West View Baptist Church, Hartlepool

A family friendly church in the town of Hartlepool

Office

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Salt and Light and the Bride of Christ

Amanda, Ian and Abbey led today’s service. Songs today were “We will go”, “We are marching in the light of God”, “Did you feel the mountains tremble?”, “Mighty to save”, “Revelation song”, “Purify my heart”, “Amazing grace” and “Therefore the redeemed of the Lord” Scriptures today included Titus 2 11-15, Revelations 19 1-10, and Isiah 25 1-12

Bride of Christ

Young Church today has as its theme Salt and Light, Matthew 5-13 to 16, and the children were encourage to make salt drawing and light sculptures whilst we explored the topics,

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Up against it. But boast only in Him.

It was a very interesting start to the service this week. Everybody seemed to have something going wrong prior to the service. Lost keys, forgotten phones and videos that refused to work were all the setbacks that were trying to stop the worship team putting together the songs and activities they had planned. Abbey and Yvette led events today. The songs for the first half of the service for Young Church and the young at heart were the kids version of the Blessing, Blessed be Your Name, God of Wonders, and Shalom My Friend. Songs for the second half were Did You Feel The Mountains Tremble?, Knowing You Jesus and Thine be The Glory. The song that we did not manage to play was Lost In Wonder (You chose the Cross)

Yvette brought us the message from 1 Corinthians 18-31. She set the scene for us. Corinth is in Greece West of Athens between two seas. It was a major trading hub with two ports and a really bad reputation for corruption. It has a temple dedicated to Aphrodite where people end up in sex inside the temple with the temple servants and so called priests. Paul sent around 18 months in Corinth, he wrote his letters to the Thessalonians and 4 letters to the Corinthians although only two survived. Christians in Corinth faced many of the same dilemmas we face today, surrounded by corruption and sin and under pressure to fit in with the society around them.

Unlike us, they had no Bible to follow, no New Testament blueprint. Paul preached a plain and simple gospel to the early Christians of Corinth. This was a struggle for Jews. They were looking for a sign in the sky whereas Jesus gave them the sign of Jonah. They did not believe in resurrection, no person worth anything would let themselves be crucified. They had no answer for death.

When you look at the Bible from a worldly point of view it does seem a bit mad. Born in a stable, dismissed by religious leaders, killed by the people He created. Corinth was full of philosophers, people interested in broadcasting their own brilliance. Paul’s message was very different, he brought glory to God, not to himself.

People today struggle with being interested in a gospel that isn’t about them, focussed on them alone, broadcasting their brilliance. Yvette outlined the importance of things not being about the person but being about God. She listed all the unsuitable people that God chose to help with what he needed to be done, liars, murderers, cowards, tax collectors, adulterers…the list goes on. If he can use all of them he can use us. All we need to do is what we are asked. Check out what happened to Ezekiel, called to be a prophet, delivering a lot of bad news, losing his wife but still being faithful to what he was called to do.

We need only do what Jesus asks us to do and trust him to sort out the rest of of our mess. This is primarily so that we have nothing to boast about, nothing that involves us taking his glory for ourselves. Let God do what only God can do. Jesus was the ultimate sacrifice and it looked like Jesus lost. His disciples went back to their day jobs .One man’s desire to obey His father saved us. The ordinary people who followed him changed the world often at great cost themselves. Boast only in Him.

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Was Mr Potato Head in the Bible?

The answer to that question is no, But it came up as part of our discussions in Young Church when we asked people to model people or places from the Bible……We had Mary and Joseph, the Nativity, a dove and many more characters straight from our children’s imaginations.

Enjoy their Bible models.

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Book Review

A new year, a new learning project.

I’m hoping to do a number of book reviews across 2023 hopefully on a range of “church” topics. The only rule I’m using is that these will be books that I get from local charity shops.

My first attempt is for a  book is “Called or Collared” written by Francis Dewar. The version I have is the second edition published in 2000.  It is a book that envisages its target audience being those who may be considering ordination in the Church of England. But it is a book that seeks to explore, a much wider theme, that of responding to the calling of God.

It opens with a quote from John Powell’s “Through Seasons of the Heart”

“There is an old Christian tradition that God sends each person into the world with a special message to deliver, a special song to sing for others, with a special act of love to bestow. No one else can speak my message, sing my song or offer my act of love. These are entrusted only to me.”

