Advent Calender

I love our Advent Calender on the doors as you come into church, I even forgive the people responsible for making me a fairy (or just possibly and angel) on day 6.

Here's another good Advent Calender.

http://www.paperlesschristmas.org/jp/sj-site/index.html

Not sure who has done this and I can't seem to skip ahead and see what the days ahead will be like but I quite like, day 7 and day 12.

Am I the only one who missed this?

According to the BBC they found Herod's tomb this year, did I miss the news that day?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/player/nol/newsid_6630000/newsid_6635400/6635479.stm?bw=bb&mp=rm&news=1&bbcws=1

Perscuted church

Following the prayers a week ago for the persecuted church a number of people asked where they can get further information. Tom has written a helpful note with links below. He also mentioned some murders in Turkey and I noticed this weekend that the court case has just come up for those accused of the killings there:

www.guardian.co.uk/turkey/story/0,,2216358,00.html

'Thanks to all of you who listened to me talking about the persecuted church on the 18^th November. Some of you have asked for some more information and especially about Shuang Shuying, the elderly Chinese lady being held in a Beijing prison. This article gives the fullest account of her story that I have found: http://en.epochtimes.com/news/7-8-30/59228.html# and the website of Prisoner Alert below has a page on her that looks as though it will be updated with any news.

Here are the websites I know about. There are certainly others but I think that this covers the major organisations that operate in the UK as well as some that may not. Please let me know if I have missed any out.

Open Doors UK - Christian Persecution Charity this is ‘Brother Andrew’s’ organisation.

Release International - The voice of the persecuted church this has similar roots to Voice of the Martyrs in the US.

Barnabas Fund ...hope and aid for the persecuted church concentrates with great understanding on Christians in the Muslim world.

Christian Solidarity Worldwide, promoting religious freedom and human rights for persecuted Christians

PrisonerAlert.com Linked to CSW.

Compass Direct News A news agency specialising in the persecuted church that has wide international contacts.

Burma prayer

China Aid

If you want to keep informed, at least the first four on the list send out regular magazines and prayer calendars. Typically they also send our e-mail alerts or regular updates that you can sign up to. They all have slightly different emphases and specialisations and I have not yet come across any evidence that they tread on one another’s toes! Sadly, there is plenty of work to be done in this area, so they don’t need to compete.

"Remember the prisoners as if chained with them, and those who are mistreated..." Hebrews 13.3'

So who's to blame?

I was browsing this site http://asbojesus.wordpress.com/ following a link just now, and it struck a chord with me. We live in the "I couldn't help it" age. We blame the devil and he blames us!

Update on Beven

Thanks, if you are following news and praying for Beven.

I spoke to Keith this morning, they now have the results of all the tests.

It seems that Beven has a tumour somewhere between his jaw and eye on one side but that the prognosis is quite a bit better than the news they were hearing in Sri-Lanka.

The child specialists are intending some sort of chemotherapy and are ‘very optimistic’ about the outcome.

One other thing worth mentioning is that since we have been talking and praying about this Beven has been feeling increasingly better and the lumps have been decreasing.

Clearly there is stuff to give God thanks for and need for more prayer.

UPDATE ON THE UPDATE

Bevan has now gone into hospital for treatment for 1 week and must be kept under observation for 3 weeks, after which he can leave. Also they must bring him back to India 3 or 4 months later. They are still positive about the outcome.

Thanks for praying

I mentioned in the service last night the need for prayer for one of my family in Sri-Lanka - Beven Benjamin - the son of Keith Benjamin.

Keith is my cousin but considers me a brother - relationships are like that in Sri-Lanka. He is a pastor of a church out there.

Beven is 9 years old.

I've spoken to them both this morning - there is a need to further investigate two lumps on his head near the ear and eye, there is a possibility of very bad news and a real possibility of very good news.

One outcome might be that the right treatment will be performed best in South India and the family are looking into that now.

Thanks for praying

UPDATE 15:30 - just heard by email that both parents and Beven will fly to India tomorrow. Not sure what that means.

