Virtual Methodist

I post this, in part, by way of a thank you to my mother in law, 20 years down the line.  It's an adaptation of something I wrote for the Methodist Newsletter for December and shared with our own congregation last Sunday as part of our Home Missions Service, but anyone who has been listening to me over the past 20 years or following this blog in more recent years, will have heard/seen bits of it before. I make no apology for that... It is too important to say once, and I will say it again... Twenty years ago, when I was a mere ministerial student helping out at Sydenham Methodist, my mother in law gave me an early Christmas present that not only helped me in an emergency, but has also helped shape my ministry from that day. She had arrived on the Friday before Christmas, but early the following Sunday morning I got a phone call  saying that Brian Fletcher, the minister at the time, had taken ill and asking me to speak at the two services that day… Since I was only a st...

I posted a link to a Guardian post including this video in last week's Saturday Supplement , but it is worth posting in its own right. On the same day I also retweeted a friend's post about news of a new foodbank opening in Dennistoun, Scotland a week or so ago saying "With each new foodbank I don't know whether to cheer or weep." That is not just because of the appalling need/generous response dichotomy, but also because of the refusal of some establishing foodbanks to engage their brains as well as their hearts. I was at an event on Thursday night past where our President, Heather Morris said that she longed for a day when Christians do not throw up their hands and say "I'm not a theologian". As Christians we need to think theologically - bring "God words" to bear on the world in which we find ourselves. But we also have to think politically - not necessarily party politically (though at times that is necessary, and perhaps the...

This summer we spent our holiday in London, where I realised, yet again, how heavily our high streets are dominated by franchises... especially food and drink ones. I think that within central London, apart from in the parks, it must be impossible to go more than 100 yards without a Mega-Bucks, Cafe Nero and/or Pret hoving into view... and often you can see one Starbucks from the doorway of another... As such it's a bit like churches in Belfast... Not only are there more pew places in Belfast than could conceivably be filled by its citizens, even if there was wholesale revival and an obesity epidemic that resulted in mega-sized gluteus maximi... but they are often arranged in clumps... And not just the Christ-shaming juxtaposition of different denominational mausoleums next to each other, announcing to the wider world that these Christians really don't love one another... but the insane proximity of buildings belonging to the same denomination. Sometimes they are due ...

As I wrote in my post on Burns night, last week I was away with a group of ministers and Christian community workers on a residential consultation concerning the nature of working in loyalist communities, such as our own in Ballybeen. The quality of the inputs was tremendous. Hats off to Derek Poole and the folks at the LINC Resource Centre for pulling it together, and to the various contributers. There was enough material to keep me blogging for months... But one of the themes that we kept coming back to was the tendency within loyalist communities, and the pressure in community work in general, to focus on the negatives. A while back there was collective rejoicing in our own community programme, Dundonald Family and Community Initiative... Why? Because one of the electoral wards that we serve had just broken through on the Noble Indices into the list of the 10% most deprived communities in Northern Ireland. Why the rejoicing? Because such a statistic potentially unlocked charitable a...

I wrote this last year, and I noted on the original file that it was influenced by someone called Janet Lees who writes a lot of liturgical resources, but one year on I haven't a clue how much, or little is her work or mine... Anyway, I gladly dedicate it to her, and to the work of those engaged in Christian community development work, especially the inspiring urban transformation being proposed by the Skainos Project in inner east Belfast. There’s a voice crying in the wilderness In the inner city wastelands And run-down sixties housing estates And the voice says “Get ready for God.” “Make the paths straight Repair the potholes and re-lay the pavements. Level the empty tower blocks and use the rubble as the foundation for God’s new motorway straight into the heart of the city, into the heart of the problem, into your heart and mine. Bend and break the proud and the powerful Raise up those who are bent over and weighed down So that they and everyone can recognise God’s handiwork. P...

Yesterday I was back on my old stomping ground of the Springfield Road for an event at Forthspring, where they hosted the President of Burundi, Mr Pierre Nkurunziza. The purpose was, as I have stated previously, to explore the relationship between dealing with community hostility and social disadvantage. For those who don't know, Burundi is a tiny republic in Central Africa, which has experienced recurring ethnic tensions, largely between the traditionally dominant Tutsi's (who controlled the army) and the majority Hutu. Since the assassination of a former Hutu president, Burundi has experienced unrest which has resulted in at least 300,000 deaths, putting our little local difficulties in perspective. Pierre Nkurunziza was at one time a rebel Hutu leader, though in interviews he emphasises that he was forced into this when the army came to kill him in his University post in the first throws of the unrest (His father had been killed in earlier conflicts in the 1970s). As the cul...

Just come across something that has REALLY got my goat... Currently I minister in Ballybeen, the second largest housing scheme in Northern Ireland, with all of the attendant problems that 1960s housing schemes have anywhere in the western world, and a few extra that are due to the nature of our little local difficulties over the past 40 years. It has a high level of teen parents, single parents and blended families; large numbers of senior citizens; low educational attainment; a large level of debt problems; high levels of unemployment (all local manufacturing has now been discontinued). Into the middle of this a local developer is planning to parachute a prestige, gated apartment complex called Skye Buildings . No mention of Ballybeen in any of the publicity... but its OK... even if those buying do realise where it is, the gates should reassure them that the peasants will be kept safely at a distance. This is gentrification at it's worst. No sense of integration within the communi...