As most of you know, I'm off on sabbatical from 1 June. Among other things I will be writing up some thoughts on the Gospels at Queen's College Birmingham, going on a healing retreat in the Cotswolds, spending three weeks in Israel and taking time to seek fresh vision and direction from the Lord.

 I hope to update you on my progress via this blog. I can't promise to do it every day, but please log on and check up on me from time to time.

 I'm afraid I will not be available for church business at all until 1 September. All my e-mails and letters are being redirected. Please contact the office, the wardens or Liz as appropriate. Please be considerate with Liz, it's a lot of responsibility to handle on your own so do think twice before adding to her burdens. I don't want to came back and find her worn out, fed up or having a nervous breakdown!

 St Matthew's seems in a good place at the moment with lots of lovely things happening and an encouraging atmosphere. God is at work! I know I am leaving you all in good hands. God bless you and have a great summer! Don't forget to pray for me.

What a fabulous Easter! We had some great events like the concert, the Great Cross Bun Hunt, the Passover Meal... Come Easter Sunday morning, St Matthew's was rammed! And what an atmosphere! It was a really joyful encounter with the risen Lord. Thank you everyone who made it possible and everyone who took part. You are wonderful!

Easter 2012

Talk at St Matthew's 6.30pm on Easter

Last Sunday was Palm Sunday. We saw Jesus riding into Jerusalem and taking over. He's the King. Jerusalem is the city of King David and the crowds acclaim Jesus as David's heir. Then we saw Jesus striding into the Temple, chucking out all the stuff He didn't like, and taking over the teaching ministry. He is the High Priest of that Temple.

In the same way this Easter Sunday we see Jesus going to the tomb, the darkness of death – and taking over! He's not having it any more! He is saying to death, "Your reign is over! I may let you exist a bit longer, but you are not in charge any more. I'm the boss here now." King of Jerusalem – High Priest of the Temple – Lord even of death.

That Palm Sunday was a day of great rejoicing – because Jesus had come to Jerusalem to be their King. So here are four reasons to be joyful this Easter Sunday:

·         Death is not the end. We are no longer lost in an aimless wandering! Our life is no longer random! We are on a journey to the heart of God, that's our destiny, and because of Easter Sunday, nothing whatsoever, not even death, is going to stand in our way. So we can live lives of passion, commitment, purpose. Eternal life starts now and changes us now in the presence of the Risen One! So be joyful!

·         You can get through any darkness – consider Mary. The risen Jesus knows you personally and says your name as He said hers. I don't know what you are going through… I know all this talk about joy will seem really glib to some people here – "how dare you tell me that my sorrows are so easily left behind…" All I can say is – the Cross. Jesus gave it everything. This is not a cheap victory. But it is still a great victory. So be joyful!

·         You can face any challenge – consider the disciples. They were terrified. The same unholy alliance of Romans and religious leaders that murdered Jesus are after them now. They are cowering behind locked doors. But God gives them a job! Go and tell everyone the news that Jesus has just been killed for. They can meet this challenge because Jesus is with them. Life is an adventure with the risen Lord! So be joyful!

·         You will have peace. The first words of the risen Jesus in next bit of John – "peace be with you." All those things that destroy our peace – anxiety, fear, insecurity, worry – we can picture in the tomb of Jesus. After all, one day we'll be dead and we'll have done all that worrying for nothing. So leave it there in the tomb and concentrate on living! So be joyful!

4 Challenges:

1.       You need this resurrection power in your life now! Don't miss it! You have to respond personally to Jesus like Mary did.

2.       You can't get it without first coming to the Cross. It's all part of the deal. "If you will not bear the cross you can't wear a crown." Through repentance at the foot of the Cross we come to the place of resurrection.

3.       There will be challenges – but you can face them because He is beside you. There will be stuff you have to let go of, because they are not what He wants for you.

4.       You will have to share it. Jesus is not just risen in your heart, He has risen in the hearts of your brothers and sisters too – "Go tell my brothers!" said Jesus to Mary. And if he hasn't risen in their hearts yet, He wants to be!

And you can meet those challenges, you can do that sharing, you can come to the Cross – because Jesus is alive! Happy Easter!

Spirituality?

I wonder what comes into your mind when you hear the word "spirituality."

For some people it's got to be exotic, like Native American rituals or the Maharishi. Others turn to New Age mysticism - ley lines, crystals and all that. Still others find spirituality in communing with nature. And a great number experience it through the arts – beautiful images, ancient architecture, powerful music… What is this longing that seems to call out to us with so many varied voices, this beauty that flashes unexpectedly across our lives, this hunger that cannot be sated with food and shelter and material comforts?

In Christian thought it arises from our relationship with God. A very wise Christian sage said, "Thou hast created us for Thyself, and our hearts are restless until they find rest in Thee." Although our relationship with God has become marred, He still speaks to us in the beauty of His world and in the restless longings of our hearts.

It's odd then that many people don't really associate spirituality with Christianity. Before I became a Christian, church was the last place I expected to meet with God. I assumed it was all about sad people doing boring, wordy rituals. How amazed I was to discover the things the Bible actually teaches about spirituality. The Holy Spirit is portrayed in a multiplicity of ways: a river of living water, a rushing wind, a raging fire, an outpouring of love, the quiet breathing of God Himself… All we have to do to be refreshed by that river, to sail on that wind, to be warmed by that fire, is to make a connection with God in the way He has provided, through Jesus His Son.

Anyway, St Matthew's is privileged this year to be hosting Radiance, a festival of Christian spirituality. There's time to explore the extraordinary depth of Christian spiritual experience, workshops looking at a wide range of spiritual disciplines, and contemporary encounters with the living God through art, music, prayer soaking and poetry. It's all happening on Saturday 26 May 10am-4pm at St Matthew's Church, in St Matthew's Centre and all over Church Hill.

So you don't have to go to Katmandu or Uluru! You can discover the spiritual treasures of our shared Christian heritage right here in Walsall!

Radiance

Saturday 26 May 10am-4pm

St Matthew's, Church Hill WS1 3DG

admission £5

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…