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

Glorious Lakeland

Some photos from a day in the lakes October 14th. I only took the photos...... God shaped the scenery!

Christians Inciting Hatred

I was recently emailed with a suggestion to look at this:

Christian Voice's anti-gay site, http://www.true-vision.org/ which spoofs the police True Vision site at http://www.report-it.org.uk/ ?

Personally I find it distasteful and embarrassing. The spoof site of course is downright deceitful. It is hard to see how this tone of diatribe there can do anything to advance the cause of Christ. Rather it adds to the climate of hatred and prejudice against those groups which do not conform to some traditional narrow norms.

I understand there are some hard teachings in the Bible on sexual ethics, prohibition on many practices and a clear positive view of heterosexual marriage. However there are many issues about how we read, interpret and appply scripture in our desire to be faithful disciples today. Surely the heart of the gospel is grace, forgiveness, love and redemption and not the strict code of the law.

What would Jesus do remains a good question. What would Jesus get angry at? Evidently (from John 8;1-11) not at the woman taken in adultery but at the self righteous religious men who wanted to cast stones but dare not cast the first one when they reflected on their own sin. What Jesus seemed to get angry at in the Temple (John 2 13-16) was social exclusion, of gentiles, women and other outcasts, and at exploitation of the poor by the money changers and the religious authorities. And here he was following the teaching in the OT law and prophets in which a handful of verses about homosexual practices seem overwhelmed by the hundreds about idolatory, poverty and oppression, and God's compassion for widows, orphans and the stranger or foreigner within the community.

Updates on my web site

I've recently tidied up the home page on my main web site
http://mysite.wanadoo-members.co.uk/credoconsultancy/uelhome.htm

and put some new links in some pages especially
http://mysite.wanadoo-members.co.uk/credoconsultancy/urbmiss.htm

The Veil Debate Unmasked

As a Christian who has lived in multi-faith communities all my adult life I get more alarmed each week about the prejudice and ignorance of the mainstream white, British "christian" society in which I live and where I don't really belong.

The current debate about veils is percieved as (and actually may be) a coded attack on Islam and Muslims, a clear case of Islamaphobia and percieved as another battle in the "war on terrorism" or "clash of civilisations". It is not really a question of individual rights but of social identities linked to faith commitments.

It will not be surprisising if the debate polarises matters further that more Muslim women will decide to wear the veil and assert their identity and rights and more Brits and "Christians" will criticise them or worse. I didn't see the Question Time programme last night that came from Preston but understand it highlighted some local people's feelings on the issue.

The co-ordinated statements by government ministers are also giving racists and Islamaphobes implicit permission to attack, or speak hurtfully to Muslim women. We read of an incident in Liverpool where a woman's veil was torn from her face, and in Preston a woman going to her local post office was told to remove her veil before being served. Christians should remember the events in Germany that led to KristalNacht and Auschwitz and the faithful response of some Christians like Bonhoffer.

Surely we should be doing all in our power to work for social cohesion which is an important component of the Biblical concept of Shalom. But that is not helped by demanding that others be conformed to the worldly culture of the present age, when we all need to be transformed by the renewing of our mind.

The idea that hiding your face betrays a desire to flee from engagement with others is clearly culture bound and part of modernist secular thinking rather than a priciple derived from Christian values. The most I would concede is that Muslim women need to be aware that some non-muslims are "freaked out" by talking to a face they can't see. There are consequences of their choice then but we must leave them free to make it..

Muslims tend to be blamed for being segregated from the rest of society. But let's be fair about this. Historically most of them have not had much choice about this, through the economics of the housing market compounded by discrimination by estate agents and sellers. In fact the Census statistics show that while most Muslims live and interact (and are usually happily integrated) in diverse multi-cultural multifaith areas, while there are millions of white "christians" who live in neighbourhoods where only a tiny handful of their neighbours are from other backgrounds. Usually they live there by choice, as the areas are greener, nicer, more affluent and "better" for bringing up their kids. Who then is responsible for increasing segregation?

It is time that Christians stopped tolerating sterotyping, misinformation and hostility to minorities for surely this is a transgression against the 9th commandment "You shall not give false testimony against your neighbor."

