Here's my Rector's report for the AGM 2012:

Rector's Report 2012

Annual Parochial Church Meeting 2012

Plusses - It's been an exciting year with many great highlights!  Here are just a few:

St Matthew's is visibly growing. I know there are more people at our ten o'clock services because Liz and I have to consecrate bread and wine for them all! It's been encouraging that so many families and children are part of that growth. I hope you are as inspired as I am to see all the kids come flocking forward when it's time for our Children's Church Spot.

In no small part this is due to Liz Burley's brilliant work. Messy Church and Blue Coat children's clubs have been hugely enjoyable (see Liz's own report), but best of all was the amazing (and exhausting) Holiday Club last summer. We are building up momentum! People who have enjoyed Messiness in all its forms are trying out things like the Crib Service, Mothering Sunday, Alpha…

Our growth has been in quality as well as quantity: there is an atmosphere among us combining awe in God's presence, joyful expectation and love for one another which bodes well for the future. We have launched our year of discipleship and people are clearly up for the challenge, if your responses to the Lent course and sermon series are anything to go by.

Youth is another growth area. Lee – what can I say? He's a one-off, isn't he? Thanks to Lee we've seen Youth Church start up on Sunday mornings and lots of engagement with Blue Coat students. Urban Spirit is really taking off following the changes made last year. The Faithworks Team has also been running a Night Café and are now attracting 40 or so completely unchurched kids on Friday evenings to the St Matthew's Centre.

The Centre itself has held up remarkably well financially in these recessionary times. Adrian has put in a brilliant performance in managing and marketing. Its finances, and those of the church as a whole, have done much better than I expected in this climate. Huge thanks to all of you who give so generously and enable it all to happen.

Minuses – Of course there have also been some problem areas:

We have lost some highly valued members who have died or become too frail to get to church. Although it's not easy to pick out individuals, we greatly regret the passing of Martin Barker who has done so much for us with so much enthusiasm. And we need to keep praying for our former warden Margaret Eddowes.

The theft of two lots of lead from the church roof followed by copper from the Centre roof has cost huge amounts of time and effort from people who are already stretched - not to mention money! It was a blow to be refused a grant from English Heritage to help us with the roof. This led to the stalling of the whole re-ordering project while we tried to sort out where that left us. The governance of Blue Coat is still in a temporary structure and we need to use what influence we can to make sure our links with the school are developed. And we still have too much of the work of running the church left to too few people.

 

The Future!

The Truscott report is going to be a major part of our future. We need to overhaul our structures and communications so that we can direct our talents and energy to bringing in the kingdom of God, not just to sorting out crises. I'll be talking about this from Acts 6 on AGM Sunday, looking at how the early church really grew when the leaders were able to delegate management tasks and focus on vision, prayer and teaching. We have an excellent Task Force who are making a great start on implementing the report.

I think we'll see a growing sense of engagement with God and personal spiritual progress as we continue working through our Year of Discipleship. I'm particularly looking forward to the Weekend Away in October. I think it will be a milestone for many of us. We will also need to give disciples real responsibility if they are to mature, so we must aim to grow leaders during the year ahead.

Progress on re-ordering this year will depend on whether we can attract a grant from English Heritage this time around. Please keep this in your prayers!

Further ahead, we must look outwards and seek fresh vision how to be the Borough Church that has a ministry to Walsall as a whole. We need to make sure that our mission is properly resourced and funded: the growth we are seeing isn't there by accident, it's there because we have invested in it, through the Centre, through the Family and Children's Worker and through Lee. Some of their funding will be coming off stream soon – let's make sure we channel in new funds to support growth. This means we will have to learn the art of visionary budgeting! What we must not do is to shrink because we don't believe in what we are doing enough to pay for it properly.

I have no doubt that the Holy Spirit is moving at St Matthew's. Brothers and sisters, let's ask God for more and let's prepare to grow! God bless you in the 12 months ahead, and God bless St Matthew's and continue to build us up.

With love in Christ,

Colin.

