Readers of the Black Country Bugle may have picked up an unfortunate impression of St Matthew's from an article in their edition of 3 January, by someone who visited when the doors were locked and it was pouring with rain. A simple phone call to find out when we were open would have avoided this! Anyway I wrote to the Bugle to set out a more positive view and here is my letter.

Dear Bugle

St Matthew's Church Walsall

Thank you for taking an interest in St Matthew's in the article in your issue of 3 January. It is unfortunate that Mr Workman chose to visit at a time when the church was not open and it was pouring with rain, which accounts for a rather depressing and unwelcoming impression of Walsall's splendid Borough Church. This is far from the truth!

It is regrettable that, owing to theft and vandalism, we are unable these days to keep the church doors open at all times, as Mr Workman pointed out. However times when the church is open are published on the notice board and so is contact information for anyone who would like to arrange a visit at another time, so there is every reason for the public to feel they can get access to their church when they wish. A great deal of further information is available on our website www.stmatthewswalsall.co.uk. From this you will see that we are a lively and vibrant community of all ages and backgrounds, with all sorts of exciting events and activities going on.

There certainly was a significant makeover of the church in the 1820s as stated in the article. However it would be misleading to view this as a total rebuild. The main alterations were the replacement of stone pillars with latest Black Country technology cast iron, the introduction of balconies to increase seating capacity, and the external sheathing of the building in white Bath stone. Among other ancient features of great interest, we still have in situ a 12^th century crypt, a 14^th century chancel, some exquisite medieval wood carving, a 15^th century font and many 18^th century memorials as well as the figure of Sir Roger Hillary which you have mentioned.

I am particularly concerned to correct any discouraging impressions your readers may have picked up because this is our 800^th anniversary year. We are very much aiming to welcome the people of the Black Country to St Matthew's during the year. To this end we will be putting on various exciting events to mark the anniversary. We would like everyone to feel they can come along and enjoy a really worthwhile time with us. Watch this space!

I hope you might be willing consider a follow up article giving a more upbeat impression of St Matthew's. Believe me there are some spectacular things to photograph on the inside of the church! Do feel free to get in touch if you would like to do this.

Best wishes etc...

 

Fame at last!

Amazingly the Times has decided to publish a letter I sent them. I felt rather annoyed at their coverage of Justin Welby's appointment as our new Archbishop in Friday's edition, not because of the nice things they said about him but the way they used the opportunity to smear the Church of England as a whole.

So I was pretty surprised when I bought Monday's paper (because I'd had a busy weekend and missed the rugby internationals) and found my little diatribe in there. Here it is:

Sir, laden as it is with words and phrases such as "detoxify," "riven by arguments," "years of bitter division," "hypocritical" and "damaged," the subtext of your front page article about the new Archbishop of Canterbury hardly bothers to conceal an aim to denigrate the Church of England at all costs. The dire picture painted bears little relation to the vibrant life in experienced in many parishes.

Justin Welby should pay no attention to the problem-focussed agenda recommended further on in your pages. The Christian faith has a great deal that is positive to offer our cynical culture and I fervently hope he will make it his top priority to commend it to our nation.      

It must be terribly easy for the Archbishop to be straitjacketed by his role and all the huge expectations and burdens that go with it. Please Lord may Justin be able to keep his focus on You, Your love, Your Gospel, and making You known to the nation.

One of the hardest things this summer has been saying goodbye to Ben. We felt like criminals as we slunk away from Heathrow having abandoned our youngest to strangers on the other side of the world for a whole year.

So isn't Skype fantastic! Through what used to be Star Trek technology we've been talking to Ben on the other side of the world. He's enjoying life and he's with a great team out there in Bolivia. He's even seen river dolphins leaping in the Amazon and families of capybaras. It's been frustrating for him that a lot of time has gone on training as he is very keen after a year of anticipation to get on with looking after those street kids - but the time will soon come.

If you want to keep up with Ben he is posting on Facebook fairly regularly and also has a blog you can follow on beninbolivia.wordpress.com. Why not add Ben to your favourites?

Elisa and I would like to say a huge thank you to everyone who is supporting Ben in prayer or who has done so financially.

St Matthew's Day

I can't believe it's so long since posted. Catching up with St Matthew's on my return has been busy! Everyone has pulled together to move the church forward during my sabbatical. Sometimes as a leader you get back from time away to find the church stuck in a lay by and you've got to shove hard to get it out on the road again. This time St Matthew's is zooming off down the highway and I'm having to sprint to try and catch up! Liz and our team of wardens has done a fantastic job while I've been away.

