There’s no ‘i’ in Team, just a lot of love and cake

One of the wonderful things about doing Relay is Team Days. Once a month all the UCCF staff and Relay workers get together in their regions for a couple of days of training and fellowship (and fun). We spent this Wednesday and Thursday in Doncaster, thinking mainly about small groups. It was great to learn and discuss how we can do better small groups and Bible studies and I think everybody learnt a lot from it.

The rest of the time involved a trip to see Fantastic Mr Fox (picture the scene: a bunch of mainly male twenty-somethings amongst a load of kids and their parents… Also none of us wanted to sit to the side of the screen so we opted for a nice spread down several rows so that we could all have a seat by the aisle). Unfortunately it was only an average film, but still a fun trip nonetheless.

We also had cake (not just any cake, but BONFIRE CAKE!), sparklers, some very good singing, a much needed girly ‘off-loading’ of stuff with C and L, more cake, wise words and hospitality from Dr Dray, food, a lot of tea and a fair amount of laughter.

I’m so thankful for the time I get to spend with these guys. Even though normally I only see a few of them each week I take so much encouragement from the time when I do see them. It makes me so thankful to God to think that he didn’t just send his Son to save me alone but to save a people. Together we are a community, a family, a group of people from different places and with different lives, but we are all united in the incredible truth of knowing that we are all saved in Jesus Christ and loved by an almighty God. It’s so good to spend time with a group of people that have genuine joy through Christ and who you can be honest with and freely and easily love as brothers and sisters.

October was quite a difficult month for me really. Largely because of the emotions involved in my Grandad’s death and the feeling of tiredness that came from that, but also in frustrations with other people and things. This may sound pathetic to you, but I really just needed my mum, as well as some time to concentrate on something other than my lonely self sitting at my desk in my bedroom. A few different things over the last week, including team days, have been a little breath of fresh air and I feel better for it.

I long for the day when the love and community amongst people (even better than that which we glimpse at team days!) becomes the norm, when every tear will be wiped permanently from our eyes and when struggles are a thing of the past. What a day that will be! Can you imagine the enormous and glorious praise that will ring out on that day? I love the words from the Getty’s song ‘There is a higher throne’:

Hear heaven’s voices sing;
Their thunderous anthem rings
Through emerald courts and sapphire skies.
Their praises rise.
All glory, wisdom, power,
Strength, thanks, and honour are
To God our King, who reigns on high
Forevermore.

Amen!

This morning we had a really great slobs meeting (looking at a passage with the student small group leaders so that they can go away and lead a Bible study on the passage themselves). We were looking at 2 Timothy 4, the last study in our little series. It was fantastic to see the students engaging with the words and being struck by how Jesus so firmly stood by Paul’s side at his first defense and hoe he delivered him from the lion’s mouth, even when others were abandoning him. We were seeing that although gospel ministry is difficult and we are likely to suffer, there is in store for us the same crown of righteousness that Paul was expecting and so looking forward to! Amazing!

The study felt different today somehow. I think being asked to close our Bibles and just listen to the words and to think about what struck us was really powerful. It was so clear to see how God speaks powerfully through his word, even with no deep intellectual analysis of words or passages, but just by taking it as it is.

I’ve been having so many thoughts now about how small groups fit into CU as a whole. The ‘Mission, Word and Community’ idea that came from discussions on Team Days while looking at Total Church by Tim Chester and Steve Timmis has really challenged me. Maybe we need an entirely new perspective on how we can use small groups in Universities, well especially thinking of Hallam anyway. I’m going to have to leave these thoughts for another post though. I haven’t quite gathered together everything that I’ve got floating around my mind, and we’ve left the CU leaders with the task of rethinking and evaluating how our small groups are run. Once a bit more thought, prayer and discussion has gone on I’ll let you have all my ideas. Any thoughts from you on ‘mission, word and community’ in small groups is welcome!

…………….

