World Cup Churches: 32. South Korea

The last of a series of blogs heading round the 32 qualifying countries in the 2022 World Cup - to see all in the series select the label 'World Cup Churches' below.

South Korea made little impression on the World Cup: but the churches of Korea have made a great deal more impression on Christianity over the past hundred years.

The real story begins in what is now North Korea and the remarkable spiritual revival in 1907 in Pyongyang.  There can be little doubt that were it not for 20th century politics, some of the largest churches in the world would be in and around Pyongyang - which has only a handful of 'show' churches under its current regime.

Many of the Christians of those days were killed or fled south and/or abroad to North America as the sad and complicated Korean peninsula history unfolded, culminating in the Korean War.  This people movement brought Christianity to the South where it has flourished.  Unlike in Wales (which we looked at earlier click here) the evidence of Korean revival is still found in the life of churches rather than their buildings.

This brings me to Yonsei Central Baptist Church.  

When England won the World Cup in 1966 this church did not exist.  When I was ordained into Christian ministry this Church did not exist.   Yet, of course, it can trace its history atmospherically to the Christian spirituality of the missionaries and revivals that century ago.

You could spend a long time watching the prodigious output of their media ministries but I have chosen this half hour clip for a reason.    The church was born out of a group of people in a basement who where 100% committed to Christ and to prayer.  And then it grew and grew.  Unusually for a Korean Baptist Church it is also charismatic in doctrine.

Yet if you watch through this worship time clip, the whole half hour (on this Sunday) was songs of repentance.  This is as rare on the YouTubes of churches as revival is in modern England.  And that is the point. 

World Cup Churches: 30.Ghana

Continuing a series of blogs heading round the 32 qualifying countries in the 2022 World Cup - I will pick out one church in each one.  I am not going to choose only churches that are to my liking.  This is an exploration not a recommendation! To see all in the series select the label 'World Cup Churches' below.

Ghana, it must be said, is not short of Christian churches.  In fact, even if Ghana started last year where Saudi Arabia is - with no Christian churches - it would still not be short of churches given the exponential growth it has.  New churches appear every Sunday.  It is an example of why, despite the miserable decline in many European countries, the Christian Church across the world continues to grow.

Spoilt for choice (or more accurately overwhelmed and bewildered by choice) I am going for Action Chapel International for this World Cup Churches blog. This probably has more to do with the founder-pastor Nicholas Duncan-Williams (or perhaps rather his current wife) than with the church itself, which is 'just another' vast Ghanaian church (with a Communion table that might trump the ones in St Peter's Basilica in the Vatican).

Speaking of Trump - here he is on the front row in the rather more humble (at least in size) St John's Episcopal Church, Washington, prior to his Inauguration, with Melanie at his side.

There on the platform is the Archbishop, Patriarch, Founder-Pastor and General Factotum of Action Chapel International, headquartered in Accra, Ghana, leading prayers.  Those of us that have not heard of Nicholas before are probably revealing more about ourselves than about him by not knowing him.  

How does he end up in St John's on that auspicious day?  I am not privy to that, but it has something to do, I feel sure, with his wife.  Rosa Whitaker is American, but not just any American (with apologies to the others).  The CEO (and founder of course) of TWG (The Whitaker Group) a US based African Investment enterprise she has served different Presidents, represented the US in Trade negotiations and agreements across Africa yet also worked in various Christian enterprises including Mercy Ships International and Pan African TV.

Or to put it another way, to step into the vast auditorium of ACI is possibly to fail to grasp the reach of this and some other African churches across the world where Western churches have often lost their voice.

Whether Nicholas prayed for the right things - and whether his prayer was answered - I leave to the wisdom of Almighty God.

The Forty Days: 2. Cloud

In the desert of Sinai the Israelites watch Moses leave them to climb the mountain where he will meet with God.

Exodus 24:15-18  When Moses went up on the mountain, the cloud covered it, and the glory of the Lord settled on Mount Sinai. For six days the cloud covered the mountain, and on the seventh day the Lord called to Moses from within the cloud.  To the Israelites the glory of the Lord looked like a consuming fire on top of the mountain. Then Moses entered the cloud as he went on up the mountain. And he stayed on the mountain forty days and forty nights

It is not a small thing to meet God.  For six days Moses waits to enter the cloud atop the mountain.  How casually we assume the ear of God.  It is promised.  But we should never take it lightly.