Encouragements from God

We had a great meeting with the Home Group Leaders last week. It was one of those prayer times when God seems so near you could almost reach out and touch Him. We pictured ourselves in prayer standing on the hill top outside St Matt's looking out over Walsall with some words from the Moving On course: This is our mountain top (St Matthew's), and this (Walsall) is our Galilee. At the end I asked if anyone had received any words from God and here are three:

·       We were standing at the west end of the church, outside on the path looking over  Walsall.   Jesus was standing at the back of the group, also looking out. Then he somehow turned to us all and started talking to us, like friends .... (or a group of budding disciples?) He also made a sweeping gesture over the town with his arm, as if to say "all this is out there...."

·       "Follow me, keep going forward, this is the path, straight ahead, do not look back. We must honour the past but not get stuck in it." As the Lord said to Joshua, "Be strong and very courageous" 

·       Come follow me! (down into the town among the people where Jesus wants to lead us): men of faith, rise up! Rise up church with broken wings!

We also had a great Prayer Hour this morning. Nine people is the most we've had for ages. God is up to something when He calls His people to pray! Yet another person had an encouraging picture as we prayed about all the problems we are having with our church building and environs. "There was a great glow in church as we were all worshipping. It emanated out through the walls and shone around St Matthew's like a force field."

Ranting on

I don't often go off on a rant, but could not restrain myself with this one...

A court has now given its verdict that is illegal for local Councils to say prayers at their meetings. The action was brought by the National Secular Society after a councillor in Bideford proclaimed that prayer offended him. It wasn't good enough for him to stare out the window or politely excuse himself. Oh no, it discriminates against his sensitive soul. In agreeing with the National Secular Society the judge has taken the view that religion has no public place in British life.  

Readers please note that this sets a legal precedent which can now be used to ban prayer anywhere – schools, hospitals, opening ceremonies, carol singing and Parliament as well as all Councils. I am personally outraged because I led prayers at Walsall Council when I was Mayor's Chaplain to Cllr Gary Clarke in 2010-11, as has been done for hundreds of years. But I also have three very good reasons for saying that this is wrong, wrong, wrong!

1. It is totally unBritish. Live and let live is the national motto, never mind Dieu et mon droit (which as well as being French has God in it, so there's another one that will have to go). There are nasty, intolerant people at work in this case and they are the secularists. To these bigots tolerance has come to mean the suppression of every distinctive opinion in case someone gets offended – but that's actually intolerance! In my book tolerance means respect for those with whom we disagree.

2. It cuts us off from our roots. We are not a secular society. The roots of our way of life all come from our Christian heritage. You don't have to look very far into the history of education, health care and social welfare in this country to find that it's the Church that started it all as an expression of Gospel values. We in Walsall should know that, because of the brilliant example of Sister Dora. She brought health care to the masses in our town because of her passionate Christian faith. Secularism seeks to destroy this heritage.

3. It is out of keeping with the times. Our society is in freefall because its foundation of shared Christian values has been eroded. When we look at marriage, the banks, the greed of rip-off Britain, teen pregnancy, rising rates of self-harm, stress-related disease, drug and alcohol abuse and anti-social behaviour it is clear that we are in deep trouble! We desperately need to hang on to our values! Let's not chuck them away to please these intellectual fascists.

Secularism banishes all ideas of absolute right or wrong. There can be no ultimate meaning or purpose to our lives and no accountability to or succour from a higher being. These chilling beliefs corrode the soul and undermine society. They have come in because we have let them. We have done nothing to stand up and be counted. Let's do it now before it is too late. We are already careering down the slippery slope.

I think I'll sit down now and have a nice calming cup of tea…

This article should appear in next week's advertiser. Let me know what you think of it.

Happiness…

What were your highlights of 2011? For me, it was the fabulous children's events up at St Matthew's. We had an amazing holiday club with 75 kids noisily enjoying themselves… fabulous fun at Messy Church… joyful celebrations at Blue Coat Sunday… deeply touching nativity plays… our kids are funny, inspiring and full of life.