Dewar goes on to highlight 3 different sets of circumstance where the words calling or vocation are used. The first is the general sense of being called to be a Christian, a calling to everyone. The second is of a call to a role such as to be part of the clergy although this can also be more general in terms of a role at work. This is not a calling for everyone. The third is that of a person’s unique and personal vocation. This is something felt from within, an urging or prompting and again this can be for everyone.  

Some of the language in the book particularly around clergy from diverse backgrounds now shows its age in terms of how far language, terminology and attitudes have moved in the last two decades of the Anglican tradition although sadly some of the underpinning issues Dewar seeks to address are still causing problems.

Dewar’s underpinning premise in this book is that God calls everyone to a self giving task in all stages of their lives.  

Dewar shines a light on the very tough process that potential ordinands go through when being considered for these positions. Unlike a Baptist church, the clergy in an Anglican church cannot be voted out. It is therefore important that these leaders are chosen with care and that they possess the right qualities for leadership. This is why the emphasis is on other people to judge these qualities rather than just the potential candidate.

Dewar highlights the Moses position “ Would that all the Lord’s people were prophets” interpreting this as longing for the day when every Christian lives out their personal response to God’s calling.  

The book contains some interesting opportunities for self-reflection and study including a section on the Exodus where you are asked to identify the pharaoh characters in your life or the times when you face Egypt or red sea moments. As always various recent god moments end up linking together. I was lucky enough to attend the recent induction of Fiona, Graham and Maire at Headland Baptist Church. Linda Donaldson shared some reflections on changing landscapes in our lives but she also firmly drew out the fact that not only were the three ministers a gift to the local community but each and everyone in that church that day were also a gift and brought their own gifts to use for God’s work. Francis Dewar shares that our gifts are not bolt ons or additions but that the gift is us, each and everyone and our unique gifts that God calls into action. But knowing your gifts is only a part of the journey, you need to find what you are called to do with those gifts.

Dewar urges us to dream dreams for others and explore whether you have a personal calling to action. Make sure it is God that calls and not your own ego or vanity prompting you. Examine and reflect on the calling stories in the Bible. Many of the people God calls are unsuitable, in society’s eyes, unwilling to take on the role and unsure of their own abilities. There is hope and a role for us all when we consider the wide variety of tasks that God called people to in the Bible,  Mary called to be the mother of God,   Peter and Andrew to be fishers of men, Paul to preach to the Gentiles,  Zacchaeus to provide hospitality to Jesus, Samuel to anoit one of Jesse’s sons as king, Jeremiah and Isaiah to be God’s voice to the people.

A thought provoking book with a lot of useful exercises and scripture to reflect and consider.  I’ll close with some questions. Do  you know your gifts? Have you found your role? Is God calling you? Have you answered that call?

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Sunday 8 January 2023

Happy New Year and welcome to our first service of the year

God’s covenant and promises and the criticism trap

Amanda, Ian and Abbey led worship today. Songs this week were “I speak Jesus”, “Holy Water”, “God’s Great Dancefloor”, “Spirit of God, Unseen as the wind”, “God of Wonders”, “Thankful”, “Graves to Gardens” and “Holy of Holies”

Matty brought us some thoughts and reflections from his week. He had found it particularly difficult to highlight what message he wanted to share. He eventually decided to speak around Numbers 12:11 “Please my Lord I ask you not to hold against us the sin we have so foolishly committed”. In this passage we see the result of falling into criticising others, and Matty reflected on the times when he has been critical of others and outlined a situation in his life where he had heard the result of someone being criticised by others when simply attempting to do the best job that they were capable of.

Despite his own reflections on this topic, he still found himself in discussions with a fellow dog walker about recent actions of the council. It is all too easy to be drawn to the criticism trap.

Amanda brought us the word today and gave us a tour of the seven covenants made by God,

A covenant is an agreement between two parties to work towards a common goal and normally sets out roles, responsibilities and consequences when the agreement is broken.

She started with the Adamic covenant which was a general covenant instructing Adam and eve not to eat from the tree of good and evil. Not following the covenenant led to consequences, death and the pain of childbirth etc. If we are disobedient the vine will be pruned.

Another covenant promise was given to Noah, that God would not use floods to drown man again. The rainbow was left as a sign of that promise.

Covenants were also made to the twelve tribes of Israel and within our communion service Amanda used 12 pieces of unleavened bread to signify the tribes.

Finally Amanda also drew people’s attention to the covenant promises given to the people of West View Baptist Church. They pre date her time at West View yet we can all see how folks from West View have spread out across the world to share the good news of God’s work and promises.