Remembering the Great Fire

On Friday 2nd September 2016 from 1-2pm the Deanery of the City of London will be commemorating the start of the Great Fire of London in a special service.

Starting at the church of St Mary-at-Hill on Lovat Lane, EC3R 8EE - in whose parish the fire started - a short service will remember those who lost their lives and the destruction of 89 churches. The congregation will walk up onto Eastcheap and down Pudding Lane to the site of Fariner's Bakery - the origin of the fire - for readings, prayers and a hymn. We will then move on to the Monument for another reading, prayers and hymn. Finally we will walk to the church of St Magnus the Martyr - one of the first to be destroyed - where there will be a short service giving thanks for the reconstruction of the City and its Churches.

Do join us for this public act of witness and commemoration, which is being promoted as part of Visit London and the City of London Corporation's 'Great Fire 350' programme, more details of which can be found here.

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U2 - The Unforgettable Fire.

Post Olympic and Paralympic events

We enjoyed an excellent Men's Breakfast at St John's Seven Kings this morning hearing from three of our Games Makers about their experiences at the Olympic and Paralympic Games - Senthur Balaji was at the Excel Centre for the Olympics, Doug Feather at the North Greenwich Arena for the Paralympics and Bob Keenan who was a driver at the Paralympics. Our Mothers' Union branch will also be having a presentation shortly from other St Johns' members who were Games Makers and on Wednesday 7th November (7.30pm) we will host a deanery Sports Thanksgiving Service.

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Coldplay - Yellow. 

The Big Society and the small acts of individuals

Redbridge deanery synod tonight was on the topic of the Big Society. The main speaker was Daniel Singleton, National Executive Director of FaithAction, a network of Faith based and Community organisations serving their communities by delivering public services (such as childcare, health and social care, housing and welfare to work). Daniel has recently written a FaithAction booklet setting out a faith-based response to the Big Society called ‘How to eat an elephant’.Daniel said that the Big Society is not a policy but a philosophy. It is to do with the choices made by individuals and, therefore, is at the micro level of society. It will be shown by random acts of kindness and involves a move towards a more neighbourly society. The Big Society has to start and end with the small acts of individuals.

In our church clusters we then discussed what we could contribute to the Big Society in Redbridge in future, what will we want to question about the Big Society in Redbridge in future, and how will we do that.

In my introductory remarks I said the following:

Jonathan Sacks, the Chief Rabbi, has said that "If we're searching for the big society, [religion] is where we will find it."

He had two reasons for making that statement. First, he quoted new research by the Harvard sociologist Robert Puttnam, showing that places of worship still bring people together in "mutual responsibility": “The evidence shows that religious people - defined by regular attendance at a place of worship - actually do make better neighbours.”

Second, he argued that: “Religion creates community, community creates altruism and altruism turns us away from self and towards the common good... There is something about the tenor of relationships within a religious community that makes it the best tutorial in citizenship and good neighbourliness.”

The truth of this can be demonstrated through research commissioned by the Cinnamon Network; a group of over 100 Chief Executive Officers of faith-based charities developing responses to the Government's Big Society agenda. Their research reveals that churches and their congregations contribute significant time as well as monies to their communities.

The 284 churches involved in the sample delivered a total of 439,000 hours of volunteer service in the last 12 months, which equates to 1,925 per church on average. These churches contributed £1,234,000 to finance social action work, or £7,568 per church, spent on an average of 3.3 projects.

Projecting these figures against population and church going for the UK gives an estimate of 72 million hours of volunteering for Church-led initiatives over 12 months.
We don’t have equivalent figures for Redbridge but we do know on the basis of the Big Society Mapping Event that was organised last year with Redbridge Council that a wide range of services are currently delivered by faith groups including:

·   Services/facilities for children – toddler groups and crèche facilities; uniformed organisations; support for parents;

·   Services/facilities for young people – detatched youth work; football clubs; drug and alcohol projects;

·   Service/facilities for adults – ESOL classes; healthy living classes;

·   Services/facilities for elderly – day centres; nursing homes; inter-generational projects;

·   Other services/facilities – counselling and bereavement services; confidence building; book and art classes; fitness classes; and Neighbourhood Watch.

We also have an agreed database where a fuller and more detailed picture of faith-based contributions to the Big Society can be gathered – that is the database maintained by Redbridge CVS – and you have all been given a copy of the form to use for entering details of your voluntary and community services.
Once we have this better map of the voluntary service contribution of faith groups to this borough then, as well as our contribution to the Big Society being better recognised, two further possibilities can come into play. First, our buildings could be considered for the delivery of Council services and/or the services of other Government agencies. It makes no sense for precious local authority finances to be used on new builds when existing community buildings may have spare capacity? Use of existing community buildings, such as those we own, locates Council services firmly in the local community and provides support to the voluntary and community sector through rental income. That is a win win situation.
Second, faith groups, the wider voluntary and community sector and the local authority can then together take an informed look at the range of existing provision in the borough, signpost to existing services more effectively, identify gaps in provision, and work together to develop new services which meet real local needs.

