You can email Church Mouse at contact@audlembaptistchurch.org.uk.
April 2, 2010
Church Mouse has had a long winter of hibernation. It does not seem possible that it is so long since CM picked up a pen.
So much for a 'weekly blog'!
But the daffodils are out in the Church garden and spring seems finally to have arrived.Easter is the high point in the Church calendar when we remember a particular moment in time when Jesus Christ gave His life to completely solve the problem of our separation from God, who spectacularly demonstrated the effectiveness of Jesus' actions by raising Him from the dead.
Jesus' friends at that time talked in terms of light and darkness. Church Mouse has been thinking particularly about light and darkness recently. We always underestimate the difference between our own experience of life and the reality that existed at the beginning. Then there was the most extraordinary intimacy between God and mankind. Everything in the world was ordered and perfect. Nothing jarred. There was no pain and no discord. We know this because Jesus has given us a glimpse of what the future holds. But as a result of our rebellion we entered a period of great darkness. Darkness in our understanding of spiritual things. Darkness in our understanding of how to relate to one another. Darkness in our understanding of self. We like to tell ourselves that our lives are nearly perfect. The reality is that we have very little idea how far from perfection we have come.
Easter changes everything. Easter brings the light of the Gospel of Christ to the darkest corner of our life. If you will place your trust in the Jesus who is alive today, He will be like a light to you so that you can see the way to follow Him. Church Mouse wishes you a very blessed Easter.
February 8, 2010
Church Mouse seems to have been hibernating for the last month, possibly because the weather has been so cold and the snow
has been on the ground. We had a burst pipe in the Church toilet that caused a bit of a flood, but very fortunately (for
a building that is unoccupied for days at a time) the water was able to flow down an open drain; so apart from the loss of
precious water, there was no damage. Others in the community have not been so fortunate and our plumbers have been
kept very busy at all hours of the day and night. We are very grateful to them.While Church Mouse has been asleep, Richard Dawkins has been busy again with another rant on behalf of atheists and against Christians. And some Christians have tried to respond. The fact is that this tends to create more heat than light. Nothing has changed since the dawn of time - everyone has the same choice that mankind has always had: we can live without God (if he exists), thereby becoming masters of our own destinies, or, having become separated from God, we can seek to rediscover him (if he exists). We each make a choice and then try to live our lives in the light of that world view. Sometimes an individual will change from one stance to the other. But it is not possible to conclusively show which view is 'absolutely right' until we have a measure of hindsight that none of us yet has. Until then we all, atheists, Chritians, Moslems, Jews and everyone else, live by faith in the world view beliefs we have chosen.
Christians, of course, believe that Jesus Christ is who he claimed to be - God's Son, sent to show us how to rediscover God and reconnect with him. But we can never prove it, and no one can disprove it either. Even when Jesus lived on earth some people saw him as mad and others as bad, but a few believed. So now that he is no longer here it is unlikely to be different. As Gerald Hemp, who took our service this Sunday, reminded us, we who have trusted in him should make it our life's goal to allow His Love to flow through us to others. His love is the only factor that can make a difference.
January 4, 2010
This week is the feast of Epiphany - actually on January 6th. The word has the meaning of 'to show or make known' and in the
present context is all about Jesus being made known to the non-Jews, or Gentiles, as the Wise Men found him in Bethlehem.
Of course earlier he had already been made known to the Jews when the angels appeared to the shepherds. In this meaning of
the word Epiphany is about God taking the initiative to make his Son, Jesus, known to mankind. Bill
made some of these very points in our service on Sunday.Nowadays we use Epiphany in another sense - a personal realisation of a new truth or something newly understood. We have an epiphany moment when a metaphorical light bulb lights up or a penny drops. If you want to make a New Year's Resolution, how good would it be to ask God to give you a personal realisation of how he has made Jesus known - and to help you to pass the good news of the gospel on to someone else so that they too could have their epiphany!
December 22, 2009
In this Christmas week Church Mouse would simply like to wish you all a very happy Christmas and God's blessing in 2010.If you have been a regular reader, thank you! There will be more next year.
