HeartEdge Mailer - July/August 2021

The new HeartEdge mailer is out, with new book extracts galore (including Jarel Robinson-Brown and Sam Wells), plus the usual links to unexpected ideas, news and resources. Plus dates for August and September... 

Have a look ...
https://mailchi.mp/48720f51ba1f/heartedge-july-august-update

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King's X - Over My Head.

CTiW and the congestion charge extension

Churches Together in Westminster have, along with representatives of other faith communities in central London, made representations to the Mayor of London regarding the recent extension to the Congestion Charge.

Here is a series of links to the main coverage thus far in relation to the issues we have raised regarding the congestion charge extension:

• Sunday Programme Radio 4 - https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000l1w1
• Church Times - https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2020/24-july/news/uk/london-churches-appeal-to-mayor-over-congestion-charge-rise
• BBC News - https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-53136450
• BBC London News - https://www.jesuit.org.uk/congestion-charge-hike-farm-street-speaks-churchgoers
• Premier Radio - https://premierchristian.news/en/news/article/changes-to-congestion-charges-may-force-churches-to-close

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Total praise - Regent Hall Salvation Army Church.

HeartEdge Mailer | November 2019

HeartEdge Mailer | November 2019

Initiated by St Martin-in-the-Fields in London, HeartEdge is an international ecumenical movement.

• We are churches and other organisations developing mission.
• Our practice is focused on 4 areas - commercial activity, congregational development, cultural engagement and compassion.

Each month we email stories and web links related to developing commercial activity, congregations, cultural engagement and compassion.

This month:

• Hannah Malcolm on hope, Liz Delafield on good society and Val Barren on enterprise - and young and olds sing a new song via Mesadorm.
• Setting up a community shop in church, plus living with a church building, how church can become a community hub plus - activism and Franciscan spirituality.
• Loads of Christmas ideas for congregations, plus community chaplaincy.
• An extract from 'The City is my Monastery: A Contemporary Rule of Life' by Richard Carter.

Read the Mailer here.

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Gungor - Brother Moon.

HeartEdge update

With 90 plus churches and organisations in the movement HeartEdge is demonstrating our potential to be an ecumenical and international network of churches and other organisations. We are growing an international support network for developing commercial work, cultural activity, compassionate response to social need and congregational life (the HeartEdge 4Cs).

Our vision is of a global movement renewing the local church, sustaining lively and dynamic communities in a thriving society. As such we have an ongoing programme to resource our members and are seeking to regularly add to our resources, as we want HeartEdge to be a useful community, a ‘go-to’ resource, and a source of energy and encouragement.

Collaboration and sharing of experience is what makes HeartEdge such a valuable network – our interactive events are therefore particularly appreciated. In May, we held our first HeartEdge Introductory day outside the UK, in Amsterdam, working with two of our member churches in the Netherlands. Closer to home, in June, we led introductory days in Newcastle and Derby. We’ve also held two consultancy days in the past two months, and are planning others in the autumn; let us know if that would be of interest to you and your church.

Looking ahead our main activities continue to involve sharing, connecting, consultancy and developing:

