Prayer diary: day 8 of Lent

Please pray for S.T.O.R.M a community based organisation in North Battersea which aims were to support single/lone parents and women back into employment, with the motto “Out of the darkness and into the light”.

The name stands for Support, Trust, Opportunity, Rebuilding and Motivation and was founed by Marie Hanson, a single mother living on the estates of North Battersea. Motivated by her own personal experiences, she started the organisation in 2005, as a self help group for single mothers aimed at rebuilding lost self esteem and confidence. Marie found that many of the women and mothers she worked with had been victims of domestic violence, poor educational achievement, unsuccessful relationships and missed life opportunities.

The Church Urban Fund is supporting S.T.O.R.M.'s conference which will support single parents who have suffered domestic violence, and who are facing other difficulties such as financial problems.

Pray also for the Contextual Theology Centre and its work with Citizens UK to develop 'Joseph Generation', a programme to develop young leaders from ethnic minorities, working particularly through its partner Pentecostal churches.

Prayer diary: Day 7 of Lent

Please pray for St Mary's Church, Battersea - whom the Church Urban Fund is supporting in a community-led response to last summer's riots. St Mary's is a member of London Citizens, and has launched a 6 month Community Listening Campaign. There are 8 institutions already involved, from which the listening campaign will be rolled out -listening to young people and adults across the borough. In May 2012, the results and proposed solutions will be presented. There will also be a Youth Leadership Programme, where young people from different congregations will be build relationships with others who are different to them.

The Contextual Theology Centre has also been working with London Citizens on a wider Citizens Inquiry into the riots.  This included an intensive process of listening in Tottenham, where the London riots began.  The community-led inquiry has now reported, and is taking concrete action to rebuild relationships and tackle the root causes of the violence.  Pray for this work, and for work CTC is doing on a London-wide report.

Prayer diary: Day 6 of Lent

Pray for Christ Citadel International Church in Nottingham, and its plans to address a range of issues of deprivation through its Parish Nurse Project. This project will provide pastoral care, advice on health, reassurance, education, support groups, weekly healing services and fellowship, to support deprived groups and bring them into contact with health services. It will be led by a pastor in the church who is a registered nurse, as well as volunteers from the church and other churches who are registered nurses.

Pray also for George Gabriel, a community organiser with Citizens UK, who is working to set up a community organising alliance in the city.  The Contextual Theology Centre was involved in a recent study event for Christian leaders in Nottingham, on the theology and practice of organising.  The Centre has just launched a four-week course on Christianity and community organising, with Bible study and practical exercises for interested congregations.

Second Sunday of Lent: Reflections on the Readings

This Sunday (4 March), the Roman Catholic Lectionary gives us the Gospel of the Transfiguration, about which we blogged earlier.  In the Church of England, the Gospel reading is Mark 8.31-end

Jesus then began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things ...and that he must be killed and after three days rise again... Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. But when Jesus turned and looked at his disciples, he rebuked Peter. "Get behind me, Satan!" he said. "You do not have in mind the things of God, but the things of human beings."

The first section of this reading reinforces last week's message: Jesus' ministry is not to be based on grandstanding and wonder-working, but on challenging injustice, and meeting violence with love. For all that he has taught them, the disciples find this an incredibly hard message to digest.  We are constantly tempted to look for glory somewhere else.  Jesus' teaching and practice reminds us again and again that it is to be found in suffering, self-giving love.

Jesus said: “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it."

Dying, we live: this is the paradox at the heart of the Gospel.  In holding power and possessions to ourselves, we cut ourselves off from the greatest gift of all - the koinonia (fellowship) which is at the heart of God, and into which we are invited by Christ's death and resurrection.  God's self-offering on the cross gives us both the example and the power to offer ourselves as a 'living sacrifice' (Romans 12.1).  'We love because he first loved us' - and in so doing, we share the very life of God (2 Peter 1.4)

Prayer diary: Day 5 of Lent

Pray for the work of Host - a charity connected to the

Nottingham Arimathea Trust, which offers accommodation and support for destitute asylum seekers by matching them up to host families who they can stay with. The Church Urban Fund is supporting the charity so that it can increase the number of hosts, and of volunteers who match hosts and guests. Pray also for the work of Near Neighbours (Eastern London) - a project run by the Contextual Theology Centre as part of the wider programme to create and deepen relationships across faiths and cultures.  Today, a Near Neighbours Gathering will be held for people in Newham at ARC Pentecostal Church in Forest Gate.