Moses remains in the cloud for forty days.  He is, after all, going to be a key conveyor of God's truth not only to his generation but to us all.

For most people the idea of spending 40 days in a mountain cloud with God - after waiting a week to be called in - seems to lack practicality.  This is certainly what the Israelites (at the foot of the mountain) thought:

When the people saw that Moses was so long in coming down from the mountain, they gathered round Aaron and said, ‘Come, make us gods who will go before us. As for this fellow Moses who brought us up out of Egypt, we don’t know what has happened to him.’

'May they be forgiven', we sigh in disgust, (oh, and by the way, I'm too busy to come to the prayer meetings . . .)

Selective Memory

November 5 is a British Memorial Day.  Each year it falls within a week of November 11, the day that 'remembers' the twentieth century's two World Wars.  Our church is no exception to this and we are deeply moved to ponder a sacrifice that is sufficiently recent to connect the older of us to grandparents or even parents affected by the War.

This pursuit of collective memory is not new.  Here follows a Prayer for the Daily Office of the  national Church for November 5th:

LMIGHTY God, who hast in all ages shewed thy power and mercy in the miraculous and gracious deliverance of thy Church, and in the protection of righteous and religious Kings and States, professing thy holy and eternal truth, from the wicked conspiracies and malicious practices of all the enemies thereof; We yield thee our unfeigned thanks and praise for the wonderful and mighty deliverance of our late gracious Sovereign King James, the Queen, the Prince, and all the Royal Branches, with the Nobility, Clergy, and Commons of England, then assembled in Parliament, by Popish treachery appointed as sheep to the slaughter, in a most barbarous, and savage manner, beyond the examples of former ages. From this unnatural conspiracy, not our merit, but thy mercy; not our foresight, but thy providence, delivered us: And therefore, not unto us, O Lord, not unto us; but unto thy Name be ascribed all honour and glory in all Churches of the saints, from generation to generation, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

For all the depth of feeling it contains, however, it is no longer said.  1605 is a very long time ago.  It is, of course, typical of the modern church to have ditched such politically incorrect referral to popish treachery.

Except that it wasn't the modern church that removed it.  It was removed in 1859, not a time conspicuous for the British being warm toward the Roman Church or the Pope.  By then 250+ years had done their work and the collective memory had new things to memorialise in liturgy with an Empire encompassing the globe.

This coming Sunday we will share Communion.  The Apostle Paul indicated that this 'proclaims the Lord's death until he comes'.  We are never to forget the greatest victory, the greatest Saviour and the greatest Salvation of all.

The Fine Art of Christmas: The Tenebrist

Gerard van Honthorst was not an Italian - a slightly weird thing for a painting from the 17th century on a Christmas card.  Coming from the Netherlands, he joined a horde - should that be palette - of painters who painted 'The Adoration of the Shepherds.'  

In truth the Christmas story offers limited scope for painters and preachers alike, so its rather down to what you do with the inevitable scene.  What Gerard liked to do, and the reason that he was described as a tenebrist, was compose (in layman's terms) very dark pictures with contrasting light.  As it happens, this scene is one of his classics.  But this is a chopped version.

The original painting is bigger - and all that which has been chopped off is wodges of dark.  It suits Christmas tastes to have a light picture, but van Honthorst was really making the point that the very bright baby is in a very dark place.  The editing loses this point, while making a nice picture for a card.

On Christmas Day at church we prayed for those who are not as blessed as we are on Christmas Day.  We prayed for those who suffer for their faith on Christmas Day.  And later the Soup Kitchen provided an amazing Christmas dinner. 

We tried to keep some dark in.

Because Christmas is more about the darkness than this cropped picture might have us believe.

Advent

Advent is about reflective waiting.

Isn't it?

Is it not a haven from the madding crowds of Black Friday, every subsequent Saturday, Sunday and Thursday late and through to Christmas eve?   There is something appealing about retreating into a Carmelite Christmas.  (It will be less expensive for a start . . .)

