Hey guys
Sorry for so much silence over the past few months - have moved to my new job and have no internet connection. Anyway, as any regular readers will know I have a real thing for ensuring we teach biblical truth in all churches, groups, etc..
Well over the past few months I have been even more aware of this - and so my urge to all of you is to consider do we really believe the Bible is God's 100% infallible word?? If not, we need to wonder whether this is the reason why the church in the UK and most of the West is declining rather than growing. It is because we are comprimising the truth for whatever reasons - sometimes for political correctness, sometimes for people pleasing reasons, sometimes just because we lack faith and conviction.
I wish we could raise a generation of believers who would not compromise the Truth for anything. Maybe the call to all those in leadership in the western church today is that of Ezekiel in Ezekiel 2. If you are in leadership read it. I f you are not read it too.
Blessings
Andy xx
Thursday, August 30, 2007
Wednesday, February 28, 2007
Forsaking our first love
Hey guys.
I thought I would just write a few thoughts I have had over the past few weeks. I don't know if any of you guys have ever been in love, as in truly been in love - not that airy fairy mythical thing but the true love. Knowing you would do anything for the person (or thing) that you are in love with. It is one of the most amazing things ever. It is the most beautiful gift from God. However, that feeling is nothing on what God feels for you and for me. He did everything for us, and more to show his love for us.
And then, I don't know how many of you have ever had your heart truly broken. That feeling of total emptiness that nothing you do seems to fill, well imagine that hundreds of times over, and you will begin, and only begin to imagine how God feels every time we reject him and turn away from him. That is what we do and we don't seem to be bothered by it. Is there something wrong with us? Have we failed to get what Christ means when he says 'I love you'?
We have forsaken our first love you see, and we do it on a daily basis - we need to be seeking God's grace and mercy so that he will transform us into a people who are ready to do his will, and to stop breaking his heart!
How do we do this? By being a people of faith - and accepting his grace and mercy, recognising we do not do it on our own - it is in Christ. And secondly, by following his word - by recognising his Bible as his direct revelation to us, to be followed and obeyed at all times. When we fail to do this by becoming lax on issues such as homosexuality, women in leadership, heterosexual sex outside of marriage, etc we are breaking his heart. So lets be a generation of people who follow him with our whole heart, and love him with the love he deserves. Let us not forsake our first and only true love any more.
Blessings
Andy
I thought I would just write a few thoughts I have had over the past few weeks. I don't know if any of you guys have ever been in love, as in truly been in love - not that airy fairy mythical thing but the true love. Knowing you would do anything for the person (or thing) that you are in love with. It is one of the most amazing things ever. It is the most beautiful gift from God. However, that feeling is nothing on what God feels for you and for me. He did everything for us, and more to show his love for us.
And then, I don't know how many of you have ever had your heart truly broken. That feeling of total emptiness that nothing you do seems to fill, well imagine that hundreds of times over, and you will begin, and only begin to imagine how God feels every time we reject him and turn away from him. That is what we do and we don't seem to be bothered by it. Is there something wrong with us? Have we failed to get what Christ means when he says 'I love you'?
We have forsaken our first love you see, and we do it on a daily basis - we need to be seeking God's grace and mercy so that he will transform us into a people who are ready to do his will, and to stop breaking his heart!
How do we do this? By being a people of faith - and accepting his grace and mercy, recognising we do not do it on our own - it is in Christ. And secondly, by following his word - by recognising his Bible as his direct revelation to us, to be followed and obeyed at all times. When we fail to do this by becoming lax on issues such as homosexuality, women in leadership, heterosexual sex outside of marriage, etc we are breaking his heart. So lets be a generation of people who follow him with our whole heart, and love him with the love he deserves. Let us not forsake our first and only true love any more.
Blessings
Andy
Sunday, February 18, 2007
Ideas for booklets
Hey guys
Over the next few weeks and months I want to produce a series of booklets on issues to do with Christianity. If you have any ideas of what you want these booklets to cover let me know!
Love
Andy xx
Over the next few weeks and months I want to produce a series of booklets on issues to do with Christianity. If you have any ideas of what you want these booklets to cover let me know!
Love
Andy xx
Tuesday, February 13, 2007
Sao Paulo - a tale of two cities....
This is a report I wrote a year ago after returning from a summer in Brasil.
Sao Paulo – a tale of two cities
2005 - a year for making poverty history?
