This coming Sunday – Light Party, 29th October 4pm. Family event with messy games, crafts and lots, lots more. If you can please bring a pumpkin and a tin can.
Invite your friends (aimed at ages 5-11)
News
News items for public viewing
Nov 5th… MBC launches PULSE, an exciting new Sunday morning children’s programme
On Sunday November 5th (a day guaranteed to go with a bang!) our Childrens’ Worker Cas Stoodley and her team are launching what we are calling PULSE, a new and innovative programme which will not only reshape the way we currently do “Sunday School” but which via a mix of engaging take home material and Social Media will also draw in mums, dads, grandmas, granddads, carers et al as never before.
Branded Think Orange the programme is based upon three basic truths: Wisdom, the need to make wise choices; Faith, the assurance that we can trust God no matter what and Friendship, the notion that we should all treat others the way we want to be treated. It also majors on one hundred and fifty bible stories and thirty Life Apps (i.e. a practical application).
Each month there is a quite specific theme, in November that’s Gratitude. Within that theme there is always a Key Question – in week one for example that’s “What are you grateful for?” And to close there’s always a bottom line, again from week one that’s “Celebrate what God has done.” However, in between and in separate age groups there are any number of craft activities, games and teaching slots.
Perhaps the biggest single difference to our current plan however is that each week (with the exception of our children who attend Bubbles) everyone starts and finishes off each session together. Indeed on the fourth week of the month we’re all actually planning to come back in to the sanctuary and through drama, song, story telling or maybe even film share with you some of the stuff we have been doing.
A couple of weeks ago Cas organised a training session for the team, some pictures from which you see here.
Please pray for this new venture; pray for Cas, her team and of course for our children and their families because as our training day proved the challenge is considerable but the potential, particularly in regard to family and community involvement is nothing short of enormous.
MBC website to provide direct links to BMS World Mission updates
BMS World Mission works among some of the most marginalised and least evangelised people, in some of the most fragile places on earth. It aims to bring life in all its fullness through seven key ministries: church, development, education, health, justice, leadership and relief.
To keep supporters up to date BMS World Mission publishes regular online updates and it is our intention, as and when we can, to provide you with direct links to these stories via both the MBC website and our fortnightly newsletter.
Below are the most recent posts. One asks for prayer for new mission workers, whilst the second focuses on the work being carried out in India. To access them simply double click on the heading.
For more information about BMS World Mission or to sign up to its free ENGAGE magazine and Prayer Diary please speak with Roger Robson or go online to www.bmsworldmission.org
https://www.bmsworldmission.org/news/pray-for-our-new-mission-workers/
https://www.bmsworldmission.org/news/from-witch-doctor-to-church-planter/
Murray McEwan speaks of encouragement, nurture and support… a fitting tribute at the close of Bob’s final service as worship leader
Just about the only downside to MBC being a growing and vibrant church is that each Sunday morning when our children and young people go into their own groups they inevitably take with them a large number of adult “teachers”. This means, of course, that they all miss anything that takes place in the second half of the service.
A couple of Sunday’s ago was Bob Corrie’s final session as worship leader and for those of us that were out of the room here’s how current Worship Leader Murray McEwan marked the occasion.
“I thanked Bob for his worship leading: his thoughtfulness, integrity coming as it does from his deeply held faith and sensitivity to the journey of the service and leading of the Holy Spirit. I also thanked him for doing the coordination of the whole team for many years which he did in tandem with Marion. Finally I thanked him for the encouragement, nurturing and support he has given many new members of the team, including me. Bob has indicated, however, that although we won’t be leading worship again he may from time to time help us out if we need him, so we are all hopeful that he won’t hang his guitar up completely”.
An Environmental Plan A – Caring for God’s Creation. Fresh Water.
We all know that fresh water is absolutely vital for the sustaining of life, people can survive without food for several weeks, but only as long as they have water to drink. Our Earth contains 1.4 billion cubic kilometres of water; that’s all there has ever been and all there ever will be, as far as we know. The problem is that when I was born the world’s population was well under 2.5 billion people, whereas today it stands at nearly 7.5 billion, and they all need access to clean water. A volume of 1.4 billion cubic kilometres might sound a lot but 97% of it is saline, as it fills our oceans and seas. Of the remaining 3%, the fresh water, over half is locked up in the ice caps and is not available to drink. The remainder, just over 1 % is potable, i.e. drinkable water. A further complication is that certain locations on Earth have a super-abundance of water, e.g. Iceland, whereas others are arid and almost water-free, and the big centres of population do not coincide with the areas of water abundance.
The amazing thing is that each time we have a drink of pure, clean water, the water in our glass has been drunk by millions of animals and plants before us. Rainwater is pure water, and the water that flows into the sea is salt-bearing and contaminated. However, sunshine evaporates pure water from the seas and it passes as vapour into the atmosphere, where it later precipitates as rain and snow. We thus enjoy the benefits of a natural de-salination and purification system, which is solar powered, and free of charge. This is how the water of life is provided for us every day, and I find that awe-inspiring.
