Contact 201311

CONTACT

Magazine of Erdington Methodist Church Station Road - November 2013 1

Contents Minister’s Letter The other side of The VISION PROJECT September Book Club Read Be a messy gardener Christmas Post Spare rib Christian Aid produces spoof film – aimed at church youth Erdington VISION PROJECT Events BUPA Great Birmingham Run half marathon completed!

New national Advent campaign aims to put Jesus ‘back’ into Christmas Children’s Pages Dates for your diary Why do you go to church?

The Journey Bargain with God Procrastination Great Invention The Knitted Bible O Come, O Come, Emmanuel All in the month of NOVEMBER Home for Travellers through December The Heavenly Man November Regular Meetings Weekly Church Activities

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Minister’s Letter Dear friends They say ‘History repeats itself.’ Sometimes it’s tempting to add, ‘It has to – no-one’s listening!’

November is a month for remembering the past. On 3rd November we shall gladly and thankfully remember the ‘Saints in Light’: those who have gone before us, revealing the way of Christ to us.

But there are two other less happy remembrances in November. ‘Remember, remember, the fifth of November…’, and on the 11th we think of those who have lost their lives in war. On those occasions we remember the suffering the human race has inflicted on itself.

Bonfire night is a very ambiguous time: parliament wasn’t blown up, and that’s generally regarded as a good thing! But we should remember that some see Guy Fawkes and his companions as victims of persecution, driven to extreme measures to save people, beliefs and ways of life they valued.

The whole episode speaks to us of a hatred and bitterness so intense it leads people to kill (or try to kill) those they disagree with. On 5th November we would do well to remember that there are those in our world today who are prepared to kill people who don’t think and believe as they do. Have we learnt history’s lesson yet?

On Remembrance Day, too, there’s much to think about. Some glorify war.

No doubt war brings out great and admirable characteristics, like sacrifice, courage and endurance, but it also produces immeasurable grief and suffering. In war, some willingly give their lives, yet the vast majority of victims unwillingly lose their lives. There is a vast difference. If you’ve seen ‘Apocalypse Now’ you’ll no doubt remember the words used to sum up war: ‘the horror’.

Both remembrances remind us of the evil in our world. Its roots are in what we call ‘sin’. Sin escalates: one sin tends to lead to another. Someone hurts 3

us and we hurt them back. For all our human advances we are still trapped in this vicious cycle.

There is a way out of it, which brings us to another act of remembrance.

Sharing bread and wine before his death, Jesus told his disciples, ‘Do this to remember me’. We remember how, in the ultimate sacrifice, he willingly gave his life for us. As Jesus said, ‘Greater love has no-one than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends’ (John 15.13). So we remember Jesus, whose blood was shed ‘for the forgiveness of sins’ (Matthew 26.28). His death shows us the only way to de-escalate sin, which is to bring it to God for forgiveness.

In our remembering, let’s see our need of forgiveness and give thanks to God that it is possible through Jesus. Because of Jesus, God says, ‘I will remember your sins no more’ (Isaiah 43.25).

Your friend and minister Rev Paul Dunstan

The other side of The VISION PROJECT We all know what the Vision Project is – or do we? I hope that if you are asked about it you would be able to say what we intend to do with the money we raise. At least, despite some early pessimism, we know we will be able to achieve part of it, having raised, in cash and pledges, nearly £60K. As this Contact comes out Gerald and I will be attending a meeting of the District Property Grants committee. They are the people who, hopefully, will give consent to start work, as well giving us a grant. We have applied to Veolia Environmental Trust (they gave Stockland Green a lot of money!) and have sent plenty of information, and now asked for more. So we are hopeful of getting something from them!

But returning to the title of this piece. We are trying to provide as many varied events as possible, and afterwards we discuss how they went; what we could have done better, should we do this again etc. How much we have 4

raised is always the first question, but lately we are realizing that there is another, important aspect to all that we are doing. More and more we are hearing how people have appreciated these events, the last three main events, the Festival of Talents, The Afternoon Tea and the Barn Dance, were all well attended and many people said how much they had enjoyed themselves.

Kim Smith, the caller for the Barn Dance, said it reminded him of those he had organised about 15 years ago when people were anxious to take part, and young people joined in enthusiastically. He said this was the best response he had had for a long time.!

