Christian Aid Week is an expression of our unity as the people of God and an opportunity for us to come together in prayer and solidarity with some of the poorest people in the world.

Chilwell Road Methodist Church

 Wednesday 15^th May 6-9pm

An opportunity to:

• pray for those affected by injustice
• join in with some of Christian Aid’s current campaigns
• reflect on our role in bringing about change in God’s world

Families Welcome

Refreshments provided

World Space is an opportunity to focus on issues of justice, human rights and environmental concerns.  It is a forum to raise global and community issues and to seek our faithful response to them.

For more information please contact Alison Rowe alisonrowe03@hotmail.com 922 5456M      

This year’s Holiday Club is Mission: Rescue. Taking on a spy/secret agent theme, it looks at rescue focusing on the story of how God saved the Israelites from Egypt using Moses and how God’s ultimate rescue plan involves Jesus.

During Holiday Club week, please pray for the following:

• That we have a good turnout of children
• That we make everyone that comes feel welcome and settles in
• That everyone is safe
• Leaders as they lead games, crafts and learning from the story of Moses
• That as well as having lots of fun, we learn about God and that the faith of both leaders and attenders grows
• That attenders and their families come to the Holiday Club Service (14^th April) and that it may be a way to welcome new people into our congregation

The main thing we agreed about was that we would love to have a new build church but the most important thing was to work what we’ve got, be pragmatic and not allow the momentum that has been built up to die.  If we do end up using the Chilwell Rd site, Chilwell Rd members will have to work hard at ‘giving up’ the old church and truly seeing a new church as somewhere that belongs to all of us in Beeston and Chilwell.

I have heard that some of the groups were not as positive but the service afterwards had a good feel to it.

If you went to the Envision, what sort of experience did you have?

By Connie Pullan

In the early days of the church, soon after Saul’s conversion, King Herod was persecuting the Christians. He had James, brother of John, put to death and when this met with approval from the Jews, seized Peter. This was just before Passover, so Peter was put in prison until his trial, scheduled after the festival.

The night before the trial, Peter was asleep in prison. An angel appeared, woke up Peter and the chains fell off his wrists. The angel led Peter out of the prison, despite guards and closed doors and then left once Peter was a street clear of the jail. Peter then headed to the house of Mary, mother of John, where a number of Christians were gathered, praying.

Peter knocked at the outer entrance, and a servant named Rhoda came to answer the door. When she recognised Peter’s voice, she was so overjoyed she ran back without opening it and exclaimed, ‘Peter’s at the door!’

‘You’re out of your mind, it can’t be him’ they told her. When she kept insisting, “it is him, it is!” they said, ‘It must be his angel.’

But poor Peter, still waiting outside, kept on knocking, and when they opened the door and when they saw him, they were astonished!

You’ve got to love Rhoda’s enthusiasm. Little is said about her in the bible, but some versions refer to her as a servant girl and it’s easy to see her as a child. She is capable, she gets things done like answering doors and relaying messages, but sometimes her overexcitement and perhaps inexperience gets the better of her and she neglects things like opening the door. The grown-ups around her put a greater reliance on their own judgement than her testimony.

I read that passage and think of our young people, children and teens. They are enthusiastic, capable and do many things. But at the same time they still have a lot to learn and we’re not about to sign them up as chair of Mission and Service, or be local preachers.

But how do we balance these 2 things, allowing them to serve, letting them make mistakes and accepting the inevitable problems while at the same time taking time to teach and guide them? And how do we correct them without demoralising them? How do we allow them to exercise responsibility without over- or under-burdening them? How much is “enough” cotton wool to wrap them in?

Hats off to Rhoda – she told them what she saw and persisted even when the others didn’t believe her. We can’t assume our young people will persist if we keep belittling them.

This is an issue that no easy answer exists for. Every young person is different and even the best leaders will get it wrong sometimes. But we need to remember that we are not alone. We have one another. We have resources (books, magazines, online) and we have the support of Father in Heaven. We need to spend time sharing ideas, training and praying.

