Life At Coventry Jesus Centre: When Tears Lead To Action

A couple of weeks ago the press issued prime-feature images of Labour leader, Ed Miliband, giving money to a 16-year-Romanian beggar girl in Manchester. The rights and wrongs of Ed’s gesture were discussed. How much did he give? And what did it do for his tarnished public image? I don’t know – but who is asking, ‘but what about the girl?’

Now it’s Monday, the centre is shut and Centre Manager, Ann, is about to go home.

The phone rings. A mother is on the phone. Her 10 year old daughter has come home from school in tears and mother is wondering what to do.

 So, why is daughter in tears?  She’s just been on a school trip and encountered a street beggar.  Her teacher told her she mustn’t give her pocket money to him. She really wanted to so ... there are tears.

Mother is asking Ann: “We both really want to do something to help homeless beggars. We live in an out-of-town suburb and we don’t see them round here. What can we do?”

Who is to be commended the most? Mother? Daughter? I don’t know - but all I know is there is a wealth of hugely good-hearted people out there! Someone is asking, actually someone very young, ‘What about the destitute men and women out there? They’re on our streets” - and, what's more, is posing the poignant question, “What can I do?”

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 ...