"Baptists are too activist," Baptists say.  This has become an early 21st Century Received Truth and it is a slightly suspicious Truth for two reasons:

1.  It is not said to us but by us.  Many colleagues in other Church groupings seem a tad envious of our activism.

2.  It is quite convenient.  So perhaps worth questioning.  By being less active we have more opportunity for, well, shopping and, er, restaurants and, um, travelling.  My sense of people who 'rest' from church is that they do not fill that time with spiritually useful things as a rule.

William Booth was an activist.  You don't start an expression of church that becomes called The Salvation Army with the intention of being overly reflective.  Strangely (or perhaps not) when we think of Christmas we immediately think of The Salvation Army.

William was not a man to ignore the spiritual.  To the contrary he regarded formalised religion, Advent and the like as too often lacking the Spirit.  Nor was he a man to down tools to dwell in a waiting that might be otherwise interpreted as a mite too convenient.  How did he hold it all together?

Well in a way he did and in a way he didn't.  he saw the paradox through which every believer in an unbelieving world must travel in Advent or any other time:

He said,

Work as if everything depended upon work and pray as if everything depended upon prayer.  

Mary Slessor

Today is the anniversary of the death of Mary Slessor in 1915.  Brought up in a poor family that had been impoverished by death and her father's resultant drinking, Mary was a child worker in a Dundee jute mill.  

Her only escape was her weekly Sunday and church.  Unlike the escapes that 21st century life offers, this one inspired her to look to do great things for God.  In time, armed with the toughness bred by her story, she was an unlikely lone female arriving in West Africa at a mission station as a nurse.  The rest, as they say, is history. 

In her home city of Aberdeen, in Dundee, on Scottish bank notes, but especially in Nigeria (as now is) Mary Slessor is recognised as the means of a revolution in the dignity of women and children - and the means of thousands of lives being protected.  Her fiery, Christ-inspired anger at the killing of mothers of the stillborn, of twins, of the mothers of twins, transformed a society.

Her appointment as the first female British magistrate in any territory advanced the value and dignity of women the world over.  

And, as we almost tire of pointing out, this was and is best achieved, by grasping - as Mary did - the Creator's dignity of his creation and the power of God to change a society by the agency of godly (not religious) people serving him and others.  

As Mary wrote to one of her prayer partners,

"I have always said that I have no idea how or why God has carried me over so many funny and hard places, and made these hordes of people submit to me, or why the Government should have given me the privilege of a Magistrate among them, except in answer to prayer made at home for me. It is all beyond my comprehension. The only way I can explain it is on the ground that I have been prayed for more than most. Pray on, the power lies that way."

Thanksgiving

Christians frequently bemoan the way Christmas is celebrated without Christ.  In the USA a similar issue exists with Thanksgiving, the great family, national holiday that occurs today.  

Year on year I go to school assemblies during our harvest period, mostly in October (the same month as originally celebrated in America).  It is a matter of wonder to me that you can have a fully-fledged all-school harvest without mentioning God once.  Or singing anything to him.  The trick is to call it a Festival, not a Thanksgiving.

When the Pilgrims celebrated their first harvest 'safely gathered in' in October 1621 they knew exactly what they were doing - they were giving thanks to Almighty God and his providential care.  Not only so, but it formed part of a pattern in which they had already held days of thanksgiving for other deliverances along the way.

Ah, we may think, those were very devout religious people and times have changed.  Awkwardly, for this view, there were nearly double as many Indians - native Americans - at the first thanksgiving as European settlers.

You do not have to be very devout to recognise that a greater Providence has laid out kindnesses that seem scarcely deserved in this world.  If humanity is all there is there is nobody to thank, no reason to be grateful and the world loses a whole vertical dimension as it dissolves into the shallowness of human experience alone.

Coal-heaver

The blog is called English Pulpit but we don't use the pulpit in the church where I pastor.  Or rather we do, but as a platform for a large white screen.  Not great for the architectural purist, but a cheap projection solution. 

It must be time to write about someone who did have an English Pulpit.  William Huntington SS had one.

Long before William had a pulpit he had a hand cart for carrying coal.  This earned him his nickname THE COAL-HEAVER PREACHER.  William was the name his mother gave him.  Huntington was the name he gave himself after accruing a kind of dirt other than coal dust through a scandal with a local young lady in his home county.  Having run away and changed his surname he was converted.  That's where the SS comes from.  In mockery of divinity degrees he awarded himself the initials SS for Sinner Saved.

