Gone Fishing

When I was about 8, the latest craze amongst me and my friends was fishing. And one day I came home from school to find that my mum had bought me a small 5 foot fishing rod from Woolworths. I can see it now. It was white fibreglass and came with a green reel. The next day I went with my friend Rob to the old canal running through the village to fish. Rob was an expert fisherman - he’d had his rod for about 2 weeks. And he told me what to do.

Unfortunately what he didn’t tell me to do was to check around you to look for obstacles. So I cast my line and it promptly caught in an overhanging tree! It must have taken us about half an hour to get it untangled by which time we had to be home.
Not the best start to a new hobby. And to be honest it didn’t get any better – especially as I didn’t like maggots!

I was put off fishing from an early age. But what I understand now is that fishing is not as easy as it looks. And if trying to fish for some probably non-existent fish in a South Wales canal isn’t easy then it is nothing like the challenge Jesus sets us when he says to us

"Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men,"
Matthew 4:19

We can hear those words of Jesus and think “Fishing’s not for me.” We hear those words and can think fishing is for other people. We’re not called to go fishing. But actually we’re all called to go fishing. It mightn’t be our favourite thing to do but Jesus calls us all to tell the Good News. Jesus calls us all to be fishers of people. “Come follow me and I will make you fishers of people”

So why is there a reluctance to go fishing? Perhaps because we tried it once and didn’t like it? Or perhaps because we tried it and weren’t very good at it? Or perhaps because we just don’t know where to start.

Samuel G. Candler, in his book “Follow Me and I Will Make You Go Fishing” writes:

“Fishing takes practice, preparation, discipline. One must learn how to best throw the net, how to make the mouth of the net come open too. I can throw the actual cast net a long way, but I can't always make the net come open so that it will actually form a circle around the fish. One must learn how to cast the line on a rod. Again, some folks can cast a long way, but their accuracy is awful. There may be fish on the right, but they know only how to cast the line to the left. There may be fish on the left, but they keep casting to the right. Casting, like discipleship, is an acquired habit. It rewards practice.”

Going back to my illustration. As a kid I thought all fishing needed was getting a rod and that was it. Well it wasn’t. I didn’t know how to cast. I didn’t know how to put a float on the line. I knew nothing about hooks or bait. Had I been shown, had someone explained to me what to do, had I been prepared, had I kept at it, then the results would have been different.

Remember, Jesus said to the disciples “I will make you fishers of men” And what he meant was that he would “make them into fishers of men”. He would teach them what to do. He would show them what to do. He would turn them into evangelists.

If we are to go fishing for people, if we are to tell people about Jesus Christ, we need some preparation. And the preparation needed depends on the scale of fishing you intend to do. Obviously if you’re going fishing on an industrial scale – for example the successful Messy Church project that’s happening here in Swindon’s Old Town or being a witness of Christ’s love as a Street Pastor – then more preparation is needed.

But if you’re just going to go fishing locally as it were, perhaps by deciding to talk to a friend or neighbour about Jesus, then your preparation is simple. Your preparation is praying for guidance and praying for the right words to say. Praying that Jesus will make you a fisher of men.

So preparation is vital.

Of course another reason for my failure as a fisherman was that at the time I was convinced that fishing in the canal was the wrong environment. If I had a better place to fish then I’d be a better fisherman.

Again Samuel G. Candler, in his book “Follow Me and I Will Make You Go Fishing”

“Fishing, like the gospel, is always practiced in context. It does no good to sit at one lake and wish I was on some other lake. It does no good to stand at the ocean and wish the weather were different. On that day, in that place, I fish in context according to what the conditions are.

So it is with the proclamation and the living out of the Christian gospel. It does little good wishing that we were somewhere else, in a different time or in a different country perhaps. Our context is this time and this place.”

In other words God has placed us where he wants us and we are to fish there. If you are in a work place God has placed you there to fish there. God wants you to fish at the golf club. Or at the Rotary club.

If we are going to be fishers of men, we must go to where the people are. And they are all around us.

One of the greatest obstacles to fishing for people is what has been referred to as the "Field of Dreams" concept that is lodged in the minds of so many of our church members.

