Advent Candles Welcome and Reveal The Light Of the World

Don't just curse this winter darkness, Light a candle in the darkness...

John 1:9

The true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world.

Winter Dawn over the Ribble

Discovering new gifts and ministries

At Preston Captain Janet Martin feels called to develop a new ministry of shadow puppet evangelism.

Although the gift is not specifically mentioned in the New Testament it seems particularly appropriate at Christmas Time when we reach out to those people who are still walking in darkness.

Poverty At Christmas

Our Salvation Army centre in Preston has this week been throbbing with activity and looking like a Toys R Us warehouse and a Kwik Save supermarket. Our team of volunteers has spent hours stuffing gifts of food and toys into plastic bags and answering phone calls from health visitors and social workers as to when they can come and collect the parcels for their clients. We've had hundreds of referrals about people in need across this relatively small city. And we try our hardest to make sure no family is disappointed, though with so many cans of baked beans in the food hampers one wonders about the impact on the health of the nation, let alone the gaseous contribution to global warming.


Without a doubt this generous giving is both welcome and necessary, and many people in poverty will be glad to receive something that helps them enjoy their Christmas. But it must leave us with lots of questions:


Why only at Christmas is the wider community so sentimentally concerned for the homeless and the poor, when so much more could be done by sustained giving by direct debit, or even by taxation?

Does small scale charitable giving make a real long tem difference to people's lives when we all know there are deeper causes behind poverty, or does it trap them in dependency?

What is the role of government as opposed to / or in partnership with the charitable sector in making an impact on these problems?

To their credit the Tory Party has been doing some serious work and analysis on these issues and you can read their report on http://povertydebate.typepad.com/voluntary_sector/

Their analysis is heavy on family breakdown, addiction and educational failure as the main causes, and it is not surprising there is a lot of criticism of current government policy. To be fair they have done a lot of listening to organisations in the Third Sector and picked up a lot of issues we have been highlighting for ages.

There is an intersting comment on the social policy list at

http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?A2=ind0612&L=social-policy&T=0&F=&S=&P=2067

which suggests that the Royal Family is a pretty dysfunctional family the only difference being that it has a lot more (tax payer's ) money.

There is also an interesting recent analysis of poverty statistics at http://www.jrf.org.uk/knowledge/findings/socialpolicy/1979.asp

As usual I want to ask WWJD "what would Jesus do?"

Of course we could quote his saying "the poor you have always with you" Matthew 26:10-12 and take it as a fatalistic acceptance of the status quo and a command to concentrate on worship and spirituality. While the context of a woman pouring expensive perfumed ointment on the Saviour's feet does support the second part of that reading I believe we should reject any suggestion that Jesus condones involuntary poverty.

Indeed it is interesting that he was saying this to a bunch of disciples who included Judas Iscariot, the group's accountant, who loved money and betrayed him for cash a couple of verses later..

And it was also undoubtedly a reference to

Deuteronomy 15:11There will always be poor people in the land. Therefore I command you to be openhanded toward your brothers and toward the poor and needy in your land.

Which in the context of the earlier verse

Deuteronomy 15:4However, there should be no poor among you, for in the land the LORD your God is giving you to possess as your inheritance, he will richly bless you,

suggests poverty is a result of sin... not the sin of those who have become poor but the sin of those who have failed to share equally the riches God has blessed them with..

Even Paul ( often thought to be a conservative) spells this out more clearly than Karl Marx ever did

2 Corinthians 8:13Our desire is not that others might be relieved while you are hard pressed, but that there might be equality.
14. At the present time your plenty will supply what they need, so that in turn their plenty will supply what you need. Then there will be equality,

I wonder does he mean just a little charitable giving at Christmas? Or Maybe something much more radical... at which we all consistently fail and need God's forgiveness and grace. For after all this is the model we see in the incarnation, in the birth of Emmanuel, as a baby in squalid temporary accommodation and before long as an asylum seeking refugee.

2 Corinthians 8:9For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, so that you through his poverty might become rich.

Celebrating Winter Binge

While the tabloid press mislead everyone with the urban myth of the banning of the traditional English Christmas by politically correct secular councillors, and the great and the good including archbishops and even their Muslim friends tut tut in horror some of us as Christians feel a much greater issue is at stake.

Of course Christmas has not been banned; the furore is just part of the racist hysteria and backlash against those who have struggled for years to promote diversity and racial justice, and serves as just another weapon in the vilification of the "other" in our society.

At this time of year I remember with affection Oliver Cromwell who for very good and Christian reasons in the 1650's actually did ban Christmas. And I lament the downward slide back into the secular winterbinge we now suffer. Charles Dickens and the late victorians who invented Santa have much blame to bear, for it was they who trivialised, and sentimentalised the nativity season. The secularised English winterbinge with its images of snow and robins, reindeer and bauble bedecked spruce trees is a very late invented tradition. As everyone says it gets earlier and worse each year and the biggest joy that marks a successful Christmas is booming retail sales which boost the flagging British and global economy.

