From the Minister’s Study

How little becomes abundant
It is my prayer and plan to encourage each one of us to adopt for both our personal and cooperate lives Paul’s motto as expressed in his letter to the Philippians: "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me" (Phil 4:13), or what one preacher described as "The ten words to change your life". It is my belief that, the gospel in a nutshell is how God through Christ makes plenty out of very little, using what I describe as the ATC formula (Availability, Trust in God and Commitment). We see this illustrated through the scriptures and in Church history. Our best examples in scripture is the story of Elijah and the widow of Zarephath (1 Ki 17) where by making available her last handful of flour and trusting and committing her future to the Lord received abundant provision for the rest of the famine. In the New Testament, the Samaritan woman, a social outcast with very little social life to share, by making herself available and taking the risk of talking yet to another male trusting and committing herself to what the Messiah had to say, her whole life was turned around and provided new life for many people in the City of Samaria (John 4:39), in fact through this woman, Jesus stayed in Samaria for 2 days "and they were saying to the woman, "it is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves and know that this One is indeed the Saviour of the world"! A little questionable life added ATC formula and provided abundant life to many.

What about the boy with little lunchbox and the feeding of the five thousand in John 6? "Andrew said to him "there is a lad here who has five barley loaves and two fish, but what are these for so many people"? Valid question, but added ATC formula five thousand were fed and I am sure the lad must have rejoiced in refilling his lunchbox with the 12 basketful of left over. Or perhaps they asked him to the left over home!

In Church history, numerous example could be cited, but why not think of the Wesley brothers in Oxford and the birth of the Methodist movement! I find the best illustration, of this message, in the following story: The Piano Lesson ...

Wishing to encourage her young son’s progress on the piano, a mother took her small son to a Paderewski concert. After they were seated, the mother spotted a friend in the audience and walked down the aisle to greet her. Seizing the opportunity to explore the wonders of the concert hall, the little boy rose and eventually explored his way through a door marked "No Admittance". When the house lights dimmed and the concert was about to begin, the mother returned to her seat and discovered that her son was missing. Suddenly, the curtains parted and spotlights focused on the impressive Steinway on stage. In horror, the mother saw her son sitting at the keyboard, innocently picking out "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star".

At that moment the great piano master made his entrance, quickly moved to the piano, and whispered in the boy’s ear, "Don’t quit. Keep playing". Then leaning over, Paderewski reached down with his left hand and began filling in a bass part. Soon his right arm reached around to the other side of the child and he added a running obbligato.

Together, the old master and the young novice transformed a frightening situation into a wonderfully creative experience. The audience was mesmerized. That’s the way it is with God. What we can accomplish on our own is hardly noteworthy. We try our best, but the results aren’t exactly graceful flowing music. But with the hand of the Master, our life's work truly can accomplish wonders. May we hear the voice of the Master, whispering in our ears, "Don’t quit: keep playing". May we feel his loving arms around us, fully assured that His strong hands are playing the concerto of our lives constantly remembering, God doesn’t call the equipped, He equips the called. And He'll always be there to love and guide us on to great things. As we look forward towards advent, may we do so with the positive affirmation that we can do all things through Christ who strengthens us and be available, trust and commit our little lives to God for him to accomplish plenty through us.
Daniel Mwailu

If you’ve got the faith, God has got the power to bless your life, hour after hour: keep the faith, keep the desire, keep reaching up until you reach . . . the sky!

Remember that all things are possible’ If you can just believe! Beliefs are what make the difference between a lifetime of joyous contribution and one of misery and devastation. Celebrate Life.

What is worship?
The word ‘worship’ occurs more than a hundred times in the Bible, most of which are in the Old Testament. In each and every case the word is not described. For example, "When the disciples saw the risen Lord Jesus, they worshipped him" (Matthew 28:17). So what did they do?

But this is not sloppy usage; rather, the concept of worship was so common that the authors of the Bible did not waste ink describing what everyone knew. Similarly, none of the four evangelists describe what crucifixion entails - they didn’t have to because, again, everyone knew.

The worship of Mary, Martha and the disciples (above) was of the same type as the worship Jesus himself would have performed when, as a young man, he went to the Temple or synagogue. So when we want to know what ‘worship’ is, it is best to look at Old Testament models of behaviour.

While synagogues are not mentioned in the Old Testament. Contemporary accounts of a Jewish ‘service’ suggest that it started with the first commandment, "Hear, O Israel, the Lord your God is one: love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your mind, all your soul and all your strength" (Deut. 6:5), followed by the amidah—a succession of 18 blessings. Only then came a Bible reading, first from the Law of Moses and then from the prophets. If a rabbi was on hand, the service culminated with a short talk as a form of sermon. There was no liturgy as such, although the lengthy amidah had a set form. Maybe a blessing or Psalm ended the service, which lasted much of a morning. Jews stood for such worship: to sit implied authority over God, which was disrespectful.