Emerson is a six-year-old child. He lives in Penha, one of the largest favelas in Sao Paulo, Brasil. At the age of just three months his father walked out on them. He has one older brother, who at the age of fourteen is in prison after being caught selling drugs. His mother walks two jobs, one during the day and another during the evening, and on top of this is regularly involved in prostitution to keep her family in the little shack they call home. At the weekends she spends what little money they have to go and visit the eldest son in prison. Just six years old, and Emerson already has had to learn to fend for himself, and in this neighbourhood that means he knows how to wield a knife, and carries one even in school, and is already addicted to solvent abuse. Two weeks into our stay, Emerson came to us and asked to follow him to their home. During that night their shack had collapsed and Emerson had narrowly missed being killed.
This story is one of the strongest memories I have from my time in Brasil. I wish I could say that this was just a one off, but it is not – many of the children we worked with had similar stories to tell.
I spent a month in Sao Paulo this summer, working alongside the Abiah trust, providing education for the children in Penha in Sao Paulo, and also providing support for the church within the favela. During this time I was struck by so many things, however the unforgettable memory is that of the immense wealth disparity between the richest and the poorest in Brasil.
I have had the privilege of working in many of the inner city areas within the UK, including areas of Manchester and London, yet I have never seen such a clear disparity in any other country. Brasil is the eighth largest economic power in the world, and Sao Paulo itself is one of the largest cities in the world. Millions of pounds have been put into the city by the Japanese government to prevent the main river through the city from bursting its banks every winter. However, some of the poorest people in the world live within this area.
What makes the situation so much more obvious is the way the city is structured. Sao Paulo is a city with no obvious zonal development. The city is growing at such a rate that new buildings are put up wherever there is space, and the favelas just fill the gaps where buildings cannot be built. This means that in many areas a favela will appear at the foot of an expensive block of flats. In Penha, for example, directly above the favela is a 16-storey block of flats, where many of the residents were taken off to their work every day in a helicopter, and at the bottom of the favela runs the ring road, a fifteen lane wide monstrosity.
Straight through the middle of the favela ran the sewer for the flats above it, however this was not a covered sewer, it was an open sewer with vertical solid walls about 20 feet deep. Every year about twenty children from the favela fall in and do not make it back up. Even whilst we were there the little brother of one of the children we were working with died in this sewer.
As always, it is the children who feel the brunt of this massive inequality. There are now an estimated 10 million children living on the streets of the major cities in Brasil, with over half of them regularly taking some form of illegal substance. Over 540,000 children have caught AIDS through shared needles or prostitution – one cannot begin to imagine the figures for HIV. About half a million children are forced into prostitution due to their circumstances. This is the way Brasil works.
This seems a rather dreary picture, however there was some good news as well. The project I was working with was one called the PEPE scheme, run by Abiah. This project sets up schools within the favelas all over Brasil, and provides basic education for children of all ages. The school we were based at in Penha is one of the largest in the country, and has recently been given a substantial grant by the council of Sao Paulo. It now has over 200 students of all ages, and whilst we were there plans were confirmed for a massive expansion project to build three new classrooms.
These schools are run entirely by volunteers, many of them from local churches. The work they do expands during all times of the day, and every evening we would accompany the teachers into the heart of the favela to visit families of the students. One weekend we took 60 teenagers on a camp outside the city, something many of the children had never dreamed of doing. Slowly but surely things are improving.
However, over the last three months I have had a real opportunity to rethink over my experiences, and one thing has really struck me. In a year where making poverty history has made the headlines so much, we have never heard of the stories of the children of Brasil. Brasil has made the headlines plenty of times, either to do with the London bombings or the corruption charges against the government, but never to do with the children who face very little future, the children who have to sell their bodies to survive. If we want to make poverty history we must remember that poverty is not just a word to describe the injustice in Africa, but that in South America, North America, and even in our own city, Bristol.
As I draw to a close I want to take you into the favelas. As you approach the houses the stench of the sewer hits you. You approach the railway line with trepidation and dash across as quickly as you can, remembering that the line curves in both directions, and by the time a driver sees you it will be too late. You are now in Penha. A group of kids is sat on the ground sniffing glue, and one or two of them are moving onto crack as they look for a slightly bigger high. People walk past not even noticing, you recognise that one of them is Emerson. Further on you see another group of kids standing round a little fire trying to keep warm in the rags they call clothes. You can see one of them is showing off their latest acquisition – a gun. The child cannot be more than ten years old. Later as you leave you see Maria, at the age of only eleven, going off towards the town, tottering down the road in heels and a short skirt. Your stomach turns as you think about the fate that awaits her there. What makes it worse is that you know you have to face them in class the next day. As Maria walks past your eyes catch and you realise you are looking into eyes that would look more suited on a twenty-five year old. The stories they tell make your stomach turn again. This is the real face of Brasil, and the real face of poverty.
Sao Paulo – a tale of two cities
2005 - a year for making poverty history?