In the 1989 film “Field of Dreams” Iowa farmer Ray Kinsella – played by Kevin Costner - hears a voice in his corn field tell him, "If you build it, he will come." He interprets this message as an instruction to build a baseball field on his farm. He does this and upon it appear the ghosts of Shoeless Joe Jackson and the other seven Chicago White Sox players banned from the game for throwing the 1919 World Series. When the voices continue, Ray seeks out a reclusive author to help him understand the meaning of the messages and the purpose for his field

"If you build it, they will come".

Now that may work for baseball fields in Iowa, but that is not how Jesus told us to grow His Kingdom. While the open invitation to everyone is "Come and see", He specifically tells us his followers to "Go and tell!" The Field of Dreams concept is a big factor in why so many of our churches are dead or dying. We are waiting for people to come, whereas, we are to go fishing. We must take the Gospel to where the people are.

Catholic priest Vincent Donovan wrote an excellent book a few years ago called “Christianity Rediscovered” about his experiences as a missionary in Kenya. He learned that the traditional approach to mission had been to build a church, a school and a hospital on a vacant piece of land and wait for people to come. But he says:

"Evangelization is a process of bringing the gospel to people where they are, not where you would like them to be… When the gospel reaches a people where they are, their response to the gospel is the church in a new place..."

In taking the Gospel to the people, we must understand their mind set. Why do they do what they do? What is important to them? How can we bring the message of abundant life to people who already think they have a pretty good life?

Outdated methods may have to be changed to make the Gospel Message relevant to the various cultures around us. The message never changes, but the methods of sharing that message must be adapted to the type of "fish" we are attempting to catch. So many of us are wrapped up in our familiar comfortable "church culture", that we never realise that the vast majority of our neighbours are foreign to that culture. We must engage them where THEY are.

Most Monday mornings I attend a prayer meeting with some other church leaders from around the Stratton and Moredon area. We pray for Swindon. Recently we invited North Swindon MP Justin Tomlinson to come and talk to us which he did.

One of the ministers asked Justin Tomlinson about the Same Sex marriage legislation and the minister made the point that he thought this was another sign of Britain no longer being a Christian country. Justin Tomlinson disagreed with that and then he said “I think it still is a Christian country but the churches need to wake up to better ways of engaging with people around them. Churches can’t continue to rely on the traditional methods”

I think we were all taken aback. How dare this MP tell us our jobs? But I feel he had a very valid point. If we are to go fishing we have to fish for the times we are in using the up to date methods and equipment.

Having prepared, got the right equipment and gone to the place where we’re supposed to fish, there comes a time when we just have to summon up the courage to go fishing.

James L. Collier, in his book “Go Fish!” says:

Have you been fishing lately? Have you caught any people for Jesus?
If you are a typical Presbyterian (or Methodist or Lutheran or mainline Christian of any sort) the answer probably is a shrug of the shoulders and a bewildered look. "He can't be serious, can he?"

He goes on to say

"A few years ago there were some statistics floating around in church circles. If you take a middle aged church member who has attended church regularly most of his/her life, by the age of fifty they would have listened to 1760 sermons, sung 5280 hymns, placed money in the offering plate about 1500 times and never introduced another person to Jesus Christ. True - most of us, if asked, can't remember ever talking to a non-believer about our faith. We just don't do that sort of thing. We haven't done much fishing."

To my mind, one of the oddest programmes on television – and that’s saying something – is a programme called “Extreme fishing” hosted by the actor Robson Green. I’ve never watched it but as I understand it he is filmed fishing in different places around the world. Why would anyone want to watch someone else fish? If you’re into fishing wouldn’t you just want to fish?

Of course the reality is that for many people fishing is a kind of spectator sport. It’s fun to watch a TV celebrity on a boat off the coast of somewhere exotic but when faced with going to fish at Coate Water or wherever it doesn’t seem as interesting. It is far safer and more comfortable to sit back and watch rather than go fishing.

And so it is for many Christians. But Jesus doesn’t want us to watch. Jesus wants us to come and follow him and make us into fishers of people.

19 And he said to them, ‘Follow me, and I will make you fish for people.’ 20 Immediately they left their nets and followed him.

Love is .....

