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As Chris heads off to bonny Scotland and Lunch Club bid him a fond farewell we once again see God at work in our everyday lives

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With Graham taking on the Eamonn Andrews role and a 10 inch Samsung tablet replacing the big red book MBC’s Lunch Club have paid a warm and fond This is Your Life style farewell to Chris Puckrin. 

Very soon Chris will be heading off to Scotland to live near daughter Lorraine and her family. However, quite literally no sooner will he have first footed the suburbs of Edinburgh than he will he will be heading back to Leeds for a knee op. Immediately following his discharge Chris’ other daughter, local lass Sarah, who most conveniently just happens to be a physiotherapist will then take charge of his recovery. 

Armed with a whole load of surreptitious obtained background information, and an equally impressive gallery of pictures Graham led us through Chris’ life story from the day in 1947 when he was born, through his childhood, his early working life with ICI, through his training for the Anglican priesthood and of course through the umpteen churches in which he and his late wife Doreen have subsequently served.

Before heading through for lunch Carole Smith, MBC’s Seniors’ Worker presented Chris with a number of gifts and cards. She also thanked him for all the love, guidance and support he has given her, her predecessor and also the many Lunch Club regulars who during his time here at Moortown have got to know and love him.

There’s a gallery of pictures here taken at Lunch Club’s special event, plus of course a couple taken recently when on behalf of the whole church Graham paid tribute to this lovely man. 

Chris, we know this move is far more than just a need to live nearer to Lorraine and Will, and we know that because when you recently preached at one of our 9.30am Services you told us so.  No, this move like so many others you have made is happening because once again you believe it’s what God wants. So as you leave Moortown and as you plan yet another fresh start all we can add is thank you, take care and God bless you.  

You can read the full text of Chris’ sermon, titled The Journeying God and based on Exodus Chapter 14, verses 13 to 29 by following this link. 

 

 

The Journeying God, a message from Chris Puckrin ahead of starting a new life in Scotland

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A couple of weeks ago and ahead of his forthcoming move to Scotland Chris Puckrin was invited to preach at one of our 9.30am Services. He took as his text Exodus Chapter 14, verses 13 to 29. You can read it here, it’s called…

The  Journeying God

If asked what’s the greatest moment of your life, how would you respond?  No doubt there’s been extraordinary moments. Birth, sucking first lungful of breath as the adventure called life began! First steps, first words. The joy of learning to read.

First job, first date, first kiss, first love, for parents the moment the children were born. Many things can be defined as greatest moment of life! I remember a time, if not a greatest moment, certainly ranks as most humorous!

Christmas, the College Ripon and York St. John. Nativity presentation complete with angel descending to announce the birth of the Saviour! Spellbinding, especially as the angel appeared. People gasped as this angel flew around, until disaster struck.

The motor driving the harness burnt out, the angel stopped dead! The momentum caused wires attached to the wings to get twisted and the angel began to spin round and round like a ceiling fan. I was there, I saw it, I still chuckle!

Think about it, someone spinning round and round, then consider that is a condition of some here today! We are all of us nice, good people, with our hearts in the right place. But some are spinning, going nowhere. Progress is halted. Life is stale and static.

The reading from Exodus tells about slaves wanting delivery from taskmasters. God rescued and redeemed them and a great journey began which was so much more than a great escape. Outcasts and fugitives became a chosen people called to travel to a promised land. Their route saw the supernatural and the miraculous happen.

The obedient Red Sea stood up, impossibly, only to crash down again on the army that chased them. God himself their navigation system. People followed the pillars of fire and cloud, discovered Yahweh was uniquely the dynamic, travelling king.

However, it didn’t end happily. They doubted, they grumbled, they rebelled and as they did so they got more and more off course. God was still with them, but they would never inherit the destiny he had prepared for them!

The journeying God allowed them to spin out their days in the wilderness, marching but going nowhere; a mystery tour anything but magical. An excursion ending in the sand. What of us? What of me? On the point of leaving Leeds to move to Scotland. Why?

Those who know my situation assume it’s because Lorraine, Will and the grandchildren now live in Scotland and I am going to be near them. I will be near them, five minutes away from them! But I’m not going to Scotland just to be near them!

Will’s job meant relocation, they asked me to go. I refused saying I believe God still has something for me to do here and wants me to stay in Leeds and it will only be when I feel him say differently that I will move!  Sounds so pious doesn’t it! True though! It would have been easy to go.

Then just 12 weeks ago God began speaking, saying “now it’s time!” At church in Scotland a guy came to say hello to me. His opening words, you’re not from Scotland, I watched you, I think God is saying you are to move here!

