abbotsford.org.uk

Notices for Sunday 1st April

Stop the Traffik Corridor: The Link Corridor is set out to enable us ways to respond to Human Traffiking. Please linker in the corridor as you eat your lunch today

Craft Daft: Back tomorrow evening with as hint of Easter, but not quite yet.

Lunch with the Almighty: 12.15 on Wednesday with tea and coffee.

Next Week: The Day. Stones roll, graves are danced on, dawn breaks open and everything changes. Purple turns to gold and none of it makes sense. But who needs sense. Just truth.

Door Duty Next Week: S Hamilton, S Caldwell, J Jack, M McKerracher, C Lang, J Cowan, G McKerracher, L Davidson

Fair Trade Easter Eggs: Those who ordered fair trade easter eggs and haven’t yet collected them, they can pick them up from the quiet room after the service.

Holy Week: There are services at 7pm each night through Holy Week where we journey, travel and bear the cross living the story of Jesus leading up to the garden and Easter Day. Probably the most important services of the year.

Holy Week Services

Monday: The smell was damp inside the temple…
The Temple

Tuesday: It was dark…
The Betrayal

Wednesday: The time was early morning…
Peter and the denial

Thursday: The disciples and Jesus were sitting round a table…
The Last Supper

Friday: A crown of thorns…
The Crucifixion

Each service will be a reflective time focusing on different moments in the story of Holy Week. It is one long service, each a stopgap for us to find time to pause instead of being busy doing something: a time for God in a week busy with the world. It is sacred, holy, special, extraordinary and filled like no other time with mystery and the footsteps of God.

God is just a human being who needs companions on the way…

Mucky Paws (March)

Just to let you know the latest edition of Mucky Paws is out. This is a small collection of liturgy and creative moments from our worship here. Don't build your hopes up but because a number of people keep asking for bits and pieces each month, a small collection of prayers and rituals and dialogues etc is put together that is probably less use than you imagine and goes into peoples files and lie there forgotten, but they are posted out electronically to whoever would like to have a laugh at what we do or maybe even use it as a bases for ideas themselves.

Ultimately, but it doesn't happen that often, the idea is for folk to send back ideas which go into the next edition of Mucky Paws. It's called Mucky Paws because while the material is copyright by Abbotsford, like good old Apple Mac systems, is open source so people get their own mucky paws all over the liturgy and adapt it for their own places and cultures. It's great when it comes back all messed up. Or would be if someone did that. However, what really is great is that a few people post back their own original stuff. Brilliant.

You can subscribe to it by emailing me and you'll get copies monthly but after the date they were written because as it is all lectionary based and nothing is thought up in my tiny brain more than two days before it is needed, it's always late for everyone, but useful for the next year perhaps. Pressure and deadlines really focus the mind!

We've people subscribing from all over the UK and Ireland, Canada and the US, Australia, NZ, South Africa, Norway, Switzerland and I think one even from Hong Kong. So it's a great feeling that the church is a bit global, and a bit desperate at the same time, just like us at home here!

Holy Week Question 2

Okay tonight's Holy Week question is an important one for understanding what Jesus was doing in Jerusalem. Up until this moment, how many times had Jesus as an itinerant preacher, enter a city? I know he was in Jerusalem when he was 12 but as an adult, how many did he enter?

Palm Sunday

Did you know there were two parades on Palm Sunday? Point for anyone who will pick up the challenge and tell everyone what thoise two parades were. If you manage to google the answer then extra points.

This is just question one of the daily Holy Week (and a few days before) quiz that will be appearing on a blog near you each day until Easter Day.

You could work in teams too if you wanted.

Being the country...

...that invented Radio 4 is certainly a feather in our caps. Just such a good station. I tend to listen to it as oft I can and download various programmes to my Nano. Life doesn't get much better. So I was listening in the car this acterfoon, between visits to Home Planet which is one of the various environmental programmes they have and the end of the programme was about Carbon Off-setting (here's a scary thought about that). It surprised me that it didn't come up with all that a positive attitude towards off-setting. It struck me it was a bit like the fair trade stuff: any excuse not to change habits. Surely it is always good to use less power, to consider how we move about (I used the train and shoe leather today to go to meetings and visit hospitals so feeling very righteous) and to move towards a point where what we do is always discussed in the context of the environment and an eco-faith. Wouldn't it be great (and this will happen) that the session (who ends up making all the bigger decissions) always considered the environmental impact of everything, the impact on children and the impact on our traditions. In my head I'm working out a process where that can always happen. It should be already but isn't unless someone mentions it.