In the UK we are fortunate, enjoying a temperate climate with only a very occasional drought. The last such year was 1995, when the Eccup Reservoir which serves North Leeds, began to run dangerously low. Like the wider world, water abundance in the UK is not evenly distributed, areas of abundance do not coincide with the areas with high demand. In the Summer and early Autumn of 1995, Yorkshire Water resorted to using a fleet of large tanker lorries to bring water to top up the Eccup Reservoir, and some of you may remember them thundering North along the Harrogate Road to deliver the water. Since then the water companies have laid a ‘national grid’ of water pipelines to ensure better supplies in the event of a future drought.
What can we do?
We began to be separately charged for our water about 40 years ago and the water companies have since invested billions of pounds in up-rating supplies. We can all help by not wasting water and being economical in its use.
- Do not leave taps running,
- Report any water leaks promptly,
- When boiling water for drinks, just boil the volume that you need,
- Harvest rain-water for watering gardens,
- Take a shower instead of a bath.
While we enjoy good water supplies in the UK, our population is growing quickly and we do not have a large margin of safety. Remember, a gallon of water is infinitely more valuable than a gallon of petrol, and even much more that a gallon of diesel fuel.
John Sturges j.sturges@leedsbeckett.ac.uk;
Julia Hyliger Julia.hyliger@hotmail.com;
September 2017
Friendship, Fellowship and Fun – Welcome to FX
Last Sunday saw MBC launch a new venture: FX.
It’s something that’s open to anyone and everyone who wants to come and meet up with other people from church and beyond. The idea is that on the fourth Sunday of each month in a relaxed and informal way we do just that.
Last week around seven families met together at Golden Acre Park for nothing more challenging than a gentle stroll around the woods and the lake.
Cas Stoodley who set up FX says. “For our first FX I wanted to be out and about because as summer turns to autumn I find that time spent outdoors, in God’s creation, always reminds me of his goodness, and joining together like this is a great way for us to share with one another how He is working in our lives.”
Future FX dates are: Sunday 22nd of October – at Moortown Baptist Church 3-4:30pm with a film for the children, a toddler area and the all important coffee and cake. Sunday 26th of November – again at MBC, 3-4:30pm with board games, craft, a toddler area and the all important coffee and cake and Sunday 24th of December which is of course Christmas Eve.
Engage… the latest BMS World Mission news from near and far
The latest edition of BMS World Mission’s magazine, Engage, is out now, and once again it’s filled with features, news, updates, letters and prayer requests from across the globe.
One piece, headlined Vive la Revolution, will be of particular interest to those of us who know John and Sue Wilson. The Wilsons have close ties with MBC which go back many years. Having recently moved from Lyon to Paris, as it says in the article: “John and Sue are now breathing news life into Avenue de Maine Baptist Church in the heart of Paris. John also leads FEEBF’s (French Baptist Federation) Ministry Commission, while Sue heads up the Federation’s Youth Committee, which includes organising the national youth conference.”
You can sign up to receive the Engage magazine, completely free of charge, either on line or through the post by speaking to BMS World Mission rep Roger Robson or by going to https://www.bmsworldmission.org/get-involved/stay-informed/engage/
Haddon Willmer shares some thoughts about prayer
I have a friend who considers himself still a Christian. Indeed he is determined to go on being a Christian, and publicly. But he says his prayer life is shot to pieces and has been for some time. I’m in much the same place.
What is prayer? he asks. It seems, in much of our practice, to be asking God for things, expecting answers, which is rather like customer satisfaction. But we often don’t get what we ask for. We see people in desperate need in the world, for food, for security, who cry out to God but don’t get the help to live. They are encouraged to ‘ask and you will receive’ but experience throws the advice into doubt. And then the doubt spreads to God. God seems not to care, not to be.
Does prayer have to take a form that runs head-on into a brick wall? Is ‘Ask and Get’ the primary, essential form of prayer? When we pray to God as God is in Jesus, are we coming to the keeper of a shop which stocks everything – and all just for the asking?
I don’t think prayer is like that. It is much more a matter of keeping company with God who keeps company with us in the way we see in Jesus. Jesus did not get what he asked for in any straightforward way. Remember his praying in Gethsemane, when his soul was exceeding sorrowful, even unto death: ‘My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will’ (Matt 26.38). Jesus talked with his Father, out of a lifelong relationship. That relationship did not consist in ‘asking and getting’ or in a comforting intimacy, so much as a working obedience, loving service and risk-taking trust, which were the ingredients that went into making the life and death and resurrection of Jesus as we are given to see it in the Gospels.
To pray is to be thinking the living of real life on earth, in a truthful relation with God the Father.
The words we put together in order to bring our praying relation to God into our consciousness – God doesn’t need them – have to be fashioned carefully so that they are truthful about our life and about God. We often pray with words that come to us casually, or are given to us by convention; there is not enough truthful thinking in them. And when they are not truthful, they easily come to mean nothing to us, or they lead us into mistakes about the reality of our earthly life or the reality of God, as God is in Jesus.