New start

We often talk about how September feels like a new year - new start in many ways. This year in particular I am aware of people starting new jobs, new courses, new schools and new things.

I recently re-read this poem by Ted Loader and it seemed to capture the moment.

I love the phrase 'tremble on the edge of a maybe', I believe God is there with me when I tremble like that.

“I Tremble on the Edge of a Maybe”

O God of beginnings, as your Spirit moved over the face of the deep on the first day of creation,

move with me now in my time of beginnings,

when the air is rain-washed, the bloom is on the bush, and the world seems fresh and full of possibilities, and I feel ready and full.

I tremble on the edge of a maybe, a first time, a new thing, a tentative start,

and the wonder of it lays its finger on my lips.

In silence, Lord, I share now my eagerness, and my uneasiness about this something different I would be or do;

and I listen for your leading to help me separate the light from the darkness in the change I seek to shape and which is shaping me. Amen.

Alpha Starts on 18th September

Alpha starts again in a few weeks' time. It is a fantastic opportunity to explore the big questions of life in a safe and friendly environment. If you're already convinced of the good news about Jesus Christ, then please pray for the right people to come. If you're not sure, we'd be delighted for you to join us. Contact us by e-mail at alpha@chichesterbaptist.org.uk or phone on (01243) 782582.

Interest in religion is alive and well

Amazon reports that in the last three years sales in the 'religion' category – whether the books argue for or against religion – have climbed by 50 per cent. The increase outstrips growth in all other categories. Anti-religious titles The God Delusion and God is Not Great were the top sellers, leaving Pope Benedict’s Jesus of Nazareth to uphold faith in third position. The Dawkins Delusion, Alister McGrath’s counter-blast to The God Delusion, has also done well.

http://www.churchtimes.co.uk/content.asp?id=43289

So people are thinking and reading about these things. That should encourage us in our prayers for the next Alpha course.

A final word from John Stott

Wasn't it fitting that 87-year old John Stott, in his final address at the Keswick Convention before retiring from public ministry, encouraged his hearers to 'become more like Christ'?

http://www.churchtimes.co.uk/content.asp?id=42531

Our own church aim, that people commit to and become more like Jesus, is as current as it ever was.

Keeping are eyes on Him

I read a great quote today, I was doing some early thinking for a sermon subject I have later in the summer about 'keeping spiritually fresh' and came across this thought by Spurgeon.

It is to do with keeping our eyes on Jesus, rather than focusing on feelings or spiritual experience:


'I looked at Christ and the dove of peace flew into my heart; I looked at the dove and it flew away.'

Lots of answers to prayer

I felt that there were lots of answers to prayer in the church meeting last night. If any of you weren't there you will want to know that the vote for Vic was unanimous.

Good doing church with you all.

How do I want you to treat me?

Several people has said they found the last bit of Sunday morning's message useful, and on request here it is. It started with the Golden Rule ("do to others what you would have them do to you") and then asking "How then would I want to be treated?" Using 1 Corinthians 13 as a starting point, for me it came out like this ...

I want you to be patient with me and kind. I don’t want you to envy me if I am successful or appear to have gifts that you do not have. I don’t want you to boast when you do things better than me. I don’t want you to be rude towards me. I don’t want you to be totally preoccupied with your own interests, but have an eye to mine as well. If I get things wrong, I don’t want you to blow up at me. In fact, I’d like you to destroy the record you have in your head of the mistakes that I have made.

If I lose my way, I don’t want you to rejoice in my downfall. When I walk with God, I want you to give thanks with me for what God has done. I want you to watch my back, to protect me from those people and things that would bring me down. I want you to trust me, to think the best of me, and to persevere with me.

That’s how I want you to treat me. Is that not how you would like me to treat you?

Sustained to the end

Some of the leadership team met with representatives from our groups for older people yesterday. I guess that silver surfers don't make up the majority of our Blog readership, but all the same I found these words from Isaiah encouraging this morning ...

"Even to your old age and grey hairs I am he, I am he who will sustain you." (Isaiah 46v3)

Yesterday

Good to do church with you all yesterday.

Thanks for not mentioning that I spelt 'Galatians' wrong on all my Powerpoint pages.

Some great illustrations from the Dean I thought.

I shall remember than we are 'meanwhile' people, in a 'snakes and ladders' world who play cricket with sermons.

Ken

Find Time To Do Nothing

Take time out to do nothing – and start an adventure of self-discovery. That’s the message from the Bishop of Reading who spent Monday morning handing out egg-timers to stressed commuters at the town’s railway station. The Rt Revd Stephen Cottrell urged people to spend three minutes a day in silent reflection - and find out what happens when we simply stop and rest. The Bishop’s theory is developed in his book Do Nothing to Change Your Life, an impassioned plea for people to resist the pressure to cram more and more into each day, and to find ‘delight and purpose in the ordinary things of life’.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/06/05/nbusy105.xml

The Power of One

I read something just now which gave me cause for thought.

ONE VOTE made Oliver Cromwell Lord Protector of the Commonwealth and gave him control of England. (1645)

ONE VOTE caused Charles I to be executed. (1649)

ONE VOTE made Texas part of the United States. (1845)

ONE VOTE changed France from a monarchy to a republic. (1875)

ONE VOTE made Adolf Hitler head of the Nazi Party. (1923)

What a difference one can make.

Questions

We're two days into the Old Testament Reflections series and I was struck by the fact that on both days the questions that were asked could be applied both ways.

We might ask God, "Where are you?" and "What are you waiting for?"

But he might well ask us the same thing.

Ideas ...

from the Joint Meeting earlier this year to help us translate our good intentions into actions...

http://www.chichesterbaptist.org.uk/pages/downloads.html

If you've missed our priorities for 2007, where have you been?! Here they are again:

Praying and working towards...

• More conversions;
• More regular time alone with God to read the Bible and pray;
• Greater lifestyle integrity.

It's often the simplest ideas ...

Back in February many of us shared our thoughts in a Joint Meeting about how we could take forward our church's 3 priorities. We hope to make all of the ideas available shortly through the Download area of the web site, but in the meantime under the "conversions" heading the following 7 suggestions came out as ideas that we could indivually act on.

1. Pray for 2-3 people you know – for opportunities to share the gospel and for their conversion
2. Make friends with non-Christians
3. Commit to spending social time with non-Christians – missing the occasional Sunday if need be
4. “Practise” sharing your faith with a Christian friend
5. Learn to become comfortable about talking with Christians about spiritual things
6. Look out for “people of peace”
7. Pray for a “burden for the lost”

What strikes me about them is their simplicity, but that is not to knock their power. The "mere" act of starting to pray daily for conversions (idea 1) could have an incredible impact. One idea I find personally interesting is number 5 below, because it begs the question, "If I can't talk easily with other Christians about spiritual things, how easy will I find it trying to talk to unbelievers?"

Any way, if you are one of the ones that have covenanted to 'pray and work towards' our three priorities, then have a think about what you could be doing in this particular area, and maybe add a comment if you have a good idea of your own.

Recommended

I mentioned this book in last night's message. Vaughan Roberts - Battles Christians face.

It's quite recent and touches on a number of key subjects ... image ... lust... guilt... doubt... depression... pride... homosexuality... keeeping spiritually fresh.

I haven't read it all yet, but I have read is very good.

Start date

Looking back to 15 May 2006 my diary simply states 'start date'. This was, of course the day, a year ago today when the building work for the upstairs youth hall began.

Thanks to Peter Stockwell for reminding me.

Does it seem like a year?

How blessed we have been to get to the point where the money side is now sorted.

What could God do for us individually and together in the next 12 months if we consider today a start date on our journey with Him?

John 5:13 ....

The man who was healed had no idea who it was, for Jesus had slipped away into the crowd that was there.

I was just thinking about this verse today.
I found myself wondering how many people receive God's healing touch and have no idea that it was God. How many of them will never know that it is God unless someone tells them?

The next verse says that Jesus then found him - not the other way around. I wonder if there is a challenge in that - namely that sometimes we are supposed to point out the ways in which God is already at work in the lives of our friends who don't yet accept Jesus as Lord and Saviour.

A sort of encouragement ...

According to the Baptist Times last Thursday (comment, p13) "only 27 per cent of Baptist churchgoers read the Bible for themselves at least once a week."

I went back to the results from our annual survey last December and was pleasantly surprised by the comparison which showed a 77% figure for CBC. If we were in the game of league tables we could get quite smug at this point.

But we're not, are we? Our standard is not the 'average' Baptist church in the UK, whatever an average Baptist church looks like. Our standard must be Jesus' standard, because our hope is that CBC will be full of people committed to following Jesus. Such people will be reading the Bible most days because they love their Lord and want to walk closely with him. When we look at the CBC figures for personal Bible reading 'most days' or 'every day' the number drops to 53%.

So we continue to pray that more people will take up the practice of regular personal Bible reading, not because it's a CBC priority, but because they love Jesus and want to walk more closely with him.

Stories of faith

"Church attendance may be in decline but people in the UK are still becoming Christians in their thousands. What can we learn from their stories?..."

I think there are some useful lessons for us here: http://www.licc.org.uk/node/321

I'm not on commission but ...

can I recommend two books which you may not have on your shelf?


Out of the Black Shadows is a book that made me depressed, excited, tearful and joyful at various points. It is an outstanding account of God's dealings with one man - Stephen Lungu. It's full of God's coincidences (aka "answers to prayer") and amazing grace. Incidentally, the action is centred around Zimbabwe and Malawi.

Unlocking the Bible has got to be at £0.015p per page one of the best bargains around at the moment! It is a hefty tome to carry, but a light read, and it gives an excellent introduction to each book of the Bible. Encouraging reading the Scriptures is a CBC priority at the moment, and this will help you to better understand what you're reading. I'm plugging it at a small group tonight, and it's required reading for CBC staff (!) ... so why not join the party!

Useful web sites

I'm made reference to a couple of web sites recently that I think are very useful. Here they are:

http://www.rationalchristianity.net/ - particularly for those thorny "contradictions in the Bible" objections that people throw our way sometimes

http://www.gotquestions.org/ - for general questions about faith

Another good one for Christian apologetics is ...

http://www.tektonics.org/

As with anything else you read (or hear from Ken, me or anyone else!) don't just take everything on these or similar sites on trust - check out what you read or hear and come to your own conclusions.

Psalm 22

PS 22:16 Dogs have surrounded me;
a band of evil men has encircled me,
they have pierced my hands and my feet.

PS 22:17 I can count all my bones;
people stare and gloat over me.

PS 22:18 They divide my garments among them
and cast lots for my clothing.


Just thinking about Psalm 22 and how many references there are in it to the crucifixion. Roger mentioned it last night as one of the many sources we have for believing in the Bible.

A thought which I recently read from a couple of sources which blows my mind is that this Psalm is not only written a thousand years before Jesus' death it is also written long before crucifixion had even been invented.

When we bring our worries to God in prayer

When we bring our worries to God in prayer-we often think of that prayer as giving our burdens up – handing them over to God and that is a very helpful image.

But sometimes, the concern is still very much a real part of our day.

I read an interesting analogy with prayer recently which I can’t get out of my mind.

The gist of the analogy is to do with carrying weight around – all sorts of weights of varying shapes and sizes.

Until we pray it is like we are carrying these weights in the most disorganised way possible. Carrying some in weak carrier bags – balancing others in our hands which are already overfull – and stumbling on with too much weight carried in ways which cannot be good for us.

When we pray, very often the weights are still there, God hasn’t yet completely removed the problem. But the act of praying has helped us to sort and arrange our weights into a manageable rucksack properly packed and balanced.

And then we can carry on, in a way which would not have been possible without the prayer.

We regularly need to stop, take stock and sort out our bags and sometimes put some new things in which we have unintentionally found ourselves balancing awkwardly in our hands again.

And sometimes when we have a sort out - some of things which were in the bag before have somehow shrunk or gone entirely.

Perseverance

I've just finished reading Stephen Tomkins' biography of Wilberforce (thanks, Ken). He really was quite an amazing guy. When we hear the name Wilberforce, we think "anti-slavery", but the Church Missionary Society, the British and Foreign Bible Society, and even the RSPCA (!) can trace their roots to Wilberforce. What stands out for me more than anything else is his perseverance, amply evident from this quote taken at a time when he anticipated one of the many defeats of his bills:

"Interested as I might be supposed to be in the final event of the question, I am comparatively indifferent as to the present decision of the House. Whatever they might do, the people of Great Britain, I am confident, will abolish the slave trade... For myself, I am engaged in a work I will never abandon... Let us persevere, and our triumph will be complete. Never, never will we desist, until we have wiped away this scandal from the Christian name, released ourselves from the load of guilt, under which we at present labour, and extinguished every trace of this bloody traffic, of which our posterity, looking back to the history of these enlightened times, will scarce believe that it has been suffered to exist so long a disgrace and dishonour to this country."

Wow! "Never, never ..." And he kept to his word. May we have the same dogged pursuit of what is right in our time, and never, never give up.

Easter Week

For various reasons I have been taking a look at C H's Spurgeons' daily readings this week. He tends to take one verse to think about in the morning and one in the evening.

His language appears quaint and dated to us, but every so often there is a gem to hold on to and today the thought of Jesus' sacrifice bringing me to tears has resonated with me.

'Morning, March 31

“With his stripes we are healed.” Isaiah 53:5

Pilate delivered our Lord to the lictors to be scourged. The Roman scourge was a most dreadful instrument of torture. It was made of the sinews of oxen, and sharp bones were inter-twisted every here and there among the sinews; so that every time the lash came down these pieces of bone inflicted fearful laceration, and tore off the flesh from the bone. The Saviour was, no doubt, bound to the column, and thus beaten. He had been beaten before; but this of the Roman lictors was probably the most severe of his flagellations. My soul, stand here and weep over his poor stricken body.

Believer in Jesus, can you gaze upon him without tears, as he stands before you the mirror of agonizing love? He is at once fair as the lily for innocence, and red as the rose with the crimson of his own blood. As we feel the sure and blessed healing which his stripes have wrought in us, does not our heart melt at once with love and grief? If ever we have loved our Lord Jesus, surely we must feel that affection glowing now within our bosoms.

“See how the patient Jesus stands,

Insulted in his lowest case!

Sinners have bound the Almighty’s hands,

And spit in their Creator’s face.

With thorns his temples gor'd and gash'd

Send streams of blood from every part;

His back’s with knotted scourges lash'd.

But sharper scourges tear his heart.”


We would fain go to our chambers and weep; but since our business calls us away, we will first pray our Beloved to print the image of his bleeding self upon the tablets of our hearts all the day, and at nightfall we will return to commune with him, and sorrow that our sin should have cost him so dear.'

Hope you like the new blog and web-site

You'll find opening comments from Roger and Ian below.
Following last nights meets for parents of teenagers I promised to put some key verses and 3 useful websites on the new blog today. They relate to different questions - well here goes:

Verses I used for the first question about God's view on sex and marriage

Gen 2:24, Mark 10:7-9, 1 Cor 6:12-20, 1 Thes 4:3-7 and Heb 13:4

Websites I mentioned, designed to inform about some of the issues of the internet + mobile texting + messaging etc.

www.getnetwise.org
www.chatdanger.com
www.thinkuknow.co.uk

God, that wasn't what we meant!

This next Sunday is Psalm Sunday. It seems a natural extension of this term's series on prayer to consider the prayer that the crowds offered as Jesus made his way into Jerusalem, and how God answered it in the way that they least expected and certainly hadn't intended. I hope that you'll pick up something of the tension as Jesus entered between the two authorities ruling Jerusalem, and how he responded to what was almost a nationalistic cry against foreign occupation with a rescue package for all nationalities.

The verse that blessed me most this week

All this also comes from the LORD Almighty, wonderful in counsel and magnificent in wisdom.
Isaiah 28:29

New place for CBC blogging

This is where you will find us blogging from now on. It will be worth removing 'Ken's blog' from your favourites etc. (as if it ever was!)