William became a preacher.  However, while many a preacher has wished for more attentive hearers, William expected it with a vengeance.  If one unfortunate made a noise he was likely to abandon any attempt at the prophetic to cry, "Silence that fool!".  Fool was one of his politer insults.  Divine providence placed William prior to age of social media.

His prayers were legendary and very rewarding.  If he needed meat he would pray for meat.  If he needed a horse and carriage he would pray for that.  Of course we are talking public prayer here.  Whether the good Lord answered him, his followers most certainly did and he died a very rich man.

All of which goes to show that an English Pulpit is not as boring, as unproductive or as unnewsworthy as the observer may be tempted to think.

Or as inherently respectful and virtuous as a preacher might like to assume.

World Cup Blogs 10: England

Let FIFA,the governing body of the World Cup,  tell the story . . .

The contemporary history of the world's favourite game spans more than 100 years. It all began in 1863 in England, when rugby football and association football branched off on their different courses and the Football Association in England was formed - becoming the sport's first governing body

So there we have it.  England are not only at the World Cup - England is the origin of the sport that the World Cup is about.

Though England is not the largest or most populous of nations it has been the place where many benefits to humankind have begun apart from sports like football, rugby and cricket.

Only this week I was reading about the start of the (now worldwide) Hospice Movement - in England.  Penicillin was a great discovery that certainly delays many of our admissions to hospices and the like.  Viagra (no further comment).

Of less life-saving significance the textile industry spawned many inventions including the sewing machine and polyester.  Then there's pencils, bone china, typewriters, radio, the world-wide web, carbon fibre, tin cans for food, light switches, stainless steel, the tuning fork, DNA sequencing, the seismograph, seat belts and toy building bricks (Lego later obtained the patent and the rest is history).  Yet this list is but a tiny sample.

Of more direct interest to this blog are those Christian ministries which started in England.  The Salvation Army, the Baptist Missionary Society (followed by very many others),  Methodism, the Quakers, the King James Version of the Bible and the Book of Common Prayer.   These spiritual gifts to God's world are much disregarded today and are quite similar to football (and Lego bricks) for though beginning in England many of the blessings from God are today valued more and used to far greater effect by other peoples of the world.

Losing what you launched is a nuisance for football and toy bricks but in things spiritual it is catastrophic - so here's (part of) the dying prayer of one of the great shapers of England, Oliver Cromwell:

Lord, though I am a miserable and wretched creature, I am in covenant with Thee through grace. And if I may, I will come to Thee for Thy people.
Thou hast made me, though very unworthy, a mean instrument to do them some good…and many of them have set too high a value upon me, while others wish me dead and would be glad of my death.
Lord, no matter how thou dispose of me, continue to do them good….Forgive their sins and do not forsake them, but love and bless them ...
Teach those that look too much on Thy instruments to look more upon Thyself. And pardon ....the folly of this short prayer and give me rest for Jesus Christ’s sake, to whom, with Thee and Thy Holy Spirit, be all honour and glory, for now and forever, Amen

Sabbatical Picture No 12 The power of powerless women

By the North Sea on a Northumberland hill stands the Victorian memorial of Grace Darling.  Her story ( you can read it by clicking here) was one of Victorian England's most famous and only added to by her untimely death not long afterwards.  Grace was a very devoted Christian.  It is easy to assume that all Victorian young women were but that is simply not true.

It is equally easy to assume that in 21st Century England no young women are likely to be very interested in God, and certainly not with any concept of him being a living, helping friend.  That theory is blown aside in the Church whose graveyard contains Graces memorial and where her life is still celebrated.  Here is a page from the book where visitors can leave their prayers . . .

Sabbatical Pictures No 3 The Walls

The Walls of Jerusalem are very evocative for Jews and Christians.  So much so that on any given day there were odd (I use the word ambiguously) people standing on the current walls reading passages of the Bible out loud to nobody in particular.

There are several Biblical reasons for doing this if you choose to find them  This, from Isaiah 62,

I have posted watchmen on your walls, Jerusalem;    they will never be silent day or night.You who call on the Lord,    give yourselves no rest, and give him no rest till he establishes Jerusalem    and makes her the praise of the earth.

