Month: March 2017

The publication of Silent Spring by Rachel Carson in 1962 first raised the alarm about the perils facing food and the countryside. This book high-lighted the effects of spraying the countryside with chemicals, and over 50 years later the problems that she raised have not gone away; indeed, they now form part of the latest approach to the so-called ‘industrial farming’ business.

Industrial farming has arisen from the large supermarkets’ desire to sell meat (beef, pork, chicken, etc.) at the lowest prices to the consumer. These supermarket chains are very large with a great deal of economic clout; they have the power to drive the agenda around food production and the supply of ‘cheap meat’. However, as with everything in this world, there is a price to be paid for this. The dictates of the low shelf price feed right back along the supply chain to the farmers producing the food, and this relentless pressure to cut costs has led to the development of ‘industrial farming’.

In terms of agriculture, the current trend is to create very large fields. Turning small fields into large ones involves the removal of miles of hedgerows and this has a very damaging effect:   

• It destroys the habitats of millions of insects (including bees), birds and small animals, many of which help the growing process. Bees are essential for pollination.
• The hedgerows act as windbreaks, and their removal aids soil erosion.
• The farmer uses heavier machinery which compacts the soil, further promoting erosion.
• The farmer needs to use more fertilizers, weed-killers, etc.

In terms of rearing livestock for food, in those parts of the world given over to industrial farming, the fields contain no animals (cows, pigs, sheep, poultry). Animals are kept under battery farming conditions, penned inside large barns, where they are fed by machines dispensing grain and corn laced with antibiotics. This way a calf can be fattened up ready for slaughter in half the time taken by natural grazing. Huge volumes of manure are generated that have to be stored in ponds, and any leakage can contaminate local drinking water supplies. It has been estimated that sufficient food to feed around two billion people is now fed to farm animals under these conditions. This is done to provide supplies of low-price steaks and burgers for the affluent half of the world, and not to feed the poor.

What can we do? Consumers have certain power, and the simple advice is

• Buy foods from the land – reared on farms, not factories;
• Use leftovers where possible to reduce food waste,
• Choose a balanced diet, without eating too much meat, and especially red meat.
• Avoid labels that say things like ‘farm fresh’, ‘country fresh’, ‘natural’ or just ‘fresh’, they probably come from factory farms.
• In the EU, eggs have to be labelled to indicate their origin, so look out for free range and organic, the hens will have been given access to the outdoors under these terms. ‘Barn’ eggs come from hens kept in barns, and also avoid eggs labelled ‘eggs from caged hens’ or ‘enriched or colony cage’ eggs. These are rare examples of labels that tell you they are factory farmed.
• When it comes to fish, sustainably caught salmon and trout is much better than farmed fish, wild salmon contains up to 60% less fat than the farmed variety.

This is important for several reasons. Firstly, industrial farming reduces biodiversity, this is bad for the reasons given last month. Farm produce should go to feed hungry people, rather than providing luxuries for the affluent. Industrially-produced meat contains more fat and less protein than naturally-reared meat. Factory-farmed meat contains high levels of antibiotics, and factory farming accelerates soil erosion.

John Sturges         j.sturges@leedsbeckett.ac.uk

Julia Hyliger        Julia.hyliger@hotmail.co.uk

February 2017

You may well have noticed that over the last few weeks a number of new signs have gone up in the MBC car park. These, together with a request that when ever you park at church – or over at Leafield clinic you leave one of our ID cards in your window are part of a strategy to make our grounds safe for motorists and pedestrians alike.

If you haven’t already got an ID card there is a supply of these both in the foyer and on the shelf that runs along the back of the sanctuary. All we require is that you put your name on the card and pop it on your dashboard. This way in the event of a steward needing to contact you he or she can do so without having to find a live mic, make an announcement and/or tour the building shouting out a registration number.

There is of course unlimited, free parking on the Queenshills. In fact if you turn right as you walk out of our main entrance and then right again at the telephone box you are on Queenshill Avenue in less than a minute (and with no roundabout to cross).