About a month ago I saw a message on Facebook from a “For sale and wanted in Swindon” group. The message told the story of a couple – Will & Hayley - who were looking for help to plan a wedding. Originally Hayley posted a message on Facebook asking if anyone had a wedding dress for sale. She wanted her dad to be able to walk her down the aisle on her wedding day. Her dad is gravely ill so Hayley knew she had to act quickly.

Little did Hayley realise the response she would get off the back of that message. As Hayley said in the interview with the Swindon Advertiser last week, she received over 200 offers of help. That means there are a lot of good people in Swindon. In fact that is an understatement. There are a lot of people in Swindon with love in their hearts.

I am honoured to be one of the 200 as I offered the use of St Andrews Methodist Church and my services as a minister if the couple wanted a church wedding. Which they did.

All in all her dress, the church, the cake and suit hire have all been offered for free, and transport has been arranged by a taxi firm.

The English language is quite amazing and it is always changing, with new words being added. 5 years ago who had heard the word “selfie” for example, but we all know what a selfie is now. But despite being a wonderful language it has its limitations. For example in English we only have one word for love, “love” whereas there are many different kinds of love.

For example there is a difference between saying “I love Swindon Town” and then saying to another person “I love you”. In other words when we talk of love, we can mean the love of a partner, love of a parent towards a child or love of a child towards a parent; we can mean a deep friendship or "liking" for a person or thing; or we can mean romantic love. But we only have the one word.

The Greek language on the other hand has four different words which we would translate as love. The four words are Eros, Phileo, Agape and Storge.

Storge – affection. Affection is fondness through familiarity (a brotherly love), especially between family members.

Philia – friendship. Philia love is the love between friends. Friendship is the strong bond existing between people who share common interest or activity

Eros – romance. Eros love in the sense of 'being in love' or 'loving' someone,

Agape – unconditional love. Agape is the love that brings forth caring regardless of the circumstance.

St Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians was originally written in Greek and it is part of a letter sent to people living in a Greek city – Corinth. And in the famous 13th chapter – in which Paul talks of love - Paul used the word Agape because he wanted the people at the church in Corinth to be more caring towards one another. But I think 1 Corinthians 13 covers all the kinds of love I’ve mentioned.

The wedding today was full of love. There was the Eros romantic love between Will and Hayley.

There was the Storge love, the family love between Hayley and her Dad and the rest of the family.

There was the Philia love, the friendship love shown to Will and Hayley by their closest friends.

And finally there was the Agape love shown by the many people who have set out to help Hayley and Will have their marriage.

Will and Hayley I hope that all the love shown to you today will be a good foundation for your marriage. And I pray that you will have a long and happy marriage together. And may your life together be surrounded by God’s love now and forevermore.

Photos taken by Ian Plested of Redhouse Photograhpy

Come and meet the neighbour

The first eighteen verses of John’s Gospel form the prologue, the introduction if you like, to the whole Gospel and they contain the themes of the entire Gospel:

The Son of God, the divine saviour has come in to the world to bring salvation to all. Many have rejected him. But to all those who believe he has given the power to become children of God and the gift of eternal life.

If the prologue is the summary statement of the entire Gospel, then one verse culminates and sums up the entire prologue:

14 The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth. NIV

Eugene Peterson in his contemporary rendering of the Bible, The Message, has given us an alternative version of the text:

14 The Word became flesh and blood,
and moved into the neighbourhood.
We saw the glory with our own eyes,
the one-of-a-kind glory,
like Father, like Son,
Generous inside and out,
true from start to finish.

I love this rendering of this text because of the choice of the word “neighbourhood”. That single word places Jesus’ coming firmly in the here and now. And Jesus is in the neighbourhood now too.

On Christmas Eve 2012 Alan Greaves was walking the short distance from his home in Sheffield to play the organ at St Saviour’s Church of England for Midnight Mass. Between his home and the church he was attacked and murdered. On the night in which we celebrate the Light of the World coming to us, darkness fell.

In July last year Jonathan Bowling admitted attacking Alan Greaves and was sentenced to 25 years in prison. Ashley Foster was sentenced to nine years for manslaughter. However,

14 The Word became flesh and blood
and moved into the neighbourhood.

At the time of the conviction Alan Greaves’ widow Maureen said:

“Alan was a man driven by love and compassion and he would not want any of us to hold on to feelings of hate and unforgiveness. In honour of Alan and in honour of the God we both love, my prayer is that this story doesn’t end today.”