And it can only be special pleading on behalf of "us" against them to major on the persecution of Christians (for their faith or more often ethnic/communal identity), or to suggest that wearing a cross is an insignificant ornament while wearing a veil is a cause for concern.

2005 English Church Census

There are some interesting headline findings here showing a mixed picture of church decline in recent years. Thanks to Peter Brierley's work there is now a quite useful time series showing what has been happening in Christian England over two to three decades.

For the details of the 2005 English Church Census please Click Here
http://www.christian-research.org.uk/intro.htm

Interim report on consultation on new migrant communities in Preston

Summary Report on:
Christian Ministry and New International Communities in the North West; (Migrant workers, asylum seekers, refugees, students)
A consultation for Christians in Preston, and surrounding parts of Lancashire, and Cumbria: Hosted by Preston Christian Action Network
on Saturday September 23rd 2006;
at The Salvation Army,Harrington Street, Preston PR1 7BN

Eighteen people mainly representing Christian churches, networks and projects in Preston and across the North West, from a variety of denominational and ethnic backgrounds attended this event. (See list of participants).

We began with prayer and worship led by Tim Keightley, director of the Foxton Centre in Preston.

We heard our keynote speaker Rev Canon Alan J Robson MSc Lincolnshire Agricultural Chaplain, present a detailed analysis of the situation in the agricultural and food processing industries in his county and the role of economic migrants within it. He presented a complex picture in which many workers are vulnerable and subject to exploitation. He talked about the work he, representing the churches and a consortium of other agencies had been undertaking to address the situation and gave us some interesting ideas which stimulated debate in the group.

• 
  30, 000 migrant workers in Lincolnshire. Mainly 'controlled' by 'gangmasters' / labour providers from both host and migrant community backgrounds.. but the new law about gang master's won't work -poorly thought out and many loopholes
  
  The need for migrant workers, in the fields at harvest time and in the canneries and packhouses, is enormous - "Supermarkets would be collapse if it were not for migrant workers". Meanwhile agricultural commodity prices are held down and traditional farmers have become an endangered species.
  
  Issues for the workers include: manipulation and abuse, childcare, housing, cultural issues, interpretation and translation, advocacy
  
  There has been a piecemeal approach to responding to migrant workers - for example at one time four different welcome packs were produced. To respond to this a charitable company has been established. One project they are involved in is training migrants as interpreters/ translators
  
  Niall Cooper director of Church Action on Poverty then spoke about the Living Ghosts campaign which seeks to give a voice to asylum seekers and refugees and highlight the injustices and destitution they often face as people with minimal rights in the UK.
  
  Possible Responses:
  · -Over many years CAP has run "Poverty hearings" - helping/ encouraging those who are experiencing a situation to speak out so we can hear their stories
  
  · -Getting stories into the press: local papers are often sympathetic of a good human interest story
  
  · -There is a place for the church to speak out: there is power in them doing so. The recent Faithful Cities report said some strong things on these issues.
  
  John East of the Wesley House Asylum Seekers Project in Blackburn with Aftab Mogul (one of the project users) continued this theme and using an interview method presented a powerful story of one Pakistani Christian family’s experience in coming to the UK to seek asylum.
  
  After lunch we broke into small groups to discuss our reactions, explore possible lines of action and prayed together .
  
  
  When we came together in a final plenary session the actions various people committed themselves to undertake included:
  
  
• General awareness raising in the churches to make people aware of the injustices faced by (and the differences between) economic migrants and asylum seekers
  
• Campaigning targeted at politicians and decision makers on these issues, and encouragement for Christians to stand for office.
  
• In Preston asking some fairly sharp questions of the Local Strategic Partnership to find out if they know what is happening locally.
  
• Encourage development of interagency partnerships to make an impact on the situation without duplicating effort.
  
• Making church buildings available for activities such as English Language classes, translation and advocacy services etc.
  
• Being much more welcoming in our churches of newcomers of different cultures and nationalities.
  
• Undertaking local grass roots research involving contacting and meeting people from the new communities, listening and giving them a voice and enabling them to shape the ministries and projects which will meet their needs.

If you have comments or want to share your ideas with us please email credoconsultancy@maister-smith.fsnet.co.uk