As ever Jerusalem provides far too much complexity for us simple souls to know what to do.  The walls on which this and other passages were being read aloud (in English of course, and with a South African or American accent depending on who it was) were built to protect Muslim Jerusalem by Suleiman, whose famed inscription reads,

he who has protected the home of Islam with his might and main and wiped out the tyranny of idols with his power and strength, he whom alone God has enabled to enslave the necks of kings in countries (far and wide) and deservedly acquire the throne of the Caliphate.

I have severe doubts that the readers are intending to promote his 16th century (AD) plan.  Also, the walls are in the 'wrong' place biblically speaking and do not surround Zion with which in the scriptures they are associated.

But this picture from those walls contains a nearly hidden addition to this story.  For, looking out toward Bethlehem, in the far distance it is possible to see another wall, the 21st century wall that divides Israel from the West Bank.  Whether you are Palestinian or Jew - or for that matter a foreign visitor - this is the real wall of Jerusalem.  It, and the issues it represents to Jew and Palestinian alike, are the real cause for prayer.

Prayer and Worcester Sauce

Could you not keep watch with me for one hour? .. Take heed, watch and pray ... Remain in me, and I will remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself ... My soul waits for the Lord more than watchmen wait for the morning ... He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High will rest in the shadow of the Almighty ... They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength.

What are the ingredients of prayer? On the back of a packet of anything, unless it is something as simple as honey, vinegar or milk, you find a list of them. Very intimidating, too, at times. What, for example, will potassium sorbate or pantothenic acid do to me?

Sometimes, like Marcus, you just taste something that is sooo good that you want to know the ingredients in order to make it for yourself. In the days when Bombay was Bombay, Marcus Sandys (we should properly call him Lord Marcus) sat in the sunshine and tasted something sooo wonderful he knew that on finishing his time as Governor of Bengal he must take the recipe back to England. On arrival here he gave the recipe to his local chemists, Mr Perrins and Mr Lea (all right, Lea and Perrins if you prefer). They dutifully and expertly concocted the brew.

The result was awful. Marcus himself declared that the result tasted "filthy". The grim broth was consigned to the depths of the chemists' store.

And that would have been that if it were true that all ingredients are the kind of things that can be listed on a packet. But, unbeknown to Messrs Lea, Perrins and Sandys, there was a missing ingredient.

Liturgies, closed eyes, Amens, bowed heads, bedtimes and chapels. And maybe many other things.  In fact the ingredients may stack up to quite a long and daunting list. Yet perhaps still our prayer life, if not awful, is at least tasteless. Anyway, back to Worcester and the rear comer of the chemists' storeroom.

It was months later that, during a clearout, the two chemists happened upon Marcus Sandys' revolting brew. They intended to dispatch it down the drain but decided first to have one more taste. In that moment Lea and Perrins' Worcester Sauce was born. 

The missing ingredient had been time. Worcester Sauce, like even the simple things - honey, vinegar, milk, fresh fruit or vegetables - needs the added ingredient of time.  

And prayer needs time.

Bless

If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone.

We thought about these words on Sunday.

We ended with this remarkable prayer from a Serbian bishop and a World War II concentration camp:

Bp. Nikolai Velimirovich was a Serbian bishop in the last century who spoke out courageously against Nazism until he was arrested and taken to Dachau. This is a translated extract of his famous prayer:

Bless my enemies, O Lord. Even I bless them and do not curse them.
Enemies have driven me into your embrace more than friends have.
Friends have bound me to earth, enemies have loosed me from earth and have demolished all my aspirations in the world.
Enemies have made me a stranger in worldly realms and an extraneous inhabitant of the world. Just as a hunted animal finds safer shelter than an unhunted animal does, so have I, persecuted by enemies, found the safest sanctuary, having settled myself beneath your tabernacle, where neither friends nor enemies can slay my soul.
Bless my enemies, O Lord. They, rather than I, have confessed my sins before the world.
They have punished me, whenever I have hesitated to punish myself.
They have scolded me, whenever I have flattered myself.
They have spat upon me, whenever I have filled myself with arrogance.
Bless my enemies, O Lord, Even I bless them and do not curse them.
Whenever I have made myself wise, they have called me foolish.
Whenever I have made myself mighty, they have mocked me as though I were a dwarf.
Whenever I have wanted to lead people, they have shoved me into the background.
Whenever I have tried to build a home for a long and tranquil life, they have demolished it and driven me out.
Truly, enemies have cut me loose from the world and have stretched out my hands to the hem of your garment.
Bless my enemies, O Lord. Even I bless them and do not curse them.