Prayer diary: Day 4 of Lent

Please pray for Smart Savings Community Interest Company.  It is being partnered by the Church Urban Fund to work with churches in Camborne to deliver a money management course for deprived families. Phase 1 will train 15 volunteers in financial advice, and phase 2 will offer 15 parents the chance to learn about money, debt management, as well as a numeracy qualification. Pray also for the work Citizens UK and the Contextual Theology Centre as they work together on the Nehemiah 5 Challenge - a campaign which complements the debt counselling work of so many churches up and down the country, by campaigning for an end to exploitative and irresponsible lending.

Prayer diary: Day 3 of Lent

Please pray for Weston Church Youth Project in Southampton.  This has run at Holy Trinity Church for 19 years – and includes drop-ins, trips, one-to-one support for young people and work in small groups.  The Church Urban Fund is helping it discern the best ways to renew and develop its work for the future.

The Contextual Theology Centre was set up by Christians in London Citizens - the capital's community organising alliance.  Over the last few months, the alliance's London 2012 Jobs campaign has secured around 1300 Living Wage jobs for local people at the Olympics.  CTC's Tom Daggett has blogged on the process before.  On Ash Wednesday, a team of people from our partner churches and other communities in London Citizens were at the Olympic site, both to celebrate this achievement and to explore other ways in which local people could take action to tackle joblessness.  Pray for them as this process moves forward – and for all who live with unemployment.

Choosing our battles with care

The Contextual Theology Centre's Director Angus Ritchie has just blogged on the Guardian's Comment is free website - arguing that Christians working for social justice need to be 'wise as serpents' as well as having good intentions.  The piece offers London Citizens' Olympic jobs campaign as an example of such 'wise' action (see Tom Daggett's post on this blog).

Read the article here

Prayer diary: Day 2 of Lent

As part of Call to Change, we are inviting supporters to pray each day for the work of the Church Urban Fund, the Contextual Theology Centre and their partner churches and projects

Tonight, Call to Change and CTC are sponsoring a Workshop on the Living Wage in Oxford.  This builds on the work staff and students in the University have been doing to secure a Living Wage for all it’s domestic staff – something which builds the London Citizens campaign which has won £70 million for low-paid workers in the capital alone.  Please pray for the event, for all involved in the campaign, and all who struggle on low incomes.

The Church Urban Fund is supporting St Chad's Church, Kidderminster, as it reaches out to the local deprived community to tackle issues of loneliness and social deprivation. Pray for its plans to establish a coffee shop – to act as a hub to start groups (e.g. parenting groups, friendship groups for elderly or lonely people, debt counselling and Christian enquirers’ groups).

First Sunday of Lent: reflections on the readings

As part of the Call to Change initiative, the Jellicoe blog now has a weekly post on the forthcoming lectionary readings.  This Sunday's Gospel reading is Mark 1.9-15

Right at the start of Jesus’ ministry, he faces a choice of direction.  Matthew and Luke tell us more about the temptations Jesus faces.  Satan urges Jesus to perform dramatic stunts, to get popularity and fame.  But Jesus’ mission is to be a servant king.

In Jesus, God becomes one of us - and so he must go through the struggles and the frustrations of human life. He comes alongside us with all the risk and suffering that involves.   He isn't here to bowl people over with his wonders, to intimidate them by his power, but to love them into God's Kingdom.

Lent is an opportunity for us to think about the direction of individual lives, and our common life.  It is a time to think about the ways in which we are shaped by the world around us - and the beliefs which actually animate our actions.

Do we live as if it is through suffering love - through the  way of the cross - that new life comes to the world?  Are we willing to become vulnerable, forgiving those who have caused us the deepest hurt, speaking the truth to the powerful even when they don't want to hear it? 

Jesus path is not an easy one:  it doesn't shirk conflict, but in the midst of conflict it remains a way of love.  It is, as we know, a demanding path.  Like our Lord, we face the temptations to an easier (perhaps more dramatic) path.  We cannot walk the way of Christ alone - which is why Lent is a time to draw closer to God, and to one another.

Prayers for Ash Wednesday and Lent

As part of the Call to Change, the Contextual Theology Centre has produced the following prayers for churches to incorporate in their intercessions on Ash Wednesday or later in Lent.