December 14, 2009
Three candles of the Advent ring lit in the service yesterday and we are at the half way stage in the summit at Copenhagen.
Time seems to be going so fast - and will we all be ready when the day comes? Preparation: that is what Advent is about.
There are deadlines that have to be met. Will the delegates be ready as the day of the final communique approaches?
Will we be ready as Christmas Day dawns? Our everyday life is made up of deadlines small and large that require us to
make decisions. Some of these decisions are fairly inconsequential but a few can be life-changing. Jesus' arrival in Bethlehem did change the world, although the scale of the change was not immediately apparent at the time. If, like me, you believe that Jesus will one day return - his future Advent, not in humble circumstances but in glory - that will be the ultimate 'life change'! So, as you make your preparations for the festive season and all the 101 decisions that have to be taken, do take a moment to recall that the first Christmas was about Good News for all that can change your life - God and His creation reconciled after years of separation.
December 6, 2009
We are now well in to the season of Advent and preparations for Christmas are under way. Next weekend we will have our
tree in the Church. Advent is the start of a new church year and, as its name suggests, is all about arrivals. We remember that
Christ came at Christmas; but we remember too that he 'comes' today and that he has promised to 'come again' in the future.
He comes today in many ways - often unexpected - sometimes through events, sometimes through a spoken word, but always where
people seek him and are prepared to be open to him.Now we 'see' him as it were through a piece of dark frosted glass but when he comes in glory everyone will see him. The challenge of Advent is both to be prepared to see him now and in that final appearance. This means that we should understand the things that are ultimately important in life and to focus on them; to get our balance right; to understand what really lasts; to focus on people rather than things; to put God first and others before ourselves. None of this is easy - especially in our 21st century culture. But Jesus has promised to walk the road with us.
A difficult road it looks like being for those gathering in Copenhagen this week. We should pray for our leaders and the many experts, some of whom do understand that this is a moral and a spiritual issue as well as a physical and practical one. We do not have to worry that the world will end because man has destroyed the planet. The end will come at a time of God's choosing when Jesus comes again to usher in a new heaven and earth. But we should worry whether, when that time comes, he will find justice and fairness and peace - or greed and selfishness and conflict? Did we take the abundance of his resources and use them for a privileged few or for the good of all? These are the really important questions.
May God bless us all in our Advent preparations.
November 28, 2009
Last Sunday Ralph Chambers led our worship service. In fact Irene had really hoped to come with him, but Irene is
not very well (as Ralph says - 'she has good days and not so good days') and when he arrived at her house to give her a
lift it was one of her not so good days. We were all sad that she could not be present.But Ralph brought back memories for some of us. We sang a 'Fit for Life' song - maybe you remember it. It is called My Guiding Light,written by his son-in-law, Paul Field. It fitted in so well with Ralph's theme which was built around Jesus' parable of the Prodigal Son. God is the loving Father who longs for His children to return to him, and there is always a welcome for a returning prodigal. And just to completely remind us of CCC we had a quiz and a wordsearch using his trusty laptop. As usual Alan was press-ganged into operating the MOUSE!
Do you have an interesting memory of CCC either as a parent or one of the many children that attended over the years? If so, do send an email to Church Mouse. CM may be able to refer to it in the next blog.
November 20, 2009
We are only a few weeks away from the summit of world leaders and representatives in Copenhagen.
It is the nature of these events that much is written before they happen so as to try and manage people's
expectations. And expectations seem to be lowering as the day approaches. But faith communities and Christians
in particular have a strong view that we live in God's world and that we are stewards of it.
It is quite true that God blessed the earth with huge quantitities of natural resources and they are for our benefit and
to be richly enjoyed as the gift of a generous God. But there is a huge 'But' coming. God has, over the centuries,
made it very plain that he is against greed, injustice and exploitation. His blessings are for everyone and to be shared.
