From the Rector - From See to Shining See

As advertised in my February article ‘Lovers for Lent’ the month of March takes us on into the heart of real passion: the Passion of Christ.  On the last Sunday of this month the Palm Sunday Eucharist is launched by words inviting us to ‘go with Christ in faith and love, so that, united with him in his sufferings, we may share his risen life’.  Cue donkey!

This turns out to be a journey of discovery.  A better grasp and deeper appreciation of Our Lord’s final struggles and agonies, however, is not meant to depress but to impress upon us the scope and significance of the mission to which His church is called.

The day after a new diocesan bishop was introduced to the See of Portsmouth the leader of our Rapid Parish Development (RPD) programme, Leigh Rampton, handed me a draft of an interim report of where he felt we had got to in our explorations to help identify what missionary ‘offer’ St. Faith’s can make to the community it serves.

Embedded in the provisional findings are two particularly encouraging ‘findings’.

We are recognised by the author as “A community of committed and motivated people who want to develop their church.” but that “We need to start living new ways of working”.  That last observation needs unpacking.  I think it could mean at least two things.  First, that the way we go about finding how we can engage with different parts of our community needs to be an inspiration to ‘us’ as well as to those we’re trying to reach.  Second I take it to mean that there are some emerging priorities that churches in very different places are beginning to hold in common.

Our bishop designate, Christopher Foster, is on record as citing four principal activities that might form the hallmark of ‘being church’.  He says first that Christians are called to be compassionate in their caring for other people.  They are called to share in what God is doing already in the world.  They are called also to encourage discipleship, to draw other people into the love of God.  And finally they are called to stand for truth, justice and peace.

So as I contemplate with our congregations the possible avenues for development down which our RPD exercise may be leading us and the possibility of a visit to our link parish within the See or diocese of Koforidua in Ghana I was intrigued to read in USPG’s (United Society for the Propagation of the Gospel – Anglicans in World Mission) ‘Transmission’ magazine that the bishop of that country’s Cape Coast diocese had recently declared that:

 “Our mission is the basis of our church in Ghana.  It is the mission of God and we are participating in it so that we live as light and salt.  Wherever the church is it must have an impact on society – socially, physically, spiritually and morally – so that the church is a transforming agent of society and community.”

Bishop Daniel concludes by saying: “We have a lot to do!”  Well we at St. Faith’s can echo that!

Divided by oceans and continents it may be but the church of God is on the move.  It is being led by the Holy Spirit to commend the Kingdom of God through a desire by local Christians everywhere to bring the offer of love, joy and peace, to communities suffering a variety of hurts and dysfunctions.  These indeed are the emerging priorities of churches in very different settings.

Behold your king comes to you, meek and lowly, sitting on an ass.

It strikes me that if the means by which we strive to serve others are any less humble than the example set by Jesus himself then we are condemned to a gradual but sure decline into obscurity.  As Leigh Rampton himself may well say: There are two very different ways of sitting on your ass.  I think our two bishops have chosen the donkey.

May God bless you on your ride through the remainder of Lent and Passiontide.

Peter Jones

From the Editor

The new Bishop of Portsmouth will be the Rt Revd Christopher Foster.  He's the current Bishop of Hertford in the St Albans diocese.  He will become the ninth Bishop of Portsmouth later this year and succeeds the Rt Revd Dr Kenneth Stevenson, who was bishop for 14 years until he retired last autumn.  The Rt Revd Foster is a Wolves football supporter!

Last month, the Archbishop of York, Dr. John Sentamu, said that Christianity is being wiped out from public life in the name of equality.  He accused politicians and others of trying to sideline religion by promoting their false idea of ‘tolerance’ and cited Labour’s equality laws as an attack on the freedoms of churches.  Attempts to denigrate church schools and ban the mention of Christmas in favour of bland ‘Winterval’ celebrations were also part of a drive to censor Christianity, he said.  Dr. Sentamu said “For all our judicial tolerance, Britain has become in many ways a less tolerant society today.  One of the main areas in which we see this is in the Government’s treatment of religion, which they now prefer to call ‘faith communities’.  The Equality Bill which is going through the House of Lords had contained a clause which would have made it very difficult for a religious group to employ someone of the religion for a position within their organisation.  A church wishing to employ a youth worker would have been unable to advertise for Christians, and priests from other parts of the world would find it increasingly difficult to preach or work in churches here unless it could be demonstrated that there were no suitable local candidates.  This is symptomatic of a trend which has intensified in Britain over the past 50 years in the name of tolerance.  That is, an attempt to remove religion from public life.  And in the process, tolerance, which is supposed to be a tool to help us deal with difference and disagreement, has instead become a negative virtue, a means of diminishment and marginalisation.”  Dr. Sentamu said some people wanted to relegate the church to a place only in the private lives of its members and that public debate was discouraged on ‘key areas which are seen as difficult’, such as religion and immigration. 