Anyway, back to carbon off-setting. You can hear the programme again by giving yourself a very pleasant 30 minutes to click here and then "listen again' and enjoying the wonders of what Radio 4 can give the world.

Fair Trade

I was going to blog about next Sunday's service and ask for hymn suggestions because we need a lot for thisw eek. So feel free to throw them this way if you have favourite that tell the story of Palm Sunday and Holy Week (the alsolutely, totally best week of the entire year)

But I want to also start a fair trade stream because the Sctosman and other media spin-doctors are spinning an angle on fair trade that is just unfair, suggesting that the purpose of fair trade is charity rather than trade. Aid and trade are two very different things and trade is always a more lasting way to help folk.

But the main point I want to make, that I made in a post a moment or two earlier tonight in that stream is that we'll find any excuse not to support something that ask for us to make a change in our lifestyle habits. It is so predictable. I go on about fair trade a lot because the process of moving to live in a different way is as big a benefit to us as to anyone who receives our money for their product. Making the change is a vital way to life faithfully because Jesus ALWAYS asked folk to make the change (and sometimes it didn't matter to what - the rich young man is case in point).

While I go on about it, I know other ministers who don't because they know that they are on a hiding to nothing as people are not willing to change habits. It is a lifestyle choice and a faith choice but we'll find any thin excuse not to change something in our lives. It's a psychological condition humans have and if we can find a reason not to, we'll be convinced by that reason even if we think someone else who used the same excuse in a different situation is just fooling themselves.

Fair trade is always going to be better than having child slaves pick our chocolate (which Mars and others do not deny happens). it is an ethical choice. It's not about how much proportionally well off fairtrade partners are. It's about security, planning, workers rights, protection while working, ability to guarantee income, thus the ability to send children to school knowing they can afford it, buying safe equipment, and know there is income coming in - all the things we expect as basic rights. Is it okay for us, but not others?

There is nothing in the Scotsman's spin that convinces me it is a bad thing. Let them write a story about the 12,000 children in the Ivory Coast that produce the chocolate for the eggs we are about to eat. Let them do that for a balanced piece of journalism.

Amen

Notices for week beginning 26th March

Stop the Traffik Corridor: The Link Corridor is set out to enable us ways to respond to Human Traffiking. Please linker in the corridor as you eat your lunch today

CAOS Task Groups: These meet tomorrow at 7.30 where we look at what we imagine might happen in the project.

Lunch with the Almighty: 12.15 on Wednesday with tea and coffee.

Next Week: Lent draws to conclusion with Jesus on that donkey. But it’s only not the fun really begins. The start of a dangerous week but one that might just change the world.

Door Duty Next Week: P Edwards, H McFarlane, J Smith, F Sinclair, D Campbell, S Hillis, N Wilson, R Edwards

Fair Trade Easter Eggs: Those who ordered fair trade easter eggs can collect them after the service today. These eggs are guaranteed child traffik free. Look for them in the shops – or better still, ask for them.

Holy Week: There are services at 7pm each night through Holy Week where we journey, travel and bear the cross living the story of Jesus leading up to the garden and Easter Day. Probably the most important services of the year.

Today

Isn't it great having the Sunday Schooll we do? They're brilliant and what they did today was fabulolus. They're on again next week. 'I wish my grandchidlren came to this Sunday School' said someone this morning.

But that older geezer in the dog-collar...

En Trading

Been shopping lately? What about this shop in Glasgow. If you want some ethical products and environmentally friendly things with everything from tableware and jotters to T-shirts and paint, skin prducts and totally, 100% recycled umbrellas. I was there last weekend and it's great for lots of things and a cafe. Always a cafe. So for a different kind oif present, an ethical gift or a conscience salving treat for yourself try En Trading.

This posting is brought to you today by your eco-loving, award winning, green congregation to offer you practical ways to live a green gospel. Jesus would shop here!

Freedom Day

Beginning to sort out Abbotsford's version of Freedom Day marking the abolition (?!?!?!) of slavery 200 years ago. Wondering whether or not to use this during the service. Thoughts?

We've journeyed with human trafficking every Sunday in Lent and this week we will offer practical suggestions to respond to human trafficking. But also offer good news stories too though those are a little more difficult to find.

The big thing is to give somethign to people to do with everything they've heard, or not heard, over the last four weeks. We've lot's of information and that is one of the big aims of Freedom Day: inform.

We'll push hard for fair trade throughout the congregation. We are so nearly there

We'll invite folk out to the cinema on Tuesday night to see the film Amazing Grace. (8.15)

We'll be selling traffik-free easter eggs

We'll offer palm prints to sent to chocolate companies to get some pressure on them

So it is a big Freedom Day for us and from us.

Further suggestions?