The Tragedy of Lost Fruit

The year 518 B.C. ... A delegation arrives from neighbouring Bethel to the priests in Jerusalem: “Should we still mourn and fast over the fall of Jerusalem as we have been doing for the last 70 years? After all, the new temple is nearly rebuilt?" (My paraphrase of Zechariah 7:1-4)

Was this a, ‘Shall we, have we got to?’ question?  Had the heart shrunk? Had the once heartfelt setting aside of time to seek God turned into duty, a trudge?

Walking through an apple orchard today, I noticed rows of trees with layers of fruit, lying on the ground, ripe but wasted, bruised, food for wasps and rotting in the autumn sunshine. Perhaps it was the strong winds? Whatever the cause, it was wasted.

How many times have we seen believers running, then walking, then trudging, then lagging behind and finally veering away from the path into wasted, wilderness land ... beautiful fruit, lost.

How can we preserve that eager, heart-felt resolve and fervent love for Jesus and His Kingdom?

Stay together, join with the strong in open-hearted fellowship, live in watchfulness and pray, be grateful, feed on rather than just read God's Word, be filled with the Holy Spirit  ... many things, all these and more but, please God, less tragic waste, let’s have more fruit ready-for-the-harvest and less waste!

ESOL and Cleaning: Let's Celebrate Success!

Dusters, brushes, mops, polish – you name it - we had the contents of our cleaning cupboard at Coventry Jesus Centre laid out in the main hall where we run classes ... If you can’t find the hoover, folks, or the mop and bucket, it just might (probably will be) in the classroom!

After a visit to the powers-that-be at the Job Centreplus last year, I was told that most of our ESOL students, if lucky to get a job at all, are best placed to be cleaners so I decided to write a tailor-made course for them – ‘ESOL and Cleaning’. (ESOL stands for English for Speakers of Other Languages.)

It was great fun. What better way to learn prepositions? Mop behind the table, sweep next to the fridge and don’t forget to clean under the table!

  
We practised heavy lifting, got our heads around cleaning codes and working with dangerous chemicals, practised putting on PPE (Personal Protective Equipment) and filling in accident reports – all with plenty of laughs but what a great learning experience! How about drilling (modelling and practising pronunciation) ‘suspicious object found in the toilets!’

Last Monday was a great day. We gave out certificate for those who had achieved 85% attendance and had a celebration. Why not? Celebrating success is very important to us. For some of our students, our in-house attendance certificates are the first they ever achieve! And, hey, if they manage to get a much-coveting cleaning job they will be better equipped! ‘ESOL and Cleaning’ certificate, here we come!”

Ten Years On: Reflections on the Death of Danielle

“I can’t believe it, it’s a girl.” Those unforgettable words, spoken ten years ago this month, are etched on my memory, the most acrid words I have ever heard in my all years as a teacher.

 You’d think that a friend or family member had had baby. But, no, these were the words Steph, my boss spoke, at the Chase Neighbourhood Centre the day we all trooped stunned into work after one of the  young people known to our project, Danielle Beccan, aged 14, was shot dead outside her house in St Ann’s, Nottingham, after a trip to Goose Fair. We’d expected reprisal shootings but always felt it was the lads that were most at risk.

We wore pink, Danielle’s favourite colour. We all mourned; we mourned for weeks. We stood by the place she was shot in stunned silence. Her young friends stood in silence too; some of them had watched her die; they’d never been trained to deal with a gunshot wound.

The press were everywhere; police stood by with guns; St Ann’s was treated by some (utterly mistakenly) like a grim, vice-filled ghetto, a byeword for all that was foul: drug-dealing, gang-crime and murder. An aquaintance of mine said she could not come to see me – I lived in St Ann’s. 

I wrote this poem; it was read at Danielle's funeral service; the sentiment expressed in it is still fresh in my mind; the memory lives on.

Danielle:
May your life not be wasted,
Your death not in vain.

Young life, so precious,
Lost forever,
That dark October night,
After spending,
Your last fun-filled hours
At the fair.

Surrounded by the friends you loved,
And dying in your mother’s arms,
Dear life, so precious,
Slowly ebbed away,
The cause – a bullet
Never meant for you.

May your bitter death,
That broke so many hearts
Give rise to something new round here,
St Ann’s.
A hatred, or perhaps best say,
A violent love against all that would destroy.
Our dream, St Ann’s, a place of peace
Where guns are never seen as cool
Or revenge regarded as right,
Where old and young, again, can walk
Our streets and ways
Without fear of violent gain
Or dark revenge
From knife or gun;
And no more matters where you live -
Or where you’re from - Iraq, Iran,
Meadows, Radford, St Ann’s
For all are welcome here.

Danielle,
Rest in peace but,
From your bitter death we long to see
 A day of better things - St Ann’s!

Courage of an Extraordinary Kind

Cokie van de Velde and team

Much is made of British jihadists going to fight for IS. What is it, 500 from the UK? Maybe more. Yes, and it is shocking. But recently we’ve heard of other volunteer fighters  - not heading for the Middle East - but West Africa - several hundred of them too.

This is no fight for extremism, conquering and slaying the unsuspecting and innocent in a barbaric military assault; no, this is courage of an extraordinary kind: leaving the relative safety of these shores to fight the deadly Ebola virus that is ravaging West Africa.

