Our Magazine - The Link Here is a selection of the articles currently appearing in our house magazine which is published six time a year. Drop into our church porch to obtain your own copy. Minister's Letter for August Dear Friends, At the end of May till early June, Linda and I had two weeks holiday. When I left, HMP Bullwood Hall had approx. 160 women resident, when I came back off holiday none remained! It was a strange experience the next time I attended the Prison, a sense of purposelessness existed. Officers and Staff went about their business but without the same drive and enthusiasm and indeed with no little anxiety for the future. All the time the prisoners were there each knew their role, purpose and duty - now there was a void. Obviously this only lasted for a short time as Male Foreign National prisoners began arriving to start filling up those empty cells. There was a story related to me some time ago, it goes something like this -- A hospital administrator was asked about how he felt about the new building he and the rest of the staff had just moved into. He replied the building was fine but the Hospital functioned more smoothly before the patients arrived and started messing things up! This is a temptation that we can all fall into at some time or another. It can be like the Hospital administrator or the person not getting their own way bemoaning their life/fate and how others are not like us and do not do things the way we would like -- meanwhile life overtakes or leaves them behind. Life is a mess because people are involved and everyone comes with their own life experience, hopes and desires. The Church is called not just to worship God but also to become involved in this mess. Christ Jesus came into this world and got involved in the mess of life and indeed confronted it at the boundaries of society and the centre of the worshipping community. He did not necessarily say or do that which was comfortable; the mess for some is that he cast out demons, for others that he revealed the hypocrisy of their lives. We have a new start, a refurbished and extended building, for it to make sense it needs to fulfil its purpose and our calling as Disciples of Christ. In order for the Church to thrive we will need to engage in the mess of life and engage with those who are not normally in tune with our thinking or way of doing things, which will involve risk and change. Most of all I believe we need to rediscover the scriptural holiness that drove John Wesley to revive the Church in his time. Yours in Christ Revd Clifford Newman Ps Holiness Movement - a précis of the definition given in New Dictionary of Theology (IVP) The Protestant holiness movement stemmed from John Wesley. Wesley claimed that God raised up Methodism to spread scriptural holiness and taught that God roots all sin out of Christian hearts in this life, so that motivationally Christians become all love. Holiness simply put was the work of grace. It was held to be wrought instantaneously in response to earnest seeking, and to be attested immediately by the inner working of the Holy Spirit. Pursuing this blessing and keeping it when found, calls for intense effort in the form of self-renouncing devotion to God and immersion in all good works. Christians advance spiritually after being sanctified, as they did before, but with an altered experience, since their hearts are now ablaze with Love to God and man and nothing else. God Bless Revd Clifford Newman Why Does God Allow Innocent People to Suffer? This is one of the most difficult questions for Christians to answer. The "problem of pain," as the well-known Christian scholar, C.S. Lewis, once called it, is atheism's most potent weapon against the Christian faith. All true science and history, if rightly understood, support the fact of God. This evidence is so strong that, as the Bible says: "The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God" (Psalm 14:1). Most atheists, therefore, without any objective evidence on which to base their faith in "no God", must resort finally to philosophical objections. And this problem of suffering is the greatest of these. That is, they say, how can a God of love permit such things in His world as war, sickness, pain, and death, especially when their effects often are felt most keenly by those who are apparently innocent? Either He is not a God of love and is indifferent to human suffering, or else He is not a God of power and is therefore helpless to do anything about it. In either case, the Biblical God who is supposedly one of both absolute power and perfect love becomes an impossible anachronism. Or so they claim! This is a real difficulty, but atheism is certainly not the answer, and neither is agnosticism. While there is much evil in the world, there is even more that is good. This is proved by the mere fact that people normally try to hang on to life as long as they can. Furthermore, everyone instinctively recognizes that "good" is a higher order of truth than "bad". We need also to recognize that our very minds were created by God. We can only use these minds to the extent that He allows, and it is, therefore, utterly presumptuous for us to use them to question Him and His motives. "Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?" (Genesis 18:25). "Shall the thing formed say to Him that formed it, why hast Thou made me thus?" (Romans 9:20). We ourselves do not establish the standards of what is right. Only the Creator of all reality can do that. We need to settle it, in our minds and hearts, whether we understand it or not, that whatever God does is, by definition, right. Having settled this by faith, we are then free to seek for ways in which we can profit spiritually from the sufferings in life as well as the blessings. As we consider such matters, it is helpful to keep the following great truths continually in our minds. There is really no such thing as the "innocent" suffering. Since "all have sinned and come short of the glory of God" (Romans 3:23), there is no one who has the right to freedom from God's wrath on the basis of his own innocence. As far as babies are concerned, and others who may be incompetent mentally to distinguish right and wrong, it is clear from both Scripture and universal experience that they are sinners by nature and thus will inevitably become sinners by choice as soon as they are able to do so. The world is now under God's Curse (Genesis 3:17) because of man's rebellion against God's Word. This "bondage of corruption," with the "whole world groaning and travailing together in pain" (Romans 8:21, 22), is universal, affecting all men and women and children everywhere. God did not create the world this way, and one day will set all things right again. In that day, "God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain" (Revelation 21:4). The Lord Jesus Christ, who was the only truly "innocent" and "righteous" man in all history, nevertheless has suffered more than anyone else who ever lived. And this He did for us! "Christ died for our sins" (I Corinthians 15:3). He suffered and died, in order that ultimately He might deliver the world from the Curse, and that, even now, He can deliver from sin and its bondage anyone who will receive Him in faith as personal Lord and Savior. This great deliverance from the penalty of inherent sin, as well as of overt sins, very possibly also assures the salvation of those who have died before reaching an age of conscious choice of wrong over right. With our full faith in God's goodness and in Christ's redemption, we can recognize that our present sufferings can be turned to His glory and our good. The sufferings of unsaved men are often used by the Holy Spirit to cause them to realize their needs of salvation and to turn to Christ in repentance and faith. The sufferings of Christians should always be the means of developing a stronger dependence on God and a more Christ-like character, if they are properly "exercised thereby" (Hebrews 12:11). Thus, God is loving and merciful even when, "for the present," He allows trials and sufferings to come in our lives. "For we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are called according to His purpose" (Romans 8:28). Steward's Letter for August After busy times at work, home and at chapel I was hoping that the summer meant that I could have a break from writing a piece for The Link, but that was not to be. Last week I was in Bristol to celebrate a friend's 25th wedding anniversary, this weekend I was at Cressing Rock listening to four bands including the Animals and the Manfreds. The audience was mainly late middle age. Their reasons for coming were probably as diverse as the people themselves. Perhaps because of a remembrance of their youth or because they had not seen their heroes in person before. Did they just like the music, I do not know. Both events were nostalgic and current which was good. As with most bands the audience is encouraged to join in with the songs they think they know so well. Last night was no exception and the various band leaders met with various levels of success. One of the more memorable moments was toward the end of the night and the audience was signing along with Paul Jones - singer with Manfred Man- remember? He waved the audience on and they immediately applauded and stopped singing. He stopped the band and explained that he was wanting every one to sing the one note and to keep it going. All they had to do was to sing the note and when they ran out of breath, breath in and sing again. As every one would hold the note for differing lengths of time break, then rejoin the singing the effect would be of an endless note. The band then replayed the chorus and the last note was held for quite some time before laughter and time brought it to an end. It worked surprisingly well. But then why shouldn't it? One man raised his voice a long time ago and ever since people have joined in and, when they needed to, taken a breath while other people have kept the theme going. My thanks to all who have enabled the building work to progress and those who have shown tolerance while it is under way. We have taken a breath so that we can rejoin the theme with renewed vigour. May God's peace be with you Mike Building Scheme You may have thought that nothing much is happening on the building scheme at the moment, but behind the scenes there has been a great deal of activity. The local authority granted us planning approval for the redevelopment earlier in the year, and since then our architect has been hard at work, finalising the plans, and going out to tender.(This means that we have asked several builders to provide a very detailed quotation, covering every aspect of the work to be done). We hope to receive these quotations (or tenders, as they are called) later in November, and in December we shall have to decide which builder to employ for the work. Hopefully, we will not get too nasty a surprise when the tenders come in. We are expecting them to be higher than the original estimates of two or three years ago, but not by too much. If the cost is still manageable, then we hope that building work will begin early in the new year. (If the prices quoted are just too high, then we may have to look again at the plans, to see what aspects of the scheme can be modified, to reduce the cost.) In the meanwhile, we are working on our submissions to various charities and trusts for funding. We already have quite a bit of money promised to us by various Methodist funds (the Circuit Advance Fund, the Connexional Advance and Priority Fund, and London's Mission funds), but we still have quite a lot of work to do to get the remainder of the money we will need. In preparation for the builders moving in, we shall be replacing the pews by chairs, so that the church and choir vestry can be used more flexibly, for a variety of purposes. Whilst building work is in progress, our midweek users of the building will have to be accommodated in the church and the choir vestry, as it is likely that the halls, the kitchen, and some of the toilets, will not be accessible. Storage is going to be a problem, and we would ask all organisations and church groups which have materials, equipment, etc. stored in cupboards to go through them, and weed out anything which can be thrown away. We hope that it will be possible to accommodate all our existing activities during the rebuilding, but, inevitably, accommodation is going to be somewhat cramped, and, at times, noisy. We remain confident that we shall all think it well worth while, when we have our new, modem premises. In the meanwhile, we ask you all to keep the scheme, the architect and builders, and the members of the Core Group* (who are working on all the details of the scheme, and the funding applications) in your prayers. Please pray also for the mission and outreach of the church, and for the new opportunities which the rebuilding work will provide in the future. Jean Dane