News feeds

Christians are being asked to pray for Rev Les Isaac, the founder of Street Pastors, as he recovers from surgery.

Chantalle  Edmunds. Premier. 16 July 2021

The post Calls to prayer after founder of Street Pastors is rushed to hospital – Premier first appeared on Fulcrum Anglican.

“My mum died in January last year. When I was at the undertakers, they asked me who I would like to take the service. I immediately thought of St Justus Church.

Church of England website.  16 June 2021

The post ‘There and then on the doorstep we said a prayer together. That was when I became a Christian’ C of E first appeared on Fulcrum Anglican.

The Church of England today launched an investigation into the whether the £9 billion investment fund that pays the Archbishop of Canterbury's £85,000-per-year wages may be tainted by money made from slavery.

Steve Doughty for Daily Mail. 16 June 2021

The post Church of England launches investigation into slave trade links of its £9.2billion investment fund that pays Archbishop of Canterbury’s £85,000-a-year wages – Daily Mail first appeared on Fulcrum Anglican.

Preacher and bestselling author Tim Keller has said the cancer in his body has not grown and that he is praying for it to decrease.

Cara Bentley. Premier News. 15 June 2021

The post Tim Keller gives update on his cancer treatment – Premier first appeared on Fulcrum Anglican.

Words by Jairus Robb, NZCMS communications  

Pocketed away on the corner of Gayhurst and McBratneys Rd in Dallington, Christchurch, a humble Op-Shop sits between the local diary and fish and chips shop. If you were to walk past without going in you would think nothing more. But if like me, you received an email from the owners and were invited to visit you would be immensely surprised to find out this newly opened shop is supporting cross-cultural missions around the globe. 

Jan and Tony Rawstron opened the Window of Opportunity Op-Shop in March 2021 with the following mission statement: to be a volunteer charity, selling second-hand goods, with all profits going to overseas Christian workers, to improve the well-being of those in need.” 

Despite only being open for a couple of months, this establishment is a hive of activity. As I introduce myself, Jan quickly ushers me past the rows of clothes, changing room and bookshelves and behind the front counter where a high school student on work experience is regularly ringing up customer’s items.  

It seems as if I’ve stepped into another world that is at odds with the relatively quiet and unassuming street corner that the shop is on. I almost feel disorientated at the number of people in the wee shop and the hustle and bustle going on inside.

Jan introduces me to the four volunteers in the back who are busily sorting through the newly arrived stock generously donated by the Dallington public.  

“This place has been empty since the earthquake,” Jan said. “It was a chemist shop. A guy came in one day, and I said ‘Are you ok?’ and he says ‘Oh yes I used to run the chemist shop. I was here for forty years!’” 

With the help of St. Stephen’s Church, Jan and Tony et up the business and were able to get charitable status through them.

I find out that Jan and Tony attended a missions course run by two of NZCMS’ own staff members, Mike and Ruth Robb. Having completed the course they headed off with Servants Asia on a short term trip to Manilla for six weeks. But it was when a friend of Jan’s went away to do missions work in Korea that Jan was inspired to find a way to support her. It was then that the idea to create an Op-Shop to raise support was born. Having volunteered in a Salvation Army, Jan had already picked up a lot of the skills needed to run Window of Opportunity.  

“With my love of Op-Shops,” Jan said, “I thought they must be able to make some money because there are enough Op-Shops around! If you had an Op-Shop in a church that would be great because you wouldn’t have to pay rent. You would just pay electricity.” At the moment Jan and Tony rent our current space.” 

So far the business has been able to make generous donations to three Mission Partners serving through NZCMS and other organisations, with several more donations due to be given. 

The response from the community has been fantastic. In just a couple months Window of Opportunity is already well known and is by no means struggling to get enough stock. 

“All this has just come this morning,” Tony said, gesturing to the large collection of items that the volunteers were sorting through out in the back. “And it’s good stuff! The quality is really good. We’re not a dumping ground for people clearing out. It shows the Lord’s got his hand on something here.” 

When asked about what inspired the name of the shop and the front window display Jan replied it is a bit of a secret.  

“My idea is that the green, and the red and the white are symbols of Jesus’ blood, eternal life and the white, washed clean,” she said, referring to the flags set up in the store’s front window. She chuckles to herself. “It’s a secret code.”  

When asked if she would ever have imagined the shop being this successful and busy after only four months of being open she was quick to respond. 

“No. Not really. But as I say you couldn’t do it without a team. They (volunteers) are great.” 