• Interviews: Our latest online resources are firstly, a conversation with Bishop Michael Curry and Xolani Dlwati, Dean of HeartEdge member St Mary the Virgin Cathedral Johannesburg, responding to four questions inspired by HeartEdge - https://www.stmartin-in-the-fields.org/heartedge-interview-bishop-michael-curry-and-dean-xolani-dlwati/. Secondly, an interview with Sam Wells recorded during the HeartEdge event in Amsterdam in May 2019, when Sam was asked about ‘being with’, the social outreach of St Martin-in the-Fields and the ethos of the HeartEdge movement -https://www.stmartin-in-the-fields.org/sam-wells-being-with/.
• Greenbelt: We will be at Greenbelt with a panel session on ‘Wit and wisdom from the margins’ with Revd Sally Hitchiner (Diverse Church), Fiona MacMillan (Inclusive Church), Revd Bev Thomas (Amani Consultancy), Jackie Elton (Single Friendly Church). People and communities so often overlooked, looked past or downright ignored – in society and in the church – have so much to teach us about who we are called to be. Join a panel of church leaders and thinkers all with lived experience of various marginalisation – whether disabled, BAME, LGBT+ or single – as together we remind ourselves that the 'calling from the edge’ is what shapes our prophetic and political thinking best, enabling us to be most truly who we might be – as individuals, as society, and as the church. Venue – Pagoda, 3.30pm, Saturday 24 August.
• Website: Over the summer the HeartEdge website goes live – for connecting with others and finding resource. It will include new information about our network visible to all, a simpler joining process, and a new members’ only section, where you will be able to find resources and other churches like you more easily. The new front pages will have a lighter and more appealing feel, and give more information about our growing network; there are more details about our 4Cs, what we do, and our membership benefits. We will update when its ready. We hope you’ll find it helpful.
• TryTank Experimental Lab: New HeartEdge member, TryTank Experimental Lab is helping to expand the HeartEdge network in the US by sponsoring the first year of membership for 20 US congregations to join the network -https://www.trytank.org/heartedge-usa.html.
• HeartEdge Conference: In October we welcome US theologian Winnie Varghese, asset-based community worker Cormac Russell, and many other exciting contributors for a two-day conference – a gathering of the HeartEdge community in Edinburgh (2 & 3 October – see attached flyer). The programme includes Sam Wells delivering the annual Chalmers Lecture series. This includes Sam’s lecture on ‘Entertaining Angels Unawares: It is More Blessed to Receive’ which is on 1 October, so you may want to consider coming early to hear that too! This two-day intensive will pack in lots and prioritise practical input and resources. We’ve kept costs down and there’s a subsidised rate for HeartEdge members – we hope you’ll be able to attend (register here - https://tickets.myiknowchurch.co.uk/gb/ODYyLTEz/t using the special rate for members). Initial media coverage can be viewed at:https://www.lifeandwork.org/news/news/post/1213-us-theologian-to-speak-at-edinburgh-conference; http://www.churchofscotland.org.uk/news_and_events/events/heartedge_conference; andhttp://www.churchofscotland.org.uk/news_and_events/news/2019/rev_dr_sam_wells_to_examine_renewal_in_the_church_during_chalmers_lectures.
• Within Conference: To be held at Church of the Servant King, Milton Keynes on 8 October. This will be a day run alongside the Watling Valley Partnership and the Diocese of Oxford, to explore a breadth of different approaches to spirituality. Includes input from Sam Wells and St Martin's Voices. Tickets can be booked here:https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/within-tickets-64982817356.
• ‘At the heart. On the edge': A day hosted by Rev Edward Carter, Vicar of St Peter Mancroft, and Revd Dr Sam Wells, Vicar of St Martin-in-the- Fields, which includes theology, ideas, solutions and support for re-imagining Church. A programme has been developed jointly by the Diocese of Norwich, St Peter Mancroft and St Martin’s. The day will be held at St Peter Mancroft on Wednesday 12 February 2020, 10 am to 3.30 pm. Register athttps://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/at-the-heart-on-the-edge-tickets-67692954449.

As of November last year, London Diocese designated St Martin-in-the-Fields a resource church, with HeartEdge as the resource offered. As a result, in October we are thrilled to be welcoming Revd Catherine Duce as Assistant Vicar for Partnership Development; the role will support the revitalisation of mission and ministry across the Diocese of London by offering HeartEdge events, networks and resources to the capital's churches.

This month we say thank you to Georgina Illingworth, our first Sheppard Scholar, and in September welcome Jessica White, who will be the Sheppard Scholar for the HeartEdge team during 2019/20. Jessica will be joined by other Sheppard Scholars at St Peter’s & All Saints Nottingham, St Peter Mancroft Norwich, The Parish Church of St Cuthbert’s Edinburgh and St Martin-in-the-Fields.

There is a huge amount we want HeartEdge to do! We are grateful for all you bring to this story, helping create a movement for change. I hope we get the opportunity to work together in the months and years ahead. So, do contact me to discuss ways your church could tap into HeartEdge resources more fully, including Consultancy Days, visits, Mission Model workshops, and more!