Four weeks later, a lady rang me. Lorraine had given my number. She’d had a dream, she said. I was in the dream, God said its time to go to Scotland! Talking with Lorraine I said I didn’t want to go unless I can be a blessing, not just to family (toe curling piety)!

Our house group meets on Mondays and the day I’d spoken with Lorraine, a Monday, was early March. At the end of the house group meeting we prayed together and agreed the need to develop the habit of not just talking but also of listening prayer.

Next day I got a text from John Whitehead who was at the house group; “praying for you in the early hours, didn’t know what to pray so listened, felt God say ‘he will be a blessing!’”

I’d not said anything to anyone in Leeds up to that point! The journeying God is calling me! So it’s onward and upward to something even now being prepared!

Now a question: what about you? You individually and your corporately, this fellowship here? Moortown? Is it to be progress or spinning? The journeying God invites us to decide! And I want to take us back to where we began, the greatest moment of our life!

The greatest moment of our life is right here, right now! Not because it’s pleasant or happy or easy, but because this moment is the only moment that is truly ours. It is the only one we’ve got. It’s the one time we have to hear God speak to us!

Past moments, however good they were or however deeply we may regret wasted or misspent are gone, never coming back, and if we live there we lose our life.  The future is always out there somewhere. We can spend an eternity waiting for or worrying about tomorrow. Again, if we live there we make no progress, we just spin.

This moment is God’s irreplaceable gift. This is the moment that matters, because this is where God is. If we are going to be with him, or hear him, we must be with him, now in this moment, so we can make progress, stop spinning and travel with the God who journeys.

This Sunday it’s business as usual at MBC but as it’s the Leeds Half Marathon expect some traffic disruption.

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For MBC it’s business as usual this Sunday but as normal the Leeds Half Marathon, which literally passes our front door, will bring with it it’s usual degree of traffic disruption. We could offer all sorts of advice as to how you might try to minimise the chaos but erring on the side of caution we’ll simply say that between just after 9am and 11ish the King Lane/Stonegate roundabout will be closed off as will Stonegate Road itself (from the Meanwood end) and King Lane from church down to the Ring Road. 

In theory, particularly for those coming to our 9.30am Service it should be possible to get into the MBC car park via the normal entrance. Getting away, however, could be very different story.  

For those of you who do get through there’s an invitation to join us on the roundabout as we hand out sugar boosting jelly babies to those who have just slogged their way up from Meanwood. 

 

 

Thanks to Laura King as Life Improv draws to a close

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Last Sunday we said thank you to Laura King for co-ordinating Life Improv. We ran two Life Improv workshops on wellbeing for young adults.  A ten week course in the autumn/winter last year and a six week course in the Spring of this year. 

There were various topics covered over the weeks including: Mindfulness and Self-awareness, living with expectations, coping strategies when things get too much, finding your calling, searching for significance, playful living in and adult world and self care for the overwhelmed

The courses were well attended and there has been some very positive feedback.”

Abiding – 12 hours of prayer – Saturday 4th May – 10am to 10pm

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This is an all age event. Feel free to drop in any time between 10am and 10pm and stay for as long or as little as you like.

The theme of the day is ‘Abiding’. There will be prayer stations, practical prayer, silence, music, worship, mindfulness and movement all flowing into each other throughout the day.

If you have something you want to bring to the day or want to play an instrument then please speak to Shelley or Nathan Dring or Suzanna or Phil Laws.

There will be coffee and tea all through the day. However, if your’e planning on staying over the lunchtime period you’ll need to bring your own sarnies. 

Do you remember our youngster’s Nepal Cake Bake… well here’s what they achieved

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Besides receiving this splendid certificate of thanks Hilary Willmer was recently sent a link to the Spring edition of a wonderful 24 page magazine called Today in Nepal. This publication is free to download by clicking on any of the highlighted links.  It really is a great read, not only is it packed with stories of change and new beginnings, it brings fresh insight into the amazing work that the International Nepal Fellowship and its supporters are doing. Below are just a few tasters of some of the Spring edition’s stories. 

A new chapter for people with disabilities in Gorkha and Banke
 
After four years of hard work the projects in Gorkha are drawing to a close. Partner communities who lived through the trauma and devastation caused by massive earthquakes in 2015 have finished rebuilding their homes and public buildings. In helping them recover, INF focused primarily on the needs of people with disabilities and many communities are now much more inclusive. Peoples’ attitudes have changed and homes and public buildings are accessible for all.
 