The organisation is hard work, and we wouldn’t be so keen do so much if it wasn’t necessary to raise a lot of money. However seeing the church family enjoying themselves together, makes it all worthwhile So please keep on supporting us and enjoy the fellowship at the different events.

Soon to come is our early Christmas Fayre on November 9th 10.00 am -1.00 pm no tickets to buy, but plenty of things to spend your money on. See the poster in this Contact, and note the date of Nov 16th for our Quiz Night.

DO SIGN UP IF YOU WANT FISH AND CHIPS we won’t be buying extra portions!

Stop Press The Vision Group has decided to postpone the Christmas Tree Festival until December 2014, and maybe combine it with a Christmas Market and make a full day of celebration. On a more positive note we are pleased to say that we have received a pledge of £5000 from the Norwood and Newton Foundation, and £1000 from the Co-op Dividend, boosting our funds to over £65 thousand.

Hilary Price

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September Book Club Read In September our Book Club read & discussed ‘We need to talk about Kevin’ by Lionel Shriver.

This book (also made into a film) is written as a series of letters from Eva, Kevin’s Mother to her husband, Franklin. This style of writing would be enough to put me off reading this book but as it was for Book Club I persevered!

The story unfolds through the letters & becomes horrifically spellbinding.

Eva never really wanted to be a mother; certainly not the mother of the unlovable boy who murdered 7 of his fellow high school students, a cafeteria worker and a teacher who tried to befriend him. Uneasy with the sacrifices and social demotion of motherhood from the start, Eva fears that her alarming dislike for her own son may be responsible for driving him so nihilistically off the rails.

To say any more about the plot would definitely spoil it for future readers but I can say that none of us anticipated the ending!!

Few of the group would have read the book by choice but all agreed they were glad they had read it.

The discussion was lively, in depth & long - centred much on ‘nature’ or ‘nurture’.

Read it if you dare – let me know what you think of it!!

Marion Griffin

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Be a messy gardener This autumn, don’t clean up your garden too much for the winter – leave some messy bits. The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds fears that ‘sterile’ gardens where nature cannot survive are contributing to the decline in wildlife.

Instead, build ‘homes for nature’, urges the RSPB: leave some weeds and garden debris, let the grass stay long, don’t cut all the nettles, leave the odd log to rot, and cut a hole in your fence for the hedgehogs.

You can also fill a bucket with wood chips, soil and rotten branches for insects. Or fill up an old washing bowl with water and gravel to create a ‘mini pond’.

Many celebrity gardeners applaud this approach. Monty Don of the BBC’s Gardener’s World recently tweeted: ‘Do not strive after tidiness’. The RSPB campaign is in response to a report that 60 per cent of species in the UK have suffered declines in the past few decades. Our sparrows, starlings, grass snakes, frogs, voles and badgers need our help to breed, move around and survive.

Mike Clarke, chief executive of the RSPB, says: “Nature in the UK is in trouble. Gardens provide a valuable lifeline for species like starlings, toads, hedgehogs and butterflies, which are struggling to find homes in the wider countryside. Although the overall problem is huge, the solution can start on a small scale . . . Our aim is to provide one million homes for nature across the UK, because if there is no home for nature, then there’s no nature – it really is that serious.”

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Christmas Post Please note that there will be the usual Christmas Post within the Church, any donations for JMA to Anne Churcher please

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Spare rib We have now attended five weddings in the modern era i.e. involving people of our children’s generation. One where I forgot my shirt, one on the seashore, one including the baby, one involving two ladies and one where the only organisation appeared to be provided by the photographer. At all of them Moya and I have looked at each other and said this is so much better then the regimentation of our wedding, where we seemed to appear on the day, walked through it and disappeared off the end without a trace and with little memory of in-between.

The other day I listened to the last program in the current run of The Reunion with Sue Lawley. She had reunited the original team of ladies responsible for the ‘Spare Rib’, a feminist magazine priced 17.5p at its launch in 1972 not long after our wedding. During the course of the interview, amongst much laughter and hilarity, I was reminded how much had changed since then with regard to equality and liberation. The accent was upon the changes to women’s place in the workplace - Reapplying for their own jobs if they chose to get married? Facing dismissal if they become pregnant?

Should they really be at home? Being paid the same as men? Some of these have been sorted in the intervening year but others remain, as markers to remind us that our society still contains more then a vestige of chauvinism and paternalism. Two thirds of people on the minimum wage are women.