——

We spent the following few minutes in prayer. We each had a star sticker as a prayer prompt to represent one of the little “stars” under our care that they may grow into big stars that emit much light for God.

For any members of the congregation reading this, I urge you to pray for our young people and our Junior Church leaders/helpers and I certainly think it’s helpful, in addition to general prayer for them, to pick a few individuals to particularly focus on.

This week we were looking at the story of Deborah. I introduced our story, “about a woman in the bible called Deborah”.

Then a little voiced piped in, full of confidence, “I’ve seen a zebra!!”

(If this doesn’t make sense, read it aloud!)

You show me the path of life. In your presence there is fullness of joy; in your right hand are pleasures for evermore.

“In your right hand are pleasures for evermore.” Reading this verse in the psalm – a song of trust and security in God – reminded me of the words of Screwtape in C. S. Lewis’ The Screwtape Letters. There, the demon Screwtape works himself into a rage over just these words, informing his nephew Wormwood that,

“He’s a hedonist at heart. All those fasts and vigils and stakes and crosses are only a facade. Or only like foam on the seashore. Out at sea, in His sea, there is pleasure, and more pleasure.”  C. S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (London: HarperCollins, 2002), 118

Screwtape has picked up on one of the more popular myths about Christianity, one which was bandied about as much during Lewis’ time as it is today. This is the myth that Christianity is fun-hating – that Christian discipleship is an interminable parade of fasts, vigils, stakes, and crosses; of denying oneself bodily pleasures and intellectual stimulation alike; of greyness, dullness, and silence.

Well, the fasts, vigils, and crosses are there (I’m not so sure about the stakes, unless Dracula turns out to be more historical than fantastical). But the fundamental truth at the heart of Christianity – the truth that in Christ, love has triumphed over law – means that none of them are there ‘just because’. Fasts and vigils, like all the practices of discipline involved in being a disciple (such as temperance, an important part of Methodist history), are there for a reason.

This reason lies in our calling, as Christians, to live virtuous lives and to live for each other. If we are greedy, and so never fast, we are consuming more than we need and are therefore denying food to those who really need it. If we are lazy, and so never participate in vigils, we will not be inclined to give of our time and are therefore letting down those who might benefit from our presence. If we let our passions rule our mind, and so place too great a value on our own experiences, we will struggle to nurture relationships that mirror those of Christ, the Incarnate God in whose image we were made.

To serve Christ, we need to love and serve and relate to our brothers and sisters in the church and the world. When we live like this – and when we try to do so, whatever our failures along the way – we live in relationship with God. We are all imperfect, and sometimes selfish, individuals: we all have greedy moments, lazy moments, envious moments… even, like Screwtape, angry moments. It’s because of our imperfections that discipleship involves fasts, vigils, and crosses; not because Christianity is a fun-hating religion, but because spiritual discipline frees us to live in relationship with God. And out in God’s sea, at God’s right hand, “are pleasures for evermore.”

By Matt Barton

Elsewhere around church, Christmas dinner is being cooked in the kitchen, where the cooks are diligently preparing Christmas dinner. The hall is being set up to serve Christmas Dinner and each time I look around the church is looking a little more Christmassy!

In addition to this, the Kumon people coming and going to their groups, occasionally peering in to see what we’re up to.

Here’s a couple of the displays members of Junior Church have been making:

Keira’s Arrangement

Rebecca’s Arrangement

Christmas is most definitely coming!

“Arise, shine for your light has come!”   These are words we can pick straight off the page of our bibles on Christmas Day.  After all the waiting and preparation and excited anticipation the day has dawned at last.  Jesus, the Christ, the Light of the World, has come.  Born in the manger, announced by angels, greeted by shepherds, worshipped by kings, God is with us.    And we do shine – with smiles of joy and happiness as we celebrate this wonderful sacred day.

For Isaiah and his people it is actually the promise of restoration they are celebrating so joyfully.  Their time of exile in Babylon is over, their sin has been paid for, their punishment is complete – and they are going home.  God has come and saved them.   However no-one will blame us for reading into these words the promise of the Messiah.  After all, the God who did save, does save and will save.  He is our light and salvation too.