Ahh writing this blog post has helped me in my thinking so much… Why should that community I spoke about only exist on team days? Why can’t we see more of that love and caring for each other and Word centred encouragement and learning amongst Christians in CU throughout the term too? How can we encourage it? Hmm.

I think it’s fair to say that I am ending this week feeling rather excited about the all the possibilities!

‘Cup of Tea’ Cake

Yes, yes Britain. You did read that title correctly. You can all cheer and rejoice; there IS a cake called the ‘Cup of Tea’ cake and it has got REAL TEA in it and it is MARVELLOUS.

And you can have the recipe, courtesy of my parents’ next door neighbour and her mother, Sue and Barbara.

Apparently the recipe is Scottish, but don’t let that dissuade you from making and stuffing your face with it.

I made one on Monday. I made one today. And I’m going to make another 2 to take on Team Days next week. If you are anything to do with the UCCF North East team and are going to be in Doncaster next week, lucky, lucky you.

CUP OF TEA CAKE

4oz mixed dried fruit

1 cup of tea (no milk, just tea!!)

½ lb self-raising flour

4oz moist brown sugar

1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda

1 teaspoon mixed spice

1 egg

————————————-

Melt margarine in a saucepan

Add the tea and mixed fruit

Bring to the boil, then leave to cool

Mix in all dry ingredients

Add beaten egg

Mix well

Bake at Gas Mark 4/160°C for about an hour

Big University, Small CU: What do we do?

Sheffield Hallam University, where I studied and where I am now doing Relay (yay!), has around 30,000 students, including 3000 International students. It’s a ‘new’ university with two campuses, with courses ranging from Nursing to Business Studies, to Teaching, to Sports Science, to Languages, Metalwork and Jewellery, Occupational Therapy, Graphic Design and so on (and on, and on)…

But the Christian Union only has around 40 regulars.

Why is that?

I know at Hallam that participation in extra curricular activites and societies is generally very low across the board (except for sport. Yes people, we DO beat Sheff Uni at Varsity regularly thank you very much…). Also, the layout of City campus, where most students are, lacks a ‘centre’. The Union (called the ‘HUBs’) has nothing but a bar and a small shop and is rarely used by students during the day. Halls are also fairly spread out across the city. The  high number of practical and vocational courses often attract students who are further back in their thinking on the gospel and who are less likely to respond to or participate in discussions or talks about suffering, evolution, religion etc.

All these things, to which there are many more that I could add, make effective evangelism on campus really quite a challenge.

In a way, Christian Unions in universities like Sheffield Hallam have to work a lot harder to reach out to students than in the Universities with traditionally large, well-established CUs. For example, even with the offer of free lunch, the lack of campus centre and general unwillingness of students here makes running lunch bars, the favourite of many a CU, ineffective and therefore pretty pointless.

So, perhaps we need to think a little outside the box and be more creative.

That is, of course, easier said than done. I have met my fair share of Christian students that are terrified to share the gospel for fear of either being made to look a fool or of simply of not knowing the words to say when the time comes. Unfortuntely that does make planning evangelism a tad tricky… hmmm.

In the past, Hallam has tended to stick to only doing Acoustic or quiz night type events which were ok (though unfortunately there were too few of them). It’s a comfortable thing to do, and I’m not ashamed to admit it, Hallam does quite like comfortable. You can go along, take a friend (or not) and let someone else do a talk with very little effort on your part. No need to actually explain the gospel yourself, phew! I’m not about to start complaining about how Hallam CU could have done things better in the past, however recently I’ve been thinking about how we could be doing things differently now and in the future. We are not just a Christian ‘Community’ (believe it or not), we are a mission team and that means proclaiming the gospel. And it means thinking of new and more effective ways that we can do it.