However when I mentioned this to another parent at our most recent wedding I was told that these changes were only small beer in relation to the changes, which had gone on during the previous 50 years - women voting, women at university, women in the professions and the end of servility and the Downton Abbey syndrome. This brought to mind a conversation that I had had with a distant relative of my Grandfather who used to say that he was proud to have lived when he did, to have seen the transition from horse and cart to having a man on the moon.

However another article in a paper has added a new facet to this on-going discussion. The publication of an annual report from a Wisconsin University entitled ‘Mindset list’. In this they report of the attitudes of new students each year, which illuminates how quickly the new becomes the 8

norm and how different the new norm is from what went before. The new entrants to UK universities are no doubt exactly the same. They will probably never have taken a film canister to be processed into slides, they will probably not have a collection of vinyl or CDs on a shelf, they will have had a white board not a black board or maybe only an interactive board and they will not have lost touch with school friends unless they have chosen to.

Their life is different because now everything is digital, books, music, photos and even work.

The ephemeral nature of all of this however could be a significant disadvantage. This is exemplified by the fact that when the BBC wanted to revisit the data from Doomsday Revisited project they struggled to find a machine capable of reading the special optical disks on which the information had been stored. The technology, which the BBC had chosen had not caught on and so after a few years had become obsolescent, a bit like beta-max. Additionally, I heard a report the other day that the British Museum has only between 15 and 20 years to digitise its entire collection of audio and visual tape material, because after a while all such tapes become unplayable. Now what am I going to do about all of the video tapes that I am keeping?

However, the immediacy of the digital revolution presents other problems.

Its ramifications are well beyond our comprehension and the eventual outcome still a long way in the future. Digital uploads be they the London beating of Ian Tomlinson, sexting by pre-teen children or a Sarin gas attack in Ghouta, are suddenly the new norm. All depend upon ubiquitous access to the Internet and the ability to transmit and receive digital data, which gets faster and faster and more and more unavoidable. When we go on holiday and the first thing I ask is ‘Where is the Wi-Fi?’ rather then ‘Where is the teapot?’ I know that something has changed.

My final point however is related to how much all of this new technology has become part of our lives. The recent publication of the memoires of the Gordon Brown spin-doctor revealed that at the height of the financial crisis in 2008 there was talk about how the government would cope with civil unrest if the banks failed. The inability to get our cash from a hole in the 9

wall or make a purchase from an electronic cash register would have had an amazingly destabilising effect upon society and I suggest that Gordon was well advised to be worried.

But I suspect that we should not be too worried about the gainsayers. Some curmudgeonly, chauvinistic, paternalists will have had the same thoughts about Suffragettes and female emancipation, the end of the British Empire, decimalisation, the nationalisation of coal and rail and the arrival of the Channel Tunnel. Which brings me back to where I started. It is inevitable that things will change and as we get older change is harder to accept. Also when we look back are we really in a place to decide whether it is for the better or not? For us it is change, which is sometimes difficult but more often wonderful.

Only one thing is certain, ‘You ain’t seen nothin’ yet’!

Peter Farley

Christian Aid produces spoof film – aimed at church youth A new film and spoof campaign, Leftovers for Africa, has been produced by the Christian Aid Collective to raise awareness of poverty and hunger.

The film follows eager entrepreneur Dan Stirling as he tries to encourage people to save their leftover food in charity envelopes to send to Africa, in a bid to solve world hunger.

Christian Aid says: “‘Leftovers for Africa suggests that by posting half-eaten food into envelopes and sending it to hungry people, we can help end world hunger. This of course is an absurd idea so we’re using this false message to inform young people of things they CAN do; actions they can take which will make a difference.” More details on ‘The Leftovers for Africa’ film at: www.leftoversforafrica.org.uk.

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Erdington VISION PROJECT Events Saturday 9th November. Christmas Fayre 10.00 am – 1.00 pm Refreshments, wide variety of gifts including decorative glassware, Jo McArdle with ‘bags galore and more,’ holiday gift stall, cakes, Christmas cards and wrapping from Crockerdial printing There will be a Chocolate Tombola (!) and 50/50 RAFFLE- top prize is half the takings for the raffle!!

Lucky Dip for everyone Saturday 16th November. Quiz Night 6.30 pm Tickets £6.00 adults and £4.00 children - includes a fish & chip supper at the beginning of the evening. Family ticket available for two adults and two children £16.00.