I have been used to working with Luther’s translation of the Bible in recent years and in the German Methodist hymn book this text has been made into a round which is often sung at Advent;  “Mache dich auf und werde Licht!”¹ -  “Arise, shine!”   Somehow the German version seems less poetic but, at the same time it feels more urgent and challenging.    “Your light has come to you, THEREFORE  get up and be a light for others”  is the sense of it.  And the implication of that is more clearly spelled out 2 chapters earlier in Isaiah² where we read: “ … loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke  .. set the oppressed free … share your food with the hungry … provide the poor wanderer with shelter  … clothe the naked … “  THAT’S HOW you will be a light for others.  That’s how you will turn their winter into Christmas.

Longing for light, we wait in darkness.

Longing for truth, we turn to you.

Make us your own, your holy people,

light for the world to see.

Christ be our light!

                Shine in our hearts.

                Shine through the darkness.

                Christ be our light!

                Shine in your church gathered today.³

The comedian Peter Kay cracks a joke about not knowing which coloured bin to put out for the refuse collectors each week. He smiles at the audience, raises an eyebrow, and says: “I just copy old people.”

Why does that get a laugh? It’s not a joke about pensioners – there is no cruelty in it. It’s a confessional joke. It’s funny because most of his middle-aged audience recognise ourselves in what he says. And we realise those sitting beside us do to. But until that moment we all thought we were the only ones furtively glancing down the street each week to see which bins our older neighbours had put out!

It’s a joke that tells us something about our hectic, modern lifestyles. We live in a world where only people who are retired seem to have time to be organised enough to know whether it’s a green, black or brown bin day.

To flourish the church needs to acknowledge this and adapt. It is not sufficient to offer one major act of worship a week – the 10.30 Sunday morning service. For too many families Sunday is another working day; it’s a day the children play football; it’s the only day free to spend with non-churchgoing partners. For some it’s a genuinely important day of rest – to convalesce from the frantic week just passed.

Chilwell Road is recognising this. Alison’s World Space is an occasional midweek opportunity for contemplation of the issues facing the world and creative prayer. Colin’s Open Space is a new Tuesday lunchtime opportunity for communion and prayer. Sarah’s Play Church is a way of serving the families who may not have the time or inclination to bring their children to Junior Church on Sunday but appreciate the opportunity for spiritual reflection midweek after toddler group. She’s also running Messy Church at Wollaton Road.

The success of these ventures cannot be measured in attendance. What matters is that the church is open and trying to meet our spiritual needs at times that suit us better and in ways that are most meaningful.

There’s a much longer established service we hold that fits into this category too. It’s the fortnightly 9am communion. I recently discovered this and have been encouraging our young people to attend. They really enjoy it (as do their parents). It’s a tranquil, half-hour service with a short, focused address.

It’s a good introduction to adult worship for them. It’s also a good service for busy families who may not have time to attend the longer, later service. To encourage the teenagers to attend I’ve started a Breakfast Club afterwards. It’s been so enjoyable we’ve now opened it up to the whole congregation.

Apparently this service was initiated years ago because the Junior Church teachers were missing out on worship, but somehow we forgot about it. It has attracted only a small number of mainly older members of the congregation.

Which brings me back to Peter Kay. We obviously need to watch older people more closely – they know something we don’t! Come and join us for communion, prayer and simple breakfast fellowship and you’ll see what I mean.

Martin Stott

So today was the cradle roll party: an opportunity for children on the cradle roll (those baptised into the church under the age of 3) and their families to come have fun. So what was this for? It was an opportunity for us to come together and show that we the church care for them, to get to know them a little better and let them know what things we offer.

At least half of the cradle roll families attended our party and seemed to have a fabulous time! With toys, a fantastic entertainer from Bongo Bongo and party food there was time to play, sing, dance, eat, chat and catch up with families, some of whom we only see very occasionally.