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Posts Tagged ‘faith’

Books for Camp: School Survival

Posted in Books, Church, Faith, Teenagers, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on 13 June, 2011| Leave a Comment »

In my quest for suitable books for the young people on our Pathfinder venture this summer, I picked up School Survival by Catherine and Louise House. Louise is Catherine’s school age daughter and some of this book is based on the experiences she had when she moved school. And although it’s called School Survival, it’s particularly about friendship and working that through, with a single chapter about starting in a new school. It is very suitable for the Pathfinder age group (11-14) as it covers many issues faced as young people move on to secondary school.

The book is a combination of stories, quizzes, activities and bible study and is split into 14 chapters, including ones on making friends, bullying, gossip, prayer and church. It might be suitable for a Year Six primary school leaver to study over the summer holidays, or for family devotions or even as an outline for a church Pathfinder group to study over a few weeks (the chapters are uneven in size, so some could be combined). I’ll be ordering a few copies for our camp bookstall.

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Books for Camp: YP’s Guide to the Bible

Posted in Books, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on 26 May, 2011| 4 Comments »

I’ve had another little spurt of book reviewing for our summer camp for Pathfinders (ages 11-14) as I’m trying to work out which books to order for the bookstall I’m going to be running. YP’s Guide to the Bible is a great little 32 page booklet, costing less than £3. It’s a reference guide for dipping into and includes flow charts, basic bible facts, bible help for young people, key people and topics, a time line, outlines of bible books and maps.

This guide would be great for every Christian (even grown-ups!) to have on their shelf and I’ll be pushing for every Pathfinder on our camp to take one home. It’s good value and an excellent little starter for anyone who wants to understand how the bible fits together, what it’s all about and why Christians read it. As the quote from Vaughan Roberts on p4 of the booklet reminds us ‘It is just one book written by one author with one main subject’. That main subject being Jesus Christ.

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Reaching the Unreached

Posted in Faith, Inner city, tagged , , , , , , , , on 20 May, 2011| 2 Comments »

Just to put the pinnacle on a super-busy week, the Vicar is off on a conference this afternoon. Only 24 hours, but it means I have some interesting travelling arrangements to make to ensure that the rest of us get home safely from the Boys Brigade awards evening, as I’m going to be carless.

I’ve mentioned it a bit late for you to book up too, but the website has some helpful stuff on inner city ministry and I’m hoping talks will be available online at a later date. Despite the hassle, I’m glad the Vicar is going – it’s a conference he needs to be at (and I rather wish I was too), especially after the experiences of the last couple of weeks.

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Waifs and Strays

Posted in vicar, Vicar's wife job description, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on 10 May, 2011| 4 Comments »

One of the things I love about Vicarage life is its unpredictability. Most of the time this is great fun – I love my morning to be interrupted by someone wanting to chat at the kitchen table, especially when there is housework to be done. But I have to confess that I find it a bit of a challenge when our Sunday evening is disturbed.

Sundays are obviously a busy day for us – the Vicar almost always preaches at all three services in our church and is often leading at a couple of them. We often have church family members over for lunch aswell, and sometimes an afternoon group for baptism preparation or something like that. So when we get to 8pm(ish) and the evening service is finished, the church locked up and the Vicar and Rocky returned to the Vicarage and the children all put to bed (though sadly not necessarily asleep now they’re a bit older) we like to be able to chat a bit, pray a bit, watch some undemanding telly, eat cheese and biscuits and drink a glass of red wine.

Our waif had a better haircut

But this week our usual routine was upset by a waif and stray with a bizarre story. Waif had come to the Vicarage at about 4pm wanting to speak to the Vicar. As our lunch guests were still here, the Vicar told him to come along to the evening service so they could chat then. And then after the service, Waif’s tale of woe came out. It involved ferries from Ireland, cash paid for tickets to the Man U-Barcelona Champions League final, B&Bs in random locations and strange train jouneys, culminating in Waif being in our parish on a Sunday evening with no money, no phone, no means of identification and needing a bed for the night.

His tale was so unbelievable, it might possibly have been true, but the main fact was that he needed somewhere to stay and was asking for our help.  I supplied the regulation cheese rolls and then we talked about accommodation. Although we have space here, accommodating complete strangers does not seem to be a wise undertaking. There is no homeless hostel in our town and not much of a chance of space being available in the Sally Army hostel in Birmingham. So in the end, the Vicar’s discretionary fund came into action. The Vicar drove him to a nearby pub with rooms, where he obtained B&B for Waif for a bargain £25.

And that was it. The Vicar returned to the Vicarage at 10pm and we ate late, went to bed late, and struggled to get started on Monday morning. All part of this strange and unpredictable life we have been called to, where the limits of our hospitality are regularly stretched. I think the Lord knew I needed a bit of a break after that though – on Monday morning we had two callers who sat drinking coffee with me so I could skive off the housework.

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Should Christians Vote For or Against AV?

Posted in Faith, Politics, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on 27 April, 2011| 15 Comments »

And I’m not talking about the King James bible, also known as the Authorised Version. I have to say that I’m struggling at the moment to decide whether to vote for or against the new voting system called Alternative Vote. And most people I speak to locally are completely indifferent.