I’m not the only one who has been thinking about new universities in this way. My wonderful North East Team leader, Peter Dray, said on his blog (see here):

“I wonder if the need for friendship and community … should be part of the outreach and evangelistic strategies at new university campuses. Obviously Christian huddling is a long way from the pattern of Biblical gospel ministry – but could CUs at these universities seek to meet the need for community to many around them with an outward emphasis? Sacrifical, outward-looking community, where everyone is accepted as they are, is – after all – a massive implication of authentic gospel living.

Imagine – building on solid gospel convictions, it’s the CU at new universities including the lonely international students in dinner plans; it’s the CU that runs a football team; it’s CU members that offer their front rooms for other university meetings to take place. Imagine the way in which this would place gospel transformation on view, and the way in which this would require CU members to give a reason for the different hope they obviously have. Because CUs are currently very small at these universities, we’re not going to talk about massive numbers coming into contact with CU members. But I wonder if the quality of contact might make CU evangelism in these tough mission fields more effective?”

So Hallam isn’t ready for lunchbars and apologetics talks, but that’s ok. We don’t have the resources to run our own Global Café, but that’s ok too.

… A group of CU students are going to be joining in with the International Students Society’s Conversation Classes to befriend International students together. We aim to get to know them and invite them on a grub crawl around our homes.

… We’re doing a Bakeathon (as you may guess, food and cake is VERY important to us!) and film + discussion with some of the girls and their baking whizz housemates.

… I’ve had people around for dinner, and intend to do a lot more cooking for them and their friends, just to get a chance to get to know them and get some discussion going.

We need people to see us living the gospel together so that they might then have questions about who this Jesus is, rather than employing the hit and run tactics of shoving a Free gospel in someone’s face and running away (or just not doing anything at all, as it seems is so often the case). There isn’t as yet an established evangelism strategy at Hallam but we must continue to try things out nonetheless. We must remember and take heed of what Paul said to Timothy; we must “not be ashamed to testify about our Lord… But join with me in suffering for the gospel, by the power of God, who has saved us and called us to a holy life – not because of anything we have done but because if his own purpose and grace.” (2 Timothy 1:8-9)

I know that as a CU we’re not facing beatings and jail as Paul was, but sharing the gospel at universities like Hallam is still tough. We have to continue even if we feel frustrated or like we’re getting nowhere.

…

Now I’ve got those thoughts out in the open, I just have to go and convince the CU…

The latest…

My Grandad died really early on Monday morning after having a stroke on Sunday. We spent all night in the hospital and it wasn’t a very nice experience. I was going to write about it on here but now I’ve decided I don’t want to. I’ll keep my thoughts to myself. All I can say is, it’s a comfort to know that Jesus is Lord and that Grandad is now at peace with him.

I’ve not really been doing anything since then. My very nice and kind staff worker gave me time off, but I’ve not done much more than play my violin and sit around doing nothing… I REALLY need to get out of the house now though, I need some human contact! All my housemates are working full time so I’ve not seen them much and last night they went out together on a double date thing (which left the remaining loner housemate to enjoy her own company. Great!). Ah well, this afternoon I’m going to visit my Grandma again so at least it’s a change of scenery. Some of my family will be there too so that’s nice at least. I love my family, they’re great. When I was younger I don’t think I realised how lucky I am to have such a great family. There is never a dull moment when we’re all together, especially with my sisters (we have been known to be a little silly together at times), and I’m very thankful for all of them.

Coventry

One of my Relay friends recently posted a link to a BBC programme about the bombing of Coventry during WWII.

Boring, you may think. I did too at first to be honest. How interesting can a programme about a city I’ve never even been to or know anything about be? It’s near Birmingham for heaven’s sake. My only response to his comment of ‘What a city!’ was ‘It’s not as good as Sheffield though, is it?’.

But it was actually really interesting. It was quite shocking to see the ruthlessness of the Luftwaffe as over 400 planes flew over in one night and dropped their load on the terrified city below. Some of the stories from people that witnessed and lost friends, family and neighbours during the bombardment were even more shocking. I found myself almost shedding a tear at one woman’s story. She herself was still horrified and upset about it even after all these years. An entire city, people’s lives, homes, businesses, schools, churches were all part of the mass target and there was no care for the lives of anyone involved.

