Momentum and Stuff

The Baptist Assembly in Wales, called Momentum, gathered in Carmarthen on Friday and Saturday last week. I travelled on the Thursday, taking our caravan, and did a short tour of the area en vélo. The caravan site was a little basic, but cheap. Here’s a picture of the shower block:

The Assembly was very enjoyable, getting together with other ministers and church members, and able to spend longer chatting and getting to know people over meals (which were excellent). There were some very good, interesting parts to the Assembly, such as the guest speaker, Eric Bryant, and the news of what is going on in Baptist circles in Wales, and in BMS.

I drove down to Llansteffan on the Friday evening after the close of play, and when the rain had stopped.

On Sunday I went to Glenwood Church in the morning, and St Mark’s, Gabalfa, in the evening. I found Glenwood to be a wonderful example of what church should be, in that they do so much in the community, as well as ministering to one another, and worshipping in a joyful, informal way. There was a presentation about a charity that works with local disaffected young people, and how they make video documentaries with them, and paint murals in scruffy underpasses. The charity is called People Around Here, which I think is a superb name!
The pastor, Paul Francis, was the preacher, and he looked at how we should give God our best, based on Mark 14.
St Mark’s was quite different to Glenwood. I know they are quite a large, lively, evangelical Anglican church, but I suppose most people go to the morning service. It was an enjoyable service and a blessing and a typical Anglican service.

This week I’ve been working on our Hymns Database – copying the Songs of Fellowship scripture index into it, and working on a combined Songs of Fellowship thematic index. (This is church work, but the kind of thing it is impossible to make time for in usual life. I did say in advance that I would try to do this job during the sabbatical!)

Tuesday 14th June 2011 - Cycling and Reading in the sun.

Lovely weather today, and I set out cycling from home joining Route 4 in St Christopher Drive, taking it through Caerphilly, Bedwas, Trethomas to Machen and then Draethen. A lovely village to stop at in the sun and read for half an hour, before pressing on (and up… and up!) to Rudry where I had lunch and read some more. Then a fast run from the Rudry mountain viewpoint down Van Road and back to Caerphilly where I sat looking out over the castle and read some more for an hour or so.
I’m still on John James’s book, Dry Bones Can Live, and I’m very much enjoying it. He made a couple of comments about miracles which I found helpful. John James is one who sees signs and wonders as important, but he notes that miracles are not as common today in the UK church as they are in some other parts of the world. (Miracles do still occur here, as well as answers to prayer, of course, he comments). This goes with what I was thinking about last week concerning the way signs and wonders tend to happen more in pioneer evangelistic situations, and maybe they are less for the complacent, comfortable church.
Secondly, we see the fulfilment today of Jesus’ remarks in John 14 about ‘greater things than these’ in the miraculous nature of modern medicine. Far more healing miracles occur every day now than during Jesus’ earthly ministry – things we accept as coming from science, but which the people of Jesus’ day would have seen as just as miraculous as the healings he performed.

Sunday 12th June 2011 - Pentecost

I went to four churches today! I started at Abertridwr Community Church, but I was only there for half an hour – Owen was playing the keyboard for one song, and then he needed to get to Bethel, so I was there in the capacity of chauffeur. A very friendly welcome, as always.
Then I went to Elim, Caerphilly – a Pentecostal church for Pentecost Sunday. There were about 120 people in the congregation, and the sung worship lasted about an hour, and included communion. There was also a part I quite liked, which was a Pentecostal version of sharing The Peace, but between a couple of the songs. The preacher was the regional superintendent for the Elim churches, and a former senior pastor at City Temple, Cardiff.
He preached on Acts 2 (of course) talking about the ‘Suddenlies of God’ – The Holy Spirit came suddenly! He talked about the Holy Spirit as ‘a helper alongside, who will partner with you,’ which I liked, and it matched very closely something I wrote about the Holy Spirit here a couple of weeks ago.