For the quiz only arrive for 7.00 pm - tickets cost £3.00 adult and £1.50 children.

Please let us know numbers for food by Friday 15th November at the latest.

Contact Hilary on 354 2555 or email: a1revsmum@gmail.com

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BUPA Great Birmingham Run half marathon completed!

Thanks to everyone who has sponsored me, asked how I got on and been generally encouraging whilst I prepared for my first half marathon on October 20th. I finished in 2 hours 10minutes and 14 seconds!

Money raised for Cancer Research UK stands at just over ÂŁ400 but you can still donate if you would like to. This time last year I was about to race my first 10km event – I never thought that I‘d be capable of the 13.1 miles which make up a half marathon. No plans for entering a full marathon anytime soon though!

Thanks again Lisa Porter

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New national Advent campaign aims to put Jesus ‘back’ into Christmas This year the UK has reached a tipping point: a recent survey* has found that 51 per cent of people now say that the birth of Jesus is irrelevant to their Christmas. And just 12 per cent of adults know the nativity story in any depth; and 36 per cent of children do not know whose birthday is being celebrated during the festival.

And so it is that ChurchAds.net, the group behind the annual Christmas advertising poster campaign, has teamed up with a number of leading churches this autumn in order to reverse this trend, and ‘save’ Christmas.

Christmas Starts with Christ will run from 1st December to Christmas Day. It will begin with the first ever nationwide Christmas Starts Sunday on 1st December. ChurchAds.net has the support of the Church of England, the Methodist Church, the Bible Society, Traidcraft and the Evangelical Alliance.

Francis Goodwin, of ChurchAds.net, said: "Christmas is a time when Christians shine light in their communities. But the good news is being lost.

We can't sit back and let that happen. We cannot let the nation lose the real meaning of Christmas; and we are passionate about bringing the Church together for this cause to remind everyone that Christmas Starts with Christ."

Arun Arora, director of communications at the Church of England, said: "‘At Christmas time thousands of churches around the country do a huge amount to carry the Christmas story into their local communities, through word and deed. The vision for the Christmas Starts with Christ campaign is to use a common logo to join the dots of these activities and project a powerful message to our entire nation that the reason for the season is the birth of Jesus.

If you would like to join in this Advent campaign, there are a number of resources on offer, including posters, logos, and Advent Calendars. Visit: www.christmasstartswithchrist.com 13

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Dates for your diary November 2nd

Bach Concert

November 3rd 6.30pm

‘Saints in Light’ at Stockland Green

November 9th

Christmas Fayre

November 16th

Quiz Night

December 1st 4.00pm

Christingle Service

December 15th

All Age Worship & Gift Service

December 20th 6.00pm

Uniformed Organisation Carol Service

December 22nd 4.00pm

Carol Service with Nativity

December 24th 11.30pm

Midnight Communion

December 25th 10.00am

Christmas Day Service David Hewitt & Worship Group

Why go to church?

A church-goer complained to his minister: “wrote I’ve been coming to church every Sunday for 30 years, and in that time I have heard thousands of sermons, but for the life of me, I can’t think of a single one now. So I think I have wasted my time.”

The minister thought for a moment and replied: “I’ve been married for 30 years and my wife has cooked me thousands of meals. For the life of me I can’t recall the entire menu of a single one of those meals now. But I do know that each one nourished me and gave me strength to carry on living. If my wife had not given me those meals, I would have been stunted and eventually starved. Without regular Christian nourishment, we also will starve – spiritually.

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The Journey One day you finally knew what you had to do, and began, though the voices around you kept shouting their bad advice -though the whole house began to tremble and you felt the old tug at your ankles."Mend my life!" each voice cried.

But you didn't stop.

You knew what you had to do, though the wind pried with its stiff fingers at the very foundations, though their melancholy was terrible.

It was already late enough, and a wild night, and the road full of fallen branches and stones.

But little by little, as you left their voices behind, the stars began to burn through the sheets of clouds, and there was a new voice which you slowly recognized as your own, that kept you company as you strode deeper and deeper into the world, determined to do the only thing you could do -17

determined to save the only life you could save.”