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Mark Heard - Rise From The Ruins.

HeartEdge Mailer | June 2019

HeartEdge Mailer | June 2019

HeartEdge is an international ecumenical movement. 

We are churches and organisations developing mission.

We focus on 4 areas - commercial activity, congregation, cultural engagement and compassion.
Join us here!

Each month we email stories, web links and news related to our focus: commercial activity, congregations, cultural engagement and compassion. Useful, inspiring, practical - a resource to take from!

This month:

• Boaz Life and well-being, plus Dementia Cafe's and responses to autism.
• Church buildings as places of safety and church gardens as sanctuary.
• Learning from the Commercial - loads of churches & projects to inspire!
• Rituals, poetry & installations in church - examples & resources.
• Plus Jessica Foster on questions of vulnerability & leadership.

Read the Mailer here.

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Blessid Union of Souls - I Believe.

HeartEdge Mailer | February 2018

HeartEdge Mailer | February 2018

Each month we sift the web bringing you the best inspiration, ideas and resources for - commercial work, cultural activity, community and congregational development - all about building Kingdom communities!

This month we're jammed-packed!

• Eve Poole on 'essential nothing', Grayson Perry on your inner-Hobbit.
• Afua Hirsch on identity, Brene Brown on boundaries, Marion Deuchars on messy desks and drawing badly, Simon Jones on Paul and economics.
• Mark Yacconelli on encounter, Anthony Wilson on 'being chipper', plus art, architecture... and music from Drake.
• Also - HeartEdge news and membership update. And lots more.
• An exclusive snippet from Sam Wells new book 'Incarnational Mission'.

HeartEdge Start:Stop Workshop: Thur 1 March, 2pm - 4pm, St Martin-in-the-Fields, LONDON: Learn about Start:Stop - popular 10-minute work-based reflections for people on their way to work - with Revd Jonathan Evens. Session includes - growing a new congregation; engaging with working people; ministering in the workplace and communicating with busy people. Book via Jonathan Evens here. Free to HeartEdge members.

HeartEdge Churches & Commerce: Wed 7 March, 10am - 3.30pm, St Martin in the Bull Ring, BIRMINGHAM: How to make churches sustainable in mission with people using commercial activities and social enterprises, to improve church finances and wider mission. With: Allyson Hargreaves (Executive Director, St Martin-in-the-Fields), Revd Dr Richard Frazer (Minister, Greyfriars Kirk), Dr Richard Higginson (Director, Faith in Business), Revd Canon Giles Goddard (St John’s Waterloo), plus Anthony Collins Solicitors, Cinnamon Network, Grassmarket Community Project (Scotland Social Enterprise 2018), Jericho Foundation, NexGen Marketing Ltd, Salt Business Network and The Bridge at Waterloo. Includes Christian Entrepreneurs; Entrepreneurial Theology; and Structuring Missional Commerce. Plus entrepreneurs input sessions led by specialists. More here. Book via Jonathan Evens.

For more information on HeartEdge click here.

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Sofia Gubaidulina - In Tempus Praesens.

First HeartEdge Mailer

The first HeartEdge Mailer was sent today. We plan to hand deliver one of these into email inboxes of those on our mailing list, about this time, each month. Each mailer includes:

• HeartEdge update – useful news from HeartEdge members, dates etc
• Links to a useful article or two – and helpful stories and resources
• A note from Revd Dr Sam Wells, and occasional guests

We’re all busy. So, we want to make this useful and inspiring. Hope you enjoy!

Keynote: “At that point we realise what we’re really about…”

At St Martin-in-the-Fields we have a limited company, and once a year we have a board awayday. We really need to raise income, not least because making a commitment to pay the London Living Wage has put quite a hole in our balance sheet.
Because the costs of doing anything in central London are so high, there comes a moment in any discussion about a new income source when someone says, ‘Wouldn’t in just be cheaper to rent out the room?’ And at that point we realise what we’re really about here. We employ all our own staff – we only outsource the cleaning, IT and security. We don’t just do whatever makes the most money. We’re trying to become an exemplary organisation – paying people properly, listening to their needs and concerns – but also developing a house style of how we do and think and talk about church and mission and business and music and everything else.

