It's Christmas time, and time is running out

It’s hard for me to think about Christmas time without thinking of a Sketch I did as a teenager that seems imbedded in my mind. I played the Vicar and the particular line that has come back to haunt me is – “This year I’m going to preach a meaningful Christmas sermon, I will not have Darth Vader or Tinky Winky, La La or Po in the pulpit, nor will I ruin my sermon notes with one of those dolls that wets themselves! I will think through everything carefully beforehand, and preach on the relevance of the birth of Christ to the modern world. If only I had time!”

I have a narrator’s part in a production this year, but won’t be preaching and so I don’t even have to face the temptation of going to the file of old material after hours of trying to come up with something original. And so my thoughts are with you because I do know the agony of trying to get it just right each Christmas. Of tying to present the Christmas message in a new and relevant and fresh way.

How do you say anything new? Anything that will so impact your congregation in such a way that will stop them in their tracks and cause them to think WOW! I never thought of it like that! and will have such an effect on them that they live their lives in a whole new way as a result of hearing you.

But it’s about you or me, it’s about Jesus. The Christmas story about Jesus is just so amazing that we want people to see it that way too!

The trouble is it’s near enough impossible to say anything new. It’s all been said! How do you improve on 2,000 years of storytelling? It’s newness depends on its freshness, and it’s freshness depends on openness – an openness on our part to hear God speak.

My advice for what it’s worth – just tell the story - and invest the time you could spend in coming up with something new in prayer for that openness of spirit that will allow God’s Spirit to bring Jesus into lives in a fresh way!

Christmas is coming

I don’t know if you’ve noticed but Christmas is coming! High street lights are being switched on, decorations are going up, cards are being written, and the perfect gift sought! Joy, Peace and Goodwill to all men or Bah Humbug! I don’t know which end of the spectrum better fits you but I do know how we all strive to encourage people towards the real meaning of Christmas, that the perfect gift has already been given! I have no ‘thought for the day’ as such today but just wanted to assure you of my prayers in the run up to Christmas. It is an especially busy time for pastors. I pray that through your ministry people will discover and gladly accept the gift of Jesus.

And by the way, it is unlikely you will hear from me next Monday, I’ll be Christmas Shopping!

God is Love!

My wife, Jackie, is leading a small group tonight on the theme ‘God is Love’. Recognizing my Biblical knowledge and profound teaching experience (well I can dream) she asked me if I had any good material. So I looked through my preaching and teaching files to pull something out for her to have a look at. To my huge surprise I discovered I didn’t have anything! To be sure, the theme was present in all sorts of ways, plenty on God loving us and more than a little on encouraging our love for God. But on the nature of God as Love - very little. Something that I will have to redress.

The last 3 words of 1 John 4v8 form one of the most profound statements of the whole Bible and perhaps for many people today one of the hardest to believe. ‘God is love’. When we think of this 'grubby tennis ball' of a planet, set in the vast infinity of space, our own lives as just moments in the onward surge of time, and our individuality among countless millions, can we really talk meaningfully about God loving us? And when we look at the world with all its evil and suffering, so many damaged and broken lives, how can there be a God who really loves us? Yet, John insists, this is the very nature of God. And if we are not to empty the word 'God' of all its meaning, we must realise that such an infinite yet personal Creator is not too great to be bothered with my tiny life. He is so great that he can be bothered with each of us individually. John is not identifying a quality which God possesses; he is making a statement about the essence of God's being. It is not simply that God loves, but that He is love. Focussing on who he is enables to believe what he does. And so though of course I want to say to you, ‘God Loves you’. But maybe it is even better to say to you ‘God is Love’!

Faith and the Environment

Revd Dr John Weaver, Principal of South Wales Baptist College, was a guest on the BBC Radio programme All Things Considered this Sunday.

"Looking ahead to the Copenhagen UN Climate Change Conference in December, Roy Jenkins is joined by four guests, each from a different faith community, to explore the extent to which religious beliefs shape our relationships with the natural world? How do they influence how we act on an issue like global warming? And what – if any – is the distinctive contribution which people of faith have to make to one of the most crucial issues of our generation?"