An example of that occurring has already happened in the borough since the meeting as the increased numbers of homeless people in the borough was a major topic of discussion at the Mapping Event and since then the churches in the borough has started the new Night Shelter based at the Salvation Army in Ilford.
Our response to the Big Society should be that of a critical friend able to ask many questions about the direction of travel both here in the borough and nationally. The Archbishop of Canterbury articulated some of these issues last year in the edition of the New Statesman which he edited.

He wrote that:

“If civil society organisations are going to have to pick up
responsibilities shed by government, the crucial questions are these. First, what services must have cast-iron guarantees of nationwide standards, parity and continuity? (Look at what is happening to youth services, surely a strategic priority.)

Second, how, therefore, does national government underwrite these strategic "absolutes" so as to make sure that, even in a straitened financial climate, there is a continuing investment in the long term, a continuing response to what most would see as root issues: child poverty, poor literacy, the deficit in access to educational excellence, sustainable infrastructure in poorer communities (rural as well as urban), and so on? What is too important to be left to even the most resourceful localism?”

Our role as faith groups is, I believe, to ask these questions at the same time as we play our part in expanding the Big Society within Redbridge.

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The Harbour Lights - Last Port Of Call.

From the Abundance of the Heart

Today I've been with colleagues in Redbridge Deanery at our annual Deanery Residential. In addition to having some Q&A input from our new Bishop, Stephen Cottrell, we have also been reflecting on his book From the Abundance of the Heart: Catholic Evangelism for All Christians. In the session which I led, I shared the following material on contact, welcome and nurture from the book before leading into group discussion of the mission process commended by Bishop Stephen:

“There is a fantasy about evangelism: people hear the gospel, repent, and look around for a church to join. Then there is the reality: people come into contact with the church, or have some inkling of the possibility of God, and enter into a relationship with the church, either through its activities, its worship, or just friendship with its members. In the loving community of these relationships faith begins to grow. Or to put it more succinctly: belonging comes before believing. Therefore, right at the heart of any effective evangelistic ministry must be a warm and generous attitude to those who are currently outside the church community and a place of welcome and nurture within it.

Nurturing a generous attitude of welcome to newcomers is something that needs to be worked at over many years … Welcome is not just what we do when someone comes through the door. It is an attitude which seeks to get inside the shoes of the other person so that they can be welcomed and accompanied at every point of their journey.”

Blessing→Belonging→Believing

Key question: How can we serve the people with whom we have contact in such a way that the gospel is intriguing, challenging and appealing?

1. List the ‘people groups’ with whom you have contact

2. Selecting one or two groups list their interests and the issues they face.

3. List aspects of the gospel that speak to this group of people and their issues.

4. Think of an event at which you could gather this group of people together and, as a way of serving them, begin to address the issues and share something of the gospel.

5. Work out all the practical arrangements for putting on this event, as far as possible collaborating with the people you are inviting so that it is their event as much as yours.

6. Produce a response sheet and decide how you are going to use it.

7. Make sure there is a next step in place.

Examples:

• An evening for parents called ‘Questions children ask’;
• An evening focusing on Christ is represented in art for members of a local Art Club;
• A book club meeting on a book which raises spiritual questions;
• A course on Christian prayer and meditation as part of the local programme of adult education;
• An invitation to renew marriage vows at a mass service to all who were married at the church in the past fifty years;
• A party for all who have been baptised in the last five year;
• An evening called ‘Stress, Stress, Stress’ with a secular speaker on stress management and a church member on prayer and meditation;
• An evening at which the Christian ethos of church school was explained and commended to parents of children beginning at the school.

“Becoming a Christian is not just learning about the Christian faith: it is about becoming a member of the Christian community, and it is about relationship with a God who is himself a community of persons. Therefore, right at the beginning of the journey, people need to experience what it means to be part of a pilgrim church. Before people can become pilgrims themselves they need to feel happy to travel with us and be open to experiencing life from a Christian perspective.

The place of nurture needs to be a safe place, where people are at ease, where they can bring their questions, and where they will feel challenged, but not pressured. People need to feel comfortable: they need to feel that their questions and concerns are taken seriously.

I like to use the term ‘Travellers’ to refer to people who are beginning to explore the Christian faith, because it describes those who are on the way. They may not yet be coming to church, but they are committed to taking the next step. For many people the best next step is a course of enquiry where they can enter into dialogue with the Christian faith in the company of other Christian people.”

Possible courses include: Alpha, Emmaus, Faith on the Way, and Start!

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Alison Krauss & Robert Plant - Sister Rosetta Goes Before Us.