What we’re trying to do is to foster a conversation about precisely these kinds of challenges. How to keep our focus on the kingdom when there are so many ways to get distracted. How to keep our team broad and diverse, amid all the pressure to work only with people who think the way we do. How to keep going when the last five ideas got nowhere. Who to look up to and imitate when it feels you’re ploughing a lone furrow.

We want you to be part of that conversation of humility and wisdom, or energy and experience, of vision and practicalities. As we walk together, we believe we shall feel our hearts on fire just as did the disciples on the evening of the resurrection that inspires all our attempts at resurrection.

Revd Dr Sam Wells

Launch event findings

During the afternoon of our launch in February we invited you talk about assets in your church to support mission, then repeat and locate the obstacles. We’ve written up the findings from a fascinating 45 minutes discussion – you can find them here… Lots to help us steer by.

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Switchfoot - When We Come Alive.

Ramfel and the Home Office's offensive adverts

Sky News report that 'Users of the Refugee and Migrant Forum of East London (Ramfel) have told the Home Office it has until August 8 to ditch the "offensive" adverts.

If it refuses, they plan to apply for a judicial review.

The adverts are being displayed on billboards carried by vans in six London boroughs as part of a pilot scheme.

They tell illegal immigrants to "Go home, or you'll be picked up and deported" and could be extended nationwide.

Lawyers for Ramfel have written to the Home Office to warn it has broken its duty to cut discrimination and harassment and to foster good community relations.

"Our clients believe that although the Government says the campaign is aimed at migrants who are in the UK illegally, it will adversely affect attitudes towards people from migrant communities who are here lawfully," they said.

"We are instructed to apply for a judicial review after August 8 unless the Home Office agrees not to continue the campaign and to remove the offending literature from the communities."'

Ramfel does great work in this borough helping those who have fled persecution and terrible conditions in their native countries to seek refuge in the UK.

Rita Chadha, Ramfel's chief executive has quite rightly stated of the Home Office adverts: “It’s a travesty of justice, it incites racial hatred and it inflames community tension. It’s just going to scare people to think that immigration is a huge problem when it’s not ... The vans are reminiscent of the 1960s when public leaflets were telling those who were foreign that they were not welcome or to go back home.”

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The Selector - Missing Words.

Realism is fiction

In Sculpting In Time, Tarkovsky quotes Dostoevsky as saying, "They always say that art has to reflect life and all that. But it's nonsense: the writer (poet) himself creates life, such as it has never quite been before him ..."
If Dostoevsky said it, then it must be true! But this statement also resonates with my own sense, through my own minor creative work, that realism is fiction. Any attempt to describe, recreate or re-present an actual experience always results in subtle changes to the experience. This is partly to do with time and partly to do with editing.

All experience is gained in the moment, in time, while all description, recreation or re-presentation is reflection on what has passed. The act of reflection is qualitatively different from the act of experience involving, as it does, perspective on the event which it is not possible to have at the time. This difference in time subtly effects the description, recreation or re-presentation of the past event changing it, albeit slightly, in the process.

All description, recreation or re-presentation of past events also involves editorial decisions about what to include/exclude and what perspective to give. Actual experience is a constant flow in time but no description, recreation or re-presentation can mimic the constant flow of events in time and therefore decisions have to be made about where to start and end thereby disrupting the actual flow of events as they were experienced. Much of what is viewed on television purports to be actual experience (i.e. news footage or reality TV) yet editors have always made decisions regarding where and what to film as well as, often, what to show. What is seen is always a glimpse of the actual influenced by an editor's perspective rather than the whole of what occurred.

In this sense, realism - even, or perhaps especially, hyper-realism - is a fiction.

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Paul Weller - That Dangerous Age.

