The third Sunday in Advent was our annual Gift Service. Once again this year’s donations are being passed on to Leeds Home Start, the local branch of a national charity whose staff and volunteers help families with young children deal with the many challenges they face.

However, for our 5 to 11 year olds in Pulse their part in the build up to Christmas was very much a hands on experience as Ann Kapolio led the group through the Bethlehem story.

With a real Angel holding a “real baby Jesus,” two hastily recruited shepherds and a more scriptural angel who came fully equipped with a heavy duty battery powered torch all that was left was for the children to employ their finest method acting skills and the scene was set. 

Next Sunday, at 10.30am is of course our Crib Service and the invitation is there to come dressed as a nativity character. However, don’t worry if you’re clean out of gold, frankincense and myrrh or you haven’t a suitably shepherdy dressing gown because we’re planning on raiding the Rewind costume cupboards and providing a full rack of carefully selected outfits. 

Saying goodbye to someone you’ve known and loved for a long time is always hard. However, when one becomes two something difficult turns into something virtually impossible. And that was the feeling on December 9th when Moortot’s lead Diane Towns and her long time “right hand man” Pauline Bridle officially stepped down after fronting and coordinating this wonderful project for 11 and 8 years respectively.

That said the morning service wasn’t quite their final appearance as immediately after both then sped off to prepare for the traditional Moortot’s Alternative Nativity and a whole string of boisterous Christmas parties. Here’s a picture of the production’s finale together with a link to a rather iffy video.Besides saying goodbye, the service also gave us the opportunity of saying hello to three month old Diana Baniamer. Diana’s mum and dad, Abbas and Atieh, had brought her to church in order to introduce her into the fellowship through a service of blessing and dedication.

Then as part of our prayer time friends joined Graham in praying for Terefe and Denenesh as they celebrated their Silver Wedding Anniversary. 

Finally, it was also great to welcome a visiting speaker. Emma Worrall who is a staff member at mission project Open Doors shared some amazing stories of the resilience and the sheer courage of Christians living in some of the world’s most dangerous areas and how they hold their faith in the face of state persecution. 

You can download an application form here: https://www.moortownbaptistchurch.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/Application-form.doc

Many thanks to all who supported the Fairtrade Stall on Sunday 25th of November – this raised £303 for Traidcraft.  This means that in total the 3 autumn stalls raised over £900.

Traidcraft and Traidcraft Exchange are continuing their work into 2019 but in a new format [ more details later]. However, there is a special Christmas Appeal for Traidcraft Exchange.

Anyone wishing to contribute please see Roger Robson.

With Shelley Dring making a brilliant Rewind debut and old timer John Sherbourne coming out of retirement MBC this week hosted Rewind to Christmas. For the first time in many years the entire 2018 team was made up of volunteers; a total of thirty people who in four sessions over two days hosted 380 Year four pupils from nine local primary schools.

Once again drama, craft, story telling and quizzes were the order of the day as the team shared with our visitors what we as Christians believe the true meaning of Christmas to be.

However, if pushed to pick a highlight it would have to be the Oscar worthy performances given by our wonderful nine year old Marys and our Josephs.   

Many thanks to them, to all their friends, their teachers and helpers for coming and of course to our fabulous team. 

The pictures in our gallery were all taken on Tuesday afternoon when Allerton C of E Primary School were our guests.  To view a larger version of any of the pictures simply click on the image. 

This year, for the first time, we asked all the schools that attended Rewind to Christmas to take enough evaluation forms back to school to allow each of their children to have their say. The results were amazing.

Comments ranged from the best bit being “when all the teachers had to stand up and shout” (a reference to a three minute scene the children always love as it involves their teachers joining them in a knock – knock style drama) to learning that “Christmas isn’t just about getting, but giving.” 

There’s a gallery below of just some of the replies we received back from Allerton Church of England Primary School.

See the video we share in church here.

https://youtu.be/g9jBj_cm2ew

Not long ago my friend Haddon Willmer lent me a book, as he shares my interest and concern for our world’s environment. It was the autobiography of Sir John Houghton, former Chief Executive of the Meteorological Office, and a committed Christian. I have indeed enjoyed reading it; it is interesting, informative and also challenging. Sir John was very much involved in setting up the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), of which he served as Chairman while they produced their first three reports. He is a scientist, and his faith and commitment to truth shine throughout the book.

Inspired by John Houghton’s thoughts, in this piece I shall attempt to set out why I believe as Christians, we should take the stewardship of our world more seriously than we often do. The following points largely come from Sir John’s book.

• The world faces serious environmental problems, mostly on a global scale.
• Looking after the earth is a God-given responsibility. Not to look after the earth is a sin.
• Christians need to re-emphasise that the doctrines of creation, incarnation and resurrection belong together. The spiritual is not to be seen as separate from the material. A thoroughgoing theology of the environment needs to be developed.
• Our stewardship of the earth, as Christians, is to be pursued in dependence on and in partnership with God.
• The application of science and technology is an important component of stewardship. Humility is an essential ingredient in the pursuit and application of science and technology – and in the exercise of stewardship
• All of this provides an enormous opportunity for the church, which has too much ignored the earth and the environment and neglected the importance of creation and its place in the overall Christian message.

Some of you may have recently watched episodes of Blue Planet II, as I have. Two images stuck in my mind that illustrate the problems that we face through our neglect in caring for our world. Firstly, there was the carcass of a dead whale which had been struck by a large ship. It was being consumed by sharks. The second image was of the great floating masses of discarded plastic materials in the oceans, which are killing fish, birds and other marine life forms. This graphically shows us that nature can clear up and recycle its own mess, but not ours. Nature’s mess is protoplasm, ours is plastic.

Furthermore, nature’s clean-up systems are solar powered, ours are not; furthermore, our systems require us to burn even more energy which exacerbates the problem. This problem is becoming more dangerous by the day; besides the loss of fish and birds, the danger is that plastics will enter the food chain, and since we stand at the top of this food chain, they could end by poisoning us. Our neglect of the world and misuse of its resources is leading to the loss of many species of plants and animals and we depend on a biodiverse world.

I have not written any items for the website for about 12 months, as I have been engaged on a project to compare mankind’s current level of environmental impact with past episodes of volcanism which led to the five great mass extinctions that have occurred during the past 500 million years. I can say that the natural order that we are familiar with is now in peril.

What can we do?

• Take more interest in how our world works.
• Ask questions about issues such as how responsibly sourced are the foods that we consume.
• Continue to minimise our consumption of plastics, and be very vigilant about disposing of them responsibly.
• Remember that we all need to take responsibility for caring for our world.

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

Julia Hyliger              Julia.hyliger@hotmail.com;

Haddon Willmer       willmerhaddon@gmail.com