Dateline Tuesday 5pm… As I write Cas Stoodley and her team of Rewind volunteers are exactly half way through their four sessions. Abridged from an original Scripture Union template Rewind to Easter is a tried and tested project that this year will once again present what we as Christians believe to be the true meaning of the Easter story to more than 300 Year Five school children.

With MBC’s Youth Worker Chris Hyliger playing Jesus (see main pic) Rewind to Easter is a mix of story telling, quizzes, video clips, drama and craft which just like its winter counterpart, Rewind to Christmas, provides us with a great opportunity to bring together children of all faiths and none to share one of the Christian church’s richest traditions.

Here’s a gallery of some of the pictures taken during our first two sessions. To view a larger version simply click on the image.

As has become customary in March in recent years with the weather improving and before the air fares become too pricy, Rod Russell has arranged for another group from Romania to visit us. We are pleased to welcome eight people from the churches we are involved with in Romania for a 12 day visit. Four are from Cserefalva where we have had longstanding links through Pastor Noemi Soos and her husband Csaba. The other four are from the village of Bikafalva where Zsuszi and Andor (who previously spent a year with us) now live and Zsuzsi is pastor.   All speak Hungarian as their first language and attend the Hungarian Reformed Church.

They arrived on Monday on a direct flight from Cluj to Doncaster courtesy of Wizz Air – a much more straightforward journey than previously. They were even in time to come to the church for the Monday morning coffee (and cake). After meeting their hosts they spent the afternoon at Roundhay Park and visiting the meerkats at Tropical World.

Tuesday saw a trip to the Dales via the Cow and Calf rocks, with a stroll by the River Wharfe at Burnsall. Some were a bit more adventurous than others – fortunately a change of clothes was not needed.

Although winter in Romania can be very cold, having on a picnic in Upper Wharefdale in March can also be a little on the chilly side.

On Wednesday a long day, for the obligatory trip to London to see the Queen or more likely the Changing of the Guard. For most it is their first visit outside of Romania or Hungary and so it is an opportunity both to meet people at Moortown and see how we do church and also to see something of the country.

The group will be joining us for the morning service on Sunday so do look out for them and say “hello” and try out your Hungarian! They return to Romania bright and early on Friday morning next week.

 

 

 

Mahatma Gandhi once said this: “Those who believe religion and politics aren’t connected don’t understand either.” Proving, if nothing other than that great minds do indeed think alike Albert Einstein put it this way: “Those who believe that politics and religion do not mix, understand neither”… connected/mix – surely a case of splitting hairs.

That was certainly the feeling at MBC last Sunday when former MP, Privy Councillor and passionate community activist John Battle (left) was our visiting preacher. Having represented Leeds West for twenty three years – a constituency that includes Kirkstall Abbey and HM Prison, Armley John drew on both his local knowledge and his infectious enthusiasm for the Gospel to underline how, if we are open to them, there are countless opportunities “out there in the real world” to serve both God and the community.

However, to a certain extent John’s timely message was just the meat in the middle of a community rich sandwich. By that I mean that earlier in the service it was one year old Emma Turnpenny’s chance to shine. Mum and Dad, Ruth and Ian, had brought little Emma, Joy to MBC to be dedicated. And although she herself was a little off colour this age old tradition – supplemented by the giving of gifts was a wonderful demonstration of how all-embracing the notion of  community really is as alongside relatives and friends the whole congregation promised to support and pray for Emma and her family in the years ahead.

Then, over coffee, it was The Beehive’s turn to continue the theme. Based in a tiny shop in Chapel Allerton but trumpeting the message of fairness and compassion this Fairtrade outlet can take huge credit for being one of the catalysts which some years ago now challenged our giant, high street supermarkets to move toward fairer trading. Although some would still argue that there’s much more to fair trade than buying bananas, sugar, even Easter eggs from certain “signed up” stores few would be foolish enough to dismiss the part that The Beehive and similar small projects have played in realigning the ethical mind-set of the average shopper.

To view a larger version of our gallery images simply click on the picture

 

This first paper is the outline of what The Listening Project is, it was presented to a church meeting in November 2016.

