Suzanna and Phil Laws’ Homegroup are organising a online ZOOM quiz night, only instead of restricting entries to regular members they are inviting us all to join in.
7.30pm for 8 is the time and the date is Saturday the 18th of July.
To get yourself on the list all you need do is to email suzannalaws@hotmail.com
Since MBC went into lockdown lots of things have gone online, and three of these are Family at Moortown (our child and family centred Sunday morning session) Oasis and Moortots.
As we now move into what would traditionally be MBC’s summer programme ie lots of all age services we asked Shelley Dring, our Children and Families Lead to talk us through the last sixteen weeks. Here’s what she said.
In order to help Shelley plan her summer 2020 programme she would like to ask you a specific question… what helps you pray? Do you have a special place, a song you sing, a dance, do you paint or write or do exercise at the same time? Do you read out a favourite prayer or say a prayer at bedtime? And have you discovered something new about your prayer life during lockdown?
If any of you have or could take or make a picture or video showing building on this Shelley would love to use it to help encourage others ahead of next Sunday’s church…(all ages included, do pass it onto people!)
The best way to get these to Shelley is either by WhatsApping her or by emailing them to shelley.dring.mbc@btconnect.com
With husband Michael standing by with full visor, gloves and sanitiser Karen Ross’ ladies craft group met up yesterday (Thursday) in her garden for the first time since March.
The sun shone and as you would expect the conversation flowed as the ladies all shared how they had coped!
Masks were a big topic; how long they would be worn they mused, and whilst most were very reluctant to go anywhere how and when will we ever be able to go “normal” shopping again?
Can’t see much craft being done but never mind, let’s hope that this was just the first of many such socially distanced sessions.
Building a little on from my last blog, this reflection also links into the fact that Daisy has stabilisers on her bike. Whilst this can be very helpful, I have noticed on more than one occasion that due to an uneven surface on the pavement Daisy can find herself in a position where the stabilisers are touching the ground but the back wheel isn’t. Daisy may very well be pedalling furiously, putting in lots of effort but the fact is, she is going nowhere! And this often leads to frustration, unless she ‘allows’ me to give her a little nudge, so she can gain traction and get going again.
As I pondered this scenario it again struck me that this is something I can so often find myself doing. I can put effort into spinning wheels – but not actually get anywhere. Lots of bluster, trying, planning, plotting… all in my own strength and even feeling a little indignant at the idea that I would need God to help!
When I first started my business 2.5 years ago, I can remember being in a moment of panic that the cash flow wasn’t what I needed. I was away at a Christian conference at the time, and spent the first 20 minutes of the evening celebration frantically scanning through my invoicing system on my phone to see where the money was, when it would come in and how I could figure it out. I was doing this as the other 2,500 were singing their hearts out in praise and worship. Thankfully I was there with good friends… the kind that call me out on stuff. As we left the tent a friend took me to one side and asked my ‘what I was playing at.’ I was a bit shocked, so he rephrased, adding more subtlety; “What kind of idiot stops worshipping in order to check their invoices. If your business need help that help is going to come from God…not you checking your phone.”
Pretty stark. Very honest… and absolutely true. And to add to it, he wouldn’t let me take my phone into any of the meetings after that in case I was tempted to do the same again.
In other words, he had observed my wheels spinning, no matter how much I huffed and puffed, and reminded me that I needed to ask God for a nudge, rather than sweat it out!
I have noticed in the world of COVID that in many of the organisations I work with their focus has been to keep the wheels turning. Often this means maintaining as many of the ‘old world ways’ as possible by simply recreating them in a new format.
I know I tried to do the same at first… keep everything the same, maintain all the habits… only now on a screen. But then, over the weeks I became more aware of the opportunities I have; the opportunity to stop just spinning and spinning my wheels with frantic energy and effort and instead say to God, ‘can I have a nudge?’ In essence, can He please set me off in the right direction, a new direction, to get me moving, not just spinning!
I think that even in our church life many Christians have asked (during COVID) ‘how can we do the same in a virtual way?’ – whereas perhaps the question needs to be, ‘what does God want to do now?’ The first question will keep us busy and our wheels turning, but maybe the second question is where we get the ‘God nudge’ to move us on. The challenge (and thing that needs prayer) is the discernment in our lives… what is spinning wheels and what is moving us on in God and advancing the Kingdom.
I love that Paul wrote, ‘Fight the good fight.’ He didn’t say ‘Dodge the fight’ because he knows we are in a battle. He simply told us to fight the good fight. Put the effort in to the right places. Don’t waste energy and effort on the things that don’t deepen our faith or grow the kingdom of God.
So, here’s the question to ponder this week: where are our wheels simply spinning, and where do we need a nudge from our heavenly Dad so we can get on the go again!
