I’m loving this new Rainbow-themed campaign, building on the way people have used the Rainbow as a symbol of hope during the current Covid-19 crisis.
Check out the video, and download the rainbow colour-in sheets for your window.
Pre-coloured (you can print this and stick it in your window).
Black and white – colour it in yourself (and stick in your window)
The man who never alters his opinions is like standing water, and breeds reptiles of the mind” (William Blake)
So have you had enough of Brexit? What I find most frustrating about it is that irrespective of whether parliament should have been prorogued or not, you only have to watch a few minutes of our MPs squabbling to see that the battle lines are so drawn-up that no matter how good the argument either for or against Brexit, no one is going to change their minds.
Now the print deadline for the Bridge means that I wrote those rather cynical words about no one changing their minds back on 13 September. So if by some miracle, something remarkable has happened since that date, and our MPs are now united in their approach to Brexit, then let me say how delighted I am to be wrong! But given how rare it is for people to change their minds, I bet I’m not!
The economist JK Galbraith said,
Faced with the choice between changing one’s mind and proving that there’s no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy on the proof.”
Which seems to me exactly what our MPs are doing. But before we condemn the lot of them for their stubbornness, let’s admit we’ve got a dog in this fight too. For all we claim that we’re open to changing our minds, we rarely do. Despite all the arguments and statistics, we encounter day by day, and all the opportunities we have to scrutinise those facts, are we really open to changing our minds?
And what’s true of Brexit, is also true of life’s even more important issues! We all have our answers to life’s big questions, and we’re sticking to them, even if we’ve never tested them, to see if they work. And whilst I’d probably not go quite so far as Greek philosopher Socrates did, when he said that,
The unexamined life is not worth living,”
I do think he has a point. There is something unhealthy about being totally closed to change.
That’s why I love to run our annual Alpha Course. Every year people come with their questions and doubts and concerns, not just about the Christian faith, but about life, the universe and everything. At every session, we watch a short presentation about a different aspect of the Christian life, and then we discuss it, and as the weeks go by, friendships form, questions are answered, fears alleviated, and just occasionally lives are transformed.
So, if you’re open to changing your mind about anything at all, why not give Alpha a try? It starts on Wednesday, Oct 2nd at 1:15pm in Upton Parish Church (St Peter and St Paul’s Church, Old Street, Upton). For more information, visit www.hopechurchfamily.org/alpha or just turn up at one of the sessions (though it does help us plan catering and resources if we know you’re coming).
First published in the Bridge Magazine, October 2019
Vicar’s article from the Bridge Magazine, May 2019
I was catching up with some old friends at a conference recently, and they started talking about all the great things going in their churches: growing youth and children’s ministries, soup kitchens, Food Banks and so on. All good stuff. And yet for some reason, I struggled to be really happy for them. If truth be told, I was more than a little jealous. Later, as I reflected on the conversations, I found myself wondering, why is it that when you compare yourself with others, you always end up feeling bitter?
This isn’t a new phenomenon. Writing well over a century ago, long before Facebook and Instagram or other forms of social media, Theodore Roosevelt, the 26th US President, said, “Comparison is the thief of joy.” Which rather begs the question, why do we compare ourselves with others at all?
Now at one level comparison is helpful. The business world has long had a practice called Benchmarking: a process by which a company can compare itself with other similar companies to identify opportunities for improvement. At its best, it’s a scientific, data-driven process that can be an incredibly helpful tool for growing an organisation. But done badly, without due consideration to the differing circumstances of the companies, and without access to all the data, it can be really harmful.
And it’s this lack of access to the data that makes comparing ourselves to others so damaging. After all, we might be experts on how we feel on the inside, but if all we have for comparison is how others look on the outside, we’re going to reach some dumb conclusions. As church leader Steve Furtick puts it, “The reason we struggle with insecurity is because we compare our behind the scenes with everyone else’s highlight reel”
Jesus tells a story in Matthew 25 about a rich man who gives each of his servants some money and tells them to put it to work. Later, he assesses what they’ve done, and in a scene, not a million miles removed from Sir Alan Sugar in the Apprentice, one of the candidates is discovered to have done nothing at all with the money and is fired.