One hates his enemies only when he fails to realize that they are not enemies, but cruel friends.

A Baptist President

Being attached to a label over which you have no control is an occupational hazard in many walks of life, including ministry.  Ask a Muslim, or a worker at Trump International, for example.

'Baptist' is a term that a vast range of churches can adopt so there are plenty of reasons to be wary of over-indulging it as a label.

Donald Trump is not a Baptist.  There have been Baptist presidents of the USA: four in all - which is four more than the number of Baptist Prime Ministers of the UK.  Given the new arrival in the White House I imagine the two that are alive - Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter (though he's no longer a Baptist) - are not feeling very happy just now.

But the one that arrests my attention is the one before them - Harry S Truman.  He was certainly not a Donald Trump.  In listings of US Presidents by wealth he occupies a very lowly position.  He grew up on a Midwestern farm and his parents could not afford to send him to College. But for the intervention of World War 2, may have stayed there but that war brought out leadership qualities in him that led to the Senate and at last to the Vice-Presidency.

And then, 82 days into a fourth term of office in 1945, the near-legendary President Franklin D Roosevelt suddenly died.  FDR had led the USA through the War following Pearl Harbor but also through the post-Depression 1930s.  His death was not on the radar.  And Vice-President Harry S Truman became President.

On his inauguration day he turned to the reporters and said, "Well boys, if you ever pray, pray for me now".  Within a few weeks he had to decide whether or not to drop nuclear bombs on Japanese cities with the intention of bringing the war to an earlier close.  It was a decision to take tens of thousands of lives in order to save more tens of thousands of lives.  The only person who has ever authorised the use of nuclear weapons was a Baptist.

There is amazing incongruity in that.  Baptists are often somewhat pacifist, sometimes committedly so, and rarely devotedly pro-military by comparison to many other people.  It is a reminder that whatever our stories in Sunday School the world thrusts difficult - perhaps cataclysmically difficult - decisions upon us.

We will all have a critical opinion on the decision that will forever mark his name.  But perhaps the lesson to learn is that we must pray for our leaders - whether they know we must or whether they don't.  Some of them have thought they are God, but none of them are.

Lightboat

There are three things about a light vessel.

It is not defined by its movement but by its position.  Living in a helter-skelter city in a helter-skelter age it is hard to appreciate the value of being rightly positioned rather than going at speed.  This is the curse of the church too.  We are not a denomination, we are a movement is the Baptist Union's current emphasis.  All this has a point.  But whether the point has much to do with Jesus's instruction to watch and pray is not clear to me.  

It must shine.  Our church's strap line is A Light on a Hill.  Being positioned well (at sea or on a hill) is not much use without lighting the world about us.

It mustn't sink.  If it sinks it is neither a light nor in the right position.  The Bible teaches us to stand firm.  

There is much that the Christian and the Christian Church can learn from a Light Vessel and almost nothing we can learn from a speedboat.  

Mrs Colville (continued)

So Mrs Colville returned to England unaware that her faithful door-to-door ministry and her discipling of one young man had, in the instrumentation of the Holy Spirit, become a catalyst for a great Revival in Ulster.  We never know what faithful obedience might produce.

The beauty of older stories is that we can trace them into their future.  We cannot do this for our own.  And so we zip forward to,2016.  That's fairly contemporary for a blog in 2016!

For just a few weeks ago a famed Baptist Church in Edinburgh City Centre moved into its new building.  When I say 'new' I mean 'fresh' because the the building was a former Parish Church.

But what has this to do with Mrs Colville?  It goes like this.  A young woman came to life in Jesus in that Ulster Revival and was so moved by the power of prayer in it that she set about praying for her church in Edinburgh City Centre.  Now what we want to read here is that, a year later, a thousand people came through the door.  The truth is that as the 20th century began and she had been praying for 30 years the church was down to 35 attendees.  

