I’m sure many of you have received your Teartimes this week and I hope like me you’ve been encouraged by the difference the global church is making around the World. It was good to have Mike Chesterton from Tearfund visit us at HBC and to be reminded of what supporting Tearfund is all about. Tearfund’s mission statement, which Mike explained to us is so full of love, faith and hope:

“We are Christians passionate about the local church bringing justice and transforming lives- overcoming global poverty. And so our ten year vision is to see 50 million people released from material and spiritual poverty through a worldwide network of 100,000 local churches.” 

Reading the bible intelligently is a key part of our spiritual formation. Part of that discipline is to attempt to understand what the author – in this case Luke – was attempting to convey at the time of writing. It’s not sufficient to pluck a text out of its contextual moorings, and apply it to today without attending to what the author had in mind when first it was written. Download my introduction notes here.

Do you care about climate change? Do you believe we should be doing something to prevent it? Do you think it will change the lives of the poorest,who will be flooded, displaced, and hungry?

World leaders have a crucial climate summit in Copenhagen from December 7th and we need to call on them to seal a strong and fair climate change deal. We need to speak out for poor people who are hit hardest by climate change and for future generations. We need to cover this in prayer.

What a fantastic time Zoë and I had when we went to London at half term. There’s no doubt that our country has one of the great capital cities of the world, certainly in terms of history, probably the greatest. The highlight of our mini-trip, following an invitation we received from Nick Brown, our local MP, was to visit the House of Commons.

I came across this from one of Bishop Lesslie Newbigin's books, which I though was worth posting: 

Words without deeds are empty, but deeds without words are dumb. It is stupid to set them against each other. It is, for example, stupid to say: “The one thing that matters is to go everywhere and preach the gospel; all other activities such as schools and hospitals and programs for social action are at best merely auxiliary and at worst irrelevant.”

I'm returning to Africa tomorrow to serve with the Mercy Ship - and this time I'll be in in Benin...

What have a crazy Frenchman called Claude, an impromptu rendition of a new worship single and the minor prophets all got in common...?

There are still some copies of ‘Twelve’, Write Life’s anthology of poetry and prose, available at £6 from the church book table. Alternatively, pay £7.50 to be posted to your door. Contact fiona@veitchsmith.com. All profits to go to the church building fund. And in the meantime, here's a poem...