Resurrection: chain reactions

Jesus’ resurrection is like a chain reaction causing a resurrection or transformation to occur in the disciples too (John 20. 19-31 and Acts 4. 32-35). They change from being people who desert and deny Jesus, who hide away because they are afraid of the authorities. They change into people who meet publicly as Jesus’ followers, through whom miracles and wonders are done, and who share their belongings or sell what they have in order to give to others. It is an incredible transformation and it happens because Jesus comes into their midst and they receive his Spirit.

Each of us, like the disciples, faces on a daily basis uncertainties and fears about our lives and faith. The disciples were afraid of what they authorities might do to them and this is a reality for many of us today. For instance, we have been reading recently in our local press from Christians today who are convinced that our government wants to prevent Christians from speaking openly about our faith. I don’t subscribe to that view myself but for some people that is how they perceive reality. For others of our congregation, their fear of the authorities has been to do with the way in which their asylum case will be dealt with. These are just some of the reasons why we might feel fear.

Thomas was not afraid instead he was uncertain. He knew that Jesus had died so, despite all that the other disciples told him about Jesus’ resurrection, how could Jesus now be alive? Again, we will have many reasons for uncertainty ourselves. Unlike the disciples, we cannot see Jesus physically and therefore we wonder is he real and am I just making all this up? We can also feel the same uncertainty about decisions we have made about our future – are we in the right job, living in the right area, are our children going to the right school, and so on and so on?

What the disciples felt in these stories is what we all feel ourselves much of the time – different situations, different reasons but the same feeling, concerns and worries!

Now the change that occurs - the transformation that happens to them, this personal resurrection that comes for each one - is not a change in their circumstances but a change in themselves. What happens is that they become aware of Jesus with them and receive his Spirit. They are still in danger from the authorities and they will spend the remainder of their lives not seeing Jesus physically but because they know Jesus with them and receive his Spirit they are able to come out of hiding, face the dangers and begin to do and say the things that Jesus did and said in their own lives.

The point about the disciples being behind locked doors and Jesus appearing to them may not be so much to do with the sense that Jesus was no longer restricted by space and time (although that is significant) and more to do with the disciples becoming aware that he was now always with them wherever they were, if they acknowledge and receive him. Isn’t that what Jesus is saying to Thomas, “happy are those who believe without seeing me.”

Michael Frost has written:

“We have locked God into the so-called sacred realms of church and healings and miracles and marvels … We seem to be trying so hard to “bring down fire from heaven” in our worship services while all along God’s favour is to be found in sunshine on our faces, the sea lapping at our toes, picking our children up at school, or a note from a caring friend.”

As we go about our daily lives are we aware that Jesus is with us in the ordinary things we see and do or do we only expect to meet with Jesus when we are in church or at some other super-charged spiritual occasion. The point about the resurrection experiences of the disciples is that Jesus is with them where they are if they recognise him. Often, the stories tell us, that they don’t recognise him initially. Mary mistakes him for the gardener and the disciples on the Emmaus Road don’t recognise him until he breaks the bread. Jesus is with us where we are, wherever we are, but often we do not recognise him.

How can we recognise him? We recognise him through his Spirit. The fruit of the Spirit, Paul tells us in his letter to the Galatians, is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, humility and self-control. Where we see these things in ourselves, in others and in the world, we can be certain that Jesus is there.

If you watch the TV News and read the newspapers regularly you can easily be convinced that love, joy, peace etc. do not exist within our world. There is a story of bad news that is frequently being told but underneath, hidden and obscured by that bad news story is a different story of good news that doesn’t make the headlines but is the reality of our lives, our church and our faith. This is what we read about in Acts 4: 32-35 – people who are one in heart and mind, who share with one another everything they have, who witness to the resurrection of Jesus and who distribute money according to need. As a church we seek to demonstrate the Spirit of Jesus to our community through our community involvements and through all that goes on in the St John’s Centre.

As we meet with Jesus today in this building, in this service, in each other and in our lives as we go away from this place, may we take his Spirit with us and share the fruits of his Spirit in our homes, communities and workplaces throughout the week.

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World Wide Message Tribe (WWMT) - Revolution.