She said she prayed that Alan’s killers would find “true repentance” in jail.

This Christmas, Alan Greaves daughter was married in that same church. She took her father’s wedding ring as her own.
And last Friday I heard a very moving interview with Alan's widow Maureen on the BBC Radio 4 Today programme. Mrs Greaves told the Today programme's Sarah Montague that the wedding day "was very much a celebration".

Mrs Greaves said she was happy that they "were together as a family" doing wedding preparations.

Ms Greaves also again spoke of the forgiveness she felt towards Jonathan Bowling and Ashley Foster, the two men jailed for the killing. She said: "It's through God's mercy that I have been able to extend real and true forgiveness."

14 The Word became flesh and blood,
and moved into the neighbourhood.

Eugene’s Peterson’s rendering of John’s Gospel is a reminder that Jesus, the Word, comes into our neighbourhood. The Word became flesh and moved in down the street. And the beauty of Peterson’s translation is that it isn’t specific about the kind of neighbourhood. It could be rich or poor. It could be a rough council estate in London or the leafy Cotswolds. From war torn Syria to the extravagance of Dubai. The Word, Jesus, dwells with us all, in all of our neighbourhoods.

14 The Word became flesh and blood,
and moved into the neighbourhood.
We saw the glory with our own eyes,
the one-of-a-kind glory,
like Father, like Son,
Generous inside and out,
true from start to finish.

When Jesus moved in to the neighbourhood he had a special presence, a glory that was like God. Let’s not forget what John is reminding us in this passage. When Jesus moved in to the neighbourhood it was as if God moved in to the neighbourhood. That is perhaps the most extraordinary claim of the Christian faith. Jesus is God and Jesus / God came in to the world to live among us.
God moved in to the neighbourhood!

This passage is all about God’s love and God’s nature. I suppose some people might be impressed by God’s power – that he could bring something out of nothing at creation. Other people are impressed by what is termed God’s omniscience – that is that God’s is all knowing he knows everything all at the same time.

But for me, and I suspect for most of you, I am most impressed by God’s love for everyone. And it is that very love that brings God through his son the Word to the neighbourhood. It’s God’s love for his children that caused God to send his son to move in to our neighbourhood. It’s God’s love beating in the heart of Maureen Greaves and her daughter that has caused the darkness to leave the neighbourhood of High Green Sheffield and for Christ’s light to shine.

Love and compassion like that shown by Maureen Greaves remind us that Jesus is alive and well and is living in our neighbourhoods.

14 The Word became flesh and blood,
and moved into the neighbourhood.

Joseph - the forgotten person in the Christmas story

Last week I was sat with a friend at a church Christmas lunch and my friend passed comment that we never hear enough about Joseph. And that “Joseph was a good man”. And I agree, Joseph was a good man. In fact that is something of an understatement.
All we know about Joseph is contained in Matthew chapter 1:16 through to chapter 2:23 And in Luke 1: 26 – 2:52. And in Matthew 13:55 Jesus is referred to as “the carpenter’s son” and therefore we assume Joseph was a carpenter.

Traditionally, Joseph is portrayed as being older than Mary. Perhaps quite a bit older. Certainly there is a belief in the Orthodox Church that he was a widower and had children with his first wife who was called Salome. But the point is we simply do not know. We do not know how long Joseph lived in his role as Jesus’ earthly father – he is last mentioned in the Gospel of Luke when Jesus is 12 years old.

We simply don’t know enough about Joseph.

So to the story we know so well. Mary comes to Joseph and tells him she’s pregnant. It is something straight out of a soap opera today. But the story is more complicated than an EastEnders plot.

Joseph and Mary are engaged to be married. And at the time this was a binding arrangement between people. In essence it meant that they were considered to be husband and wife even though they weren’t married. Therefore, unfaithfulness when engaged was considered to be adultery. And under Jewish religious laws adultery meant divorce or death.

We’re told that Joseph is “a righteous man”. This means he was “right with God” he followed God’s wishes. As Joseph was Jewish he also would have followed the Jewish laws which meant he was righteous. And as I’ve said those laws dictated either death or public divorce as a punishment for adultery. Joseph was clearly in love with Mary and didn’t wish to see her die so he had it in his mind to quietly divorce her.