As part of our life together as Moortown Baptist Church it is helpful to reflect on how we make disciples and what shapes that process. This enables us to deepen our understanding and inform our discernment of what God is doing through us and amongst us. Last Tuesday evening at the church meeting we commissioned a listening project to reflect upon our life together as disciples.

What is the Listening Project?

A group of 7 listeners will spend time with groups and individuals in order to build up a detailed description of what our current discipleship life looks like and what is shaping that process. Listeners’ written reflections will contribute to a wider process of discernment that will be shared with the Leadership Team during March and April 2017. Recommendations from this discernment will be presented to the church meeting in May 2017.

Who are the Listeners?

The listeners are: Bob Corrie, Helen McEwan, Peter Chukwenweniwe, Karen Newell, Simon Marlow, Shona Shaw,

I’m not in a small group, can I take part?

Yes, we are hoping that listeners will be able to spend time with individuals but this maybe limited due to pressures on time. Please speak to Shona if you would like to participate.

How will confidentiality be maintained?

Written reflections will be kept anonymous. If there are aspects of the reflection that identity a person, verbal permission will be sought to use the material in the project. Written reflections will be shared with the listening group and Leadership Team.

How will I know what has been heard and understood by the listener?

After listening sessions with groups or individuals, listeners will write their reflections and share these with the group or individual participants. This provides an opportunity to confirm accuracy of details and request comments be summarised or paraphrased rather than quoted directly. A more general interim report of emerging themes from the reflections will be shared at the church meeting on 21st February 2017. Once again, any personal material in this report will be included with the participants’ permission.

How will the written reflections be interpreted by the Listeners and Leadership team?

The reflections will provide a detailed picture of our current life together as disciples and we anticipate shared themes and aspects of our discipleship emerging from this. We are particularly interested in the ways that forming disciples is shaped by routine, beliefs, life stages, values etc.

In being able to identify these formative influences we hope to understand more deeply the church’s shared experience and how we might encourage and sustain new growth.

Do I have to take part?

No, everyone is free to choose to participate or otherwise. However, the more people participating in the project, the more this aids our discernment. Contact Shona if you are unsure, by phone 07735458661, or email shona.shaw@gmail.com

We hope that everyone who participates in the project might find it helpful in their own lives but also enable them to feel part of a larger, emerging picture of church life.

Shona Shaw – November 2016

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Here now is the team’s interim report…

At the November church meeting, members commissioned the Discipleship Listening Project: a 6 month process to reflect upon our disciple-making at Moortown Baptist Church. The process has involved a team of 8 ‘listeners’ who during December-February have visited small groups, triplets and individuals to observe our practice of discipleship. Some listeners have visited their own small groups others have gone along to groups as new comers.

Written accounts of the listeners’ visits are being written and are now forming the basis of our reflection on what we currently do at MBC in small groups to encourage discipleship. This gives us an idea of the beliefs and values that are embedded in our doing. Whilst it has been important to hear what people think discipleship is all about, it is particularly important to attend to our actions and behaviours. It is in our ‘doing’ that we can see which values and beliefs about making disciples are important to us and which have been the most fruitful in our church community.

The primary purpose of this report is to thank you, the church members, for engaging with this process, for welcoming listeners into places of confidence and for trusting us to get this far! The visits were not meant to judge behaviour, it has not been about an ‘us and them’ factor, or naming and shaming but looking at ‘our’ life together. We recognise that there will be inevitably those who feel that their voices have not been heard. The approach we have taken could not cover every area of church life, but seeks to provide a ‘snapshot’ of our life together following Christ Jesus.

The second purpose of this interim report is to raise 3 initial observations from our listening that we wanted to share with you. If you remember, the project divides into 2 phases: phase one-collecting information, phase two: reflecting and interpreting the information. At this point we are just at the beginning of phase two, reflecting and interpreting as individual listeners and as a team together. We have met once to reflect on a written account together and will do this more so that our reflections can build up a shared picture. The question we are asking ourselves is:

At MBC, what are the beliefs and values that inform our practice of making disciples?