Mary Oliver This poem is about following your own instincts as you journey through life; put to one side all the other selfish voices ‘shouting their bad advice’: ……. little by little, as you left their voices behind, the stars began to burn through the sheets of clouds, and there was a new voice which you slowly recognized as your own, In conclusion, here are Mary Oliver’s own words which seem to reflect the very essence of ‘The Journey’.

“I don't want to end up simply having visited this world.”

Says it all!

Barbara Rawson

Bargain with God Angus was driving down the street worried because he had an important meeting and couldn't find a parking place. Looking up toward heaven, he prayed in desperation: "Lord, take pity on me. If you find me a parking place I will go to church every Sunday for the rest of my life and give up whisky."

Miraculously, a moment later a parking place appeared. Angus looked up again and said, "Never mind. I found one."

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Procrastination The other day I set to and tidied my desk, well I arranged the papers into three piles to await being put away into leaver arch files. This is a task, which I avoid as long as possible, even though I get cross with myself when I cannot find something important. The trait goes back almost as far as I can remember. It certainly predates any involvement in management. Even though I knew that The Industrial Society suggests a good manager should only handle a piece of paper once, my desk always looked a complete pickle.

I excused myself because the Treasurers desk/office was even worse.

I have recently discovered that I am in good hands. Apparently about 20% of people are chronic procrastinators; putting of filing, tax forms and DIY. Famous procrastinators include: 1. Quintus Fabius Maximus, Roman general of the 3rd Century, BC was initially given the nickname "Cunctator" - the Delayer - as an insult. But his strategy of avoiding battle with Hannibal and the Carthaginians helped turn the tide in the Second Punic War. The Fabian Society is named after him.

2. Douglas Adams author of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and the literary world's most notorious procrastinator, who once said: "I love deadlines - I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by."

3. Hamlet whose famous soliloquy must be the procrastinators handbook; ‘to be or not to be, that is the question’ etc etc.

4. John F Kennedy who very famously procrastinated over the Cuban missile crisis. He said that he did not paste Krushchev into a corner from which there was no escape, except nuclear war.

On the other hand the world tends to have a higher regard for those who make almost instantaneous decisions and are fired up with action and who live their lives by ‘carpe deum’ sieze the day. Maybe it all stems from the Protestant work ethic, never put off until tomorrow what you can do today.

I suppose that Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair would be included in such a group.

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But life for procrastinators is not all bad. Sometimes the ability to sit and think, freewheel to a solution can be an advantage, beyond ‘not rushing in where angels fear to tread’ as my driving tester said after I passed. Time to watch the flowers grow and the rainbow glow. Time to read a book or go for a walk.

One final thought - a recent report suggests that procrastination is a hang over from adolescence. The attitude that tomorrow will do. Maybe it is just our ongoing resistance to the change we need to make, the recognition that there is not all the time in the world. Suddenly every minute is precious.

But then I am reminded of that famous Biblical passage I learned at school, ‘even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like on of these’.

Peter Farley

Great invention The boys had been up in the attic together helping with some cleaning. They uncovered an old manual typewriter and asked their mother what it was. She briefly explained, but they were still puzzled as to how it worked.

"I'll show you," their mother said, and returned with a blank piece of paper.

She rolled the paper into the typewriter and began striking the keys, leaving black letters of print on the page. "WOW!" they exclaimed, "That's really cool...but how does it work like that? Where do you plug it in?"

"There is no plug," she answered. "It doesn't need a plug."

"Then where do you put the batteries?" they persisted.

"It doesn't need batteries either," she continued.

"Wow! This is so cool!" they exclaimed. "Someone should have invented this a long time ago!"

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The Knitted Bible Members of Elvet Methodist Church held a week-long exhibition of the Knitted Bible which was on loan to them from St George’s United Reformed Church in Hartlepool.

Elvet Methodist Church held a successful preview evening for its members in order that the whole congregation had the opportunity of seeing and owning the project before it went on display. The next morning, the church opened its doors to visitors who were able to walk through the 33 knitted bible scenes, enjoying a coffee as they explored. Entry to the exhibition was free.

Almost 1,000 people came to see the display, raising more than £660 in donations.

