Sophia Course and Enterprise Club

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Lifehouse - Between The Raindrops.

Windows on the world (277)

London, 2013

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C.O.B. - Wade In The Water.

Sophia Hub Enterprise Club

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Scott Stapp - Break Out.

Courageous: family breakfast and movie

We had an excellent morning at St John's Seven Kings enjoying a cooked breakfast and watching the movie Courageous. 

Filled with action, police drama Courageous is the fourth film from Sherwood Pictures, the moviemaking ministry of Sherwood Baptist Church in Albany, Georgia.

Four men, one calling: To serve and protect. As law enforcement officers, Adam Mitchell, Nathan Hayes, David Thomson, and Shane Fuller are confident and focused. Yet at the end of the day, they face a challenge that none of them are truly prepared to tackle: fatherhood.

While they consistently give their best on the job, good enough seems to be all they can muster as dads. But they’re quickly discovering that their standard is missing the mark.

When tragedy hits home, these men are left wrestling with their hopes, their fears, their faith, and their fathering. Can a new found urgency help these dads draw closer to God … and to their children? 

These are everyday heroes who long to be the kinds of dads that make a lifelong impact on their children.

Sherwood Pictures has produced four films: Flywheel, Facing the Giants, Fireproof, and Courageous. They have been some of the most successful faith-based movies in history. In a partnership with Sony Pictures and Provident Films, the films have been distributed globally and are available in multiple languages. The two most recent, Fireproof and Courageous, opened in the top five in U.S. theaters.

Sherwood Pictures pioneered a unique model, even for Christian filmmakers. The mostly volunteer cast and crew have been one of the great story lines of Sherwood Pictures: “Our people have gone the second mile and beyond with these movies. There is no way we could have done this without hundreds of volunteers who did everything from acting, to bringing food and babysitting. They have been tireless workers because they believed in the vision ... Sherwood Pictures is not the story of individuals, but of a church body operating in unity ..."

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Sanctus Real - Lead Me.

Music at Midnight: the Life and Poetry of George Herbert

Music at Midnight: the Life and Poetry of George Herbert by John Drury is a brilliant biography as this review by Diarmaid MacCulloch makes plain:

'Drury triumphantly delivers the goods, artfully weaving the poetry through the life (little of Herbert’s verse can be pinned to particular dates, which Drury turns to his advantage). He opens with what he rightly calls a masterpiece, “Love III”: “Love bade me welcome; yet my soul drew back”. So much of Herbert is packed into it: a disarmingly domestic scene of a cheerful meal, in which the poet’s sense of unworthiness, doubt and self-loathing is lovingly subverted by a Host – both innkeeper and that which Catholic Christians term the bread of the Eucharist. “So I did sit and eat”: what Reformed Protestant simplicity to cap the verse!' 

'Because he published no English poems during his lifetime, and dating most of them exactly is impossible, writing Herbert's biography is an unusual challenge. In this book John Drury sets the poetry in the whole context of the poet's life and times, so that the reader can understand the frame of mind and kind of society which produced it, and depth can be added to the narrative of Herbert's life. (T.S. Eliot: 'What we can confidently believe is that every poem in the book [The Temple] is in tune to the poet's experience.') His Herbert is not the saintly figure who has come down to us from John Aubrey, but a man torn for much of his life between worldly ambition and the spiritual life shown to us so clearly through his writings. The result is the most satisfying biography of this exceptional English poet yet written.' (Trinity Hall, Cambridge)

Drury is particularly good on Herbert's relationship with John Donne and his influence on poets such as Richard Crashaw and Henry Vaughan. Herbert was himself influenced by Nicholas Ferrar who 'transformed his mercantile family into a religious and educational community, a voluntary society that he hoped would preach to contemporaries by their example. While that hope was at best only partially fulfilled in his lifetime, those who had known him at Little Gidding were able later to form networks that adapted that piety and voluntarism to create societies acceptable within the church. These men led the way to voluntary Anglicanism that characterized a 'Church of England' in transition from a national to an established but essentially voluntary institution.' The memory of the community survived to inspire and influence later undertakings in Christian communal living, and one of T.S. Eliot's Four Quartets also called "Little Gidding."