I asked the Twitterverse which way a Christian should vote on the matter and the main response I got was that the bible’s only recommended system of election (apart from the Lord’s election of his people, obvs) is by lot (cf Acts 1v26 – for the selection of Matthias as an apostle to replace Judas). Selection by lottery is a system which leaves the choice to God and teaches his people to pray, although I’m not aware of any churches which use that system for selecting their church council these days.

The Christian Institute has a paper on AV which is fairly non-committal – it highlights the issues  and also links to Christians and others for and against.  Christian bloggers who have posted include John Richardson and Peter Kirk – both in the Yes camp.

My current concerns are fairness – is AV fairer than the existing First Past the Post system? And also cost – will a new system involve the country in extra expense for advertising, teaching and counting? And is anyone bothered enough about it to implement a new system? I’ve not met anyone locally yet who is passionately convinced that AV should be brought in for the good of the country.

Tonight I read a helpful article in the New Scientist which mentions a system that is claimed to be ‘an alternative, “perfect” system’, which actually sounds more like the biblical method I mentioned above:

Maclver’s system is identical to FPTP in all but one respect. Voters in each constituency choose a single candidate, but then one voter is picked at random from each constituency and their choice determines which candidate gets elected. The random element means the system isn’t covered by Arrow’s theorem.

It sounds horribly unfair but it would actually produce results that are more proportional to the views of the country as a whole, argues MacIver, as it is simply a random sampling of the population. So if a party has 20% of the national vote, it should end up with roughly 20% of the seats in parliament.

It turns out Maclver’s idea isn’t a new one – the system is known as a random ballot. But it isn’t one of the choices being offered to the UK public.

I liked the way the New Scientist summarises the dilemma for all of us who want to cast a vote in this referendum next week:

Do you want a system that picks a winner with strong support from a minority of voters (FPTP) or one where the leading candidate is vaguely liked by a majority of people (AV)? No amount of equations can help you reach an answer.

And as a Christian the response to the final dilemma has got to be prayer. So that’s what I’m planning to do. How about you?

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The Vicar’s Wife Recommends…

Posted in Faith, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on 26 April, 2011| 5 Comments »

Christianity Explored have relaunched their website, and it’s looking very good. I especially like the short video clips, although you can’t filch them for your blog, or download them to use in a service at church. Looks like you’ll have to buy the dvds when the course itself is relaunched (in a seven week version) in May!

I particularly enjoyed Rob’s story: My Girl said to me ‘No more sex’ – make sure you listen right to the end.

[Edit: Seems I was wrong about having the videos on your blog – you can get them if you can embed code, although wordpress.com make you pay for that privilege, so I can’t. See Tom’s comments below for links to the embed codes.]

Rob

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Holy Week Timeline

Posted in Faith, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on 20 April, 2011| 3 Comments »

I’m sure a bunch of you have already seen this around the blogosphere, but I only spotted it yesterday. It’s a really cool picture of where everyone was in Holy Week – Jesus, the disciples, the Jewish leaders, the crowds, the guards etc. Am wondering how to get this printed out much bigger – A0 would be cool.

BibleGateway, who published it, have more details, as do openbible, who designed it.

[HT Abraham Piper, as usual]

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Hosanna for Palm Sunday

Posted in Faith, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on 15 April, 2011| Leave a Comment »

Regular readers know that I’m a big fan of Andrew Peterson’s Christmas album, Behold the Lamb. This week I came across his Palm Sunday song ‘Hosanna’ from his 2008 album Resurrection Letters Vol II (Vol I is apparently still in the pipeline). Enjoy.

You have crushed beneath your heel the vile serpent.

You have carried to the grave the black stain.

You have torn apart the temple’s curtain.

You have beaten death at death’s own game.

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Acts of God

Posted in Fun, tagged , , , , , , , on 8 April, 2011| Leave a Comment »

What exactly is an Act of God? Bill Bailey asks some excellent theological questions here, and very amusingly.

[HT Abraham Piper at 22 Words]

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Who is the LORD?

Posted in Faith, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on 14 March, 2011| Leave a Comment »

So I’m back from the PT Ministers Wives Conference. I arrived home on Thursday afternoon last week full of beans. This year the conference was rather less densely packed with sessions than previously, so I felt I’d had lots of time to digest the excellent bible teaching (of which more in another post later).

A key phrase came home with me – from a seminar I attended on ‘Bridging the Gospel Gap – Applying the Gospel to ourselves and others’. That phrase was ‘Who is the LORD (in this situation)?’ In the seminar we thought through a fairly trivial example – how we would react when stuck in traffic on the way to get test results from the doctor’s, considering how our reactions under stress indicate who or what is most important in our lives.

I’m so pleased I’d learnt that, as I came home to a couple of tough situations,  both personally and in the parish. I am so grateful to have been prepared by God to remember that He is sovereign in everything. My small challenges are nothing, of course, to those faced by many, and this week the situation in Japan following the earthquake and tsunami puts my life’s gentle meander into perspective. But the truth that God is the LORD in everything helps me to trust him in my minor situations and not be ruled by them. And that truth helps me to pray for Japan and the people there as they mourn and as they search for meaning in the chaos.

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