So the style of a Jewish synagogue ‘service’ is our first strand, answering the question, ‘what is worship?: our lips and bodies give praise to God.

Next strand of what is worship entails feelings. A glance at the St John’s Revelation shows a powerful image of worship in Heaven (e.g. see Rev 7:7–17). The worshippers are enthralled with God. The singer John Denver’s most famous work, Annie’s Song describes how his love ‘fills up my senses, like a mighty river’. This feeling that the senses are saturated explains the ‘worship’ of a fan revelling before the pop star of his dreams. Similarly, the people in Rev. 7 are so overwhelmed by God that they can think of nothing else. In fact, we get the impression that their minds are so taken by the sights and sounds of God that their actions are involuntary. Many of our New Testament images of worship also have this idea of it being an involuntary response to God.

But most Jewish worship - for example in a Synagogue - was more deliberate, and involved bringing to mind the greatness of God. As a modern example, the new Methodist Worship Book suggests that when blessing the collection, a suitable form of words is, ‘Yours, Lord is the greatness, the power, the glory, the splendour and the majesty ...’ If spoken to a human, such words would be flattery; but to God they simply reflect the truth of his supreme nature. We see how the second strand of what worship entails is to give to God a suitable response for His glory and majesty.

And the third, Christian, strand to worship involves the Holy Spirit. Scripture defines a Christian as someone ‘filled with the Spirit’ (Rom 8:9). God the Holy Spirit within us helps us to know God the Father: Christians no longer just know about God, but actually know Him as an loving but infinite God. The Spirit lets us know what loving the God of love means in practice, and it’s the Spirit who empowers us to love Him accordingly.

This idea of worship being a loving response to the God of love is used by the Methodist Church in its catechism: article 46 says, ‘To worship is joyfully to proclaim, in the power of the Holy Spirit, the wonderful acts of God, and to celebrate His glorious nature. We worship God not just in formal or informal acts of worship, but also with out lives - by serving him in serving other people’. This is the third strand to worship.

So, as Christians, we must give God the praises of our lips and bodies: loving God with all our strength. Secondly, we bring to mind the greatness of God and are moved to action - loving God with our minds. And thirdly, as Christians, we ask the Holy Spirit to show us how to respond with love to the God of love - worship with the heart. In fact, the three strands of worship correspond to the shema of Deut. 6:5.

But as worship involves the Spirit, our best preparation before a service is prayer: in effect, we should bring our worship with us, rather than going to Church to find it. In effect, our title question becomes: do we worship?

Hollowe’en
Hallowe’en occurs in a few day’s time – the time for trick or treat. But what is the trick, and what is the treat?

The trick is the idea that Hallowe’en is all a bit of ‘harmless fun’. "After all", some people will say, "Who believes in the powers of darkness anyway?" "Who seriously believes in any sort of a spiritual warfare, nowadays?" "Isn’t it possible to take things just a little too seriously? . . ." and so the devil sows in our minds the lies which, if we accept them, will lead us away from God, and into a state of unbelief.

But an unbelieving person is paralysed when it comes to following Jesus because commitment is nowhere to be found. Jesus shows us that when we confront the devil (as he did in the wilderness, see Matthew 4:1–11) one of our best weapons is Scripture. So if the devil can trick us into not believing the word of God, then he has as good as won the battle for our lives.

The treat, however, is God’s Spirit in us: God’s presence is the result of believing God’s word, holding firm to the truth, and denying any attention to our enemy the devil. It is in believing that we are enabled to come to the cross of Jesus for forgiveness; it is this believing that enables us to have a Father–child relationship with the Living God; and it is through believing that we are able to live and move by the power of the Holy Spirit.

But having the Holy Spirit inside of us requires a response. As James 2:26 says, ‘As the body without the Spirit is dead, so also faith without actions is dead’.

Do we pray? Do we have fellowship? Are we committed to following Jesus with everything we have and are? In short, have we fallen for the trick, or do we claim the treat? Lynne Priestley

Oberammergau 2000
On 6 September 2000, my daughter-in-law Patsy and I set off on a holiday to Austria and a visit Oberammergau for the Passion Play. We stayed in a beautiful Tyrolean village, surrounded by snow-capped mountains. The following Saturday, 9 September, we went to Oberammergau to see the Passion Play. Crowds flock to this small village every ten years to see the play and the theatre seats 4,700 people.