The third church was right across the road – Wesley, who were hosting the Caerphilly Pentecost Picnic, due the the extremely heavy rain. At least we were in no doubt as to whether to hold the picnic inside or outside! A good atmosphere, with people breaking out of their own church groups.

Number four was the evening service at Heath Evangelical Church, Cardiff. The preacher was the pastor, Rev Wyn Hughes, who surprised me by being very young. Well, younger than me, anyway!
This was only the second church in the fourteen I have been to during the sabbatical not to have a band playing. Anyone care to guess which one the previous one was?
…Yes, Bethel, Penyrheol where the preacher doubled as the pianist.
Oh, also Mount Carmel had only one musician, but Terry pressed ‘play’ on the pre-recorded piano track and strummed along on the guitar.
But Heath Evangelical was the first where there was solo organ (an impressive pipe organ). Heath was also the first of the fourteen to use hymn books rather than a projector. And it’s a long time since I last sang from the EMW book ‘Christian Hymns’. All minor keys, of course, apart from the one to the tune of Crown Him With many Crowns.
One hymn included the line “Our bosoms with gratitude glow” (I wrote it down to be sure I had it right!). I confess, I didn’t notice many glowing bosoms.

It’s interesting that both Elim and Heath would say they are Evangelical, and place full trust in the grace of God for salvation in Christ. They both hold the Bible as of paramount importance, but the two services couldn’t be more different in style and emphasis.

At Heath the pastor preached on John 16: 1 – 15 (from the KJV – and prayed in King James language too). He said, “If you haven’t been wrought upon by the Holy Spirit, you are not a Christian,” which sounds like it would be interesting, if I knew what it meant!
Here’s another: “You may think you are free, but you are a pawn of the devil.”
He made a good point that when the Holy Spirit convicts of sin, there is no ‘torment’ in it – God never loses his temper. Scaring people about Hell and Damnation is not the way to lead them into the conviction of the Holy Spirit. I suspect some of his predecessors within the evangelical tradition would have taken a different view, but it was good to hear that.

The warmth of the welcome has varied considerably over the last seven weeks. The smaller churches are definitely better at making visitors feel at home. That’s not to say I haven’t been welcomed at some of the bigger churches I’ve visited, because I have. Just not all of them!

During the Week

On Monday (6th June) I went to the fourth and final part of the course on Acts. It has been an enjoyable course, with lots of helpful ideas coming from various people, especially the Catholic lady. When we looked at a part where Paul gives his testimony, I was asked whether we have people giving testimonies in the Baptist church. I said we did, especially at baptismal services, “where people talk about why they are being baptised, how they met Jesus and what he means to them.” One lady was horrified at my phrase ‘how they met Jesus’… “I haven’t met Jesus!” she said. “Who meets Jesus these days???”

On Tuesday (7th June) I spent most of the day helping to load all John and Pauline’s worldly goods into two small self-drive vans. Whenever I do something like that I am always so glad I am not a removal man by trade!

On Wednesday (8th June) I dropped some children off at Bethel for ‘Roundabout’ then sat in the car and listened to a CD from New Wine 2007, which included a comment that “signs and wonders occur on the border between the Kingdom of God and the kingdom of the enemy.”
I need to think further about that one. It fits with something I heard someone say a while ago – someone who says he is not really a dispensationalist, but nevertheless thinks that signs and wonders are for pioneering church-planting situations.

Thursday (9th June) began with a Governors’ Committee meeting, and was followed by a trip along Route 47. This is the northern part of the Celtic Trail between Swansea and Chepstow (I only rode a small part of it!) It is more ‘challenging’ than Route 4 which goes further south. I rode the part from Penallta Park near Ystrad Mynach over the Hengoed Viaduct to Cwmfelinfach in the Sirhowy Country Park. Nice one – about 16 miles there and back.

Sunday 5th June 2011 - Down the pub.