The prayers ask God's blessing and protection on those affected most deeply by the financial crisis, and ask for God's grace in using the season well for individual and corporate repentance:

Father,
we give you thanks for this holy season of repentance and renewal.
We ask you for the grace to use it well
- to recognise the wrong turnings in our personal and common life;
- to turn to you for forgiveness and renewal
- to enthrone your Son as Lord, and live as citizens of his Kingdom

Lord, in your mercy
hear our prayer

Father,
we place into your hands those  who feel most keenly the effects of the financial crisis, 
in our own land and around the world,
and those who have lived in poverty for many years.
May they know Christ crucified as the One who suffers with them, and the one who comes with justice and with power.

Lord, in your mercy
hear our prayer

New course on faith and organising

This week's Church Times covers the launch of Call to Change - both the new website and the four-week CTC course has launched (for Lent but also for other times of year) on Scripture and community organising. The course was produced by the Centre's partner churches in Citizens UK, the course has been trialled in its Anglican Baptist, Catholic, Methodist, Pentecostal and Salvation Army congregations.  It equips participants to engage in ‘listening campaigns’ in their area, and work with other local congregations and organisations on issues of common concern.

Called to Change: Seeing God's glory

As part of the Call to Change initiative, the Jellicoe blog now includes a weekly post on the lectionary readings, and how they relate to the Gospel call to social transformation.


For the two Sundays leading up to Lent, the Church of England lectionary chooses special readings to prepare us for the season.


Last Sunday's readings reminded us that God's glory is found in engagement with, not evasion of, the material world.  In Christ, the divine life has 'moved into the neighbourhood', and so all aspects of life can reveal the glory of God.

That message is reinforced this week with the Gospel of the Transfiguration (Mark 9.2-9).  We are given a glimpse of our destination as Christians - as the glory of God shines out through Jesus Christ (something echoed in the Epistle, 2 Corinthians 4.3-6)

It is a particularly appropriate reading as we stand just days from Lent. The Transfiguration is like a 'fast-forwarding' of salvation: a moment, before Jesus begins his journey to crucifixion, where we glimpse the purpose of the cross.  The purpose is the salvation of all things - spiritual and material - so that the whole created order can shine forth with God's mercy, love and glory.

We need these kinds of 'mountain-top' experiences as Christians - moments which lift the heart, and raise our vision beyond the daily grind to glimpse our destination.

Lent is a good time to take stock and re-balance our spiritual lives.  Do we spend too much time on the 'mountain top'?  If so, we need to hear Jesus' call to return down to the level ground - so that the glory we glimpse in worship and prayer becomes more of a reality in our relationships and our communities?  Or are we so ground down by our daily labours that we have lost our sense of perspective and direction?  If so, we may need to make more time in our lives to allow God to lift our hearts and raise our vision, as Jesus did on the mountain.

Called to Change: Putting relationships first

As part of the Call to Change initiative, the Jellicoe blog now includes a weekly post on the lectionary readings, and how they relate to the Gospel call to social transformation.


For Roman Catholic churches, and others following the Revised Common Lectionary, the Gospel for next Sunday (19th February) is Mark 1.2-12.  

Seeing [the] faith [of his friends], Now some scribes were sitting there and they thought to themselves, "How can this man talk like that?  He is blaspheming.  Who can forgive sins but God?'"
Jesus...said to them, "Why do you have these thoughts in your heads?  Which is easier: to say to the paralytic, 'Your sins are forgiven,' or to say, 'Get up, pick up your stretcher and walk?'

The crowds have heard of wonder-workers before, and they have listened to teachers - but never have they known anyone to declare the forgiveness of sins.  That is in God's power.

Jesus isn’t saying that physical illness is a sign that our relationship with God is wrong.  He explicitly denies that in other healings.  What he’s doing is moving from the physical issue this man faces to the spiritual issue we all face – the health of our relationship with God and neighbour.  And because he is God, he has the power to heal that relationship too, if we are willing to open our lives to his grace.

"My god is that which rivets my attention, centres my activities, preoccupies my mind and motivates my action." (Luke Johnson)  Is it true in my life that "God is love" - or do I value things above people?  Is my prayer life with God focused on getting things from God - or deepening our relationship?  What 'gods' stand at the centre of our current economic system - and what would our economic and social order change if we placed relationships at their heart?