Yet as adults there is something poignant in the happiness of children. As we get older we discover how much pain relationships can bring. People let us down… people we care about suffer… people die and leave us grieving… We fear for our children because one day they too will be cast out of the garden of innocence. We wish we could protect them from the bittersweet fruit of this knowledge.

Jesus said some odd things about happiness. You can find them in the Sermon on the Mount. They're often written as "Blessed are the poor in spirit" etc, but in the original language He just meant "happy". So – "Happy are those who mourn"? "Happy are those who hunger and thirst for justice"? "Happy are you when people give you a hard time?" So you're happy when you're not happy? What is He saying?

It doesn't make sense without God. Those who mourn can be happy because God can bring comfort: He brought life out of death in the resurrection of Jesus. He can fill us when we are empty and accept us when others reject. This is happiness stronger than sorrow, stronger than death. When everything else goes, God's love is still there for us.

It's all about relationships. In Jesus, God heals our relationship with Him, so that the love can flow once more. Perhaps "Blessed" is better after all: we can be happy, not because we find happiness in this or that, but because God blesses us.

Happiness… We're all searching for it. Sometimes it seems ever further away in today's society. Material things, success, celebrity culture – they are not enough to satisfy our souls. May you find the happiness you are searching for in 2012. Keep looking and don't give up! It's out there. But I suspect you're more likely to find it when you look in the place God put it – in Jesus His Son.

Happy New Year from everyone at St Matthew's!

Message for 2012

 Dear member of St Matthew's

Jesus never told us to Go and make converts of every nation – good as it is to be a convert. He didn't say Go and make churchgoers, nor Go and make Christians – though it's good to be a Christian and a churchgoer too. No, Jesus said, Go and make disciples.

But what is a disciple? They weren't unique to Jesus. In the Bible, John the Baptist also had disciples, for example. So did other distinguished Jewish teachers, or rabbis. And so did the philosophers of the Greek-speaking civilisation of Jesus' day. These disciples all sought, not merely to hear what their teachers had to say, but to learn how they lived. Above all they wanted to be like their teachers because their teachers' wisdom should be earthed in the way they lived from day to day. For this reason disciples would follow their teachers everywhere – according to some sources, even to the loo and under the marriage bed! They did this so they could copy the ones they followed and grow to be more like them.

So a disciple is someone who tries to spend as much time as possible with their master, in order to learn from their master how to grow to be more like their master. What a great ambition for a Christian – to grow to be more like our Master, Jesus! Did you know that is God's plan for you? According to Romans 8:29, God has "predestined us to be conformed to the likeness of His Son."

That is why I want 2012 to be a Year of Discipleship for St Matthew's. We have quite a few new people in church. What are we doing to help them grow to be more like Jesus? Have we got more to offer them than forever recycling them back to Alpha? Are there people who've been around a bit longer and who perhaps have lowered their expectations and stopped growing? Unless the church is making disciples then it is not doing what Jesus told us to do.

 Here are a few things currently in the pipeline for our discipleship agenda:

·         we're running with the theme of discipleship in our January teaching programme.

·         there's a gifts course over two evenings on 25 Jan and 1 Feb. This will help you discover what gifts God has given you and what He is calling you to do in His service – a key part of being a disciple.

·         our Lent course, Moving On, runs on Wednesdays from 29 Feb to 4 April and is designed to help us with first steps in discipleship.

·         in October we have weekend away together booked. This will be a great time of fun and friendship and also help us with our spiritual growth as disciples.

·         Join a home group or cell group – this is where we can support and encourage each other in the nitty gritty of living out a Jesus lifestyle.

Discipleship isn't just about hard work and duty. Let's enjoy getting to know Jesus better, let's learn together through our mistakes and weaknesses, just as Peter and the other disciples did in the Bible. Let's be new, different  people at the end of 2012 compared to what we are now at its beginning. There's an adventure in store for us!

With my love and prayers for the coming year,

Colin

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?