Time for another visit to a SWBA church – in fact I went to two today: Woodville (Road) in the morning and Solace in the evening.
Woody (as it is known) is a large church with a relatively new building in Cathays. A large part of the congregation is made up of students, so I would be interested to know what it is like in the middle of the holidays! The service included the baptism of two young people, both of whom (I think) are students.
The worship (music) at Woody is more lively than I have seen at most churches on my sabbatical tour, with the possible exception of King’s Newport.
David Morrell, the senior pastor, preached on Acts 8: 26 – 38, and went on to expand on Isaiah 53, which I thought was interesting, because I have used exactly the same readings and basic outline in a baptismal sermon quite a few years ago!

In the evening I went with Dean to Solace, which is a church that meets in a pub. It is run by James Karran, who is the associate pastor at Ararat, Whitchurch. Solace has been running for a few years now, but only recently moved to O’Neill’s in Trinity Street, Cardiff.
The idea is really good, and it is developing well. Inevitably it is like a cell group, and attempting outreach to the other people in the pub is very difficult… partly because there were very few other customers in the pub on a Sunday evening.
There was a prayer time in an upstairs room, and some equipment was set up. Then we went to the bar downstairs for some food and drink, and it was decided to stay downstairs for the talk (on forgiveness), a discussion, prayer time and communion. There were eight of us altogether, including Dean and me and a visitor from Ararat. Apparently some of the regulars were missing.
This kind of thing is definitely an important way of developing church and trying new ways of worship. It fits exactly with the way Jesus went about teaching and preaching. The difficulty in today’s setting is being clear exactly where it is going and what it is for. Is it outreach with the intention of getting other people in the pub to join in? Is it a church to which it is easier to invite friends? Is it a church that some ‘fringe’ people find it easier to join because it is a small group and not in a church building? Will it be a combination of these things? Probably!

Half Term

On the Sunday at the beginning of Half Term I went to Bethel, Penyrheol in the morning (because I heard there was an excellent preacher that day), and Highfields in Cardiff in the evening.
The sermon was on Esther, and the preacher’s aim is to cover the entire book in two sermons. So although the reading was from chapter 2, he actually preached on the first five chapters. So a lot of the 40-min sermon was telling the story, although there were a few interesting and helpful points of application.
Highfields is a large church with an impressive building, and a lot going on. They mainly sing traditional hymns, but played by a band.
I was at Highfields a few weeks ago, mid-week, for a lecture on the problems in the Old Testament. And I commented in this blog on that occasion about how it set me off on a train of thought concerning big churches, and why and how they grow, and about finance. I’m not sure when (or if) that train of thought will reach its destination and be presented in written form, but I was thinking about it again following last Sunday’s visit.
Incidentally I am now reading John James’s latest book, called Dry Bones Can Live – How to be part of a healthy church, which also has a fair amount to say about church growth.
We were away from Tuesday to Friday, visiting relatives, including a trip to my ancient homeland.

Pontypridd Swimming Pool

On the Friday before Half Term I cycled the other way up the Taff Trail, through Pontypridd, onward to Rhondda Heritage Park (having parked the car at the bottom of Nantgarw hill).
That section, from Nantgarw to Ynysangharad Park, is where Route 4 (Celtic Trail, going east-west) and Route 8 (Taff Trail, going north-south) follow the same path. Here's where they divide again, in Ynysangharad Park.

There is a paddling pool in the park, in regular use, but there was previously an open-air swimming pool. It's still there, but out of use and very hidden from view by buildings, walls, doors and boards. Built in the 1920s and closed in 1991. When I was in the park last week one of the solid gates was open for a van to pass through, revealing a tantalising glimpse:

...and when no-one was looking I moved the temporary fence that was across the gate, popped in, took a photo, and ran away quickly!

Here's a picture of the pool in its heyday:

Lunch in the park, and a couple of chapters read from my book, then onward through the 'Barry Sidings Park' to Rhondda Heritage Centre: