Valuing our heritage (Jul '13)

(Jan Vickers)

Robin and I recently had a holiday in California and one of the highlights for us ageing hippies was hugging the giant Sequoia trees.

It was extraordinary to be touching a living organism that had been alive for over 1800 years. A similar feeling to kissing a 150 year old giant tortoise I met last year! You may have guessed that biology was a part of my heritage! 

This last year I have had the immense honour of having a beautiful American, Allison Wyatt from Redding CA, doing life alongside me. Introducing her to our amazing British culture has been an important part of our year. Recently we visited Chatsworth House in the Peak District where yet again I found the need to hug trees! 

We journeyed on to Yorkshire where I was able to share with her my personal heritage. We visited Scarborough, where I was born and bred, and the small Methodist Chapel in a local village where, aged 12, I gave my life to Jesus. We prayed round the Methodist Central Hall where my father had been saved and received his call to preach under the eye of Methodist preachers Sangster and Newman. There we discovered that the lady who is now seeking to bring life again into that place was someone I had led into life in the Spirit when we were 17 whilst working together in a Methodist hotel! 

Allison and I prayed in another church where I was raised and spoke with my old youth leader who shared movingly of his hunger for life to come once again into those dry and ageing churches. There we were given an old Order of Service from 1955 with my father's name as the preacher; his sermon title was The Fellowship of the Holy Spirit. I felt as if that fellowship was spanning the decades.

Over these past months Colin has been sharing with us The Big Story that we are part of. God's story. Looking back at my roots reminded me that I have a spiritual inheritance through my parents, their faith and the Methodist movement that brought salvation, revival and community transformation to our nation. I now have my part to play as the Pioneer group of churches, of which River is a hub, is forging connections with the Methodist church to help resource and revitalise that call to impact the nation once again. 

Looking at a cross section of one of those fallen giant trees I saw the rings, showing year by year the history of that tree, the growth, the droughts, the fires and yet life continuing for generations. Looking at our own lives we can see the years of growth and years of hardships but through it all we see the amazing faithfulness of The Ancient of Days whose wisdom will never fail and whose plans to restore this world continue. Surely we have an amazing inheritance and a wonderful legacy to hand on! 

An old hymn writer, Joseph Hart, wrote in 1759: 

"THIS, this is the God we adore, 

Our faithful, unchangeable Friend; 

Whose love is as great as his power, 

And neither knows measure nor end. 

'Tis Jesus, the First and the Last, 

Whose Spirit shall guide us safe home; 

We'll praise him for all that is past, 

And trust him for all that's to come.

Keeping it real… (May '13)

(Linda Southwood)

Let’s not just talk about love; let’s practise real love. This is the only way we’ll know we’re truly living in God’s reality. 1 John 3:18

Many have discovered that God (who is very big), is interested in me (who is very small, when you have the whole world to look after). He, God, doesn’t regard me as a nameless and faceless worker for Him but He sees me as significant, He knows my name, and He likes me. I don’t experience God as detached, disinterested, too busy, or distant. He is here to share my struggles, join me in my bad times, and bring me peace. 

And yet… there is an invitation for you and me to become more and more the kind of people who are aware of the divine presence, attuned to the depths of each and every moment and seeing God in more people, places and events each and every day. We have had our eyes opened to God everywhere, to seeing the beautiful in the ugly, finding the praise in the pain. 

And yet… we recently celebrated the dedication of two babies in Marlow congregation, Darcie and Zach Picillo. It was a fantastic morning, it was emotional, it was memorable and it was almost called off because of the snow. 170+ adults and children packed into the Holy Trinity School Hall. Such fun. So picture this: our slightly scruffy school hall filled, with standing room only, bursting at the seams with a bunch of new people and you’re not too sure who they all are. Other than you know they’re visitors because they’re the ones who have arrived on time (point made – move on.) The highlights were many and varied. Gerry Picillo gave us an insight into their family’s journey to River Church and said “when we thought about dedicating Darcie and Zach, we knew we had to do it here at River… where else would we go?” The Picillos live in Aylesbury, but have come to Marlow. If your geography’s not great, that’s miiiiiles away. 