1 Timothy 6:12
12 Fight the good fight of the faith. Take hold of the eternal life to which you were called when you made your good confession in the presence of many witnesses.
It’s Friday the 10th of July 2020 which means that if you include those that we broadcast on Maundy Thursday and Good Friday this coming Sunday’s Church at Home will be MBC’s nineteenth online Service.
However, as many of you know it’s not just the way we do our Sunday worship that’s changed. Moortots and Oasis have taken to Facebook Live with Shelley Dring presenting twice weekly sessions of song, dance, storytelling and craft. On Sundays Shelley also hosts Family at Moortown, a programme that imaginatively mirrors the themes of Church at Home only this time via its own dedicated YouTube channel.
Those currently leading our Youth work are, as you might expect also making the most of digital technology be getting together through a mix of regular Zoom meetings, WhatsApp catch ups and the like.
Although it’s now more than three months since Carole Smith, her Lunch Club team and their guests were in the same room the caring continues. Hundreds of phone calls have been made, regular newsletters have gone out, most recently a number of sheltered visits have been carefully managed and last week there was even time for some extra special takeaway treats.
Likewise with our expanded in-house Pastoral Team. Available 24/7 to respond to need and to provide support co-coordinator Jane Coates and the group of trained volunteers who work alongside continue to do their very best to ensure that no one feels alone. The MBC website, normally updated two or three times a week is now not only providing a whole raft of Covid related information but as a means of communication has come to resemble a rolling news service as virtual contact has replaced the real thing. Home Groups were one of the first to embrace Zoom, as was Life Worth Living and of course in early June we even had a virtual church meeting.
What follows are four short messages from Carole, Abi, Shelley and Graham in which each of them share some thoughts from lockdown.
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On Wednesday 11th March 2020 there was the usual hustle and bustle at Lunch Club as we played some energetic games of adapted table tennis together. There was laughter and competitive spirit with Raymond Newton achieving a rally of over 100 hits seated at a table with his opponent Mike Gray! We enjoyed a delicious lunch together and a quiet game of Bingo afterwards. Little did we know then that it would be our last meeting altogether for some time…
Both our Lunch Club members and the team who support them have responded to the challenges of Covid-19 with gusto. Many of our seniors have drawn on the resilience and wisdom which they have learned through other difficult life experiences. They have done their best to stay connected and keep well and have also reached out to others. Several members asked to be put in touch with those in the group whom they knew were particularly isolated, some have welcomed family for a wave outside their window and others have started a regular local walk or been busy in their gardens.
The Lunch Club Team have made over 450 telephone calls to our 28 members in the last 12 weeks to offer a chance to chat and to provide practical help or signposting to it. We have delivered jigsaws and books, organised food shopping and supported people when they have been feeling low. There have been 5 mail-outs sent to the group as another way of staying in touch and to provide information, articles and activities of interest. Last week our first doorstep visits and cake drop-offs were a welcome surprise for our members!
We now know our seniors a lot better, and we hope that we have enabled the spirit of fun and friendship which is so present each Wednesday at Lunch Club to prevail at a distance… and we thank God for the opportunity to continue to do that and to be part of this community.
Carole Smith – Seniors’ Worker and on behalf of the Lunch Club Team
MBC Youth have been meeting regularly throughout lockdown. All of our contact has been virtually, on Zoom, which has made it possible for us to stay in touch even though apart.
The youth team have been running weekly Sunday evening Zoom calls where we have been exploring the same themes and bible passages as Church at Home. This has helped us all to feel connected and part of the whole church.
God has been speaking to us about how Christ is the head of the church, which is the people – not the building! We are all still able to be part of Christ’s church, even when we are physically apart.
We have also been running mid-week groups:
We have been really encouraged by the engagement from some of our young people and have been able to continue to build and strengthen relationships during this time. As we come towards the end of a what has been a long and difficult term for many of our youth, there is certainly a sense of “Zoom fatigue” and a desire to meet together again in-person.
As we head towards the summer holidays we are discussing as a team what we might be able to offer our young people during the break.
Thank you for your continued support and prayers for our amazing young people and their leaders.
Abi Tilley – on behalf of the Youth Team
I write this on a rainy Wednesday after visiting Sainsburys with its screens, face masks and one-way system. It’s a very different picture to the one back on Wednesday 25th March when I filled my car with a load of paint and ribbons, my diary and laptop, postponed Rewind and went home to start the journey I’ve been on for 15 weeks.
Connection seemed to be key. My main thoughts and prayers were around ‘how do we keep being church for all ages in a new era?’ In the news there were pictures of empty churches. But the church hadn’t gone, it had left the building.