Would it help our praying to look at ancient written prayers, which come out of thinking, living life, and attending to God?
I find prayers of this sort helpful, but not because, being written, they are ready-made and demand little effort. Rather the problem is that prayers composed by people in other ages or other places, often have features I cannot make my own, as I live in my own times. They help me to work at prayer rather than to get an easy ride. Through classic prayers, I can see how to go about thinking and even writing my own prayers. When I have a good clue about how, I can get on trying to do it truthfully, with some hope that my praying will be worthwhile.
Take an example: a collect from the old English Book of Common Prayer
O God, who art the author of peace and lover of concord, in knowledge of whom standeth our eternal life, whose service is perfect freedom: Defend us, thy humble servants, in all assaults of our enemies; that we, surely trusting in thy defense, may not fear the power of any adversaries; through the might of Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
What is the structure of this prayer?
First God is addressed, but not merely named. The name of God by itself has too many possible meanings to be any help in focusing our minds and living, or helping us to distinguish the true God from mere imaginings.
God is named, and then identified. God is not completely described – that is impossible. A particular characteristic of God is specified: ‘the author of peace and lover of concord’. These are big words, calling for a lot of meditation and searching. That is one reason why it is worth saying a prayer like this frequently, so that it gets embedded in our memory and can repeatedly speak to us.
Is there such a God? If God is ‘the author of peace and lover of concord’ what follows? What does it mean for our living? In knowing Go, the prayer tells us, we find eternal life, life not in the human earthly abundance of some sort of wealth, but life in the abundance of God as God is in Jesus. And then it offers a further specification of God, which carries an implication for how we human beings are to live: serving God is ‘perfect freedom’. This language has been dismissed as impossible and oppressive paradox – how can servitude be freedom? As it stands it does not truthfully explain much of our experience of the human world. It is a prayer of desire and aspiration, reaching for something better than we routinely have. So it invites us to venture into God, who is not like the familiar powers that arrange and manage the earth, only bigger. God is the mystery at the heart of a ‘strange new world’, his own new creation.
In this prayer we start by seeing God in a specific way and then we find ourselves challenged and invited to risk moving into and with God.
After this start, the prayer goes on to present our need to God – in a world where we have enemies, we ask to be defended, on the basis that we are God’s humble servants, against the ‘others’ who are not. As those who serve God, we ask to enjoy the freedom that goes with service (‘whose service is perfect freedom’). We trust in God to defend us, keeping us free from the assaults of our enemies. And this we expect to happen, because our Lord Jesus is ‘mighty’.
A prayer needs to have this sort of second half, answering the first half which presents God to us. Now our existence is brought to God, presented to God for service, so that we can live it with God in faith.
This is often the hardest part of a prayer to think and write. The second half of this prayer makes me uncomfortable; I don’t want to say from the heart ‘Yes’ to all these words; indeed, if this is Christian faith, I may not be able to go along with it.
Why are these words difficult? Should we find them difficult? The prayer identifies God as the author of peace and lover of concord, and then puts ourselves in the picture as God’s humble servants against enemies. And then we call God with his might into action on our side in the battle. When we trust in a God of Battles, are we trusting in God as he is in Jesus? This prayer does not ask for the peace of the world, we ask for our peace, our freedom from fear, in a world structured by the logic and spirit of enmity, a world where we struggle for our survival.
It is natural enough for us to pray like this; there are enemies, and we have reason, sometimes, to be fearful, unbearably. But when we pray in these terms, are we being faithful to God? Are we being wise and generous in our approach to living?
I criticise this prayer and feel inclined not to say it. So can I leave it there? Not if I want to be a responsible human being in this present world; not if I have any glimmer of God as the author of peace and lover of concord or have the beginnings of an aspiration to serve him. I find myself constrained to try to write a prayer I can say.
Here is my attempt. If you can’t join me, which is quite likely, make your own.
O God, who art the author of peace and lover of concord, Continue your patience with us, who make, manage and suffer a world at war in itself and do it all with fearful discordant spirits: please do not give up on us just yet, though a fair case is made against us, as some of our own wise prophets tell us. Our mountainous sins rise up in witness against us. Enlighten us so that we may see how your patience gives us time to change our thinking and our practice. Help us to use our time redemptively and to give our full energies to your service. Please go on walking your weary way in our world, which loads its sin upon your frailty and mocks your example of a better way of being human. Go on walking in our world so that we may come to follow you, share your spirit and work with you. May we see you gladly when you come our way . Do not give up on us: Come Lord Jesus!
Herd Farm Youth Weekend – Friday 27th to Sunday 29th April 2018
A weekend of fun, great food, getting to know God and each other. For years 7 to 13. The cost is £50 which includes board, all activities and food. You can get more information and booking forms from Shona or Kate.
Please complete and return your form together with a £10 deposit by Sunday 29th of October with the balance due on Sunday April 1st next year.
We want all our young people to be able to enjoy this residential and we don’t want anyone to miss out because of cost. So for anyone who may find this a struggle, don’t worry we have options available. Again see Shona or Kate for details.