Today's special reason for blogging is it's St Matthew's Day (well, it was on Friday, anyway, and this is the nearest Sunday). We all got together for lunch, with some fabulous curry supplied by the Asian congregation and more food from other members of the church. Then we had an amazing service this afternoon. Other services were all cancelled so we could come together as the St Matthew's family and celebrate being one in Christ for a change.

There's been so much to celebrate! Six new babies born in the last six months (we need to keep that production line going!), a great holiday club this summer, a magnificent new refreshments facility opened for use in church today, fabulous music, new faces appearing all the time, progress with re-ordering, fund raising, and just great people. You are a great church to come back to, St Matthew's!

And it was good on St Matthew's Day to draw on some of what I've been learning over the summer and set St Matthew (the apostle, not the church this time) in context as we read out his conversion story today. From Mark's gospel it is clear that Matthew's tax collector's booth stood by the lakeside and from Matthew (the gospel, not the apostle or the church this time) that it was close to the village of Capernaum, which became Jesus' home for much of his ministry. So to have wandered round Capernaum and stood on that atmospheric beach brings the story so much more alive!

It seems that Capernaum was quite a prosperous little town: lots of expensive decorative stone carving, an imposing synagogue (where Jesus himself ministered, see Mark 1:21), lots of small businesses like Simon Peter's partnership with James and John, who employed othes according to Luke 5:9-10. A great deal of this was because Capernaum was close to the border with Gaulanitis, the modern Golan, which was a separate mini-state ruled by Herod's brother Philip. Custom tolls were charged on goods brought in from Golan, and that's what Matthew and all the other tax collectors lived on. There were a lot of them, to judge by the party that Matthew threw to celebrate his conversion in Matthew 9:10. Unfortunately no-one else liked them. The only mates they had were other tax collectors, because the Romans took a cut and they were seen as collaborators.

So what are the values shown by this story for us today?

Conversion. Jesus radically changes lives! That money hungry Matthew just walked away from his tax booth to follow Jesus. Anybody could have gone off with his money! That's a change of heart. And we at St Matthew's today need to share that same living, risen Jesus with the people of Walsall and see Him change lives today. We are already seeing this happen through Messy Church and Alpha. But has God got more for us? Can we reach out through Back to Church Sunday? Or just through gossiping the gospel in our daily lives?

Welcome. How brilliant to open that new cafe area on St Matthew's Day! Because Jesus loved going to parties and being with people: check out the Gospels and note how many times He's at a party in them or compares the kingdom of God to a party. He never turned one down. He didn't turn Matthew down when he invited him to a party with tax collectors and sinners. He won't turn you down. So we need to welcome people of every sort as Jesus does. This means we may need to change! Our ways might be difficult for new people to follow. New friends used to Messy Church or Alpha may find the step up to church really hard. Wouldn't it be great if everyone who visited St Matthew's found at least one person who took an interest in them? Wouldn't it be great if there wasn't a single lonely person in our church? We'll be working on welcoome in 2013.

Discipleship. This is the key issue because it's about the quality of our life with Jesus. The apostle Matthew was so deeply affected by Jesus that he left everything to follow Him. Are we willing to give everything for His sake? He promised that if we lose our own lives for Him we will find them again - a life filled with His peace and love and deep relationship with God is what we were made for. This is our year of discipleship - let's go for it! Discipleship is the theme of our church weekend away this October. Is God calling you there? Have you gone deeper with God this year? There's still 3 months left...

Happy St Matthew's Day everyone!

Where it all started for Matthew - the beach near Capernaum



Yesterday was Elisa’s birthday and we can’t think of any better present than to be here in the Old City of Jerusalem (though I did buy her something else as well). The atmosphere is amazing! Our day began with the ringing of Church bells, and if that sounds very English in a pastoral sort of way, it’s anything but. The bells have a completely non-British sound – echoes of Byzantium and W B Yeats’ ‘gong tormented sea’ (just read it). The heat is unBritish, the in your face salesmen are unBritish, the winding alleyways and lack of greenery – unBritish: and the smells are definitely unBritish. Yet we feel at home. There’s something about Jerusalem...

Our day has ended with the sight of thousands of Jewish people of every description and wearing every description of headgear. They were making their way back from worship at we presume the Western wall. Night has fallen and Shabbat began some hours ago at sunset. We went up on to roofs of the Old City to catch the evening light and found a couple of hundred young people there waiting for Shabbat to start. When it did they all hugged each other, just like doing the peace at St Matt’s but noisier (did I mention it isn’t very British) and then started singing Hebrew songs and dancing. I think they were party of American student Jews on tour. Older and more staid Jews were presumably welcoming in the Sabbath at home as tradition requires.