But where Jesus’ story differs from the Apprentice, is the liberating way in which the master treats the remaining candidates. Instead of ranking them to find a winner, he rewards each of them. It’s his way of saying that our task in life isn’t to sprint to the finish comparing ourselves with others to see who comes first, second or third. Instead, we’re to run our own race, in our own lane. The goal is not to win, but to make the best use of the gifts God has given us, by becoming the best version of ourselves we can possibly be. As someone once said, “No one in the entire world can do a better job of being you, than you.”
So next time you’re chatting with friends, or you’re jealously watching the highlight reel of their lives on Facebook or Instagram, remind yourself that God hasn’t called you to run their race. Instead, he wants you to focus on running your own. And when you do that, not only do you run your own race better, but it sets you free to enjoy the success of others. It makes you better, not bitter.
Published in the Bridge Magazine, April 2019
So what’s Easter really all about? The crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus? New beginnings? Flowers, chocolate and Easter bunnies?
To make sense of Easter you have to understand one thing: Jesus’ core message. So if you’ve just picked this magazine up at random, then read on – because if you grasp this, you’ll be well ahead of a lot of churchgoers!
The gospel of Mark sums up Jesus’ core message like this:
The time has come, the Kingdom of God is near. Repent and believe the good news.” (Mark 1:14).
Jesus’ core message is as simple as that.
So what does this “Kingdom of God” mean? Maybe it’s like a religious frequent flyers club where you build up point for being good and doing religious things and being on church fundraising committees. Now those are all good things, but they aren’t what Jesus meant.
Or maybe the Kingdom of God is about politics: a way for religious leaders to motivate the masses to fight for whatever bit of land needs defending? But that’s not what Jesus had in mind, either.
Instead, think about kingdom like this: remember the days when you used to sit in the back seat of your parents’ car and fight with your brother or sister about “my side” and “your side”? Well, your “kingdom” is the bit of the seat you rule over. And that’s what the Kingdom of God is like: it’s the realm over which God rules: a realm of eternal love, peace and justice.
Now when some people hear that, they imagine Jesus means Heaven, but again that’s not what Jesus meant. The Kingdom of God isn’t about us going from down here on earth, to up there in Heaven. Instead, when Jesus talked about the Kingdom of God his focus was on bringing up there down here. That’s why he taught us to pray in the Lord’s Prayer, “Your Kingdom Come, your will be done, on earth as in heaven.” His point is not that we go up to Heaven, it’s that the Kingdom of Heaven is coming down to earth. And it all starts with Jesus. His body and life was the first place people could see God’s will being done on earth, as they would in Heaven.
That’s why he was such a threat to the rulers of his day. It wasn’t “love one another” that troubled them, it was all his talk about Kingdoms. That’s why they killed him. And that’s why God raised him from the dead: because in the Kingdom of God, there is no death. Only life in all its fullness, forever.
And that’s the point of Easter: a forever and a day promise of life in all its fullness, in the Kingdom of God; a Kingdom which is still near to us now.
And to receive it, we have to welcome it’s king, Jesus, by making him the centre of our lives. And when we do that –a little bit of “up there” comes and dwells in us, a deposit guaranteeing us all of God’s Kingdom promises for the future.
So that’s Easter: The Kingdom of God is near – repent and believe the good news. And it’s as true and accessible today as it was on the first Easter Sunday.
May you have a very Happy Easter, and may a little bit of “up there” come “down here” to dwell with you this Easter time.
Visit www.hopechurchfamily.org/easter to find out about Easter celebrations in the church in your community.
In a spirit of full disclosure, I might have pinched an idea or two for this article from a talk given by US Pastor John Ortberg on Easter Sunday 2015.