Mark 3:25

The demolishers arrived on our church premises today: the first signs of work to prepare the way for the tram.

They cut down a tree (to stop birds nesting) and fenced off the site of the house and garden abutting our drive, once known as Wesley Avenue.

There are minor parking restrictions in the drive, but eventually the small additional  public car park here should encourage the Sunday congregation!

It will be business as usual in church, of course.  We are NOT due for demolition!

Those of us who are preachers and organizers of church services and fellowship groups need to realise that only half of “Christians” had actually attended services and only 40% had opened their bibles in a year. Three-quarters did not believe completely in the power of prayer, and only 32% believed that Jesus was physically resurrected.

In the realm of public policy, 74% agree that religion should not have any special influence, and almost as many (69%) say that Christianity had little or no influence in their own choice of marriage partner.

Asked to select which one statement best describes what being a Christian means to them personally, 40% chose ‘I try to be a good person’ and around a quarter (26%) chose ‘It’s how I was brought up’. Around one in six (16%) selected the statement ‘I have accepted Jesus as my Lord and Saviour’ and less than one in ten (7%) chose ‘I believe in the teachings of Jesus’.

Would Chilwell Road members see themselves reflected in these descriptions of Christians? If not, is it because Methodists are out of line with the majority of self-identifying Christians, or simply further along the path of discipleship?

What we can’t do is to limit the use of the label “Christian” to people with particular beliefs or practices.  I wonder if we could also say the same about “Methodists”?

Later in the same programme, one of the group is interviewed about what it meant to have to move house because her home is to be demolished to make way for the tram, and another phoned in with her views (as a local councillor) on the issue of public prayers at Council meetings.

So if Eric Pickles does not succeed in his hasty promise to change the “banning” law, what will local councils miss?  First will be the “inspiration from the almighty” channelled by the local chaplain at the start of each meeting of full council.  Second will be the reminder that while an errant council may escape both an unwelcome appearance in Private Eye’s Rotten Boroughs column and the electors’ booting out them out at the next election, a higher authority with an even longer term viewpoint is keeping his/her eye on proceedings.

I note that our local Borough Council in Broxtowe does indeed start its meetings with prayers. However, both the agenda and the minutes clearly demonstrate that the prayers are a mere preliminary to the main itemised business and therefore exempt from the strictures of the current law nor open for discussion in Matters Arising next time!

Some will rejoice with them over their new-found fortune, especially as the winners might have been described as the deserving poor (and not bankers, professional footballers or ex-convicts).  This week’s winner, Matthew Topham, has family connections with Chilwell Road and recently helped decorate our premises.  Some will applaud the winners’ generous determination to gift some of the proceeds to family and friends.  Some may express perhaps just a small hint of envy, wishing they had shared the same blessing from heaven.

But others will regret the glorification of a system that spreads wealth so unfairly in rewarding gamblers rather than wealth-generators or service-providers. They will be uneasy at the prominence given to the disproportionate rewards offered by an industry that exploits the gullible and encourages addictive behaviour.

It is true that our Methodist Church has softened its traditional abhorrence of gambling in all its forms and now not only permits raffles in our church halls but also encourages church council to apply for grants for community development projects to the Lottery Board. It’s general approach to the National Lottery, as with other forms of gambling, is “to press for safeguards to protect people from harm as a result of gambling. Some gambling activities are particularly harmful, and certain groups of people are particularly vulnerable to this harm”.

I am sure we would welcome any opportunity to offer a free home to the local Gamblers Anonymous meeting! Or should we send a begging letter to Matthew?

The answer: none of the above. Rather, its main purpose is to remind us of the specific Methodist “callings” that have brought us membership within the church, the body of Christ. The Catholic Church in England and Wales is now following suit, printing their similar callings on similar credit-card-sized tickets. One duty in particular caught my eye: Catholics are “to use their intellectual, emotional and spiritual gifts wisely”.

We Methodists don’t check up on each other’s performance, but at the end of the day ….

has a new website:  congratulations!

Not that the report was untrue, nor that it had been leaked. No, it was described dismissively (in the slightly garbled words of the King James Version) as “old wine in an even older bottle”.

The only Christmas book gift that I have had time to open has been David Crystal’s “Begat”. He has explored the use and misuse of aphorisms derived from the particular phraseology of the KJV (and Tyndale before that): “new wine into old bottles” comes, of course, directly from Matthew 9:17. Crystal points out that the meaning of that phrase is both better appreciated when “wineskin” is substituted for “bottle” and also indifferent to the order of the words “new” and “old”.

Only Christian fundamentalists would disagree with such laxity of interpretation. It is curious that Muslim fundamentalists make use of exactly the same trick.

But what am I doing, writing about wine and bottles after my previous post?

Today, a coalition of national Churches and charities has written to the Prime Minister asking him to introduce a minimum unit price on all alcohol sold in Britain when the Government’s alcohol strategy is announced later this month. David Cameron has indicated that he may be willing to introduce a minimum price of 40 – 50 pence per unit on alcohol, but the group is worried that these plans may be dropped under pressure from the drinks industry.

The group is also encouraging individuals to write to their MPs, highlighting the problems caused by cheap alcohol in their local area and asking them to support per unit minimum pricing. A range of resources for the ‘Measure for Measure’ campaign are available online here.

A YouGov survey conducted in December last year revealed that 61% of UK adults believe that excessive drinking is a problem (from minor to major) in their neighbourhood. The survey commissioned by the Methodist Church, United Reformed Church and Baptist Union of Great Britain asked people to judge the effects of alcohol on the area within walking distance from their home, or where they use local facilities.

We already have Street Angels on the streets of Beeston.  ”Measure for measure” is a wider political campaign aimed at the prevention of alcohol abuse, and deserves the support of churches like ours.

The co-ordinating committee working towards getting the five churches in Beeston and Chilwell together have determined that we should do nothing separately that we can do together. We have an online diary to help eliminate clashes of events.

Hope NG9 is developing and has come from the desire to care for those in need which has arisen from the current economic climate. Food is distributed from the Hope Cafe and clients are helped in different ways.

The Benevolent Society has helped the needy in Beeston and Chilwell for over 150 years. Their main source of income is from the Beeston Methodist Carol Choir singing around the streets of Beeston at Christmas.

Submitted by a Guest blogger at The Wesley Guild meeting 24 January.