After that the muezzins started. I am sure it sounded wonderful before the invention of the loudspeaker but I’m afraid electronics have rather ruined the muslim prayer call for the neighbours. We suspect there’s an element of competition about it all: with so many mosques close together you’re bound to want yours to stand out from the one next door. I think it could be the same with the churches too – our spire’s higher than yours...

We have been to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre today, containing the sites where both Jesus’ cross and his tomb are supposed to have stood. There is actually surprisingly good authority for this. St Helena the mother of Constantine, the first Christian Emperor, researched it all in the third century and found evidence that there had been Christian worship on the site for a very long time already. Check it out online. I don’t normally go in for places dripping with gold  and jewels and I certainly objected to being shoved out of Jesus’ supposed tomb as soon as I started to pray (they can spot troublemakers!). But to stand by the site of the cross and look at the exposed riven stone (see Matthew 27 for the earthquake) was a deeply moving experience. And there were people from all over the world sharing it. Jesus said, “When I am lifted up I will draw everyone to myself.” That’s certainly true in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. We even met some Finns and were delighted to hear stories about what God is doing in their country.

I’m sorry not to be able to post any photos either here or on Facebook. I forgot that this old laptop doesn’t have a slot for the camera’s memory card and I also forgot to bring a cable... so no pics till we get back. Sorry.

Lots of love,

Colin and Elisa x x

Elisa and I are now in Tiberias on the Sea of Galilee. It's very very hot (everybody warned us!) and there is a haze over the lake most of the time, from all the evaporation I suppose. It's also shabbat and we are about to go off for a sabbath meal provided by our hotel at outrageous extra cost because we are are to expect that everything will be closed down.

We just had a very interesting time up on the hills close to the lake. They have unearthed the village of Chorazin including the synagogue and some houses. It's mentioned in the Gospels as a place Jesus knew and did mighty works in:

Alas for you, Chorazin! Alas for you Bethsaida! If the same might works that were done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago... (Matthew 11:21)

As we looked around at the devastated rocks that made up the deserted village, it made us feel, "Lord, don't let us become like that! We want to have soft hearts and listening minds towards you!" On the other hand those words come just before Jesus' words of comfort to those who do come to him with a good heart:

Come to me, all who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest... You will find rest for your souls. (Matthew 11:28)

Matthew has delberately put these words of the Lord together so that after the pain that comes from hardening our heart to the Lord comes the reassurance of comfort when we are responsive to Him. How wonderful it was to be in the same places Jesus was in, to see the same hills and lake, to walk on soil that He Himself trod! So we were reminded also of the wordds of the angel after the resurrection:

You are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has risen! He is not here!... He is going ahead of you into Galilee, there you will see Him, just as He promised. (Mark 16:6-7)

Yes, it felt very special to be in Galilee and read that promise. But of course it means we can see Him by faith anywhere, not just in Galilee, because He is alive. Thank you for all your prayers that we will encounter His presence more deeply while we are here, I think they're working!

Just one other Bible verse. There are turtle doves everywhere, even in the big cities like Tel Aviv. It's a sad reflection that these days they have become all but extinct in the UK. Up on that hillside we could hear their cooing all round us, a sort of churr-churr. In the Song of songs it's a sound used symbolically for the the Lord's call to love Him and respond to His love (that's if you go in for symbolic readings - it's definitely a love poem as well). It's Song of songs 2:12-14. Elisa and I prayed that God would renew and restore our first love for Him too.

I'll just close with a local Jewish joke, having now swum in the waters that Jesus and his disciples knew so well:

Why did Jesus walk on the water? Because the boats here are so expensive!

God bless you all and thank you for praying!

Lots of love, Colin and Elisa.

We are almost ready to take off for Israel tomorrow morning. We've eaten our last bacon sarnie for 3 weeks, left instructions for Tom and Ben and we're nearly there with our packing. As we prepare for lots of heat and sunshine it's sad to leave you all in the cold and rain.

We hope to carry on blogging a bit from Israel (provided I can get the blog to work - it took several goes today) but we'll probably put pictures on Facebook.

Your prayers for health, safe travel and an uplifting time in God's own country - and I don't mean Yorkshire this time - are greatly appreciated!

Lots of love, Colin and Elisa.