Unbelievable? No, maybe not.
Dog Collar Clergy ‘Risk Attack’
BBC NEWS | UK | Dog collar clergy ‘risk attack’
Doesn’t surprise me. It happened to me once. Quite random, in the street. No witnesses. Later I realised it was someone with a drug problem we’d been trying to help through a youth ministry. Persecution for my faith? Probably not.
And it rather blows the romantic idea some traditional church members have that wearing ‘the collar’ makes you approachable to non-churchgoers. I’ve never known that in fifteen years. The best it gets is, ‘Hello, Father,’ from people I presume either to be Catholics or those searching for some way to be polite. I’ve never asked my female minister friends what reactions they get.
Technorati Tags: ministry, dogcollar, violence, persecution
Dog Collar Clergy ‘Risk Attack’
BBC NEWS | UK | Dog collar clergy ‘risk attack’
Doesn’t surprise me. It happened to me once. Quite random, in the street. No witnesses. Later I realised it was someone with a drug problem we’d been trying to help through a youth ministry. Persecution for my faith? Probably not.
And it rather blows the romantic idea some traditional church members have that wearing ‘the collar’ makes you approachable to non-churchgoers. I’ve never known that in fifteen years. The best it gets is, ‘Hello, Father,’ from people I presume either to be Catholics or those searching for some way to be polite. I’ve never asked my female minister friends what reactions they get.
Technorati Tags: ministry, dogcollar, violence, persecution
Dog Collar Clergy ‘Risk Attack’
BBC NEWS | UK | Dog collar clergy ‘risk attack’
Doesn’t surprise me. It happened to me once. Quite random, in the street. No witnesses. Later I realised it was someone with a drug problem we’d been trying to help through a youth ministry. Persecution for my faith? Probably not.
And it rather blows the romantic idea some traditional church members have that wearing ‘the collar’ makes you approachable to non-churchgoers. I’ve never known that in fifteen years. The best it gets is, ‘Hello, Father,’ from people I presume either to be Catholics or those searching for some way to be polite. I’ve never asked my female minister friends what reactions they get.
Technorati Tags: ministry, dogcollar, violence, persecution
Harvest Sermon: Healing The Land
Text-wise, this is a shorter sermon than usual this week (don’t cheer too loudly). You’ll see this is built around a TEAR Fund film, and you’ll need to watch the film at the point where I provide the link, before coming to the summary.
Introduction
Our text for Harvest Festival this year is 2 Chronicles 7:14:
‘If my people who are called by my name humble themselves,
pray, seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from
heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal their land.’
It’s an odd text for Harvest. It comes from a night-time
divine visitation that Solomon received after the dedication of the Jerusalem
Temple. But I was attracted to it, because of the reference to healing the
land. Healing the land seemed a good theme for harvest, and especially because I
wanted to tie in our theme with the sermon series I began on healing three
weeks ago.
In that respect, the context of God’s promise to heal the
land if his people come to him in penitence is a relevant one, I think. For God
anticipates a time of drought, a locust invasion or pestilence (verse 13). And
these plagues are very similar to what we witness in our world today. At a
harvest time when we are so grateful for the plenty we have, we are conscious
that millions in our world do not enjoy that.
So firstly, let’s consider some of the ways in which the
land needs healing in our world today. I’m hoping we can now see a ten-minute
film from TEAR Fund from their ‘Be Part Of A Miracle’ campaign. (Link
here.)
Summary
Healing the land is God’s promise to those who turn to him. But he calls us to
be partners with him. As Sophia said in the film,
‘You can’t just say, ‘God, help me,’ when you are not taking
care of yourself. You need to take care of yourself, but you also need his
help.’
And as Cuthbert quoted Augustine at the end,
‘Pray as though everything depended on God. Work as though
everything depended on you.’
Yet is the church in Fombe doing anything different from other
relief agencies? Secular charities would instigate similar relief work. More
widely, we will share in the concern to change our lifestyles to mitigate the
effects of climate change. We, too, shall campaign for fairer rules on
international trade. We shall work to see medical drugs made as available for
the poor as for the rich of the world.
But our text calls for people to pray, to seek God’s face
and turn from our wicked ways. There is a Christian distinctive here. We partner
God in healing the land, because the Creator made us to be his stewards of it,
not people who do what they like with it. Treating creation rightly is part of
the bigger picture of repentance, the call to turn our entire lives back to
God. So it’s good to see TEAR Fund link their service of the poor in the way
Cuthbert said near the end about the church:
‘We are always close to the community, enabling people to
step out of poverty, and bringing them to faith.’
A true healing of the land is linked with the healing of the
person – healing their alienation from God by bringing them to faith in Christ.
And so healing the land is for the Christian a spiritual activity. We may well
do many of the things that secular agencies do, but it will be based on prayer
and connected with sharing our faith. In healing the land, the Creator calls
his stewards, the human race, back to himself.
Cuthbert said,
‘Would you start by committing to pray?’
I want to commend TEAR Fund’s ‘Be Part Of A Miracle’
programme to you. I receive their prayer diary. Every day there is material for
intercession or thanksgiving regarding their work among the poor and oppressed
of the world. If you are willing to take up Cuthbert’s challenge to start by
committing to pray, then speak to me afterwards. Let’s make a start in healing
God’s land.