The News of the World as soap opera

Ian Jack, in today's Guardian, suggests that with the closure of the News of the World "the great age of Britain's popular press is drawing squalidly to its close."

What he calls the great age of the popular press, he characterises in two vignettes. First, the owning by the News of the World of "what the Victorians knew as our baser selves" through the paper's specialisation in "salacious accounts of sex and violence." Second, the "enterprising devotion" of the popular press to the frivolous as characterised by Lord Northcliffe, who "spread the word to his staff like a preacher: roughly, to subvert the words of Philip Larkin, readers were forever surprising a hunger in themselves to be more trivial."

"Crime exclusives," Northcliffe noted: "are noticed by the public more than any other sort of news. They attract attention, which is the secret of newspaper success. They are the sorts of dramatic news the public always affects to criticise but is always in the greatest hurry to read ... Watch the sales during a big murder mystery, especially if there is a woman in it. It is a revelation of how much the public is interested in realities, action and mystery. It is only human."

This "only human" principle of feeding our baser selves with a daily diet of reality, action, sex, violence, and the trivial has led, in time, to the ongoing reality soap opera which forms the substance of the redtops, celebrity mags, reality TV, and online chats/tweets encompassing as it does the 'who has been seen where', 'who is with who', 'who has broken up with who', 'who has attacked who', and 'who has cracked up and/or rehabilitated' of the real (and, sometimes, manufactured for money) lives of celebrities, entertainers, politicians, sportstars and victims of serious crime.

This ongoing soap opera which blurs the boundaries between fact and fiction has become 'the news' for many, if not most of us. In what Ian Jack calls "the great age of Britain's popular press," it was the redtops which provided this daily diet to millions of us but, with the advent of rolling news and the internet, the ability of the redtops to deliver, sufficiently quickly, the public face of this celebrity reality soap opera has diminished pushing the News of the World into its alleged illegal focus on the secret face of the celebrity reality soap opera.

This soap opera now provides our sense of the sacred. Gordon Lynch, writing in the same edition of the Guardian, explains that: "Coverage of the death of Baby P or processions at Wootton Bassett honouring soldiers killed in action momentarily bind their audiences together in strong, moral sentiment, either through their recognition of a particular sacred form or horror at its pollution ... The moral credibility of news media lies partly in their ability to work with the grain of sacred meanings shared with their audience ... The degree to which the News of the World profaned what many people take as sacred is unprecedented in post-war media history ... The tipping point came when the actions of people associated with the News of the World became profanations, an evil polluting the cherished sacred significance embodied in the stories of Milly Dowler, Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman, and the 7/7 bombings."

The death of the News of the World, however, does not diminish in any way the celebrity reality soap opera. Instead, it feeds it. Rupert Murdoch, Rebekah Brooks and Andy Coulson have all become part of the story in ways that they never intended - indeed they are 'the story' for the moment - but, because we are fed by this ongoing soap opera and therefore need those who become stories in it, I predict that - as in the career of Piers Morgan - the story will rehabilitate them at some point in the future and by means of some other role in the soap opera, as long as they come to accept that they have, by foul means, become characters within the ongoing celebrity reality soap opera that they themselves have helped to perpetuate.  

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Echo and The Bunnymen - The Puppet.    

Coathanger crucifixion

The following comes from the Bible Society's Newswatch service:

"A 9-foot sculpture of the crucifixion, made from 3,000 coathangers, was briefly on show outside St Giles’ Cathedral, Edinburgh on Wednesday. David Mach, a Scottish artist acclaimed for his massive sculptures created from waste products, is developing four crucifixion figures including a Calvary scene for a major exhibition at the Scottish capital’s City Art Centre next summer. He is also producing up to 120 large-scale collages giving his ‘artist’s version’ of biblical events. Fife-born Mach (54) was spurred to work on the project because it was at Burntisland, Fife that James VI agreed to commission a new Bible in 1601. Although Mach has no personal religious belief, he said, ‘The King James Bible communicated its message so effectively that its language still resonates through our speech.’ The ‘richness’ of ‘biblical imagery is as fine a subject as I could wish for’ he added."