Only people born in Oberammergau, or who have made the village their permanent home for at least 20 years are eligible to take part in the play. The children, even babies, have their part to play. There are no wigs or false beards or make-up: the actors must let their hair and beards grow unchecked and unstyled for a year before the Passion Play is due to open. This takes place every ten years in memory of an event in 1633. The bubonic plague was sweeping through Europe. The villagers of Oberammergau tried to stop the plague entering the village, but were unsuccessful and many people died. The people gathered together and prayed and made a vow, that if God spared the village they would perform a Passion Play. Not another person died of the plague in Oberammergau.

The Passion Play opens with Jesus travelling into Jerusalem on a donkey, with his twelve disciples, and a crowd singing ‘Hosanna’. The crowd portrays a real crowd of the time, including children waving palm leaves, and mothers with young children in their arms.

Jesus pushes His way through the crowd and finally reaches the Temple. He pushes away the money-changers and again it is how you would imagine it at the time, with real doves flying away and the sheep and goats, and the children picking up money from the floor. Jesus preaches in the Temple and the crowd listens and is drawn to Him, but the priests and Pharisees are envious and afraid of losing their power over the people. The Pharisees and priests are dressed in very colourful and elaborate clothing to show how rich they were, compared to the ordinary people.

At the Last Supper, the disciples sit round a long wooden table, and Jesus starts to wash their feet, becoming a servant: you may have read this often in the Bible, but to see Jesus washing Judas’ feet, knowing he is going to betray Him, is very moving.

Judas goes off to betray Jesus, then realises what he has done and hangs himself. Everything looks real, and it actually looks as if Judas has hanged himself: the sense of reality is quite amazing.

Jesus goes to the Mount of Olives, and you can feel His anguish at the suffering He will have to face, and even though He pleads with His Father to spare Him, He still says, "Not my will, but Yours be done". Jesus loves us enough to go through the pain and agony He knew He was to face so that we could have a relationship with God as our Heavenly Father, and have eternal life. It was the only way. Jesus knew this: in John 14:6, He said: "I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me".

Jesus is arrested and brought before Caiaphas, the high priest, Pontius Pilate, and Herod, and once again back to Pontius Pilate, who orders Jesus to be flogged. Actually seeing Jesus being beaten and whipped so brutally that His blood-stained body collapses, and to watch a crown of thorns put on His head, is indescribable.

Jesus the Son of God, is allowing this to happen to Himself, and God is allowing it to happen to His Son: it gives you a deeper insight into the depth of God’s love for you and me.

Pontius Pilate condemns Jesus to death. Although Jesus has already undergone the cruellest torture, he must now carry his own cross up a steep hill outside the city. The agony and pain on Jesus’ face as He carries the cross and stumbles with the weight, is so real you feel part of the crowd, you feel the hostility of the crowd and the soldiers and you feel the depth of pain felt by the mother of Jesus and His friends, you hear the banging of the nails and you se the three crosses lifted into the air and fastened to the ground. Blood flowing from the wounds of Jesus.

"Jesus the Son of God is crucified".

I cannot put into words how I really felt, tears in my eyes, goose-pimples, sadness. When the clap of thunder came and Jesus died, it sounded like the loud groan of God’s heart-felt pain. How they lifted Jesus down off the cross and how the mother of Jesus and women friends who were close to Him, so lovingly and tenderly wrapped Jesus up and carried Him away to the tomb: it was so very moving.

But that is not the end of the story: three days later, Jesus rose from the dead. "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whosoever believes in Him should not perish, but have eternal life" (Jn 3:16).
Beryl Hunter

How does Scripture ‘speak’ ?
When I speak to God and He speaks to me, it is not in the language of this world, but in a spiritual language without words which seems to come quite naturally. Before I utter a word or move my lips, the meaning is out; and this is the same language in which truth was communicated to the authors of the Scriptures. Afterwards, they tried to find words to express what had been revealed to them. But often they may have failed to get just the right word, but the meaning they were trying to express is inspired. They must have felt acutely this difficulty in expressing the full meaning of what often cannot be really put into words; and after they had written it down, having done their best, they must have thought to themselves, ‘After all, something is better than nothing, and we must give our message’.

So how do we learn what the Scriptures really mean? When I was staying in North India in the house of a friend, I was reading a religious book in which there were some things I did not understand. My host—an extremely intelligent man—explained my difficulties, and his explanation to me sounded quite satisfactory.