The remarkable thing about the story of Coventry was the resilience of the people. Despite what they had been through they carried on, started to rebuild and ended up quadrupling their factory output as part of the war effort.

When it’s Hitler sending the bombs over, it’s easy to look at the evil of it and condemn it as awful. The thing is, the British Air Forced retaliated, and still it is talked about as a kind of triumphant victory over the Germans. Doesn’t that just show human nature and selfishness? The horror for the people of Coventry was real and awful, but I can’t help but fell slightly angry at the British response. I understand it was ar time, Britain and Germany were enemies, they were fighting. But the fact remains that I don’t see how we can condemn the Luftwaffe for that when our response was FAR worse.

The bombing in Coventry killed around 500 people. By the end of the war, the Royal Air Force was dropping three times the amount of bombs the Germans dropped on Coventry onto German cities night after night after night. When the Allies bombed Dresden, they killed 35,000. In Hamburg, 50,000. You can’t even compare it, it’s sickening. What is worse is that there will have been many more dead than they could count because many people were left as nothing more than burnt ashes or scattered lumps of flesh. Isn’t that just disgusting?

The city where I grew up in Germany, Osnabruck, had its fair share of bombing during the war too. The majority of the old city was destroyed and they are still finding unexploded British bombs all over the place; under school playgrounds and houses, in streets, on building sites… Some people have even died from them exploding unexpectedly as they begin to corrode and break up.

Here is my beloved, war damaged Osnabruck:

I know the Nazi regime was evil, but I can’t help but wonder if there was another way that the war could have been won, because this makes us as bad as they were in my opinion. Especially seeing as most Germans were not Nazis, but innocent civilians, undeserving of almost everything they got. Maybe we should listen when the Bible says “It is mine to avenge; I will repay” (Deut 32:35). Only God can serve up sufficient justice for this. Human efforts only end in more death, hurt and sorrow.

The only amusing thing I found from thinking about this whole thing was this picture:

Why is it amusing, you ask? The building in the background is where I went to the dentist! The barracks (called Roberts Barracks) were taken over by the Brits when the war was over and I never once thought about the fact that the Nazis used to march in the square where we parked our car…

Take a look at the Coventry programme yourself.

Coffee Shops Are The Bee’s Knees

Enough said in the title really. I LOVE coffee shops. I LOVE café culture. It’s one of the things I loved most about Paris, where you seem to overhear someone ask ‘tu veux un petit café?’ every 100 yards or so.

My current coffee shop of choice is Coffee Revolution on Ecclesall Road. It’s not even the best coffee shop in the world; it’s not that big and it’s not got the best coffee either, but I love the atmosphere and I love even more how you always bump into people you know, or can wave to them as they walk by outside.

I think I love coffee shops because the only distractions are good distractions. You look up briefly to see someone new come in, or stare in awe at a 6 year olds giant muffin (yes, I did this today…) and then you’re straight back to what you were doing before. I was there on my own today, and I managed 4 hours of solid reading and 4 cups of tea, which is an achievement compared to what I get done at home I assure you. There is no computer or anything else to tear me away from our beloved Mr Grudem and note making that goes along with it. Instead you can just sit there, watching the world go by, contemplating interesting things you’ve read, sipping tea, day dreaming, having some quality time with yourself, in your own thoughts, asking your own questions.

I’m not usually one of those people that likes to spend much time on their own. I love being surrounded by people and I love activity. I suppose that’s what happens when you’re the youngest of 4 and grow up in a noisy house before being shipped off to boarding school where there are another 40 people in every room adding their own screams and squeals. I find it hard to stay concentrated when it’s just me at home trying to study, that’s why I spent half of my degree in Adsetts and why I am choosing to surround myself with the noise of strangers in coffee shops. It’s like alone time, but without being on your own. Perfect.