And yet… if we don’t keep it real with God, we’re in danger of conceptually knowing Him but little more. If we don’t keep it real, then what’s the alternative – pretending? And if it’s not real, we find fewer reasons to seek God’s wisdom and His support for our ordinary daily life. What Gerry was referring to when he said “where else would we go?” obviously wasn’t literal. There are dozens of churches between Aylesbury and Marlow who would gladly have performed a baptism or dedication service. He meant that what he and Lori and the children have experienced is real, the love and support is real. The love has been as real as the pain and the darkness as well as the joys and celebrations. That’s the only thing that makes sense of travelling a 40 mile round trip to come to Church. This Church.

Keeping it real is about being authentic, and authentic is about being genuine with yourself, God and others around you.

Loaves and Fish and Flying Pigs (Mar '13)

(Andy Read)

By the time you read this we will be in the third month of 2013 and many of us will be saying “Where is the year going?”. As I write this I am still processing the time frame that we called Twenty- Twelve. The statistics for me were something like this. 12 months; 11 different countries visited (two of them, twice – only one for a holiday); around 94,500 miles flown. So, if a few of you wondered why you hadn’t seen me recently, that’s probably why!

The reason for the vast majority of the travel was to carry out my role as the CEO of Links International, a mission and development charity. That amount of travel won’t always be necessary, but it was last year. And please believe me when I say that I’m not quoting the statistics to try to impress you. After all, it gave me a pretty rubbish carbon footprint – and by itself flying over three and a half times around the globe is just… well a lot of jet lag, a lot of in-flight movies and lots and lots of bad instant meals. But I dare to hope that the miles meant more than that.

For a start, it seems to have meant a lot to the partners that I was visiting. In an age of email, Skype, Facebook and so on it would be easy to think that face to face contact isn’t so necessary – but I believe that is a fallacy. Whilst in Kenya I learned a phrase in the local language. “Ndogu ni makinya” literally means “Friendship is steps” – and carries with it layers of meaning about how if we want to be friends with people then we need to actually take steps towards them – literal and figurative – and meet them. I learned a lot just in that saying. And it reminded me about Incarnation and all that our Heavenly Father did for us in The Word being made flesh. We don’t need to travel 94,000 miles to put that lesson into practice do we? Maybe 2013 can be a year of seeing people we spent 2012 meaning to visit.

Often, when I see the huge needs that meet us when we go to the poorest of the world, I wonder if there is anything we can do. We seem to have so little. But another encouragement and lesson takes me back to the title of this piece. Over the last few years we have been training a group of people in Malawi from the village of Chapsinja, just outside of Lilongwe, to form a Community Healthcare Team. These people have been going out into their local area with some simple but life-saving teaching, and we went to hear their report. The story was very encouraging, as they spoke about the training they have been delivering in around 20 other villages. They said that it would be good if we could go to see one of those other communities for ourselves. So we got into the 4×4 and were driven out the 25 minutes or so to the village of Gunde. Quite a short, if dusty, drive for us - but about an hour and a half’s journey by foot, which is how the Healthcare Team travel. It was my expectation that we would go to the village, talk to a couple of people and return. I was wrong. 

We were greeted by about half the village – singing and welcoming us. Chairs were set out for ourselves and eight village headmen from the area under the cool shade of a large, spreading tree. Several people from the village then proceeded to tell us all they have learned from the Chapsinja Team. It was impressive!! They had learned so much – mostly, by the way, without such benefits as literacy, written resources and so on.

Jesus taught a multitude all day and as the sun was about to set, the disciples appeal sounds quite familiar to me. “Where will we get enough for all these people?” But what did it take? Just 5 loaves and 2 small fish – but actually that was all the boy had. Jesus took all he could give – and multiplied it to make it more than enough. In the village of Gunde it felt like we were witnessing that same miracle in operation all over again. In 2013, in whatever situation, let’s bring the little we have and watch Jesus multiply it. And the Flying Pigs? What I would have looked for 3 years ago if you had suggested I would be in these situations! Stay open to new things!