Suddenly I was making more phone calls, setting up what’s app groups, texting, emailing, zooming and creating new social media platforms. These included two live under 5’s sessions on Facebook using the Moortots Facebook page. We ‘meet’ every Tuesday and Thursday at 11am online. I am ably supported by my two children and we have an average of 20 live views joining in with songs, crafts, stories and dance. By the end of the day we have over 100 watchers.
Topics have included everything from the Lost Sheep, Thankfulness, Space and the Eurovision Song Contest and we hope it’s an ‘anchor point’, encouragement and safe space to join in God’s story each week. Those who do join us are a mixture of ages and include those who come to MBC regularly, those who attend the toddler groups and new some people who have joined us during lockdown. It’s a great opportunity to reach out. If you haven’t already then do tune in; the songs might bring back some memories! Sessions are available on our new YouTube channel, Family at Moortown.
Sunday school group sessions are also made each week for the YouTube channel. I’m always on the lookout for how God wants to speak to us and how we can empower each other. In these sessions and through Church at Home we’ve seen people move, paint, play, find new paths, exercise, share their treasures, re-enact bible stories and pray creatively each week. Families and those in the children’s teams often post what they have thought/made on a Sunday and it’s great to share it.
I’m supported in all this by our children’s teams, each with a heart for sharing Jesus in an accessible way. They have been praying, messaging, some have kept in touch with families, encouraged each other and joined activities. These have included reading their favourite bible stories (available on the Family at Moortown channel), virtual afternoon teas and a virtual Easter egg hunt.
And the journey continues… As Coldplay sang, “I’d rather be a comma than a full stop”.
So, we look to how we can be a comma in the new season. We all have a part to play in God’s family.
Do get in touch with me if you want to get involved or if you could do with a bit of support yourself.
Shelley Dring, Children and Families Lead
So many aspects of our lives have changed significantly over the last few months and MBC is no exception. Covid-19 has re-shaped the way we do church, our regular programme of activities and being able to see the people we are used to meeting up with.
Technology has given us new opportunities – we have Church at Home; live on Facebook and with recorded content on YouTube. At 10.45am each Sunday we have upwards of 100 separate devices watching tuned in both locally and from across the world (in effect that could be as many as three to four hundred people) and as many as three times that number watching regularly on catch up.
During our time together members share videos, messages, sometimes a dramatic unpacking of the service theme with a short talk and prayer. Highlights have been the shared music items all so well run by the tech team: Murray, Sam, Mike, Abi with Tracy and others on hand. We have always aimed to produce accessible content produced by MBC people. In recent weeks the family at Moortown playlist has complemented the same theme for children and families.
Throughout Covid-19 lockdown 12 volunteers from MBC have joined a local volunteer hub run jointly by Leeds City Council and Voluntary Action Leeds. Every week they are providing food shopping and pick-ups of medication. We have highlighted the work of the Christian charity Home for Good encouraging Foster carers in Leeds and offer ongoing prayer and support of NHS and other carer/ key workers.
We have offered prayers and public statement that silence is no longer enough in the face of ongoing racism in society as highlighted by Black Lives Matter.
Alongside the friendships we share in church we have a pastoral care team of 18 volunteers which is set up to offer visits and maintain contact with people. Throughout the lockdown this has been through phone calls but, as the lockdown eases, the team is able to offer ‘safe distance’ visits. The team is coordinated by Jane Coates, with Pastoral Deacon Julia Hyliger and Robert Owen on the core team.
Many of our home groups have continued, so have met by virtual means such as Zoom, Skype or WhatsApp. Others have simply kept in touch by regular phone calls.
Looking forward, we wish to take the best experiences from lockdown as we try to plan for what we may be permitted to do in terms of regular activities or services. We need to ensure that anything we do in the MBC building can be provided and accessed within Covid-19 safe protocols. It is likely the way we do church in future months will be a combination of on-line and smaller in-person meetings or services …watch this space!
Graham Brownlee, co-minister
ALSO AVAILABLE IN PRINT. This article together with Roundabout MBC, a collection of recent stories from our website has been printed out and distributed to a number of people we know who don’t have easy access to the internet.
If you can think of anyone who would appreciate receiving a large print paper copy of any future issues please email their name and address to mbcnewspics@gmail.com
It’s hard to believe but this morning was the 19th Service we have broadcast via Facebook and YouTube since the beginning of lockdown.
Watch again as David and Sue Gladman welcome us to CHURCH AT HOME… HERE
For FAMILY AT MOORTOWN click HERE.
And for our all pre-recorded YouTube material, that’s our notices, music, prayers, bible reading and messages simply click HERE
The statue of the slave trader and philanthropist Edward Colston statue has been torn from its plinth and dumped in Bristol’s harbour. He joins a list of toppled US statues including Christopher Columbus and Robert E Lee – and they may soon be joined by Oriel College Oxford’s controversial monument to the Victorian colonialist Cecil Rhodes.