Of course there is goodwill, and some extra giving to charity.. see For a few days homeless people may be taken off the street and kept warm and well fed, toys are collected and given to the poorest families, and the height of radical Christmas chic is to buy a goat for a farmer in Africa as the present for the auntie who already has everything (see http://shop.christianaid.org.uk/ ). Yet the injustice and suffering and warfare contiue around the world for the other 364 days each year. There's a warm self righteous glow, but nothing is really changed.

For most people though the festive season is just that. An orgy of spending followed by an orgy or eating drinking, sub-misltoe kissing and worse! And a guilt filled January where resoultions for a healthier lifestyle sometimes make it to about the 15th.

What a tragedy and a travesty of the feast of the Incarnation.. !

There is one tradition of the English Christmas that is beyond compare. The performance of Handel's Messiah (which I was privileged to hear last night in Preston's Guildhall). There is no way of avoiding the mystery and the challenge of the story for the words that are set to music are pure Scripture, glorious in ispiration and revelaing the greatest story every told. What a wonderful way to memorise Bible verses. No wonder everyone stands as the choir booms out the Hallelujah chorus. One only wonders how many of the singers and the orchestra fully understand the significance of the lyrics.

Indeed at its root the celebration of Christmas should be about the miracle of "the word made flesh",

As Charles Wesly put it
"our God contracted to a span, incomprehensibly made man"

As Graham Kendrick put it

From heaven you came, helpless babe,
Entered our world, your glory veiled;
Not to be served but to serve,
And give Your life That we might live.

Come see His hands And His feet,
The scars that speak of sacrifice;
Hands that flung stars Into space
To cruel nails Surrendered.


If this is the true meaning of Christmas it should transform our lives, it should transform our world..

And it is something to celebrate, with a song and a carol or two such as "Joy to the World"

Joy to the world! the Lord is come:
Let earth receive her King;
Let every heart prepare him room,
And heaven and nature sing (x2) And heaven,and heaven and nature sing.

And even I will not say no to a helping of Christmas pud

and at least one more beer.

A virtual christmas card

HAPPY CHRISTMAS AND BEST WISHES FOR THE NEW YEAR

CHRISTMAS GREETINGS & ANNUAL NEWSLETTER

December 2006
Dear Friends,

As usual we thought we had better tell you what we’ve been doing this year, as there must be at least a handful of people who are interested. There is a lot to thank God for and we end the year all in good health and reasonable spirits, if a bit tired and battered by lots of the little things that make up the stresses of modern life. We’ve now been in Preston nearly five years, have built up a fairly good network of friends and community contacts and are well involved in the life of our local church, which has many positive aspects, but will never be perfect as long as we are there (and as long as it stays CofE!).

With teenagers in the family we do less together than a few years ago, but we did have family holidays with the relatives in Scotland, with many familiar faces at Capernwray and a great week based in Berwick on Tweed joined by our London friend Catherine. We still miss the Newham networks and the buzz of the East End, but try to keep in touch by phone, email and the occasional visit or get together. And even up in Preston we mustered half a dozen Hammers fans to watch the Cup Final together.. (we wuz robbed!! … and we won’t talk about this season so far).

Greg has had a very different year actually having to go out of the house and to get into work by 9am each weekday. The job at The Salvation Army is very rewarding, helping to run the community centre, managing Big Issue sellers, networking into the community and writing funding bids to develop the work. We’ve raised over £15k for a playground and garden project and £25k to set up a computer suite; all we need now is half a salary for the next few years to keep me in the post beyond next summer. I’ve spent a lot of spare time on the allotment, walking the hound and doing digital photography. You can find out more by looking at my blog which links to various web sites that cover different bits of my life: http://gregsnewblogcredo.blogspot.com/

Jane has had a pretty miserable year at work having been forcibly relocated to Merseyside where she is now stuck in a field probation office in Southport. Workload is excessive, electronic record keeping wastes 85% of the time, all to provide a scapegoat for the Home Secretary to blame when the tabloids have a headline about a paedophile or a murderer who is “on probation”. One bright spot she is off to Bulgaria in January to deliver 10 days training to their new Probation service. The other bright spot is the “accidentally” tinted bright red hair style!

Marcus and Martha being teenagers just don’t want to be mentioned in this letter at all, but we can tell you the former is soon due to take GCSE’s and went on a school trip to the Western Front, while the latter is very active in Christian groups at school and church.
NB: Greg’s suit is pure digital editing!!

So here’s wishing every blessing for Christmas and the New Year 2007
Greg, Jane, Marcus & Martha