Penny Bissell, Wesley Study Centre administrator, said: "The week we had the exhibition was the week which ended with the Durham Miners' Gala and we were all not too sure about having the exhibition open on this day as our church is on route to the Riverside where everyone gathers. We always open for refreshments on Miners' Gala Day as this is an opportunity to witness through social action all those in need of food, drink and shelter. This year the sun shone and folk were picnicking on our front lawn and church steps a wonderful sight to see. As always, our members worked their socks off and raised £3,954 for our annual church project, which will go to Durham Youth For Christ’s Mentoring Scheme." from The Buzz - a newsletter distributed online to share what's happening in our districts, circuits, churches and church groups

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O Come, O Come, Emmanuel O come, O come, Emmanuel And ransom captive Israel, That mourns in lonely exile here, Until the Son of God appear...

What wonderful words of hope and faith in the coming of Jesus, our Messiah! You’ve heard that Advent carol every Christmas-tide of your entire life. But if it wasn’t for a quiet, High Anglican English vicar who was once warden of an almshouse in East Grinstead, most likely you would never have heard of it.

John Mason Neale (1818-66) had always loved words. As a child of 10 he had edited his own handwritten family magazine. As a young man he enjoyed long solitary walks in the English countryside, pausing only to do a bit of brass-rubbing or to collect the architectural details of the country churches he discovered.

Neale was something of a scholar: he was captivated by the Middle Ages and the medieval church, the early church fathers and the lives of the saints. As one small girl at his almshouse orphanage once observed, Mr Neale (then in his 40s) “must be very old, to have talked to so many saints and martyrs”.

John Mason Neale’s place in history was assured when he decided to translate old hymns into English. He went on to become the greatest of all translators of hymns from the old Latin, Greek, Russian and Syrian churches. ‘O Come O Come Emmanuel’ was just one of them; it began as an old Latin hymn of doubtful date. Today it is loved round the world. The English Hymnal (1906) contains 63 of translated hymns and six original hymns by Neale.

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All in the month of NOVEMBER It was....

150 years ago:- on 19th Nov 1863 that President Abraham Lincoln delivered his famous Gettysburg Address at the dedication ceremony of the Soldiers’ National Cemetery in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.

125 years ago:- on 6th Nov 1888 that Tchaikovsky’s 5th Symphony was first performed in St Petersburg, Russia.

100 years ago:- on 22nd Nov 1913 that Benjamin Britten, leading British composer, conductor and pianist, was born.

90 years ago:- on 11th Nov 1923 that the eternal flame at the tomb of the unknown soldier under the Arc de Triomphe in Paris was lit for the first time. It was the first modern-day eternal flame in Europe.

60 years ago:- on 9th Nov 1953 that Dylan Thomas, Welsh poet and playwright, died. He was best known for ‘Under Milk Wood’.

50 years ago:- on 22 Nov 1963, that US President John F Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas.

Also 50 years ago:- on 22nd Nov 1963, that CS Lewis, Irish-born British novelist, literary critic and academic, best known for ‘The Chronicles of Narnia’, died.

Also 50 years ago:- on 23rd Nov 1963 that the first episode of the science fiction TV series ‘Doctor Who’ was broadcast on UK TV It is the longestrunning and most successful science fiction TV series in the world.

40 years ago:- on 3rd Nov 1973 that NASA launched the ‘Mariner 10’ space probe to Venus and Mercury.

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25 years ago:- on 15th Nov 1988 that the independent state of Palestine was proclaimed by the Palestinian National Council.

20 years ago:- on 1st Nov 1993 that The Maastricht Treaty came into effect, establishing the European Union.

15 years ago:- on 1st Nov 1998 that The European Court of Human Rights was founded in Strasbourg, France.

Also 15 years ago:- on 24th Nov 1998 that the British Government unveiled plans to abolish the rights of hereditary peers to sit and vote in the House of Lords.

10 years ago:- on 22nd Nov 2003 that England won the Rugby World Cup for the first time.

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Home for Travellers through December Mary and Joseph are olive wood figures who wish to travel around the area from 1st December.

Mary and Joseph are looking for people who will have them in their home for one night. They need to be taken to another family the next day (you will be told where) and this continues up to the 24th December when they return to Erdington Methodist Church.

Please give this some thought, and in mid November a list will be on the notice board for people to sign up.

Thank you Margaret Hillman

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The Heavenly Man Brother Yun with Paul Hattaway A little while ago I read this remarkable true story of a Chinese Christian called Brother Yun. He was born the fourth of five children in the Nanyang County in China’s Henan Province in 1958 to a peasant farmer, and although life was difficult he had a relatively happy childhood. His home was constructed of mud with a straw roof, in which the rain often entered.