You should try it. Take a book, take just yourself. Add a couple of hours, a couple of cups of coffee and a little contemplation of the world around you and what you get is relaxation and some really good quality time out from busy life and its stresses.

While you’re at it, try pondering this one… where does the phrase ‘the bee’s knees’ come from? It is a little strange. Do bees even have knees?

France

I used to think it was inevitable that I would end up back in France. But now I’m not so sure, and I don’t know why I’m feeling like that. As a Relay worker I have been asked about it and have the opportunity to go. On the surface the choice seems an obvious one: I already speak French, have experience of living in the country, there is a definite need there… and yet for some reason I am still considering staying in England. What is that reason? I don’t know. Not fear (I know that’s shocking, especially for me, but I assure you it’s true). Not lack of time or finances. Not another super amazing job that’s already waiting for me at the end of Relay. Not anything specifically. But still, I can’t make the choice.

Even my French friends are singing “Oui, oui, oui !” at me.

*This is the point where I let out a big sigh*

If I do go, where would I go? What would I do? I think I’ve decided I wouldn’t do Interaction, working with the GBU, but what about something else? I don’t even know what options there are. Working with a church maybe? Would it be short term? Medium? Long (eek!) ?! I don’t have a clue.

I know my life is in God’s hands so I don’t need to worry, but I am naturally curious and also don’t always cope that well with not knowing what is just around the corner. You see, after Relay finishes I have ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA what I’m going to do. So whatever decision I make eventually, in the meatime I’m going to have to sit here and bite my nails, wishing I owned a time machine just so that I could go ahead and check out how the story ends…

France: oui ou non ? C’est quoi la réponse ? Personne ne sait, sauf Dieu…

Oh. My. Goodness. Get me one!

Ok, I know I’ve only recently decided to start learning the guitar, and I have done a bit I swear. But now I want a Cello for Christmas. I’ve just spent an hour and a half learning the beginning of Bach’s Cello Suite no 1 and now I want my very own shiny, pretty, lovely Cello.

Yes, this is a hint. Christmas is now only 3 months away. You can start saving tomorrow.

I am sooo glad I can already play the violin, it makes learning the Cello quite a lot easier. I’m already looking forward to playing along with L and N on their violins!

Such beautiful music; have a listen and I promise it will brighten your day.

Showering with Love via the Postal Service

Last week on our North East team days we looked at Romans 12 and were thinking about putting others before ourselves and such like. The conversation that came out of it was about how we, as a team, can love and serve each other better, even though most of the year we wont  actually be together. Keeping in contact is reeeaally important, and as I ABSOLUTELY FLIPPING LOVE MY FELLOW NORTH EAST RELAY WORKERS (please note that this does NOT mean I don’t love all you other Relays too…). I am going to try my best to correct a lifetime of being incapable of actually remembering and sending things in the post when I say I will.

I have already asked them for their addresses and am going to pay the Royal Mail to deliver my love to them tucked nicely inside an envelope.

Go on Pat, do yo’ thang!

Ruth

My sister’s middle name is Ruth and I quite like it, but that’s not why I’m writing this post. In fact, it has absolutely nothing to do with it.

It just so happens that Ruth is one of the books that I have been reading recently. Some of the characteristics that she and Boaz possess have  challenged me. Carrying on from one of my previous posts, I am still thinking about how I can love people better. Ruth’s faithfulness, hard working attitude, lack of selfishness, boldness and humility (putting others before herself) and Boaz’s kindness, thoughtfulness and generosity are great things to model.

Ruth’s story points forward to Jesus too. As the servant King, he literally put everyone before himself, and we are asked to follow him.

Then he said to them all: “if anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.” Luke 9:23

Denying myself isn’t something I seem to do very often… definitely something to think about this week.