Action Child

I have recently become involved with a Christian charity/organisation called EAB (Evangelical Action Brazil). They work in the North East of Brasil, based in the town of Patos. Their main activities, as stated in their website is the following:

As well as a full range of activities traditionally regarded as ‘spiritual’ (church planting, evangelism, etc), EAB’s integrated approach means it is active across a vast range of social and community projects. Whilst EAB will always respond to urgent need (for example, relief work during epidemics) its ongoing work is geared to long-term, selfsustaining solutions, preferring projects such as job creation schemes or reinforcement education which give some of the poor of Northeastern Brazil a genuine perception of God’s love, the opportunity to sustain a higher quality of life, and retain personal dignity.

One of their projects, and the one I have just bcome part of, is called Action Child. There are many children in the North East of Brazil whose parents cannot afford for their children to attend school, to have medical and dental care and sometimes they cannot even afford to feed them enough.

Action Child is a project whereby schools are set up in the various towns around the Northeast. Many of the children who attend the schools are then sponsored by people, mainly from the UK, by paying £15 a month. What this money allows is for every school to have adequately trained, paid and legally registered staff.
Each child has a nourishing meal every day.
Back-up medical and dental care is provided when needed.
The children receive spiritual guidance in a loving Christian environment.
Poor families can benefit from social worker support.

They are an amazing organisation and have recently had a massive increase in the number of children sponsored, which is great! If I've got my fact straight, they have increased from about 53 sponsored children to about 150 in about 18 months. They now have 20+ schools open in various places across the region. The best thing about this organisation is that 100% of the money donated/sponsored goes to the project!

Sponsors are encouraged to write to the child they are sponsoring and the children are asked to write every 6 months, and will sometimes write more often. The great thing about this project being fairly small, at least when compared to Compassion International, is that sponsors are able to sends gifts over to their child, both in the form of money or actual physical presents. This enables sponsors to have a much more personal relationship with the child they are sponsoring, even if they never get to meet them.

My role now is to translate the letters and emails which are sent from the UK over to Brasil, as this will hoepfully free up the office staff over in Brasil to get on with the other projects run by EAB.

Anyway, look into the organisation, they do amazing work, and if nothing else, please pray that their work continue for many years!

Mysterious Ways...

God definitely moves in mysterious ways...

Take, for example, the ministry of one "Dave The Horn Guy". (www.davethehornguy.com)

He is an accomplished songwriter, and worship music director at a large chugrch in California until he felt God call him to do something radically different. He felt called to unleash the creativity God had given him into a brand new venture.

Here's what his website says about him:

Enns holds multiple music degrees. At 31, his full time musical efforts have found him to be a Billboard recognized songwriter, a studio musician, an orchestrater of over 200 songs, a regular giggin’ trombone/piano player, singer, and a founder/producer of an award-winning urban acappella group. He’s combined these experiences with 25 chromatically tuned bulb-horns, custom made from a top-of-the-line German horn maker to create “Dave the Horn Guy"

He now lives in Colorado and travels America performing at youth events, baseball games, big events and even the Jay Leno show!

Check out these videos:

I too blame the sun...

I got sunburnt on saturday at the police family day.

I then topped it up on sunday at the barbecue...

I blame the sun.

Becky blames me... Something about not enough sun cream...

God and Poker...

I am often amazed at the things God does, the places He turns up and the situations He changes.

I was in Luton this bank holiday weekend. I decided it was high time I spent some time with my cousin and my childhood friends, so I set off on the coach, leaving Becky to look after the kids for a few days (I did have her blessing, so no need to worry!).

Anyhow, the plan was to go see the carnival on bank holiday monday, but, due to heavy rain and the fact that the main road the procession was meant to walk down was flooded, it was cancelled.

I spent some of the afternoon with my Uncle and Aunt instead and then set off to Jude Smith's house for a friendly game of poker. (There was no cash on the table, only plastic chips! Hmm, maybe next time we could play for real chips, of the potato variety... although they may get a bit cold...)

Anyhow, after a bit of a chat and a rerun of a classic Gladiators Final (Eunice won!) we set up the table for the game. Well, it was more of a wooden trunk thing in the middle of the room, but it was exactly the right size!

No game of poker is complete without whiskey (apparently) so we all had some proper whiskey, Glenfiddich I believe (none of this JD stuff, Jeff would not allow it!) and started playing.

Some time into the game, someone mentioned that the only other thing missing was cigars, so, there was a break in the game while cigars were bought and smoked.

During the break a guitar turned up. I can't remember who got the guitar out, but it ended up on my lap. Someone had an oldish Survivor Songbook out on the table too.

Someone asked me to play an old Matt Redman song. I can't remember which one now, but before I knew what was happening, we were all singing song after song. I was playing Acoustic Guitar, Jeff was playing drums on the guitar case, my new friend Hairy was playing classical guitar, Jude, Kate and Ali were all singing beautiful harmonies.

I could feel God there. He was sitting with us. Singing with us. We finished singing one of the songs. I still can't remember which song it was but when the song ended, no one spoke. There was a silence. A Godly silence and I fell in love with Him all over again.

I love it that He came and sat with us while we played poker, drank whiskey and smoked cigars. I love it that He sang with us as we found ourselves worshipping Him. I love it that He loves us.

What a night!

P.S. I lost the poker game!

3 year old questions...

Emily, my 3 year old daughter, just asked me a question.

She said: "Daddy, did God make Jesus?"

I wasn't quite sure how to answer that...

Starving Jesus - Part 1

I've been reading this very challenging book recently. It's called Starving Jesus and is written by Craig Gross and J.R. Mahon (both of xxxchurch.com fame).