Up to now Joseph is acting righteously. He is doing what Jewish law, God’s law, says he must do. But actually he is doing more than that. He is acting in a way that shows he is concerned for Mary’s dignity and welfare. He is acting through love.

Another way of thinking of “righteous” is by thinking of righteous meaning “just” or “committed to justice.” And Joseph fits that description perfectly. He is following the law as set down in the Jewish scriptures but he is also following what we might think of as a Christian way of thinking – the way of love. And really by following the way of love, an attitude that Jesus would demonstrate in his later life, Joseph was prepared to bend, if not go against the Jewish laws in order to follow the way of love.
In many respects Joseph stands as a fairly minor figure in the Christmas story. And yet he demonstrates to us what it means to be a follower of Jesus. It means that we are to look to the Bible for guidance but equally we are to listen to what God is telling us to do now. These aren’t always one and the same, for I believe God is still speaking and he says things that aren’t in the Bible.

If Joseph had followed what the Jewish scriptures said then Mary would have been very publically divorced or killed. But instead Joseph listened to what God was saying to him. Firstly to treat her with love. And then of course take her as your wife. Forgive her and bring her child up as your own. Oh, and by the way call him Immanuel.

Joseph was being shown how Jesus would teach the world later. In the famous Sermon on the Mount Jesus adopted the same approach “You have heard it said that the law tells you to do this. But I tell you, you have to do more than that” For example:

43 “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbour[i] and hate your enemy.’ 44 But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, Matthew 5: 43 - 44

By choosing to live out the heart of the law – which is God’s love for all people – rather than the letter of the law, Joseph was already living out the values that Jesus would demonstrate. The values of God’s kingdom – love.

2,000 years later we as God’s people are still facing situations where we are pulled in different directions. Where the Bible seems to tell us one thing and yet where our hearts are telling us something else. For example over the issue of gay marriage. The Bible appears to have a set of teachings that set out that homosexuality is wrong. But then we hear Jesus telling us to love our neighbour. What is God saying now?

It seems to me that we all could do with the courage and wisdom of Joseph. The courage to obey God and to listen to what is God is saying to us. And the wisdom to discern God’s message of love. And the wisdom to realise life isn’t as simple as we may think. For God is a God of surprises. A God who uses ordinary people like a carpenter from Nazareth to do extraordinary things.

Give me patience and give it me now!

Many of us grew up with the adage “Patience is a virtue” ringing in our ears. Or maybe “Good things come to him who waits”

In James 5: 7 – 10 the writer talks abut patience.

7 Be patient, then, brothers and sisters, until the Lord’s coming.

James 5:7

Having given this piece of advice James then goes on to compare the patience of waiting on the Lord to the patience of a farmer.

“See how the farmer waits for the land to yield its valuable crop, patiently waiting for the autumn and spring rains.”

Generally I don’t give much thought to patience. Patience isn’t something I have to be concerned about – unless of course I’m stuck behind a cautious driver at a junction and I find myself saying “Go on! You could have gone then!” And then a voice from the passenger seat says to me “Be patient.”

Patience is a virtue. In other words to be patient, to have patience, is a good thing. So why is that? Why is it good to be patient?

I suppose in certain fields of work or aspects of life, patience is a virtue. For example someone who is engaged in creating a piece of art has to be patient. Or perhaps someone repairing a watch. Or an airline pilot bringing in a plane to land. These all require patience.

But of course it is not just in the world of work that patience is required. To play the piano to the level required to play a complex piece of music by Bach for example requires patience – patience to practise and practise. To play golf to a decent standard requires practice and patience too. And I suppose all of us can understand that kind of patience – the practice makes perfect kind.

We can see then how patience can be a virtue in certain jobs and in certain pastimes. But can patience be a virtue in other senses too?

Patience can be a virtue in situations where waiting is required and where essentially we have no control over a situation or where we are powerless to change things. So to go back to my illustration earlier. If I’m stuck in traffic, to have patience is a virtue because I cannot do anything about the cars in front of me. Similarly when queuing at an airport to check in or to go through security it is pointless getting agitated because it is so slow a process. In such circumstances we cannot do anything to change anything so we may as well be patient.