Called to Change: Next Sunday's (CofE) readings

If you go into most bookshops today, the ‘Mind, Body, Spirit’ section is larger any the section marked ‘Theology’ or ‘Religion’. People are attracted to a form of ‘spirituality’ which treats them like consumers. ‘Spirituality’ becomes another off-the-shelf product. The season of Lent show us a very different vision of the spiritual life – where we need to look outwards as well as inwards. We need Lent now more than ever, so that mind, body and spirit can be released from the self-indulgence of a consumerist, individualistic society. The ‘Good News’ of Lent is how much more we believe there is to life than this.

The Church of England offers special readings for the two Sundays before Lent begins. We can all use these to help us prepare for the season.

The readings for next Sunday (13th February) are John 1.1-14, Colossians 1.15-20, Psalm 104.26-37 and Proverbs 8.1,22-31

The Roman Catholic lectionary is different for the next two Sundays, and we have blogged on this in the previous post.

John 1.1-14 tells us that Jesus has humbled himself to enter our flesh, so that in our flesh we might be united to God. John writes that the disciples "have beheld his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father". This glory is a foretaste of that which God wants us all to share.

It is tempting to think that we find the ‘glory of God’ by running away from ‘the world,’ as if Christian spirituality were about ‘other-worldliness’. But John 1 reminds us that it is into this world that God has entered. He has (in Eugene Peterson’s translation) ‘moved into the neighbourhood’.

This world is capable of showing forth the divine life, and the divine glory. Our calling as Christians is to work with God to make that vision a reality. As today’s Epistle (Colossians 1.15-20) puts it:

In [Christ] all things were created: things in heaven and things on earth, visible and invisible... all things have been created through him and for him....

God was pleased ... through him to reconcile all things to himself, whether things on earth or things in heaven , by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.

John’s Gospel uses the term ‘the world’ in two very different ways. Sometimes it means ‘everything God has created’. As we read in Genesis 1, God looked at the world and saw it was ‘very good’. And s John 3.16 reminds us that ‘the world’ is something God still loves, even after its fall. Indeed, God loves the world so much that he gave his only Son for its salvation.

Sometimes John’s Gospel uses the term ‘the world’ rather differently. ‘The world’ sometimes means, not creation in general, but creation in rebellion against God. In this sense, the disciples are not of ‘the world’ – and Jesus says he ‘overcome the world’ (John 16.33).

So we are called to be 'in the world’ – called to be in the creation God has made and sent his Son to save, called to be ‘good news for the poor’, challenging injustice and calling for a right use of wealth and power. But we are not called to be 'of the world.'  The values we are loyal to as Christians are often in conflict with those which dominate the wider culture.

Jesus’ glory is revealed from a manger and cross, not a palace or an earthly throne.  This reminds us that Christian discipleship involves a challenge to the values of our broken world. In Lent, we are called to remove the idols of money and power from the thrones they have in our hearts and in our society. In Lent, we remember that money and power are to be placed at the service of Christ, and of his Kingdom of justice and of peace.

Called to Change: Catholic lectionary readings

Each week, the Jellicoe Blog will be publishing a reflection on the forthcoming Sunday's lectionary readings.  On Sunday 12 February, the Church of England and Roman Catholic churches have different readings set.  Here we blog on the Gospel for the Roman Catholic lectionary - a blog on the C of E readings follows:

A leper came to Jesus and pleaded on his knees: "If you want to" he said "you can cure me." Feeling sorry for him, Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him. "Of course I want to!" he said. "Be cured!" And the leprosy left him at once and he was cured. Jesus immediately sent him away and sternly ordered him, "Say nothing to anyone, but go and show yourself to the priest, and make the offering for your healing" (Mark 1.40-45)

In the Greek in which Mark wrote, there is an undercurrent of anger in Jesus. This is something most of our English translations miss. Jesus is not simply sorry about the man's condition, and eager to put it right. He is angered - maybe even outraged - by it.
Why is this? Lepers are treated as the ultimate outcasts in Jesus' society. If a "clean" person touched them, that person became unclean. By that law, when Jesus reaches touches the man, Jesus should become unclean rather than the leper becoming clean.
In casting out demons and curing lepers, Jesus proclaims God's Kingdom as one of liberation - liberation from prejudice and injustice; liberation from the spiritual and physical forces which stop us flourishing. It is not an easy task. Jesus is crossing a boundary, challenging a taboo. He is placing himself next to those his society holds to be worthless.