The book addresses many issues that New Community Church has been focusing on addressing since January when all the recent changes were brought in, and I have found it very useful:

The two authors start by saying that there is a conversation that is heard, whispered by many christians, all around the world. The conversation generally starts with questions like:

"Where is the love?", "Why are we stuck in the pews?", "Why is Sunday the only time we see christians?" and "Why is everyone such a hypocrite?"

Every now and again someone stands up and says "Church sucks, let's get out of here and make a real difference." They are usually silenced or ostracised by the masses of comfortable christians surrounding them. I am trying not to be one of those comfortable Christians, happy to go to church on Sunday, and then forget about Him for the rest of the week. I have been getting better at this. I find that most weeks I manage to talk to God most days, and that makes such a big difference to the way I see others, but I am by no means perfect (as most of you are well aware!) and sometimes I find I have a week where I become my main focus. I can only promise I'm working on this...

Anyhow, The book goes on to say that, as a whole, christians run from sin. We are not at ease talking about sex, drugs, alcohol. We don't like to admit that there is cheating, lying and stealing going on all around us. And because we won't talk about it, most of us don't do anything about it.

I have had conversations with people about all the different people I deal with in my work as a police officer. I meet rapists, drug dealers, prostitutes and robbers. I meet drug addicts and alcoholics, and I'd like to think that, although I am seen by them as the enemy, I try to treat them like Jesus would (although still doing my job, which may well involve arresting them...), but tat is not the point. When I speak to people about them, so often I hear people say "All they need is Jesus." I've never seen them out on the streets...

Are we having too many Bible Studies? Are we having too many Worship Services? Are we too busy telling each other how much we love each other and not taking that love out the building?

1 John 3v18-19 says: "Dear children, let us stop just saying we love each other, let us really show it by our actions. It is by our actions that we know we are living in the truth..."

My actions show I am not always living in the truth. At home I am often selfish. I often watch television and let my wife run around clearing up, using the excuse "I go out to work, she doesn't" I know I'm wrong every time I say it. I often play guitar in the bathroom when the children are in the bath, just so I can say I helped bath them, when actually, Becky is the one who washes them, gets them in and out, dries them and then gets them ready for bed. I am trying to change my ways.

The authors of the book say that we, as christians, should do "anything short of sin" to take Jesus to the world. This means that maybe we should be leaving the building behind, leaving the Bible studies, leaving the music and stepping out where no one has been before. Jesus did everything but sin to show his Love.

He served Humanity by giving His life and all He asks is for us to do the same for Him. Are you honouring His actions? All He wants is for us to grab the people around us and serve them, in any way possible.

Are working for Him or for our own ends? We don't need to be super spiritual to serve Him. We don't need a theological degree or a leader's role to serve Him. We are all the same in His eyes. We ALL fall short of His glory. His glory. Not ours.

On that point, so often we work so hard to show everyone what good christians we are, how together we are, instead of admitting our brokenness and sin to one another and then getting on with salvation!

Paul always encourages me on this point. Paul, ie Saint Paul, admits openly to his fellow christians in Roman 7 vv14-20 that he is a sinful man. "I sold into slavery, with sin as my master" he says. "I really want to do what is right, but I don't do it. Instead I do the very thing I hate." He goes on to say "No matter which way I turn, I can't make myself do right"

Imagine that kind of honesty in church? Imagine the church leaders standing up in front of the church and openly admitting that they have a problem with greed, pornography, alcohol or lust. Think how much freer we would be to serve others if we didn't have to work so hard to keep up the veneer of the perfect christian.

We are here to serve. We are here to be His body. Let's not forget that.

It reminds me of a song by Casting Crowns. The chorus says:

"But if we are the body

why aren't his arms reaching?

why aren't his hands healing?

why aren't his words teaching?

and if we are the body

why aren't his feet going?

why is his love not showing them there is a way?"

I know it's been a bit rambly, but hopefully, I've managed to explain roughly what the book's first chapter has helped me think about.

You can download the whole of the first chapter of the book at www.starvingjesus.com if you would like to read more...

See you all soon.

Louis Theroux and the Westboro Baptist Church

Last sunday I watched a programme on TV which truly upset me. It was called "America's most hated family"
Louis Theroux, a well known documentary maker went to live with the congregation of the Westboro Baptist Church, in America. The church believes that America is being punished by God for its sins. They do not stop there though. They have made it their mission to picket soldiers funerals, denouncing the soldiers as sinners and "fags". They preach hatred and death in the name of God and I just cannot get my head around that. How can someone claim to know God, claim to know the Bible and still preach that God is a god that freely kills people. They claim that all natural disasters are caused by God and are sent to punish people and that anyone who dies in unnatural ways was obviously punished by God and is therefore in Hell.

This goes against everything I have ever learnt or experienced about God. Isn't the Bible's most famous verse John 3:16? God so loved the world..." Why would a God who so loved the world kill people who he loves? Why would He send his Son Jesus to die for us if he is only going to later punish us anyway?

Louis Theroux let me down a little by not being able to argue his points biblically as he obviously did not know enough about the Bible to compete with the random verses the Pastor of the church was using to preach from.

I made the mistake of visiting their website (www.godhatesamerica.com) and I felt compelled to pray for them. That is what I urge anyone reading this to do. Pray that God will reveal Himself to them with all His love, His mercy and His grace. It fills me with such sadness to see so many people filled with so much hate and so confused. It just goes to show that the enemy is still at work in the world today, but unfortunately for him, we know the battle is already won!