And although James of course could not have been thinking about traffic jams or queues at airports, I think it is to these second scenarios that he is thinking. Situations where we have no influence or control so we may as well be patient.

Try as we may there are some things in our lives that we cannot exert any control over.
It’s hard for any of us at any age to be patient. Particularly when we are in a time of stress.

There was a delightful little story in the Reader’s Digest from Mrs. Nolen Cash of Lonoke, Arkansas. Mrs. Cash said that with the due date approaching for the birth of their first child, her husband was becoming increasingly fidgety.

One evening she told her husband that she was having some slight pains, but she assured him that they were not serious. Later, she was relaxing in front of the TV when she heard her fidgety husband shaving. Then he began to throw on his clothes.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

With great exasperation he said, “You can sit here if you want to, but I’m going to the hospital!”

Sometimes these are trivial but sometimes they are serious. We can either get angry and frustrated and feel our blood pressure rising or we can be patient and accept that we cannot do anything.

In summary, waiting can be aggravating. But we may as well accept that there is nothing we can do apart from wait patiently.

To illustrate his thinking about the scenarios where we have no influence and where we cannot change time, James uses the illustration of the farmer. At the time James was writing, farmers in Palestine relied entirely on natural irrigation and rainfall. In contrast as I understand it, nowadays Israel is very green due to the widespread use of irrigation systems. But then whether or not a crop grew depended almost entirely on how much moisture fell, and in what form and at what time.

There had to be rain when the crop was planted in order to help germination and then rain later to nourish it. But if rain came just before the harvest or during the harvest the crop could be ruined.

Since there was nothing the farmer could do to influence these climatic events the farmer just had to be patient.

James is writing to a group of early Christians who believed that Jesus’s return was imminent. They were becoming impatient for this event. So this is why James is preaching patience. This is why James is saying to them that there is nothing they can do to change the timescales so they may as well wait patiently.

I suppose for us it is slightly different. Although we hear during Advent that Jesus will come again, after 2,000 years of waiting we’re patient. We’ve got used to waiting. Or maybe we’ve moved on from waiting patiently and think Jesus’ return will never happen. Either way we hear the promise he will come again and we wait. So we may as well wait patiently.

However, sometimes we have to be impatient. Sometimes to be patient can be an excuse to do nothing or to sit back.

During my visit to America in the summer I learned a great deal about the civil rights protests of the 1950s and 1960s. And one thing that became clear to me was that the protests were sparked in large part by black people, and those who were sympathetic to their plight, running out of patience. For years they had been promised reforms but it had never happened. Finally their patience ran out and many of them decided to do something about it via civil disobedience.

In his great “I have a dream speech” Dr Martin Luther King said:

We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of Now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood. Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God's children.

Patience in the face of unjust circumstances that can be changed is not a virtue. Justice delayed is justice denied.

Being patient with injustice, hoping in other words that things will eventually change but not seeking to bring about that change, such patience is wrong. It is unvirtuous.

So yes James is right that in some things, which we cannot influence, we have to be patient:

7 Be patient, then, brothers and sisters, until the Lord’s coming.

8 You too, be patient and stand firm, because the Lord’s coming is near.

But we should not be patient when we see wrongs happening now. We should not be patient with the fact that, according to Shelter, this Christmas 80,000 children in this country will be homeless. We should not be patient with MPs who could receive an 11% pay rise.

Be patient in waiting for God’s Kingdom to come and our Saviour to return in glory. But be impatient with the in justice of this world until he comes.

A pleasant surprise at Aldi

For the last couple of years Stratton Methodist Church in Swindon has been running a project called "Community Kitchen". On the second Saturday of the month, we open the church up and offer the homeless and lonely somewhere to come for a meal and some companionship. We also are able to provide guests with packs containing toiletries and we also have some clothing available.

Last month we had a record number of guests and many of them asked if we had any shoes they could have. We didn't have any shoes but I remembered that the local Aldi supermarket had some in stock. So I went round to Aldi and bought a few pairs of trainer style walking shoes. These proved popular with the guests and we promised we'd get some more in for next time.