The sad fact is that the long-industrialised countries have taken an attitude that the earth's resources are primarily
for them and not for all. It's about the survival of the fittest and the devil take the hindmost. So it is to be
applauded that one of the chief goals of Copenhagen is to work out a system whereby
the 'rich' countries will help the poorer ones to address the problem that we all face together.If we decide to raise our thermostat by one degree, we should consider whether someone else has no heat at all. Would it not be better to turn the thermostat down by a degree and to wear warmer clothes? (CM does want to point out that this suggestion is only directed at those who have enough. The usual comments about the elderly keeping warm still apply.) Jesus, in his famous counter-cultural sermon states that 'Blessed are those that hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled'. So please do pray that the delegates understand that above all they are discussing a moral issue and that they do the right thing.
Have you got an opinion on the Copenhagen summit? Email you thoughts to Church Mouse.
Church Mouse was at the Church Anniversary service last Sunday. Although the stone above the middle window on the
side facing the road states that the building was erected in 1840, it was back in 1812 that the first group started
meeting in a home a short distance down the road. So, since age is obviously a good thing, everyone there wanted to claim that
they were 197 years old rather than a mere 169.
Having written in last week's blog about Herbert and Ethel Sutton Smith, you may imagine CM's surprise when the
preacher for the day, the Reverend Andrew Funnell, mentioned in his sermon that he remembered the wall plaque in their memory
being dedicated. Herbert and Ethel had a son, Eric Sutton Smith, who himself was a missionary to Ceylon (now Sri Lanka).
He it was who came to the Church and dedicated the memorial to his parents. A picture is shown here on the right.Andrew Funnell was making the point that anniversaries are for remembering the past, for thinking about the present and for considering the future. Clearly as we at the Baptist Church remember the past we are reminded of the effect that these early missionaries had around the world. The point was also made that Herbert and Ethel went on from Africa to China. And China is one of the most dynamically growing countries for the Christian Church today with who knows what prospects for the future.
It is also one of the two most important countries represented at Copenhagen. How interested Herbert and Ethel would have been if they were alive today!
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November 11, 2009
This is Church Mouse's first blog on the new web site for the Church. Everyone here is pretty excited about
the new venture and they are hoping that you like it too.CM was at the Bible Study two weeks ago where we started the series titled FutureShape, which is all about the link between care for creation and mission. It's not an obvious link to everyone. Surely mission is about spiritual things and creation care is - well - about physical things? So where is the link? Well, of course, it's always a bit dodgy to imagine that God is only interested in the spiritual - therein lies the path of what theologians call dualism and that's generally regarded as a 'bad thing'. Thus it turns out that God is more than interested in what is, after all, His world - and therefore so should we be.
Evidently, way back in 1988 the Lambeth Conference of Anglican Bishops produced what have become known as the "five marks of mission":
- To proclaim the good news of the kingdom
- To teach, baptise and nurture new believers
- To respond to human need by loving service
- To seek to transform unjust structures in society
- To strive to safeguard the integrity of creation and sustain and renew the life of the earth
Still on the theme of mission, CM was reading the item about mission on this web site,
and in particular the piece about the Reverend Herbert Sutton Smith. It seemed like it might be an
interesting idea to look the gentleman up on Google. A search for 'Herbert Sutton Smith Congo China' came up with
loads of information, but mainly about the fact that he had written a book on his experiences in the Upper Congo.
He was the resident physician and was involved in the foundation of the Stapleton
Memorial Hospital there (named after one of his close colleagues who died during Herbert's time there).
You can download and read the complete book titled
Yakusu, the very heart of Africa : being some account of the Protestant mission at Stanley Falls, Upper Congo.CM has included a couple of pictures. The first shows the hospital in its early days (the caption states 'The beginning of the hospital that shall be: Mr Millman (architect and builder) to the left; the author and Mrs Sutton Smith standing in the doorway.') while the second shows a group picture that include Herbert (back row second from left) and his wife Ethel (front row on the left).
So there we are - isn't the internet wonderful - and thanks to University of California and MSN for digitising the book.
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