Permission granted!

St Matthew's seems to have quite a buzz about it at the moment. Here's why I am in good heart as we stand at the start of 2012, wondering what may lie ahead:

·         Things are really taking off with our families and children! Liz Burley our new worker launched Messy Church just over a year ago, loads of people are coming and there's always a great atmosphere. Children's Church is growing on Sunday mornings and we had an amazing holiday club last summer (another to follow this year).

·         We now have a youth worker, Lee, for the first time for years. Lee has launched Youth Church on Sunday mornings and has got involved with Blue Coat school. He has linked up with the Faithworks team who are working with young people across Walsall. The new night café is attracting 30 or so young people with no church roots to the St Matthew's Centre every Friday night and is still growing.

·         The young people of Church Hill Praise continue to inspire me with their fire and passion! They fill me with hope for the future.

·         We've had a great Alpha Course with over 40 participants, thanks in no small measure to our curate Liz, who organised it. She has been breath of fresh air.

·         St Matthew's Centre is booming under the leadership of manager Adrian Perks. There seem to be more and more community users in there all the time (and even two or three other churches who hire our premises)

·         Our Asian congregation are in good heart too – their local radio broadcasts are great!

·         I particularly feel this when I see our members supporting , helping and caring for each other because then I know that the Gospel is being lived out among us.

So I think, by the grace of God, we are an inspiring community to belong to. The question that bothers me is, what holds others back from joining in? It has surprised me to discover that many people feel they need permission to come to church. Several times lately I have been asked, "am I allowed to come to church?" Sometimes it's because the building seems so imposing, sometimes because people don't know what goes on in there and are worried they won't fit in, sometimes because they weren't baptised, sometimes because a vicar has been unhelpful or even rude to them in the past… But whatever the reason, it's not good enough. Because the heart of the Gospel is that Jesus welcomes everyone – especially sinners. He said, "Whoever comes to me, I will never send away" (John 6:37). So you are all allowed, by express permission of the King of kings!

Why not give St Matt's a try in 2012?

It's really exciting to have just published some poems with The Five! Our new book, Five Squared, is available at £12.50 from www.lulu.com. It's called Five Squared because it has 5 x 5 poems, each of us has contributed five.

Here's one of mine as a taster, hope you like it!

A rose garden

So I planted the garden for you.

To guard it, a hedge of sweet myrtle,

Within it, lily of the valley, rue and rose

To keep me scented of you till you come.

All through it of course there must flow

A stream of limpid water,

Running and singing and shining

From a broken jar of clay.

And come at last you do – but why must you

Ignore my gate, break down my hedge

And trample my flowers?

Why could you not linger

on the lawn I laid for you,

but must go straight ahead

(my hedge again!), leaving only

an irresistible scent, and the

faint echo of a call?

So I followed in your steps, that led

After many days to a high rugged hill

And a torrent that thundered

With the sound of many waters.

Far away and small my shattered garden.

It seemed you had a wider field to walk,

Immersing me into a deeper stream.

And at the summit, you at last,

Plainly waiting for me. “Lie down here.

Gaze into heaven till it becomes a sea,

Until the tall trees reach down as roots into the deep

And the eagles swim an abyss of light

And you too play in love’s empyrean.”

So I awoke – and you were not there.

Only the footsteps leading down.

Grumbling and longing I follow –

Don’t you know how hard you make it?

Down into a valley and a dour city

And a pressing, depressing crowd.

And is it true that here at last I will find you

Among the disappointed and averted faces

And the wandering uncertain steps

And the least of these my brethren?

And your long unfathomable look for which I long

Must be looked out of my own shrinking eyes?

Arrogant? Moi?

Ouch! It was a bit of a downer to read in The Times recently that Rowan Atkinson thinks vicars are arrogant, smug and conceited. That's Rowan the comedian of course, not Rowan the Archbishop – it would be even worse if it were our own boss who thought so! I wonder what could have made Mr Bean say such things…

Of course there is a priestly desire to pontificate which doesn't always come across well. Sometimes on Thought for the Day a well-meaning vicar feels the urge to lecture us about the latest headlines, oblivious of the political, social and economic experts on the show who know far more about it than he does. "Why doesn't he get off his soap box and tell me about Jesus?" I find myself rebuking the radio. "That's what I need to get me through the day!"