It is time for Christians to wake up and be proud.

Thank you to Sandra Haggan for organising a very pleasant evening for 15 parishioners from St. Faith’s and 3 from St. Albans at the Brookfield Hotel for the postponed Epiphany dinner on 3 February after a Candlemass Eucharist in church. 

Colin Carter

Albert Schweitzer

I wonder how many of you recognize this name.  Virtually all of you!  I am impressed.  When I was a young man, Schweitzer was revered and his genius compared with the great mathematician Albert Einstein.  Schweitzer was a Doctor of Theology, Medicine, Music and Philosophy.  He was born on 14 January 1875 in Kayserberg, Upper Alsace, then Austria but now France.  He studied at the Universities of Strasbourg, Paris and Berlin.  In 1900 he was ordained a Curate in the Church of St Nicholas of Strasbourg and in 1901 became Principal of the Theological Seminary.  From 1905 to 1913 he returned to his studies at the University of Strasbourg.

As the years progressed, Schweitzer’s fame as an organist spread and he became an authority on organ construction.  I am sure Sylvia Willey is impressed!  As we shall see, he was also an author of great distinction.  In 1905 he wrote a definitive book in French about Johann Sebastian Bach, translated into German in 1908 and into English in 1911.  In this masterful work, Schweitzer emphasized the religious nature of Bach’s music and advocated performing it in a simple undistorted style.  Having read Peter Willey’s superb articles on composers in “Faith Matters”, I am sure this work would meet with his approval.  In 1906 Schweitzer wrote a book “The Quest of the Historical Jesus” in which he examined the eschatological aspects of His life.  Without asking Canon Peter, who knows what eschatology is about?  Most of you!  That’s the last question from me.  So as you all know, it is the doctrine of Death, Judgement, Heaven and Hell.

In 1913 Schweitzer started his missionary work which was to bring him worldwide fame and a Nobel Peace Prize in 1952.  He will always be associated with the place of his ministry – Lambarene in the then French Equatorial Africa, now Gabon.  He built a hospital there and in its first year some 2000 patients were treated by him!  When the First World War broke out, he remained in Africa but in 1917, as a German national, he was interned in France until the war ended.  He remained in Europe for a further six years giving organ recitals and writing two volumes of a study of civilization in which he developed a philosophy about the reverence of life.  In 1924, he returned to Lambarene and rebuilt his hospital.  For the rest of his long life he worked tirelessly for the sick and poor, including 300 lepers.  He financed his work by regularly returning to Europe to give organ recitals.  In 1930 he wrote a book called “The Mysticism of Paul the Apostle” and a year later an autobiography called “Out of My Life and Thought”.  His final book “The Kingdom of God and Primitive Christianity” was not published until two years after his death on 4 September 1965 at the age of 90.  The world lost a man of so many talents but Africa lost so much more.  They lost a true saint!  Canon Peter was inspired to join the priesthood by another saint who worked tirelessly in South Africa.  To learn more, you must get next month’s “Faith Matters”.

Roger Bryant

St. Hilda (6I4-680AD) and Easter

What, you may say, has St Hilda (or Hilde) to do with Easter, and who is St. Hilda anyway?  In fact she is a very important person in regard to Easter.  She was born in 614AD of royal blood but at a young age her father was murdered, her mother fled the country and she was brought up at the court of her great uncle; King Edwin of Northumber­land.  His queen, Ethelburga, looked after her and taught her the Christian faith.  She was christened at York when she was thirteen by Paulinus.  It was a dangerous and turbulent time and in about 647AD when Hilda was thirty three Edwin was killed in battle and Ethelburga decided to return to her childhood home in Kent.  Hilda also left with the intention of joining one of her sisters who was a nun at CelIe near Paris but she only got as far as East Anglia before Aidan, the Bishop of Lindisfarne called her back and asked her to take charge of a small religious community on the north bank of the river Wear.  He was so impressed by her management of this community he made her abbess of a monastery at Hartlepool after the previous abbess had left leaving it in a total mess.  She remained at Hartlepool until she left in about 657AD to found a double monastery at Whitby on the North Yorkshire coast.  It was mutually beneficial to have a double monastery in those dangerous times.  The nuns helped to pacify the monks and in turn the monks looked after the nuns.  They had separate quarters but worshipped together and each supported the other in their religious faith.  Meanwhile Edwin had been succeeded as King of Northumbria by St. Oswy (St. Oswald) and he had been baptised into the Celtic tradition of the Christian faith.