Technorati Tags: harvestfestival, TEARFund, BePartOfAMiracle, Malawi, Fombe, CuthbertGondwe, healing, creation
Child Tax Credits
The Child Tax Credit system is up the spout again. What a surprise. In four years, we’ve never had a satisfactory year. We’ve had them ignore my income and give us a fortune we knew we weren’t entitled to (as well as other benefits). So we had to save the money, notify them and agree the repayment. We’ve had them fail to tell us what the scales are so that we can check whether they’ve awarded us the right sum (we’re supposed to check, but how can you?). This year, we’ve reported a reduced joint income and so you’d expect a higher award. Nope. They lobbed off a chunk and are recovering an overpayment. It’s insanity, especially when we rely on this to buy some basics for our children.
So who will get the blame? I notice from the Guardian article linked above the Government speak about ‘officials’. Well, of course ‘officials’ take the action and make the mistakes. But on whose instructions? The officials are civil servants. I know as an ex-civil servant that you simply have to implement and operate Government policy. I know from someone who works at HM Revenue and Customs, who administer the scheme, what happened. It was introduced too quickly, and staff were not trained properly. Which means nothing has changed in the twenty-one years since I left the service. Politicians introduce something glitzy, it all goes wrong and the blame goes to the ‘officials’ again.
The Tories are right – this has happened under Gordon Brown’s watch (he introduced the scheme as Chancellor of the Exchequer), but they were guilty of the same tricks when they were in power. I know – I worked for them.
We can survive. We are also the kind of educated professional family where we know how to write letters and appeals to win our case (although it’s tiring and soul-destroying to have to do that every year). But there are poorer people than us who won’t know how to play the system, and who are suffering enormous hardships. It’s time politicians stopped either playing the scapegoat (the Labour Government) or pretending they were on a righteous crusade (the Tories). Sorting out the system to help the poor is a bigger vote-winner for me than political jousting.
And of course we’ll forgive, even if they are using up their seventy times seven credits. But shalom comes with reconciliation and justice, too. So not just as a parent but as a Christian too, I believe this mess must be cleaned up. If Brown really is committed to substance rather than style in contrast to the Blair years, then he will. Let’s wait and see. I wonder how long before I exhale.
Technorati Tags: childtaxcredits, GordonBrown
The Religion Of Branding
I’ve just found this three-year-old interview with Naomi Klein about the problem of branding. Here are some extracts which bear Christian reflection:
In a marketplace where it’s so easy to produce products, where your
competitors can essentially match you on the product itself, you need
to have something else. You need to have an added value, and that added
value is the identity, the idea behind your brand. And this is spoken
of in many different ways, “the story behind the brand.” I don’t think
we can understand this phenomenon just in terms of how easy it is to
produce products. I think it also has to do with a reaction to a
culture in the ’80s where people were longing for some kind of deeper
meaning in their lives.So what brands started selling was a kind of pseudo-spirituality — a
sense of belonging, a community. So brands started filling a gap that
citizens, not just consumers, used to get elsewhere, whether from
religion, whether from a sense of belonging in their community….
How has branding moved into politics?
I think it was when George Bush went to Baghdad for Thanksgiving and
held up the turkey. I have a friend who says that since September 11,
she’s felt as if she’s been living in a movie. What I realized when I
saw that image was that, in fact, it’s not that American politics is
being influenced by Hollywood, but that it’s being deeply influenced by
Madison Avenue. That image with Bush holding the turkey was a
quintessential advertising image. It was more than just a political
photo op. He was being treated in a sense as a corporate mascot — not
as a president, but the corporate mascot of the nation. That image of
holding that platter is a quintessential advertising image, almost like
Aunt Jemima, the early brand images of the comforting corporate mascotWhat do you say to the American who feels overwhelmed by all this?
One other thing I wanted to say is that I do think that we care more
than we’re given credit for. And I always think it’s quite amazing that
after September 11, there was this amazing outpouring of caring. And
the response from the government of the U.S., from Bush, was, “Go
shopping.” And it wasn’t just once or twice. Essentially the entire
government response after September 11 in terms of what individuals
could do to make a difference was to shop. There was a big campaign in
Canada; we got in on this, and we had “Canada Loves New York” weekends,
where we would just come here and shop. And the idea that … the
greatest way to express solidarity with people is through consumption,
when people were responding in ways that were much, much more
significant and human, and [were] helping each other in a time of need,
and [then they were] told by the government: “No, do something really
isolated; just shop. Save your country; support people that way.”How do we wake up?Can we break this cycle of artifice?
I don’t think there’s a way out of this until we actually — not to
get too New Age here — but I think we really need to ask ourselves
what we’re honestly shopping for when we’re shopping. Sometimes you’re
really just shopping because you need something, but shopping is now
the primary leisure activity, the primary family activity, and a lot of
it is extraordinarily un-fun and unsatisfying. And I think that it is
important to ask yourselves what you’re actually shopping for. If you
are shopping for community, if you are shopping for democracy, you
actually are not going to get it at the mall. And you will only be
cured of this particular malaise if you find ways to fulfill those
desires elsewhere. That’s certainly the only way I kicked my shopping
habit.
Technorati Tags: NaomiKlein, consumerism, globalisation
Big Circumstance 