Arrogance is particularly unwelcome in the church because we are supposed to favour humility. It's because of Jesus that Christians think humility is so important. At Christmas Jesus humbled himself. He gave up His glory to become a human being, to seek for us, serve us and save us. He even went to the cross to bear our sins. Just as he humbled himself for us, we have to humble ourselves to receive him. "Lord, I have let you down. I've failed to live how you wanted me to. I've hurt others. I need you. Please come into my life and help me change…" Arrogance is actually bad for you. It stops you learning new things – "I know it all already." It shuts out others – "Who needs them?" It's anti love – "It’s my life and I'll live it my way!"


And humility is not what you think. It doesn't mean crawling, being bland, pretending to be useless when you're not, or denying your worth as a human being. Look at Jesus – he asserted who he was as the Son of God, threw out money changers, confronted authority. Life with him was an adventure! Gentle Jesus, meek and mild? As if! Humility really means being ready to admit when you are wrong, open to others and willing to serve them.


Just like Jesus when he came in humility for us. He came at Christmas – to seek you, serve you and save you. This Christmas could be the start of an amazing adventure if you will ask him in. In the meantime you'll just have to make up your own mind about those arrogant vicars…

After the fire came a still, small voice…

As I write this article, the country is still reeling from the August riots. Over two thousand looters have already been arrested. Emergency courts are dealing with the surge in cases. Shattered communities are doing their best to clear up the mess and start again. For families who have lost sons and brothers the process will be much longer.

Now that the immediate danger has been dealt with, it is right that we embark on some serious soul searching. How did we bring up a generation who do not know it is wrong to wreck the lives of others for the sake of a bigger TV and some new trainers? Is it our casual rejection of millennia of wisdom about loyal, stable relationships as the best environment for children? Is it the lack of respect for teachers and elders? Or the lack of integrity in our bankers and expenses-guzzling politicians? Is it the rampant commercialism of our age: you are what you consume, so if you haven't got it, go and take it? Is it the shallow, me-too atheism that says we are just animals with no meaning or purpose to life - and then gets all surprised when we start to act like it?

Good questions and I think we should chew them over and take them to heart. We need to be careful how we answer them. Get them wrong and we might end up living through the same nightmare again. For example, those who want to evict every looter's family from their homes and cut off all their benefits will create a feral class who roam the streets with no possible source of income but more robbery…

But I believe in a God who is bigger than the riots, so I believe there are answers. I'd like to tell you about two of them - answers where I believe actions speak louder than words.

Even as the riots first started, we led a children's holiday club called Have I got News for you. 75 young children heard a wonderful message about how much their lives matter because God loves them. I wish you could have been there to see the spontaneity and openness with which they explored the love of God. What a contrast to those who feel their lives are worthless, that they are not wanted by anyone and have nothing to lose.

The second answer came as the riots were at their peak. Some twenty of our young people set out on a summer mission to bless and serve the people of Walsall. They washed cars for free, picked up litter, gave a free barbecue, and ran participative activities in sport, art and music. Their motive? They want to follow Jesus and love their neighbour. What a contrast to the things appearing on our television screens.

We need to rebuild, not just our shops and streets, but our hearts and our values. Start with Jesus, as our amazing young people have done, and you won't go far wrong.

Reductionism – a parable…
It's my son's birthday. I love my son and I want him to have a really nice present that he will enjoy. So off I go down to Halford's and buy him a nice shiny blue new bicycle.
Come his birthday my son is delighted with it! "It's my present to you son. I love you and that's why I've given you this bike".
A few days later though, my son seems unhappy. He stops using the bike, and he doesn't seem to want to meet my eye either. Finally I get him to talk about it.
"You said you gave me that bike because you loved me. But I've found the receipt – it didn't come from you at all, it came from Halford's – and before that it was made in Taiwan!"
Do we really think that discovering the bike came from Halford's means it can't really be a proper present from me? Then why do we suppose that understanding more about how the universe works means it can't possibly come from God? There isn't any logical connection at all between these statements as far as I can see – have I missed something? And in that case, isn't the whole Dawkins argument really about what drives people to accept one kind of explanation and reject others?