“But we’ve got a few years left in the shed. And we wanted to do something for the Lord. And we were thinking, if we don’t do it now, time will pass by.”  

For a couple who have named their new shop the “Window of Opportunity,” it’s no surprise that Jan and Tony are living out that ethos themselves.  

You will find the Window of Opportunity Op-Shop at 148 Gayhurst Rd, Dallington, Christchurch.

It is open Wednesday to Friday at 9:00am – 2:00pm and Saturday from 10:00am – 2:00pm.  

• Open for business
• Some of the stock available
• There is all sorts here!
• Front desk ready for action
• Some of the incredible volunteers
• Jan and Tony chatting with some locals

A new Archbishop of Alexandria and Moderator of Pakistan have been installed as Burundi looks forward to its new Archbishop in August.

Funding will go to 25 organizations that include Seminaries, Churches and Dioceses throughout the United States, Africa, and Latin America

Religion News Service. 15 June 2021

The post Trinity Church Wall Street awards $4.6 million in grants to support faith communities in the US and around the world – RNS first appeared on Fulcrum Anglican.

The former Cabinet minister and church music conductor willl receive honours from the Queen for their services.

Cara bentley. Premier News. 12 June 2021

The post Andrea Leadsom and Dr Noël Tredinnick among Christians in Queen’s honours list – Premier first appeared on Fulcrum Anglican.

Flordelis grew up in a Rio favela, but rose to fame after adopting more than 50 children, becoming a hugely successful gospel singer and winning a seat in congress. And now she is on trial for murder

Tom Phillips. Guardian. 10 June 2021

The post Did Brazil’s evangelical superstar have her husband killed? – Guardian Long Read first appeared on Fulcrum Anglican.

Hundreds of young Christians are to lead a pilgrimage which spans the length of the country – from the G7 to COP26.

Church of England website. 10 June 2021

The post Young Christians to march from Cornwall to Glasgow to campaign for Climate Justice C of E first appeared on Fulcrum Anglican.

Christians in Cornwall are setting the agenda as the county hosts the G7 summit over the next few days.

Donna Birrell. Premier News. 10 June 2021

The post Bishop of Truro says G7 leaders are still answerable to the highest power of all – Premier first appeared on Fulcrum Anglican.

David Walker says faith leaders should face full force of law if they don’t comply with proposed ban

Harriet Sherwood. Guardian. 9 June 2021

The post C of E bishop backs prosecution of those who defy ‘gay conversion’ ban – Guardian first appeared on Fulcrum Anglican.

Hundreds of churches have signed up to a week-long ‘nature count’ beginning this weekend which will encourage people to visit churchyards and record what they see.

Church of England website 4 June 2021

The post Communities to search churchyards for rare or endangered species – C of E first appeared on Fulcrum Anglican.

The son of an abusive Christian man has stepped down from church leadership while an investigation into what he knew happens.

Cara bentley. 8 June Premier News

The post John Smyth’s son PJ Smyth steps down as church leader following investigation into what he knew about father’s abuse – Premier first appeared on Fulcrum Anglican.

The Rector of St Helen's Bishopsgate, an evangelical church in the City of London, says he was beaten in a shed by the late John Smyth.

Christian Today 7 June 2021

The post I was a Smyth victim too, says Rector of St Helen’s Bishopsgate – Premier first appeared on Fulcrum Anglican.

US Pastor and best-selling author, Rick Warren has announced he will be stepping down from leading his church in California.

Kelly Valencia. 8 June 2021

The post Rick Warren retires as lead pastor of US mega church – Premier first appeared on Fulcrum Anglican.

The Benedictine abbey on the Hebridean island reopens tomorrow after a £3m renovation funded by bake sales and sponsored walks

Harriet Sherwood. Guardian. 6 June 2021

The post Scotland’s ‘cradle of Christianity’ on Iona is saved by small mercies – Guardian first appeared on Fulcrum Anglican.

Christians in Cornwall are sending a call to prayer around the world ahead of the G7 summit this week.

Donna Birrell. Premier Christian News. 5 June 2021

The post Christians in Cornwall putting prayer at the heart of the G7 agenda – Premier news first appeared on Fulcrum Anglican.

Introduction

The first religious experience that I can remember is getting under the nursery table to pray that the dancing mistress might be dead before we got to her dancing class.

This is how Gwen Raverat begins her chapter on Religion, in Period Piece: A Cambridge Childhood (p. 210). Thankfully, her prayer was not answered. In this witty, autobiographical gem, she describes her growth amongst the academics and townspeople in the extraordinary, extended family of her grandfather, Charles Darwin.