As we are at the start of phase two, the observations I share with you today are provisional. They are my attempt at drawing together themes that are visible to me in the material so far. Therefore their significance to the team’s reflections and subsequent recommendations is provisional at this point. It is provisional for two reasons. Firstly because we are still in the early stages of a shared conversation around interpreting practice. Secondly, because we recognise that small groups, whilst a primary place, they are not the only place we see disciple making in the breadth and variety of our church. It’s also worth highlighting that during the visits it has been evident that our small groups vary enormously. Given all this-the following observations are tentative! However, they are important to share with you, as we want to include everyone in the discernment process. Its important you get an opportunity to reflect on the questions that are being raised for me, if not others, at this point.

1. Discipleship vs disciple making

What is discipleship? Several people have raised this question during the process. It brings up positive and negative responses. For some it is a meaningless term: you don’t find it in the bible, for others the term intellectualises and puts the focus on approaches, models and theory about discipleship but detracts us from the actual doing and being. One listener summarised this as ‘discipleship means different things to different people.’ Indeed it meant different things to the Gospel writers but they all agree that to be a disciple is to follow Christ and seek his kingdom.

As a result the term I have used with the listening group has been disciple-making, rather than discipleship. Whilst we recognise that following Christ and becoming more like him is a work of the Holy Spirit, we also affirm that this is a process in which we take an active part.

If you didn’t believe this-we wouldn’t be here: we know it involves you and me together, working under the inspiration and guidance of the Holy Spirit! So it’s about following Christ, becoming like Christ, and walking alongside one another as we share this life and faith.

What are the practices that we recognise as disciple making? Its important to highlight the rich diversity of small group life in this church and the variety of places that making disciples takes place. Not just traditional, mid week home groups but at the Monday coffee mornings, The Barn sessions, in Toddler groups, informal triplets, the list goes on! Across all of these, however, listeners have identified 5 core practices: hospitality, prayer & worship, scripture reading, discussion/reflection on life. Not every group included all 5 practices each time they met nor placed the same emphasis on each. We need to be careful to avoid making a causal link between core practices and being disciples. However, its helpful to be aware of some shared practice as it indicates it carries particular values of making disciples for us. It also brings to our attention what we might expect to find and maybe don’t.

Questions this raises:

A key belief of being a disciple is having an outward focus and sharing the good news? Do you agree?

Does this happen in small group life at MBC and if not should it/could it?

2. Faithful belonging

The strongest practice observed time and again was the faithfulness of members to their groups and to one another. Whilst the church has encouraged the practice of homegroups, small groups, mid week meetings, it has never seen the entirety of its membership participating in groups. For those that have chosen to join a group and found some sense of belonging, home groups have enabled a place of permanence and acceptance through the years. For some groups it was a commitment to a particular focus of the meeting i.e. intercessional prayer, theological enquiry, or reflection on shared life stage that helped them feel connected to others. The longevity of some groups is impressive and reveals deep friendships spanning decades. Faithful friendship and group belonging are fruits of disciple making which are to be celebrated and treasured. Even with established friendships, however there is a challenge to stay committed to being vulnerable with one another ad sharing openly about life. Being able to share unfinished stories of life and faith is risky. Getting the balance between confidential boundaries and an openness to others allows trust and belonging to grow.

Questions this raises:

Do disciples need to have things in common e.g. life stage, gender, intellect in order to learn and grow at a significant/deep level?

Does this have an homogenising effect and is this a good thing, when we value diversity as disciples of Christ?

3. Practical Love & Service

Faithful friendship is demonstrated in practical love and service. This was observed in the practical care and support given to each other but also expressed in members’ service in the wider church. Some groups contain members who serve or have served in particular ministries of the church such as: teaching & theology, children’s or youth ministry, and oversea’s mission. This shared experience of church life seems to strengthen ties within a small group and provide a focus for reflecting on faith together. Whilst participation in small groups encourages some members to serve in the church this is not automatically the case. There are plenty of church members active in church service who do not attend home groups. This maybe due to lack of time or no wish to join a group. Managing time and other commitments to church is certainly an underlying factor in member’s regularity and participation in small groups. This is of particular concern for those groups with members of working, and or young family life stage. Members contend with a secular working culture that has longer hours, lengthier commutes and will sometimes involve working absence from home. It is not unusual for both parents to work, differing shift patterns to share child care and for grandparents to be actively involved in the care of their grandchildren. These all impact upon the values and beliefs we carry about where and how we make disciples. Love and Service are fruits to be recognised and encouraged, however, the contexts in which we serve and grow are not the same as they were 20 years ago.

Questions to ponder:

If we learn best through doing then where should our focus be in helping make disciples-in church activities, or in people’s lives beyond church?

Is this our current focus in small groups?

Some verses on making disciples that have shaped my thinking over the last few months are from

Matthew 28.16-20:

“Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

Which other bible passages does your mind go to when you think about being a follower of Christ? 

Next Steps for the Project:

During March-April, Listeners will meet as team and with the Leadership Team to share reflections and begin to identify recurrent themes in our reflections. During May the Listening Team and Leadership will discern together recommendations and present these to the Church Meeting.

Shona Shaw, 24th February 2017

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A walk around suburbia soon provides evidence of this problem. Common items of detritus lying around include discarded plastic bags, plastic water and soft drinks bottles and beverage tins, but we shall just consider waste plastics here. The older generation will remember that in former times the rubbish was largely paper and glass bottles. Paper would biodegrade and school children would return bottles to the shop to reclaim the deposit. Formerly too, people all had shopping bags and baskets which day after day they took with them to the shops.

Plastics are made by a high-energy process called polymerization. As a result they are chemically very stable and do not biodegrade. That they are then used for such ephemeral, short-life items as supermarket shopping bags represents a major misuse of valuable material, particularly as they are made from non-renewable oil.

Until recently given away free of charge they are not valued, and little thought is given to their disposal. Similarly, plastic water bottles are no-deposit (unlike the old glass bottles), and they are similarly disposed of in a careless way by consumers.

Why should we be concerned by this? Beside their durability, plastics are low-density materials, which mean that they blow around in the breeze and they float in water. Carelessly disposed of, they can find their way into streams and water-courses and end up in the sea. Picnickers on the beach can leave such waste behind them, and the next tide will carry it out to sea. We understand the working of the various ocean currents, and we know that regardless of the point of entry, floating waste can reach almost everywhere on our planet. Floating plastic accumulates in large gyres; there is one in the Pacific Ocean thought to contain up to 50 million tonnes of plastic waste.

Sea birds spot small pieces of floating plastic, mistake them for morsels of food and swallow them. Worse still, they feed them to their chicks who then become full and die of starvation. In 2010, a story broke telling of how thousands of Albatross chick carcases were found on Midway Island in the Pacific. Each of their decomposing bodies was filled with small pieces of plastic. More recently, environmental scientists carried out a post mortem on a dead whale and found that its digestive tract was blocked by plastic waste. So plastic is a toxic material that brings death to creatures large and small. The good news is that the recent imposition of a small charge for plastic bags has reduced the amount of waste found on beaches by a very large amount.

So, what can you do?

1.  Buy yourself a shopping bag or bags and take them with you. It is easy to keep a folded bag in your pocket for odd unexpected purchases.
2. For drinking water, buy a re-fillable water bottle from the outdoor shop and use it.
3. If you must buy bottled water, the bottle must be responsibly disposed of when empty by placing it in the recycling material bin.

This is important for two reasons. Firstly, we share our world with several million other species of life, and we each depend on many of these for our survival. Anything that reduces biodiversity reduces our ability to survive in the future. Secondly, it is now possible to recycle most plastic materials and to turn them into useful building products with long service lives. So recycling your plastic waste provides feedstock for the manufacture of many useful things, avoiding the need to extract more virgin material.

Hopefully, we shall return to the questions of biodiversity and recycling in future pieces.

If you have any thoughts or reflections, please contact us.

John Sturges           :   j.sturges@leedsbeckett.ac.uk;

Julia Hyliger                Julia.hyliger@hotmail.co.uk;

 

February 2017