I do quite a lot of our shopping in Aldi as it is very convenient for where we live and very good value. So every time I've been in since last Community Kitchen I've looked to see if they had any shoes in stock. Until today I've been out of luck but this morning I saw they had just had a delivery of "Winter boots" - walking boots. I bought five pairs as the church treasurer had said to me if I saw any shoes get them.

The chap on the till looked at me slightly quizzically for having five pairs of boots.So I explained to him that I was buying them for the homeless project at Stratton Methodist Church.

I was just packing my trolley, when I felt a tap on my shoulder. I turned round to see a lady with a £10 note in her hand.

"I couldn't help but hear what you said about the shoes. So please can you take this money for the project."

I could have hugged her. All I know is that as I thanked her for her kindness I felt tears in my eyes.

It has apparently become quite trendy for the middle classes to shop at Aldi and Lidl for bargains. (A recent newspaper feature in The Daily Telegraph summed it up "How Aldi won the class war - and became the fastest-growing supermarket in Britain. How has the German giant conquered Middle England? ") So was the giver of the tenner some Yummy Mummy slumming it to buy the 79p coconut milk? I don't think so. I think the giver was an "ordinary" person who just wanted to do something for someone else in the lead up to Christmas. £10 to her may have been quite a lot of money relatively speaking. But her generous gift will mean a lot to someone leaving Community Kitchen next week with some new boots.

Whoever she was, that lady's spontaneous act of generosity touched my heart. Thank you whoever you are.

Breaking through the silence to listen for the inner being

On Saturday morning (30th November) the news reports were dominated by one news story – that late on Friday evening a police helicopter had crashed late into a crowded city centre pub in Glasgow Scotland.

The reports on the radio were filled with eye witness accounts of the helicopter crashing. But also stories of how people in the pub had helped one another to escape. And how in fact some people had purposely gone to the site of the crash to help out.

Come Sunday morning the news reports told of the work carried out by the emergency services. How they had arrived very quickly on the scene and how they had set about rescuing people who were trapped and treating the injured.

But we learned too that 8 people were known to have been killed (now 9 at the time of writing.) And these include the 2 police officers (PCs Kirsty Nelis and Tony Collins) and the civilian pilot (David Trail) aboard the helicopter.

On Sunday morning I heard an interview with the Reverend Gordon Armstrong, Church of Scotland chaplain to the Fire and Rescue service. He had arrived on the scene about half an hour after the crash. And spent many hours offering comfort and support. He shared with the interviewer (BBC’s Paddy O’Connell) how members of the emergency services need to be able to share what they have experienced.

Mr. Armstrong described how shortly after he arrived a silence descended on the area. In fact a calm, as the emergency services got about their task. Mr. Armstrong said:

“It was as if all there knew where their thoughts were and our thoughts were in the same place”

Paddy O’Connell then asked Mr. Armstrong

“In your job you need to break through the silence”

“Well we do. That’s where we as chaplains come in. We step in and try and break the silence. Sometimes it is met with silence. The thought is ‘It could have been me or someone I know.’ A lot of what we do is listening. Listening for the glimpses of the inner being in all of us.”

I thought Gordon Armstrong expressed the role of a chaplain so well. And those of us involved in chaplaincy will be able to relate exactly to what he said there. I am fortunate in not having been on duty when police officers have had to deal with anything traumatic. Nevertheless, much of my role is about listening and in the listening trying to hear “the glimpses of the inner being”. To distinguish between what is general chit chat or moaning and something more important underlying.

In the conclusion of the interview, Paddy O’Connell commented that Gordon Armstrong was about to set off for morning service on the first Sunday of Advent. “How will you marshal your feelings?”

Gordon Armstrong replied that one of the Advent readings was Matthew 24 speaking about the “Day and hour being unseen.” In other words none of us know what the future holds. The events at the Clutha Vaults bar in Glasgow certainly tie in to that.

I am pleased that the Rev Armstrong’s views have been sought at this time. It is important for serving members of the emergency services and members of the public to learn of the roles of chaplains. Though of course I wish it hadn’t taken a tragedy like this in order for the media to show some interest in chaplains.

My thoughts and prayers of course go out to those who have been injured and to the families and friends of those who were killed. But as a fellow chaplain I pray for Gordon Armstrong and other chaplains and of course for the members of the emergency services having to deal with this tragedy.