It is necessary to digress here because what had happened was that the Romans had brought Christianity to Britain only a hundred years or so after the Crucifixion.  St. Patrick (born c.373AD died 463AD) learned of it from the Romans but when they left he was enslaved by the Irish.  Eventually he escaped and later returned to Ireland to spread the Christian message.  Later the Britons were pushed to the fringes of our island by the Saxons, Angles and Jutes and in about 563AD missionaries left Ireland to evangelise Scotland, the north of England, Cornwall and Wales.  The great abbeys of lona and Lindisfarne were set up and Bishop Aidan was himself trained at lona.  So this was the Celtic church to which King Oswald belonged.  However, in 597AD the Pope sent Augustine to southern England and he, of course, founded the church at Canterbury.  King Oswald's queen was a Christian in the Roman tradition and herein was the difficulty: when Oswald was celebrating Easter his queen was still keeping her Lenten fast.  We can imagine the problems and arguments!  Eventually it was decided to ask Abbess Hilda to organise a Synod (a meeting of the Bishops and senior members of the Church) at Whitby to decide the matter.

In the Celtic church, unlike the Roman church, women were held in as high regard as the men and Hilda had built up a considerable reputation as an organiser, teacher and administrator.  She was consulted by people both far and wide, in this country and from abroad.  No less than five men who were trained at her monastery became Bishops so it was no surprise that she was asked and in 663AD the great Synod of Whitby was held.  Colman, Bishop of Lindisfarne and from the Celtic tradition argued that their tradition went back to St. Columba and to St. John the Evangelist but the Bishop of York, Wilfrid, favoured the Roman tradition.  (He it was, on return from a trip to Rome, came home through Selsey and found the Manhood peninsular to he heathen and so Christianised them.)  He pointed out that their (the Roman) tradition was followed throughout the Mediterranean and came from St. Peter himself.

King Oswald in summing up the Synod came down on the side of the Roman church despite Hilda's misgivings.  As he said "I will follow the way of St. Peter, holder of the keys of heaven, lest, when I come to the gates there be none to open them- he-being my adversary who is proved to have the keys."

As to the actual date of the moveable feast and celebration of Easter I recommend those of a clever mathematical disposition consult the Book of Common Prayer which shows how, up to 2200, it may be calculated!

St Hilda died on the 17^th November 680, aged sixty six after suffering what may have been malaria for several years.  When she died nuns at Hackness, thirteen miles away from Whitby, saw her soul being carried away to heaven.  They spent the night praying but it was only when monks arrived from Whitby with the news that she had died that they realised the vision had occurred at the moment of her departure from this life.

Her abbey was ransacked by the Vikings in the 9^th century and the present ruins at Whitby are of a later date.  They are approached from the town by climbing 199 steps

In the chapel of Mary Sumner House, the headquarters of the Mothers' Union in London and not far from the Houses of Parliament, St Hilda is commemorated in a roundel window.             

Sheilah Legg

Ecumenical Kirchentag – Munich 12-16 May 2010

A Tourist Prayer

Cambodia Update

Esther Thomas, whose parents, Rod and Glenda, are in Sendai, Japan, is in Cambodia with the Youth with a Mission (YWAM) and wrote the first of her reports in February’s “Faith Matters”.

I thought it would be appropriate to write another update as we are more than half way through our outreach.  Since we have passed the halfway mark, we realize that the next four weeks we have here are going to speed by!  We have revisited our goals that we set for ourselves in the beginning, and have decided to really push through these next few weeks, rather than slowing down.  Our aim is to “make disciples” as Jesus commissioned us to, and not simply “make believers”.

During the time we have been here we have seen 8 conversions.  We are careful to follow up the people who have decided to follow Christ and to disciple them so that they will establish a firm foundation in the word of God and then also be able to disciple and teach others.  There is one young man named Lam, who was one of my students and is seeking the Lord.  He recently told me that he believes that God created the world, and he has apparently been praying to Jesus.  Please pray that God gives him a revelation of exactly who he is, and that he gets saved!