This is an item I put in the local Pioneer magazine recently - I hope you like it!

A Pearl of Great Price?

In my pocket I carry with me a large white marble. From time to time I take it out and hold it for a moment, or feel its smooth roundness in my pocket. I do it to remind me of certain important things. I do it especially when I'm feeling lonely or misunderstood, or when things aren't going my way. In short, when I'm tempted to feel a bit unloved and a bit down.

The marble reminds me of a story Jesus told - the story of the pearl of great price. There was a merchant, He said, who was a dealer in fine pearls. One day he found one of such exceptional beauty and lustre that he sold all that he had to buy it. On the face of it, Jesus was saying that we ought to value God's presence and love so much that everything else fades by comparison. It's a great message for these cynical times when we seem to know the price of everything and the value of nothing. It's our fixation with greedy materialism that landed us in recession.

But we can also turn the story round. What if it is not about us searching for God, but God searching for us? Is He the merchant hunting for pearls? If so, it means He gave everything, His best and finest, in order to have us. This is just what the life of Jesus tells us. He came among us so He could lay down His life for us on the cross. He gave everything to have us. We are His pearl of great price.

So that's what my little marble reminds me of. I'm not lonely or unwanted or insignificant or worthless - even when my circumstances or emotions say I am. I am God's pearl, for love of whom He gave everything. Wow.

Sadly I haven't got a real pearl of great price for my reminder - can't afford it! And it's just as well really, because that reminds me I don't have to be anything special for God to love me. Ordinary people, with all their up and downs, are precious to God. So much so that He gave Jesus for them.

Have you found your pearl yet?

with love in Jesus from Colin.

Coming home

I've been threatening for some time to put my conversion story on to the blog - after all, it is the best thing that's happened to me. At last I've got round to it. A quieter summer period helps, and so did Jeremy, asking for stories to put in a booklet of testimonies so we can all see how God has worked in the lives of people at St Matthew's. Here's what I wrote:

I was a tortured soul as a youth. My parents had moved constantly while I was younger, usually to totally different parts of the country. I went through the experience of losing friends and trying to make new ones so many times that in the end I just gave up - what was the point? I'd soon be saying goodbye again. I became lonely and withdrawn.

I'd always believed there was a God since I first thought about it. I hadn't been brought up with this - my parents didn't take us to church or tell us about their beliefs. But somehow this conviction had taken hold of my life. The difficulty was, I couldn't seem to find this God I believed in. I tried lots of things - Eastern spirituality was in fashion - and thought that if you rolled all the beliefs about God together you be bound to come up with something like the truth in the end. But none of it filled the deep emptiness I felt within. I began to wonder if God didn't want me.

Then my father died very suddenly of a heart attack and things got a great deal worse. I found I had nothing inside to help me care for my mum, who was devastated, nor for my brothers, when they most needed me. We fell apart a bit. God seemed further away than ever. I sank into depression. Life had no meaning or purpose whatever.

Bedtime many months later: as I got ready for bed I prayed, "God, if you're there at all, you can have my life. It's no use to me." I fell asleep immediately, something I had been unable to do for a long time.

The following day I felt a strange urge to get up and go out into the streets. I remembered what I had prayed. "This is a strange urge," I thought, "Could this be God answering my prayer?" So off I went. I bumped into someone who was actually going along to an evening service at my local parish church. It was the last place on earth I'd thought of to go looking for God. But over a period of weeks, as I heard and responded to what I heard there, I came to realise that the way to find God is through Jesus.

I remember the night it finally dawned on me that God really loved me: a warm Devon night in August. I had gone away with the Church Youth for a week's houseparty and a brilliant speaker had seemed to speak straight into my heart. I went out and lay on the grass, looking up at the stars, and finally felt that there was a place for me in the universe.

What about you? If you're at St Matthew's and you have a story of what God has done for you, please let Jeremy have it, and soon! Don't forget they're supposed to be anonymous (sorry about that Jeremy - can a blogging vicar be a special case?)

Colin.