You can listen to or download the programme either from the BBC website, or from the College Download Page.

Happy Birthday Sesame Street

Well this week’s Monday morning note is being written in the early hours of Tuesday morning! The reason is I left early this morning (sorry yesterday morning now) to come to BU Council in Swanwick. So today Tuesday we are celebrating 40 years of Sesame Street. No not at Council, though it will be interesting to see if It comes up! We did however spend some time today considering how we may better address the needs of children and better include them in the life of our churches. I have just had great fun however on www.sesamestreet.org go on, you know you want to! It never did take off in the UK as it did in other parts of the world but it has been a major player in the education of children around the world for, hard to believe, 40 years. And Bert and Ernie still look good on it.

The stars still want to be part of it. The Independent carries these four quotes:
MICHELLE OBAMA "I never thought I'd be on Sesame Street with Elmo and Big Bird... It's probably the best thing I've done at the White House."
JAMES BLUNT "I always wanted to be a Muppet. So when Sesame Street approached me, I thought: 'I'm going to be on this!' It's pretty incredible stuff."
RICKY GERVAIS "You know you've made it when you get asked to do Sesame Street or sing with a little furry puppet. It's quite weird in a funny way."
KOFI ANNAN "Elmo and his friends, they tell it straight... Keep it simple and it brings you back to earth. I think that is very important, we all need that."
Kofi Annan has of course simply restated what Jesus said: “Unless you become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” The utter trust and dependency in the Father is sadly lacking in most of us and has been replaced by a self sufficient maxim that, well that, let’s be honest is really ‘childish’ rather than ‘childlike’!

God is Good

God is Good! (Nahum 1:7). We have to begin there in each and every situation. The problem is that we so often fail to tap into the goodness of God for lack of trust. One dictionary definition says that trust is ‘confidence in’ and ‘reliance on’ and secondly that it is a position of obligation. Eph 1:3 lets us know that the entire Christian life is learning to access what God in Christ has already provided for us. But in the learning we often meet with failure and disappointment. If God works in everything for our good (Rom 8:28), by implication we will fail in some things when first we try. We are wrong to limit this verse to the bad things that happen to us which are beyond our control. It also has to have reference to the things we do! And believe me this is a hugely positive thing. If you are succeeding at everything, you’re not trying hard enough! You’re not risking enough!

My kayaking club are going to award a trophy at the end of the year to the person who has had to bail out of their kayaks and swim the most. All that has accomplished is stopping many club members from having a go at a stretch of river that is a bit beyond them and this means improvement is hampered. We need to risk, we need to go out on a limb, we need as Will Carey said, to “attempt great things for God”. We have after all an assignment from God to see to it that His Kingdom comes, His will is done. Trusting a God that is good and always works good gives us the confidence to keep at it, to pursue those things that are beyond us naturally. It is how we grow. Learning and growing through failure Keeps us tethered to the goodness of God.

Father and Son bonding

Just had a great weekend white water kayaking on the river Dart, Father and Son bonding and all that! It’s the reason we took up kayaking. The trouble is I absolutely love it where as my son, Lewis, has not been quite that enamoured with it. As many of you who came to the Roadshows would have heard, my son’s thing is def metal and he’s a drummer! (Pray for me). So in the summer I went to Sonisphere festival at Knebworth and discovered there is an advantage to going deaf in old age. Actually we had a great time together and even though some lyrics were far from wholesome they were a great launching pad for conversation with my son. It did strike me that if the command on God’s people is to make disciples of all people groups (Mt 28:19) who’s doing it amongst this tribe? If you are aware, I would love to know. What I truly loved about being there was seeing my son energised. It seems both of us want to live life to the full and I know that Jesus himself said that was why he came. I am praying that my son will discover that for himself, even that he would be one Jesus would use to reach that culture.

You will find this email and the previous two on the South Wales Baptists Blog
http://southwalesbaptists.blogspot.com/
Have a look and join in the conversations on this blog!

By the way, the dart was so good this weekend he’s decided that Kayaking really is fun so I’m sorry but we are praying for rain this half term week so we can get on another river!