There are 8 women that a few of us meet with in a small village 3 times a week to tell them the gospel and to pray for their sicknesses, etc.  We have seen many healings among the people in the village and I feel as if God is really doing a mighty work in their hearts.  Just last week, a tiny baby with TB was completely healed by Jesus after we prayed for him!  This was not only a witness to the Khmer people that our God is the one true God, it also really encouraged us in our faith.  Now the mother believes that Jesus healed her baby and that our God is more powerful than Buddha.  However, she has not yet made a final decision to follow Christ, so please pray for her.

In the time we have been here, we have noticed a major setback in witnessing.  There is a general mindset that if you are a Cambodian you are automatically Buddhist, and therefore if you convert you are no longer worthy to be called a Cambodian.  This is one thing that holds Cambodians back from accepting Christ as the only way to salvation - fear of man.  However difficult it may seem, we firmly believe that the Holy Spirit has the power to overcome difficulties such as this.  Please pray for the recent converts; that they will grow in faith and knowledge of Christ and his sacrifice for them.  Most of the converts have Buddhist or Hindu parents and so they are frightened of what might happen to them if they were to tell their parents about their conversion.  Please pray that they will be encouraged and become bold, but also wise in the way they go about doing this.

As for us, we have been praying and fasting for a revival to break out in this land.  God has really answered our prayers to do with our team, and I feel as if we are more united than ever.  A few of us girls have been visiting a brothel at night with about 8 prostitutes living there.  They are warm and friendly people, yet we can always sense an emptiness and depression whenever we visit.  We would love to see God save these desperate women, so that they can turn to him in all their brokenness and be made completely new.

Weekend discipleship opportunities.

We have been meeting with some of the students outside of our classrooms on Sundays and sometimes on Saturdays as well. Almost every Sunday we meet with students who have accepted Jesus Christ as their Saviour and Lord and disciple them on what it really means to follow Christ.  C, S, and D were some of the new believers who have been meeting with us every Sunday for about four or five weeks now.  Although there is a language barrier, Holy Spirit is working in these meetings through testimonies and also, at times, by providing an interpreter.

I am so thankful for what God has been doing in the lives of these wonderful people and for what He has been doing in my life.  God has given me a new testimony of how truly faithful He is!

Thank you so much for all your prayers and support! We wouldn’t be able to do it without you.

God bless!!

Esther

“And So …”

Sometimes, with an essay or a novel, it is not the opening paragraphs or the main body of the text which take hold of our imagination and stays with us, but the concluding lines.  So it is for me with the final lines of a novel by Scott Fitzgerald: “Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us.  It eluded us then, but that’s no matter – tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther … And one fine morning – So we beat on, boats against the current, bourne back ceaselessly into the past”.

This is not to say that we yearn for the past, but that for many of us, we did and perhaps still do, believe in that future which has eluded us and is already past.  For how many of us has that future, now our present, resolved itself to be that which we stretched out our arms for?  Dreams, yearning for the future for those uplands where we would dwell in confident achievement and content, remain with us even when we have accepted and settled for compromise, and if fortunate enough, the happiness that we have and enjoy.

“The Great Gatsby”, the novel which moved me to these words, is a chronicle of the Jazz Age of the 1920s – an age of heady, brittle enjoyment for some, but for others who saw the portents of disaster ahead, it was a time of anxiety and apprehension.  The end of the 1920s brought the ‘Great Depression’ which affected America, Europe and the rest of the world, culminating in 1939 with a war which soon engulfed Europe, USA and countries of the East.  In the 1920s however, it was only the few who gave warnings, generally unheeded, of what was to come.  The March of Folly gathered pace; politicians preached their platitudes and ignored reality.  Most of the public believed what it wanted to believe; that aggressors could be placated and peace purchased without penalty – like Gatsby they believed in a future that eluded them and was already past.

The March of Folly goes on; we need only to reflect on wars and conflict from, say 1900 to the present day to realise that we the public, our leaders and politicians have learnt little, if anything, from the past.  The past, written up by learned historians, but which, for the most part unless it confers some advantage, is ignored by Governments and politicians.  Individuals may sometimes learn from the past, but Governments never.

So, what do we do? – We ‘beat on’ in the hope that somewhere that yearned for future will become the present!

John Bradey