After our move back to Cambridge for retirement in September 2020, I re-read Period Piece and it set me contemplating  the genre of memoir. Currently my wife, Alison, and I are enjoying David Copperfield by Charles Dickens. I read a chapter aloud before supper each day. I only realized recently that Dickens includes key autobiographical elements and that he wrote it, as he did his other novels, in installments.

Christopher Hibbert, in his introduction to the 1983 Folio edition of David Copperfield, states that “before all else it is a novel of memory, a blend of experience and imagination” (p. xvi). Shortly before writing it, Dickens had started his autobiography. Hibbert describes Dickens’s friendship with his future biographer, John Forster. He says that Dickens intended

the manuscript to be found among his papers after his death; but he could not bring himself to finish it. He entrusted the earlier pages to Forster and then, so he told Mrs Henry Winter, the former Maria Beadnell with whom as a young man he had been so desperately in love, he burned the rest…His description of [Copperfield’s] distress at being put to work in Murdstone and Grinby’s warehouse in Blackfriars is taken almost word for word from the account of his own experiences at Warren’s which he gave to Forster. (ibid.)

As I began to ponder writing a memoir, at this liminal moment, I thought writing in instalments may be a good method to follow.

So this is the first instalment: the preface. Usually, the preface is written after the book is finished. Here, it is written first, proleptically.

Challenge and Temptation

In April 1974, soon after my conversion to Christ at Hertford College, Oxford, on January 20, I was helped by Oliver O’Donovan, then a tutor at Wycliffe Hall, Oxford, to think through my vocation. Thirty-one years later, on September 25, 2005, at St. Mary’s Church, Islington, London, Oliver kindly preached at the 25th anniversary of my ordination:

Graham’s ministry was a gift to Islington from Kenya and from Cambridge. One day he will be a gift from Islington to somewhere else. The stay may be long, it may be short. The main thing is, it must not cease to be, even while he sits here in the Vicarage, a journey around the world. The whole Scriptures, the whole apostolic doctrine, the whole Christian life, the whole world church must break in on Islington through his ministry.

This was very moving and challenging to hear at the time and later to read.

There are, at least, two dangerous temptations of “remembering”: not being thankful to God for everything; and being boastful in our thanks by comparing ourselves to others.

In an earlier sermon, expounding Philippians 3:13, at Christ Church, Oxford, Oliver had given pertinent advice about memories:

Thankful memory transfers events out of our own field of action into the record of God’s deeds for us. Our past becomes transparent to him and to his works. Whatever your mind may be stocked with, Paul says to his readers, God will require you to add this measure of distance, too; no memory, whether good or ill, can be good for us, until we have made it over to him by thanksgiving, and so freed ourselves from its hold.

So, “Making over our memories to God by thanksgiving” is significant. Remembering coram Deo (in the presence — literally the face — of God), with thanksgiving, is the essence of Augustine’s Confessions, which are all addressed to God. In Book 10 he ruminates on memory:

Great is the power of memory; it is an awe-inspiring thing, my God, a profound and limitless multiplicity. And this thing is the mind, and this I myself am. What then am I, O my God? What is my nature? It is various and manifold and immeasurable: behold the numberless fields and caves and caverns of memory, each immeasurably full of an innumerable variety of things. (Confessions 10.12)

There is still, however, a subtle temptation in thanksgiving, as was made clear by Jesus in his parable of the pharisee and the tax collector (Luke 18:9-14):

The Pharisee, standing by himself, was praying thus: “God, I thank you that I am not like other people…I fast twice a week; I give a tenth of all my income.”

Oh dear! How on earth may one write of memories authentically and responsibly, with thanksgiving, in humility, and coram Deo?

Why Write a Memoir?

Why should anyone write a memoir? Good reasons may include: for documentation; for learning from the past; and for celebrating God’s goodness. Bad reasons may include: for self-aggrandizement; for scoring points over others; and for making money. Many interweave a mixture of reasons.

John Henry Newman wrote his white hot Apologia Pro Vita Sua to correct Charles Kingsley’s accusation that he had always been, at heart, a secret Roman Catholic. Ronald Knox and Thomas Merton both wrote at pivotal moments: Knox’s Spiritual Aeneid  explained his conversion to Catholicism and Merton’s Seven Storey Mountain — published in England as Elected Silence — recalled the background of his call to follow God into a Trappist monastery. Hensley Henson, Bishop of Durham, wrote Retrospect on an Unimportant Life in his retirement. These are all beautiful works of literature, as well as moving testimonies, though the fourth is somewhat pompous in spite of its title.