On his deathbed Herbert sent Ferrar the manuscript of The Temple, telling him to publish the poems if he thought they might "turn to the advantage of any dejected poor soul" and, if not, to burn them. Ferrar decided to publish them and Herbert's poetry has remained in print ever since.   

Malcolm Guite is particularly illuminating on Herbert's poetry in his excellent Faith, Hope and Poetry: Theology and the Poetic Imagination. Also worth reading are his post on Herbert's poems about prayer and his sonnet for George Herbert.

Justin Lewis-Anthony and Sam Norton are provocative and relevant on the George Herbert model of ministry as an overwhelmingly impossible task. Lewis-Anthony suggests in If you meet George Herbert on the road, kill him: Radically Re-Thinking Priestly Ministry that the memory of Herbert celebrated by the Church is an inaccurate one, and, in its inaccuracy, is unfair on Herbert himself and his successors in the ordained ministry.

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Ralph Vaughan Williams - The Call.

Coming soon - the Seven Kings Time Bank

Sophia Hubs is based in Seven Kings as a pilot for a national project to create local hubs that help to build a thriving local economy and a rich community life.   We are running training courses, a weekly enterprise club with local speakers, business mentoring and more.  Our aim is to harness the wide and amazing wisdom, skills, resources, expertise and ideas that are already here in the community.  We are helping to inspire and kick start new social enterprises to meet the needs of Seven Kings/Ilford/Redbridge community.

Our next step is the Seven Kings time bank.  A time bank is a skills exchange network.  It will be a way for local people in Seven Kings and the surrounding areas to help each other, build relationships and be recognised for the help that they give. A time bank is a great way to get the services you need without the need for money plus to increase your confidence in the help you can give others with your own skills. 

Time banks are running all over the country. Individuals join as members and then for every hour’s help you give to another (e.g. Spanish lesson, guttering mending, web design) you receive one time credit which you can then spend on receiving help from another member (leg waxing, bike fixing, horrible internet connection problem solving).  The exchanges won’t have to be a give-take scenario between two people; time banking is a cycle of exchanges that continues on with many time bank members.

Sophia Hubs sees this as an important tool and resource to help our new entrepreneurs try out and develop their business offers and develop their customer base.  It is also a good way of increasing the relationships and networks in a neighbourhood.  The time bank broker (that’s me!) will be on hand to help you work out what you need, what you can offer and help to get you started.

The official launch will be announced soon through Redbridge CVS but in the meantime please register your interest at Sevenkingstimebank@sophiahubs.com or ring 020 8590 2568.  If you want to find out more about our training courses or enterprise club please ring or email me on ros.southern@sophiahubs.com.

In the meantime there is also an exciting and fast growing time bank for organisations (rather than individuals) in East London which we advise all Redbridge groups and businesses to join.  Find out more at ECHO:  http://economyofhours.com/.  This is an experienced time bank organisation that is helping us with the final plans for the Seven Kings time bank that is coming soon.

Ros Southern

Time bank broker, Sophia Hubs

(based at St John’s Church & Centre, St Johns Road, Seven Kings, Ilford, Essex IG2 7BB)

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Live - Run To The Water.

Continuing fight for step-free access at Seven Kings and Newbury Park stations

'After learning Crossrail is still searching for ways to fund step-free access at Seven Kings, campaigner Ron Jeffries, 80, said he feared he would never see lifts at the station in his lifetime.

Mr Jeffries, of Aldborough Hatch, said: “Redbridge will miss out on step-free access and I think that is wrong - I do believe that Seven Kings should be step-free.”

Mr Jeffries, chairman of residents’ community group Aldborough Hatch Defence Association, has campaigned tirelessly, with all three political parties, for Crossrail to rethink its plans for Seven Kings.

“I was not put at ease by Matthew White,” added Mr Jeffries. “I am not at all satisfied.
“We will keep the campaign going and we will not be giving up.”

Mark Kennedy, a committee member on the Seven Kings and Newbury Park Residents’ Association, echoed Mr Jeffries’ words and insisted the groups would “fight on”.'

Read the full story in the Ilford Recorder by clicking here.

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Over The Rhine - Meet Me At The Edge Of The World.