In this magazine you can see how Manju and Devna, two young women who participated in a similar project in Banke, managed to turn around their lives. Thanks to your gifts, circumstances of hundreds of people like Manjuand Devna, who are living with disabilities, have significantly improved. Local groups are ready to carry on with the work by themselves, so the project will be coming to an end in June – a great achievement to celebrate…
 
New communities in Bajura are preparing to work with INF
 
After five years, we will soon be saying goodbye to people in our projects in Jukot, Sappata and Wai.
Meanwhile, others are preparing for a new chapter on their journey out of poverty. The majority of our selfhelp groups in Bajura are already in the process of registering as independent cooperatives. With a helping hand from supporters like you, local people pooled their resources and worked together to improve their income opportunities. Families are now better placed to earn a reliable income and many no longer need to leave home to work abroad. They have food all your around and can afford to send their children to school. People in Himali and Budhinanda have seen the change that INF’s work has brought to their neighbouring communities and are eagerly preparing to follow their example. Maheswori and Nanda are two of the leaders of newly established self-help groups. You can meet them on page 16.Green Pastures Hospital – new services to reach more patients
 
UK donations and gifts left in wills have funded the first phase of the hospital’s development. Thanks to your generosity we were able repair and refurbish buildings, and to upgrade wards and theatres. The team of specialists is steadily growing and the first new services are already available. The focus on poor and marginalised people remains at the heart of Green Pastures’ leadership team. With a growing range of services, some paying clients and a dedicated Poor Fund the vision that no one will be send away is well on its way.Nepal’s first hospice for all life-limiting or terminal conditions
 
Palliative care at Green Pastures is also ready for a step change. Over the last three years, thanks to your gifts, we were able to pilot a basic hospice services. This was hugely successful. As a result, a large donor has agreed to fund a hospice building in Green Pastures grounds; we have pledged to find the funding for additional staff, furniture and equipment. Hospice care is rare in Nepal and only available at a few large cancer-focused hospitals. The hospice will be the first in Nepal to offer care for all patients, regardless of their condition. And, as it will be an integral part of Green Pastures, patients will benefit from its whole range of services, including pain management and counselling.Your support has made all this possible. Thank you.
 
These are just some of the highlights and you can find much more inside your magazine. Much has already been achieved, but our plans remain ambitious – the need in Nepal is still great. Our focus is, as always, to serve poor and marginalised people. People who are hidden, neglected or excluded because of their caste, a disease or disability. We want them to have the best medical care possible, fair opportunities to access work and education, and a chance to live fulfilled and independent lives in inclusive communities where all can play an equal part. Change is possible – hopefully this magazine will show you how much we can achieve together. Thank you for your support.

Talking on the cliff edge – Leave/Remain – Haddon Willmer urges Church to engage in conversation on the Brexit debate

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This post begins with an extract from a feature that appeared in the Guardian on April 15th. It tells of the many difficult conversations that had to take place before the signing of the Good Friday Agreement in 1998. It continues with an article by Haddon Willmer in which he writes about the need for similarly tough conversations to take place now and argues the importance of Church facing up to and debating the “disagreements, frustrations and fears” of the current Brexit crisis. 

From the Guardian 15 April 2019 Blair and Ahern

Of all of the meetings we were involved in leading up to the Good Friday agreement, none were more difficult than those with family members of victims of the Troubles. Widows of British army soldiers and RUC officers, sons and daughters, wives and husbands, mothers and fathers of nationalists, republicans, loyalists. There were those who could not understand why we were seeking a deal with people who had killed their loved ones, or releasing from prison people who had committed horrendous crimes. Yet there were also those who made us promise to make the process work to ensure that others would not have to go through what they did. These conversations made us determined to ensure that such courage would form the basis upon which those following could build a better future.

Yet in practice, it was also time away from these conversations and from the media storm that enabled the Good Friday agreement to come together. It was time in the company of rivals with differing versions of what was right, and what was wrong, what was possible, and what was not; people with the personality and resolution, when surrounded by uncertainty and competing visions of the future, to put together a new power-sharing agreement.

Nobody should compare the tragedy of the Troubles to Brexit, but … the necessity for calm matters even more

Of course, nobody should compare the tragedy of the Troubles to Brexit, but as the rhetoric becomes stronger, the language becomes more divisive and inflammatory, the divisions in the Tory and Labour parties more evident, the need for calm matters even more. Having conversations with the public matters. Speak to those who voted remain, the 48%, alongside those who voted leave, and try to understand both. Speak to those who do not tweet incessantly or rage endlessly on radio phone-ins, as well as those who do. Understand that the public are undergoing the same process of churn and reflection as the politicians, and give them permission to be honest about that. Getting away from the media chaos to do this matters. Getting the right personalities together from across parties matters. Teams of rivals must be built.