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Regina Spektor - Samson.

Rejuvenate Worldwide newsletter

Rejuvenate Worldwide Newsletter Date: July 09

Imagine an area with no prospects and little vision for their future! An area where there is no school and no access to education - leading to fewer children contributing to their community! Fewer adults being able to provide for their families through work, and a community affected by poverty and alcohol dependency.

Now…….Imagine a community with a school, where young people are raised with a vision and a hope for their future, where young people graduate and become the leading lights in their community, their community transformed by adults who are teachers, doctors, business owners and accountants.

This is NOT just an imaginary exercise….. What will you do to make a difference…..?

Andi Thomas - Rejuvenate Coordinator

NEW SCHOOL: Sironko Primary School

Working with community workers in Uganda together we have identified the need for a school to be built in a remote area on Mount Elgon – Kasabasi Village in the Masira sub-county. The villagers have little access to local towns and therefore no access to education without a school they can afford in their village. Without education Ugandans have limited options in their adult life. Land has been secured in order that Rejuvenate plan, build and supply resources and a teacher to the school.

SPONSOR A TEACHER

In England an average teacher’s salary is £25,000. In Uganda an experienced teacher’s wage is £1200. Are you a school that can sponsor a teacher for the new school? Can you do a non-uniform day each term? £3 buys chalk for a school for a WHOLE YEAR in Uganda, can you sponsor the resources a teacher will need? To read more and sponsor any of the projects in Uganda please visit Rejuvenate Worldwide.

RJW has been working in Uganda since 1998. On a recent trip to Uganda we were updated with the various struggles and challenges Ugandan's face daily and yet we take for granted.

YOUTH GROUP SCALE NEW HEIGHTS!

In May 20 young people from Reality Youth Group in Kingstanding Elim Church climbed Snowdon to raise money for the new school in Kasabasi village. A beautiful sunny day saw the team race to the top in record time with much fun had by all.

THANK YOU for all their hard work and amazing contribution!

We need your support, get involved!

Rejuvenate Worldwide is solely run by volunteers and we rely on the generosity of people like you to keep the charity running. You can support the charity as an individual or a group by praying or giving financially, getting involved in our events or organising one yourself. We would also love to come and share with you about our work by giving a presentation. For 2009/10 we are looking for people to get involved in:

1. Rejuvenate fundraiser evening Autumn 2009
2. Trek Italy 24 - 29 September 2009
3. Trek Tanzania (Kilimanjaro) 17 - 27 September 2009
4. Cycle Mexico 19- 29 November 2009
5. Giant abseil spring 2010

NEW FOR 2010 CYCLE EUROPE CHALLENGE

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Gillian Welch & David Rawlings - Red Clay Halo.

The Black Rain (4)

The following, which is taken from 'Signs of hope and some positive proposals in the global financial crisis' by Rev. Robert Morrison and which I understand to have been issued by the Christian Association of Business Executives (CABE), has some interesting resonances with my earlier posts in this series; here, here and here:

"There is a great difference between our times and the great civilisations of the past. Economic cause and effect is now linked at the speed of fibre optics, fuelling feedback loops of spin and commentary, not least in the hothouse of 24 hour media expectations. They are constantly turning bad news into head lines news and that just undermines confidence across the globe. It creates a profound sense of despair and despondency or just denial and disbelief. But there is no point in pretending it’s not as bad as it really is. It would be unethical for governments to cover up the truth and no one wants to live in a dictatorship like contemporary Zimbabwe or Stalinism, where the truth is constantly denied and the press controlled or suppressed. But even in a free press environment, news is a commodity that makes some people rich and others poorer. The commodity of information is owned by someone and serves their ends and self interest. This is not conspiracy theory, but a fact. Public watchdogs are needed to challenge the distortion and exaggeration of particular stories or just lazy journalism which uses the defence that good news doesn’t sell newspapers. What kind of society would not want to report and celebrate good news and success as an encouragement to others and to rejoice the heart? What kind of journalist is incapable of turning good news stories into commercial successes?"

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Delirious? - Kingdom Of Comfort.