At 11am on Sunday November 11th 2018 it will be exactly 100 years since the end of World War One.
To mark this particularly poignant anniversary, and in addition to our usual morning service MBC is holding a special Remembrance Day Songs of Praise.
Followed by afternoon tea this short service will begin at 4pm.
On Monday and Tuesday, November 26th and 27th over 400 Year 4 children from a dozen local Primary schools will pour through our doors to see and hear first hand what Christmas means to us.
This year even more than ever our team will be made up of a number people for whom Rewind will be a whole new experience. However, for each of the four sessions we need a minimum of 15 volunteers and as things stand we’re still a few short.
Please, if you spare a couple of hours on either the Monday or the Tuesday (or better still both) speak with Shelley Dring, John Sherbourne or Kate Slater.
Rewind, besides being one of MBC’s longest running and most valued outreach projects is great fun. You won’t be left to fend for yourself – there are enough old hands around to make sure of that and the feeling you get from spreading the true meaning of Christmas to so many lovely children is impossible to describe.
Feel free to come to all or just the bits that suit you best
Despite ongoing discussions about the need to keep up this twice yearly practice this coming Sunday, October 28th, is the time you need to alter your watches, clocks, timers etc. That’s because at 2am British Summer Time officially ends.
So Sunday morning everything back an hour please… don’t say you haven’t been warned.
There is a big red box in the meeting area labelled PAFRAS. A few people regularly give food and toiletries for the often destitute asylum seekers that eke out an existence in our city. Those gifts are much appreciated by the people who gather on a Wednesday in St Aidan’s church hall which is always overflowing as we drop off the donations. So what does Pafras do and what need is it meeting? More information below is taken from the PAFRAS website, where you can find much more detail.
But before you read that, the immediate needs are:
FOOD Chick peas (0.5-1kg), Pulses (0.5-1kg), Tins of tuna, tomatoes, Rice (0.5-1kg) Sugar and Pasta, Tinned meat (not pork), Baked beans, Cereals (Porridge, muesli), Coffee/tea, Biscuits
TOILETRIES Moisturiser, Nappies (mainly 10KG+), Deodorants (Men and women), Razors (disposable), Shaving Cream, Shower Gel/Body Wash, Soap, Hand wash and Tooth brushes
So what is Pafras and what does it do?
PAFRAS is the main project in Leeds providing direct support to destitute asylum seekers. All those who attend our drop-in are offered a meal, prepared by our volunteers, snacks and fresh fruit as well as hot and cold drinks. Additionally, at each drop-in we distribute food parcels put together out of the donations of foodstuffs that we receive. We ensure that all volunteers who handle food have food safety awareness training.
The food given out at our drop-in is a vital lifeline for people who have little or no access to food elsewhere. At the same time our drop-in opens a vital social space in which people for whom meeting in a café is unthinkable.
Our aim has been to create a space that service users can feel at ease in and take ownership of. To this end they are encouraged to get involved in running the service, from manning the reception desk to preparing food in the kitchen (more information on this can be found on the volunteering page).
Destitute asylum seekers are one of the most marginalised and excluded groups living in Britain today. Isolated linguistically, culturally and socially, they frequent in a world where rumour and fear over-shadow and often play too great a part in people’s choices. In providing a little for people’s immediate needs, our drop-in also opens a window through which our service users are able find out more about other services they can access.
A range of different services are delivered at the drop-ins:
There will be a Fairtrade Stall after our morning service this coming Sunday (October 28th). As usual Roger Robson and his team will be on hand to show you a whole raft of beautifully crafted Traidcraft goods as well of course as a wide range of Advent calendars and Christmas cards.
There will be a new weekly Bible Study Group on Friday mornings in the MBC Music Room starting this week, October 26th. With tea and coffee from 9.30am and proceedings starting at 10 each session will last about an hour. However please feel free to come and go as you wish.
Rod Russell who very recently visited the USA has very kindly sent us these three images.
The first (left) Rod spotted outside what he describes as a outwardly Christian/evangelical cafe in West Virginia, the other two, the “so called” Beautiful One -liners were in a church bulletin.
How do you feel about MBC adopting a similar outreach strategy?
Answers on a postcard please.
One of most valuable attributes of a local church congregation is being a diverse community.
At a social level this provides mixed human interaction and caring in an increasingly isolated and compartmentalised society. Old and young mixing together and so able to enjoy vitality, friendships and new perspectives. The connections and support mechanisms churches can offer that foster wellbeing in the wider community.
But many local congregations have lost this diversity of community, small aging congregations proliferate and are declining; new churches of students and young adults pop up. Yet although geographically close these aging and youthful groups do not interact, because the new gathering is suspicious of the inertia of the older and the older perceives the newer as shallow and gimmicky.
Now diversity follows another factor – that of culture and race. Once again mono-cultural churches spring up, playing an important role in fostering a shared story of culture, community and Christ. My experience is that over 2 or 3 generations these churches will diversify as the culture and story of that church becomes more complex and varied itself.
Some churches experience and welcome diversity in one congregation, Moortown Baptist Church being one. This is a blessing to us. Like every blessing it brings joy, opportunity and responsibility. We would do well to reflect upon this diversity. Is this simply co-existence (different groups in the same space but not relating deeply)? Is this one host culture welcoming others as the guests or becoming equal collaborators? I suggest tentatively, that many of us embrace diversity when it is the other we are serving and giving to but might be disconcerted or unprepared for mutual relationships where we receive as much as we give.
I have a sense that as we grow together as different cultures, ages, backgrounds, we can get stuck on relationships of deference on the one hand or strict judgement but not get further. Deference meaning that we excuse the other because are not able to challenge and engage; and judgement bringing harshness because we lack understanding and empathy.
We can grow through this not by assuming coming together is automatic, nor by seeking an artificial conformity but by discovering a deeper and mutual appreciation.
Age and culture/race are easy examples to give but this also applies to gender, class, education, sexual orientation, disability…
And what of the Christian view? Many Christians have followed exciting and challenging journeys in diversity. Not by finding quick ready-made answers but by finding time and time again that as God is three in one, there is something profoundly mysteriously and wonderfully of God when diversity intertwines.
As Christians we also appreciate that Christ was God among us and humble that we learn to be together following the way Jesus Christ lived himself.
So we come full circle. The church is a special place and community in a divided world not primarily because that is the way we choose it, or because we are just nice together, or because we have a ready-made infrastructure but basically because this is how God is and how God works among us. A precious gift to be nurtured indeed.
Graham Brownlee, October 2018