The first extant autobiography in English is The Book of Margery Kempe, written in the early 15th century in Lynn, Norfolk, where she describes visiting Julian of Norwich in 1413. The manuscript is in the British Library and was only discovered in 1930. The British Library describes it thus:

The only known copy of the mystic, Margery Kempe’s autobiography, telling of her life and travels in England and on pilgrimage to the Holy Land and Santiago de Compostela. The original was dictated by her to a priest of Lynn and this is probably a copy made from the original, perhaps under Margery’s supervision.

Margery Kempe, a mother of 14 children, was also a brewer and the owner of a horse-mill who later became a visionary and a mystic.

Sources

Two classic, perceptive diaries, both kept over nine years, are by the metropolitan civil servant Samuel Pepys (1660-1669) and rural priest Francis Kilvert (1870-1879). Contemporary diaries are clearly important as historical records.

What are my written sources for Nourishing Memories? Since my conversion in 1974, I have kept a hand-written spiritual journal (currently four volumes); from 1985-91, while serving at St Andrew’s College, Kabare, in the foothills of Mount Kenya, I wrote to my parents every week on aerogramme letters; from 1992-2000, I have my reports to the Henry Martyn Trust, when I lectured in mission studies and founded the Henry Martyn Centre (now the Cambridge Centre for Christianity Worldwide) in the Cambridge Theological Federation; as Vicar of Islington (2000-09) and partly during my time as Bishop of Sherborne (2009-15), my Fulcrum Newsletters 2005-11; as Mission Theologian in the Anglican Communion, my monthly Interweavings articles 2015-2017; now in retirement my Ponderings.

Conclusion

Why should this particular person, at this particular time and place, early in retirement in Cambridge, write a memoir?

The clue may be in the participle “nourishing” in the title and its double meaning. I hope that, in the very acts of reflecting and recounting, I may be nourished by God and that these written memories may later be nourishing for others as they read of the nourishment I have received from innumerable people close to God, little-known as well as well-known.

Nourishing Memories follows on from my collections of poems, Nourishing Connections (Canterbury Press, 2020) and essays, Nourishing Mission: Theological Settings (Brill, forthcoming in 2021).

To guard against the temptations already mentioned, I will be writing these memories in cumulative installments and also sharing them first with my wife and then with two trusted, critical friends, who have kindly agreed to call me to account.

For inspiration in cumulative praise and thanksgiving, I have been rejoicing in the cosmic scope of the Benedicite from the Book of Common Prayer (“O all ye works of the Lord, bless ye the Lord: praise and magnify him for ever…”) and meditating on Psalm 136 (“O give thanks unto the Lord, for he is gracious: and his mercy endureth for ever…”). I have also been mindful of the Book of Common Prayer’s Litany (“From all blindness of heart; from pride, vainglory, and hypocrisy; from envy, hatred and malice, and all uncharitableness, Good Lord, deliver us”).

Finally, my heartfelt plea to the “Holy Spirit: Remembrancer,” written at St Beunos, North Wales in 2017, is:

O Holy Spirit, Giver of Life,
Illumine my sin,
Which lurks and creeps in darkness:
Give me your life,
Which swirls and leads into light.

O Holy Spirit, Inspirer of Languages,
Release my tongue
From cynical cursing,
To praise you, Father and Son,
With eloquent wisdom.

O Holy Spirit, Remembrancer,
Refresh my memory,
With words of Moses and Jesus,
To help me follow your ways
And imagine your future.

O Holy Spirit,
Cascading water, coursing down the mountainside,
Whirling wind, sweeping up the valley,
Flaming fire, crackling in the hearth,
Soothing oil, seeping into cracks of an old cricket bat,
Fill me.

Graham Kings
The Rt. Rev. Dr. Graham Kings is honorary assistant bishop in the Diocese of Ely and research associate at the Cambridge Centre for Christianity Worldwide.

This article was originally published on Living Church, and is reposted here with permission. 

The post Nourshing Memories: Preface first appeared on Fulcrum Anglican.

A veteran Christian media pioneer who lived through rocket attacks and car bombings in war-torn Beirut, Lebanon, says Christians in the Middle East have never been more willing to risk everything to put their faith on display.

Religion News Service. 3 June 2021

The post Media ‘daredevil’ focuses on ‘courageous faith’ in Middle East – RNS first appeared on Fulcrum Anglican.