From   https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/apr/14/good-friday-agreement-ireland-brexit-tony-blair-bertie-ahern

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Above is part of a longer article by Tony Blair and Bertie Ahern relating the achieving of the Good Friday agreement to our task now of working together to make the least damaging outcome of the Brexit issue that we can.  

It is a call for engaging in conversations, which have become more difficult than ever, across the gulfs of disagreement, fear and frustration, which now divide us. The conversation is not only for politicians but for people in general.  Not only for those who ‘tweet incessantly’ but also for those who don’t. Not only for those who talk freely because they are excited or fearful, but those who tend to keep quiet and take shelter in fraught situations – even while they worry in private. We are all already living in the confusion of the way to Brexit, and we will all have to live with it as it unfolds for years to come.  

Politicians talk and show how demanding it is for ordinary human beings to deal with a complex of issues like Brexit – or the Northern Irish situation as it was in the 1990s. We expect them to do the talking for us and to solve the problem and we criticize and despise them from failing, from our positions of superior evasion. Blair and Ahern remind us that many different people were engaged in difficult conversations out of which real if imperfect change happened, a working agreement to work together in future. In those conversations many people, half-politicians or un-politicians moved from their silos to talk with the enemies next door. That was not easy, either to start or to persist with.   

On Brexit many of us are still in our silos, Leave or Remain. Families and friends avoid breaking up by never talking about it. What does it do to our relationships when we live closely together, feeling that some issue is real and important, and yet being unable to talk about it together, calmly and constructively? It is like a disease that makes holes in the bones. 

Questions about the UK and the EU have been pressing on us for the last four years. All through those years, many of us have been going to Church, indeed trying to ‘be Church’.  But there has been virtually no conversation about Brexit amongst us. Why not? Does following Jesus make it a matter of indifference to us? Is Church for us a haven of peace, in a troubled world? All through this time, many of us in Church have been deeply concerned about Brexit and its consequences but we have not shared them, though we would like to think being Church implies a deeper than average sharing of life. We see the peoples of these islands divided, bewildered, drifting towards a cliff-edge, while some deny that there is such a thing. But we don’t talk with one another.  

We don’t talk because we fear falling out with each other. Why should we fear that would be the outcome of talking? We are aware of our passions and sensitivities, and those of others, and we don’t want to let them loose. But why could we not keep them in check enough to talk calmly and constructively? I think there are two reasons. One is that we can see that such a conversation would require us to be ready to get beyond our ready-made, slogan-like opinions, and work together to understand the whole situation better. Hard work like that requires patience, humility, curiosity and comradeship.  

The second reason is that when we pause to contemplate the mess we are in because of Brexit we get a glimpse of the road ahead, and it is, whatever happens, hard and steep. Whatever side we come from, Leave, Remain, of Don’t Care, it will require us to accept and live with uncomfortable outcomes. And yet, unless we can accept them with goodwill, unselfishness, care for the poorest, and the readiness for sustained hard work, we will not be able to live the future that is coming with peace and joy, love and justice. We hold back, hoping there will be an easier way, even praying for a miracle, a happy outcome achieved by a power greater than our own.   

Like it or not, the people of the UK are set a task by Brexit: it has to be lived through somehow or another. Christians in Church are set a life-task, to be salt and light, living in and serving in the world.  These are not two distinct tasks, as though we could concentrate on one and ignore the other, or be faithful and effective in one and careless about our failure in the other. In the grace of God, they have been given a large overlap, a deep intertwining. They are not identical, but they are not separable, for us now. This is why we should talk about Brexit in our secular contexts, but have the conversation in Church.  

LMFS makes the news

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As a result of its efforts to attract more furniture donations The Leeds and Moortown Furniture, which as many of you know started out here at MBC has been making the news.

First, North Leeds Life, a magazine that is distributed monthly in Rounday, Moortown, Alwoodley et al and which attracts upwards of 100,00 readers reported on LMFS’s participation in the Leeds Lent Prayer Diary launch and then, shortly after, a story in the Yorkshire Evening Post told how as the result of a successful grant bid to the Sir George Martin Trust the Store’s staff and volunteers were all being kitted out with smart new uniforms. 

If you have furniture to donate please call 0113 2739727.

Or to watch a video about the Store visit https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2HTVHm3KLo

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