Emerson is a six-year-old child. He lives in Penha, one of the largest favelas in Sao Paulo, Brasil. At the age of just three months his father walked out on them. He has one older brother, who at the age of fourteen is in prison after being caught selling drugs. His mother walks two jobs, one during the day and another during the evening, and on top of this is regularly involved in prostitution to keep her family in the little shack they call home. At the weekends she spends what little money they have to go and visit the eldest son in prison. Just six years old, and Emerson already has had to learn to fend for himself, and in this neighbourhood that means he knows how to wield a knife, and carries one even in school, and is already addicted to solvent abuse. Two weeks into our stay, Emerson came to us and asked to follow him to their home. During that night their shack had collapsed and Emerson had narrowly missed being killed.
This story is one of the strongest memories I have from my time in Brasil. I wish I could say that this was just a one off, but it is not – many of the children we worked with had similar stories to tell.
I spent a month in Sao Paulo this summer, working alongside the Abiah trust, providing education for the children in Penha in Sao Paulo, and also providing support for the church within the favela. During this time I was struck by so many things, however the unforgettable memory is that of the immense wealth disparity between the richest and the poorest in Brasil.
I have had the privilege of working in many of the inner city areas within the UK, including areas of Manchester and London, yet I have never seen such a clear disparity in any other country. Brasil is the eighth largest economic power in the world, and Sao Paulo itself is one of the largest cities in the world. Millions of pounds have been put into the city by the Japanese government to prevent the main river through the city from bursting its banks every winter. However, some of the poorest people in the world live within this area.
What makes the situation so much more obvious is the way the city is structured. Sao Paulo is a city with no obvious zonal development. The city is growing at such a rate that new buildings are put up wherever there is space, and the favelas just fill the gaps where buildings cannot be built. This means that in many areas a favela will appear at the foot of an expensive block of flats. In Penha, for example, directly above the favela is a 16-storey block of flats, where many of the residents were taken off to their work every day in a helicopter, and at the bottom of the favela runs the ring road, a fifteen lane wide monstrosity.
Straight through the middle of the favela ran the sewer for the flats above it, however this was not a covered sewer, it was an open sewer with vertical solid walls about 20 feet deep. Every year about twenty children from the favela fall in and do not make it back up. Even whilst we were there the little brother of one of the children we were working with died in this sewer.
As always, it is the children who feel the brunt of this massive inequality. There are now an estimated 10 million children living on the streets of the major cities in Brasil, with over half of them regularly taking some form of illegal substance. Over 540,000 children have caught AIDS through shared needles or prostitution – one cannot begin to imagine the figures for HIV. About half a million children are forced into prostitution due to their circumstances. This is the way Brasil works.
This seems a rather dreary picture, however there was some good news as well. The project I was working with was one called the PEPE scheme, run by Abiah. This project sets up schools within the favelas all over Brasil, and provides basic education for children of all ages. The school we were based at in Penha is one of the largest in the country, and has recently been given a substantial grant by the council of Sao Paulo. It now has over 200 students of all ages, and whilst we were there plans were confirmed for a massive expansion project to build three new classrooms.
These schools are run entirely by volunteers, many of them from local churches. The work they do expands during all times of the day, and every evening we would accompany the teachers into the heart of the favela to visit families of the students. One weekend we took 60 teenagers on a camp outside the city, something many of the children had never dreamed of doing. Slowly but surely things are improving.
However, over the last three months I have had a real opportunity to rethink over my experiences, and one thing has really struck me. In a year where making poverty history has made the headlines so much, we have never heard of the stories of the children of Brasil. Brasil has made the headlines plenty of times, either to do with the London bombings or the corruption charges against the government, but never to do with the children who face very little future, the children who have to sell their bodies to survive. If we want to make poverty history we must remember that poverty is not just a word to describe the injustice in Africa, but that in South America, North America, and even in our own city, Bristol.
As I draw to a close I want to take you into the favelas. As you approach the houses the stench of the sewer hits you. You approach the railway line with trepidation and dash across as quickly as you can, remembering that the line curves in both directions, and by the time a driver sees you it will be too late. You are now in Penha. A group of kids is sat on the ground sniffing glue, and one or two of them are moving onto crack as they look for a slightly bigger high. People walk past not even noticing, you recognise that one of them is Emerson. Further on you see another group of kids standing round a little fire trying to keep warm in the rags they call clothes. You can see one of them is showing off their latest acquisition – a gun. The child cannot be more than ten years old. Later as you leave you see Maria, at the age of only eleven, going off towards the town, tottering down the road in heels and a short skirt. Your stomach turns as you think about the fate that awaits her there. What makes it worse is that you know you have to face them in class the next day. As Maria walks past your eyes catch and you realise you are looking into eyes that would look more suited on a twenty-five year old. The stories they tell make your stomach turn again. This is the real face of Brasil, and the real face of poverty.
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