But later on, however, I met the author of the book, who explained to me the real meaning, which was quite different. Just so, learned men very often misinterpret the Scriptures. If we want to know the real meaning, we must go to The Author, that is to say, we must live with the Holy Spirit.
Sadhu Sundar Singh

Taken from a Church Magazine
Don’t let worry kill you: let the Church help

Did You Know?
Read the story of Jesus raising Lazarus to life in John chapter 11

There was a belief amongst the Rabbinical community of Jesus’ day that a person’s spirit hovers over the body for three days following death. Only on the fourth day, when the body is unmistakably dead, does the spirit depart . . . and Scripture relates how Jesus waited four days before journeying toward Lazarus’ home in Bethany. Jesus here was raising the spiritual stakes, in a similar manner to when Elijah held a ‘prayer competition’ with the priests of Baal (see 1 Kings 18:16 ff). Jesus showed that the greater the challenge, the greater was the miracle. The net result was a strengthening of the disciples’ faith, and greater glory being given to God.

And we have proof that something tremendous happened in Bethany because, to this day, the town is called ‘Azariyeh’ in Yiddish - a name that derives from Jesus’ friend Lazarus.

November book review

Light Through Prison Bars: Noel Proctor - The Inside Story of the Strangeways Riot, Jenny Cooke, Kingsway, 1995
This is the second book in a two-part biography of the Rev. Noel Proctor. Many of you will remember Noel as the singer/ preacher in Littleborough Square at Pentecost 2000: a man who combines a terrific sense of humour with a great faith in God and in human nature.

The book looks back to his youth in Belfast, to his work as a prison chaplain, particularly at the time of the Strangeways riots, and his family life with his wife Norma, who died of cancer in 1991.

This is a book which will make you smile and make you cry. I hope that it will also make you contemplate the life of a man serving God and his fellow men with total commitment and loyalty. He is a man who continues to trust God in all things.

This is a book everyone should read. You will find it in the Church Library.
Derek Ackroyd 

Thank You
You might remember the letters we wrote last month to the Government of Yemen about a young man who had been imprisoned and tortured for becoming a Christian? (His case was brought to our attention by the Methodist Recorder.)

Praise the Lord! He has been released and is now safe, starting a new life in New Zealand. God has heard our prayers. Thank you to everyone who sent a letter.
Jo Monk: Foreign Missions Secretary

Vision 2025
Christians in Britain today have the privilege of being able to reach for at least a dozen different English translations of the Bible, and have countless study aids and commentaries at their fingertips. Imagine then, what it must be like for a Christian in Papua New Guinea (PNG), who longs to read God's word in the language of his heart, and yet, if he can read at all, may have no access to any scriptures in his own language. Wycliffe Bible Translators (WBT) believes that it is part of God's commission to bring the scriptures to people such as this, and that He has set the following ambitious goal for us, known as ‘Vision 2025’.

This seems like a huge task, especially when in PNG alone, there are reckoned to be over 850 distinct languages! But it is a vision that with God's help, and through the training of and partnership with national linguistic specialists, WBT believes to be possible.

It is this vision that has drawn us as a couple to work with WBT. We completed our training in linguistics in 1999, and are currently planning to go with our two children to PNG in February 2001. We believe that God has called us into literacy work, and in particular to work on what is known as the STEP course (Supervisor's Tokples Education Programme). This project brings Papua New Guinians from areas where translation work is already in progress to the WBT centre in PNG, in order to train them as literacy programme co-ordinators. It’s a very practical course and enables them to run sustainable ‘mother tongue’ literacy programmes in their own language. Through these co-ordinators, thousands of people will not only gain the educational advantage of becoming literate in their own language, but will also gain access to the scriptures in their mother tongue.

Partnership in WBT goes in two directions. Obviously it involves working alongside national colleagues, but WBT members also need partners back at home – churches and individuals who have a vision for this kind of work, and who are able to support WBT missionaries through prayer and finance. As new members of WBT we are looking for such partners, and would welcome any opportunities to go and speak to interested groups in the coming few months. If this has whetted your appetite to know more, we would be delighted to speak with you!

Taken from a Church Magazine:
At the evening service tonight, the sermon topic will be "What is hell?" Come early, and listen to the choir practise

Which craftsman in the Bible ... ?
1. Who is the best boat-builder?

2. Was a carpenter?

3. Were fishermen?

4. Used to be a tentmaker?

5. Had a friend who was a baker?

Which craftsman in the Bible ... ? Answers
1. Noah built the biggest boat mentioned in the Bible (see Genesis 6–9)

2. Before his three-year ministry started, Jesus was a carpenter (see Matthew 13:54 and Mark 6:2–4)

3. Simon Peter, Andrew, James and John were all fishermen (see Matthew 4:18–22)

4. Most rabbis were self-supporting, so St Paul was a Tentmaker before his conversion (see Acts 18:2–4)

5. When Joseph was in prison, he made friends with a baker (see Genesis 40:1).

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