One such person is sanitation expert, Cokie van der Velde, who has left family and grandchildren behind, stares death in the face daily and yet continues to fight. The risks are huge; for many it’s a bit of a gamble – but courage always comes with risk.

So, there are fighters and fighters but, in their intentions, they could not be further from each other: both risk life and limb but, oh, what a different warfare!

Let’s big up the courageous Britons fighting Ebola  ... I can’t help being proud of them. They’re displaying courage indeed, of an extraordinary kind.

A Fun Relaxed and Informative Day. ESOL Training at Coventry Jesus Centre

What a great day last Saturday (27 September) was! My sister, *Rachel Hatfield, came to Coventry Jesus Centre to give a days training for our Jesus Centre ESOL training volunteers and staff. (ESOL stands for English for Speakers of Other Languages.)
 
Attempting to decipher the Bengali script, feeling something of the difficulty and humiliation of those beginning to learn the Roman script as adults, howls of laughter as we learn how to drill and are the happy recipients of our very own Farsi drillers, assessing our grammar knowledge (or lack of it) and learning how to make our ESOL sessions practical, relevant and enjoyable.

Altogether, it was a fun, informative, relaxed day and, most of all, we were inspired by Rachel’s energy and enthusiasm. We learned such a lot and have already began putting it into practice.

Watch out learners, here we come! Drilling begins on Monday!

*Rachel teaches the CELTA (Certificate in English Language Teaching to Adults) at Brooklands College in Surrey. 

As Ridiculous As ... Grace

Jesus is master of hyperbole: I mean, how ridiculous is the parable of the prodigal son? 

The younger son ungraciously asks for his share of the inheritance and promptly squanders it. When he comes back to His grieving father, he doesn't even have time to say ‘sorry’. Instead of disgrace there is embrace, instead of rebuke an extravagant celebration! Only the best for the worst of offenders!

And what about the parable of the Good Samaritan? The traveller, after all, was an idiot. He was travelling on his own on a tortuous road renowned for bandits. Hadn’t he taken into consideration that something like that could well happen? And did he think he really deserved to be rescued, cared for and generously provided for in his folly?
 
Grace is giving us sinners exactly the opposite of what we deserve. It’s ridiculous ... as ridiculous as a perfect God being mercilessly tortured and dying on a cross for us, sinners through and through.

These parables were told  to transform our thinking about what God is like; they were told to transform our attitude to others as well: we’re to be like God ... full of, full of, full of .... that same grace. And that's a challenge ...

Where was God in ‘Christian’ Rwanda in 1994? Two Kingdoms, Two Countries.

Rwandan Christians, Rukundo Bartholomew and Deo Seyod from ‘Disciples of Christ, Rwanda, share their thoughts:

Half a million of his countrymen and 78 members of his family slaughtered. This is Rukundo’s experience  of the Rwandan genocide of 1994. Now Rwanda is struggling to cope with the aftermath of the genocide and people are asking searching questions.

 I sit up when Rukundo speaks and recently he and Deo spoke at our Jesus Army marquee event. This is the gist of Rukundo’s message:

“People in Rwanda are asking deep questions these days: ‘Where was God when people were being killed in the genocide? He did nothing! He’s not powerful! How did this terrible chain of events happen in a country which is supposedly 95% Christian? What went wrong?’

“‘Burundi, the Congo and Rwanda are 90% Christian; they are also very troubled areas. Does Christianity really have no effect on this huge area of Africa?’

“If we can carefully answer these questions and the question, ‘what really is the church?’ we can be a blessing to the church in Rwanda and the wider church.

“Missionaries brought us Catholicism and Protestantism. We have worship centres and miracle centres – but all these are not the church. Evangelists have managed to get people out of sin but haven’t taken them anywhere. We need strong, apostolic ministry to bring about God’s design in the church. 

“In past days we tried to build a local church but we remained in the Kingdom of Self. Church has to be an alternative culture, an alternative way of life, a different people – distinct from that which surrounds.”

Deo elaborated on Rukundo’s theme. Financially, he has done well working as a senior bank manager in Rwanda but has found success alone does not satisfy him – indeed, far from it. Now he has decided to move into a Christian community, the New Humanity Mission, and share his life and resources with others, including Rukundo and his family. His decision has been fired by a vision:  “God opened my eyes to see two countries.  There is the country of our natural life; there is also a spiritual country. We have to step out of the first country into the spiritual country; only then will we taste the fullness of what God has for us.”

Reflecting on Deo and Rukundo’s thoughts, the words of Jesus come to mind: "You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden; nor does anyone light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all who are in the house." (Matthew 5: 14-15)

 Jesus calls us, as His people, to be a city on a hill and a lamp that cannot be hid. Our mission is to beam light into the dark places and see many drawn into our light. Yet, we must, as church, carry our own very distinct God-centred and God-driven culture, engaged and yet separate, identifying with but not imitating, mingling yet set apart, caring deeply for people but disdaining so much of what this world is offering them ... to use John Stott’s words, “like a lily growing in a manure heap.”* Then, in times of great adversity, as in the Rwandan genocide, people will know who the true Christians are, where to find the church (God’s gathered people) and will realise a ‘Christianised’ society is not the kingdom of God.

*The Contemporary Christian.