Because life was so hard and all hands were required to help on the farm, he had to look after his siblings so had little opportunity to attend school.

Christianity was introduced into Henan in1884 and those who accepted the faith were ostracised and ridiculed by their communities. Of those who accepted Jesus, many were killed for their beliefs.

Brother Yun was called to serve Jesus at the age of 16 when the Cultural Revolution raged throughout China. At the time Yun’s father was sick with cancer of the lungs and stomach and the family were told to prepare for his death. The father had served as a Captain in the National Army and had fought against the Communists, had been persecuted and had received 12 bullet wounds to one of his legs.

His mother was under great pressure facing the daunting prospect of raising five children alone. One night she heard a tender and compassionate voice say, “Jesus loves you.” She knelt down and repented of her sins and rededicated herself to Jesus. She immediately called the family together and asked them to spend the night laying hands on their father asking, “Jesus, heal our father.” “Jesus heal our father.”

The very next morning his father was much better and within a week was fully healed! It was a miracle from God. Because of this great miracle, Yun’s parents began to hold house meetings with relatives and friends at which doors were locked and windows covered. Many accepted Jesus as their Lord and Saviour.

Although his mother was illiterate, she became the first preacher in their village, holding house groups in her own home.

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Yun had craved a Bible but there were few Bibles in China at that time. He eventually received and read his Bible right through, several times, memorising many passages. He knew God was calling him to be a missionary in his own country and felt he was being called to go West and South. He began his ministry first by reciting the passages of the Bible he had memorised which had a profound impact on the people who listened.

This was only the beginning.

Throughout his young life Yun was hunted throughout China, imprisoned, escaped, recaptured and tortured, yet always held on to his faith in Jesus. His final escape from prison was truly a miracle almost beyond belief.

His remarkable story was first printed in 2002 and won the ‘Book of the Year’ in 2003. To date it has sold over 750,000 copies worldwide in 30 languages. It is a truly amazing, inspiring and compelling read and I commend it to every Christian believer.

Ann Tomes

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November Regular Meetings Coffee Mornings Each Saturday 10.00 am to 12.00 noon

Tuesday Club Every 4th Tuesday in the month at 2.30 pm

Sunday Worship All worship starts at 10.30 am unless stated otherwise below 3rd

Lynette Jones

10th

HOLY COMMUNION Rev Paul Dunstan

17th

David Hewitt

24th

Rev Peter Grimwood

Life and death The vicar was preaching a powerful sermon concerning death and judgment.

In the course of the sermon, he said: “Just think – all of you living in this parish will one day die.” At this, a man in the front pew began to laugh quietly. After the service the vicar demanded sternly what he had found so funny about his sermon. The man replied: “I was just so happy that I don’t live in this parish!”

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Weekly Church Activities Sunday

10.30 am

MORNING WORSHIP and Young Church

Tuesday

9.30 - 11.30 am 9.30 - 12.30 pm 2.00 pm

Stay and Play Pre-School : Karen Homer Tuesday Afternoon Meeting : Ann Tomes (4th)

Wednesday

9.30 - 11.30 am 9.30 - 12.30 pm 12.30 pm

Stay and Play Pre-School : Karen Homer Luncheon Club - (1st and 3rd)

Thursday

9.30 - 12.30 pm

Pre-School : Karen Homer

Friday

9.30 - 12.30 pm 5.00 - 6.15 pm 6.15 - 7.45 pm 7.45 - 9.15 pm 7.45 - 9.15 pm 5.30 - 6.30 pm 5.00 - 6.30 pm 7.30 - 9.00 pm

Pre-School : Karen Homer Beavers : Lynn Turner Cubs : Elizabeth Baizon Scouts : Lisa Porter Explorers : Caroline Joyce Rainbows : Debbie Barnett Brownies : Lesley Carter Guides : Helen Rainsford

Saturday

10.00 - 12.00 noon Coffee Morning : Lesley Morgan 10.30 - 11.30 am Church open for prayer : Margaret Curzon

Please hand any items for the December/January CONTACT to any of the Editorial Team (Peter Farley, Christine Rankin, Ann Tomes & Nick Riley) by 15th November 2013 at the latest please or alternatively email me: nickriley@blueyonder.co.uk with the word ‘CONTACT’ in the title.

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