But she had bequeathed to her family the vigour to trust and pursue in prayer.  And so it was that a new pastor arrived.  Joseph Kemp teamed up with a Church Secretary who himself had captured his mother-in-law's vision of revival.  And the rest, as they say is history.

There did indeed become a year when a thousand people were saved at the chapel.  There were prayer meetings that were measured in days not minutes.  And so today it is still possible to buy unwittingly into Mrs Colville's legacy not only as a student in Edinburgh City Centre but in many other places through the world.

Except that of course it is not that this springs from one woman.  She was the trigger but the power was the Lord's.  She did not even believe she was a trigger - but she did believe she was the Lord's!  And that will do.

It's Missing 3. The Lord's Prayercut

Hymns and songs almost invariably have bits missing, and even if the printed version doesn't then the performed version will.

More extraordinarily the central prayer of the Christian Church has a bit missing.

Our Father, which art in heaven,

Hallowed be thy Name.
Thy Kingdom come. 

Thy will be done in earth, 

As it is in heaven.

Give us this day our daily bread.

And forgive us our trespasses,

As we forgive them that trespass against us. 

And lead us not into temptation, 

But deliver us from evil. 

For thine is the kingdom, 

The power, and the glory, 

For ever and ever. 

Amen.

Here's the Roman Catholic version:

Our Father who art in Heaven, 

Hallowed be thy name; 

Thy kingdom come 

Thy will be done 

On earth as it is in heaven. 

Give us this day our daily bread; 

And forgive us our trespasses 

As we forgive those who trespass against us; 

And lead us not into temptation, 

But deliver us from evil.

My attendance at RC services is almost non existent - the last time I was left hanging by this version of the Lord's Prayer was in a fiercely evangelical church and the time before that in a middling cerebral Anglican church.

The rationale for the haircut prayercut seems simple enough - the oldest transcripts of the Gospels (usually but not universally deemed to be the most reliable) don't have the final doxology in.  

To me, the question is: What do we gain by taking it out?

The answer cannot be that it gives a better ending.  Mostly, when I've heard it in its truncated form, the leader adds Amen which is an unconscious admission that the truncated version doesn't feel that it ends right.   

The answer cannot be that the doxology doesn't fit the prayer.  The meaning of the doxology echoes the opening lines of the prayer about the kingdom and divine glory of God.  It reflects the grounds of confidence that we might be delivered from evil.

The answer must be that it is more Biblical.  This seems simple and straightforward enough.  Until we ponder that in the Roman Church being Biblical is hardly a stated priority with its varied forms of  hierarchical authority.  A Church that has in central liturgy a prayer

Blessed be the great Mother of God, Mary most Holy.

Blessed be her Holy and Immaculate Conception.
Blessed be her Glorious Assumption.

Blessed be the name of Mary, Virgin and Mother.

Blessed be St. Joseph, her most chaste spouse.

doesn't really need to exercise itself too much about being exactly Biblical!  Similarly, by his writings I am fairly sure that the Lead Vicar in the cerebral Anglican church I gave as an example doesn't believe the Lord's Prayer was actually uttered by the Lord.  So his problem with it is hard to understand too.

That leaves us with the Biblicist church who may have some grounds for leaving it out because it's not in the Bible (though surely most of our other prayers aren't either?)  But even that isn't straightforward because this doxology IS in the Bible - 1 Chronicles 29:

11 Thine, O Lord is the greatness, and the power, and the glory, and the victory, and the majesty: for all that is in the heaven and in the earth is thine; thine is the kingdom, O Lord, and thou art exalted as head above all.

Shall we just keep saying it, eh?

Election day

Almighty Father,

whose will is to restore all things

in your beloved Son, the King of all:

govern the hearts and minds of those in authority,

and bring the families of the nations,

divided and torn apart by the ravages of sin,

to be subject to his just and gentle rule;

who is alive and reigns with you,

in the unity of the Holy Spirit,

one God, now and for ever.

Considering Cards (and envelopes) - 5. The Postman's Challenge (Part 2)

One of our elderly relatives sent us a Christmas Card in this envelope:

 

We thought it was more than a little surprising that this got to us. Well done Royal Mail!  Just as well I'm not at some of our nearby churches - like Grace Church or St James or St Andrews!

The formula we end prayers with is also very simple - in Jesus' name.  God has made a way to him that is as simple as can be.