A new wave of anger about who we choose to memorialise has been fuelled by the killing of George Floyd, and this programme asks – if we are to better reflect our country – how should our public spaces change?
Samira Ahmed is joined to discuss solutions and the future by the the artist Hew Locke, who was born in Edinburgh and raised in Guyana before returning to the UK. He has made works directly featuring controversial statues. We hear from historian and former director of the British Museum Neil MacGregor, and philosopher Susan Neiman, author of “Learning From The Germans” a book about memorials and remembering difficult history, especially around race. And Danna Walker, an architect, and founder of the social enterprise “Built by Us” which aims to diversify construction and architecture to create a more inclusive built environment.
A statue represents what our values, our gratitude, our emulation. To make and care for a statue spells out who we think we are and want to be. A statue can shape our aspiration, actions and relationships.
A statue involves us in itself, if we let it. Most statues are ignored by most people most of the time. Let them moulder. When they are noticed, they raise awkward questions which are not to be ducked, questions not so much about the statue but about ‘us’.
All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God…
Is a statue a standing denial of this truth?
Is it a truth?
I cannot put up or defend a statue thinking that I celebrate a person who is an exception to this truth.
A statue should not publicise a claim to glory that attains and shares the glory of God.
‘All have sinned…’ means I have sinned, we have sinned, not just, you and they have sinned.
Do not accuse, while exempting myself. Do not point the finger at the statue and away from ourselves. Do not protest our relative innocence by covering statues with reminders of their crimes as though we are impeccable judges.
Truth and fair judgment means being open to the whole history of the people we choose to celebrate and be represented by. We live in cocoons of histories which comfort us by affirming our rightness and glorious achievements.
If you Lord should mark iniquity, then Lord, who should stand? (Psalm 130.3)
Take down the statues of all who are found to have sinned: will there be any statues left?
Let anyone who is without sin amongst you, cast the first stone (John 8.7)
What to do?
Add in clear print on every statue, put it in indelible stone: ‘All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God’.
Must we leave it there? Will not human beings waste away in depression and hopelessness, if this stands as the final verdict?
Add further: ‘But there is forgiveness with God, that God may be revered’ (Psalm 130.4).
And: ‘Father, forgive them, for they know not what they are doing’, (Luke23.34) – even though they should and could have known.
Pray with them for that forgiveness. And set about forgiving in practice. Come into the light of the shining of God who forgives sin, the same light that exposes sin, the light we tend to shun because our deeds fall short (John 3.19-21).
‘Our Father in heaven….Forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us’ (Matthew 6.12).
What will happen to statues and statue-making and statue-celebrating if we come into the light of God?
They will, in their feeble, pretentious, not knowing way, preach the gospel of the judgment and the redemption of God. They will remind us of our sins, particularly the sins we rely on and benefit from, and the sin that confuses us because it mixes itself with goodness of one kind or another. Now we will not be deceived by them, but will be open to hear the truth, in the light. So we will know, and knowing we will be called and guided to do more than denounce sin we see in others, we will renounce it in and for ourselves.
And we will work to live in truthfulness about ourselves – all have sinned, and at best, we are but earthen vessels (II Corinthians 4.7ff) – with hope in the grace of God in Jesus Christ, who bore the sins of all and who now lives in glory for all.
broadcast on BBC Radio 4, 8 July.
On Thursday July 2nd more than 50 supporters of Leeds Citizens, including members from here at MBC and from Stainbeck URC formed a socially distanced human chain around Sunny View Nursing Home in Beeston as a show of support for care workers to be paid the Real Living Wage after the Covid crisis has revealed the absolute, key importance of these dedicated people.
The Vicar of Beeston and Bishop of Kirkstall together with representatives of the Muslim, Jewish and other Christian communities – plus a number of secular organisations presented gifts to workers from the Home before praying a blessing on all its patients and staff.
The 50 plus attendees then encircled the large building out to the main road. The demonstration was planned to highlight the insecure terms of employment of many care workers on so called “zero hours contracts” which means that they have often have to risk their own and their family’s health by either going into work or not being paid. Sadly, this situation also applies to care workers who care for people in their own homes (this includes some MBC members) who are sometimes only paid for hours of ‘client contact’ and not the travelling time between patients.
Representatives of Leeds City Council were also present at the event and were urged to press for the Living Wage for all Leeds Care Workers.
Please pray that, as the current crisis reduces, we as a nation do not forget those who we have recently applauded on our doorsteps but have taken for granted for far too long.
Thank you, Roger Robson
