The Drawing Room


This Thursday at COTC we are pleased to be hosting one of Rob Peppers excellent ‘Drawing Room’ workships (as seen in Time Out). It is more than a drawing class, using drawing as a meditation. It is open to all – no experience necessary, and is a lovely non-threatening environment to kick start your creativity, or develop existing skills.

Rob is a major artist with exhibitions around the world, and is currently showing in Liberty’s on Regent Street.

The Drawing Room. COTC 17th April 8pm-10pm. Suggested donation £5.

Easter 2008

If felt to me that Easter brought together all the themes we have been exploring over the last few months, themes like Kingdom, justice, restoration & creation. On Sunday morning we reflected on the resurrection account in Luke, and also this wonderful image by Stanley Spencer (click for a very large version). He imagines the resurrection in his own village church yard at Cookham in Berkshire, a new easter morning with creation and humanity restored together.

Easter is our declaration of the hope that God has not given up, that life matters, and it will endure into eternity, in the midst of a bleak and suffering world. This is what we proclaim.

UPDATE
Matt Wall was preaching at the remembrance service this morning and he referred to another Spencer Resurrection painting, commissioned in the aftermath of the First World War, and drawing on Spencer’s own experience as a medical orderly in Macedonia. It is called ‘The resurrection of the Soldiers’.

Lent

We talked yesterday about preparing to enter into the wilderness at Lent to create some space and to seek repentance and humility. You can find the talk on the resources page. And whether you are planning to give something up, or take up some practical discipline our hope is that this is restorative for us as individuals and community.

The book that I recommended is by Henri Nouwen, called reaching out. Amazon are suddenly out of stock (it must be a Lent favourite) but you can get it from their new and used section for as little as £2.77

So Lent starts on Wednesday, we are going to begin with and Ash Wednesday Service at 7.45pm at Church.

A few people are talking about blogging their Lent experiences.
Matt Wall for one:

“I was struck by how Lent should be a positive time; a time of ‘realignment’ if you like; a time of choosing freedom over slavery. I’m not quite clear on what that means yet but I feel invigorated by the idea of leaving my self behind and focusing on God…The whole idea is to cease trying to be God and start deferring to the real one, so honesty not false holiness is the name of the game – so this may not amount to a hill of beans. We’ll see.

How are you planning to mark these 40 days?

Surprised by Hope

I was at a fantastic Advent lecture by Bishop Tom Wright before Christmas, based on his new book ‘Surprised by Hope’ [Amazon]. It was a thorough exposition of Christian Eschatology, and a deconstruction of lots of the crazy ideas and bad thinking that dominate popular ideas about life after death. Ultimately it is given with the conviction that if we get our destination right we will travel with more confidence and joy. I am just about to start reading the book, but given some of the fascinating conversations we have been having recently I thought I would recommend it generally.
Update: Feb 08.  Bishop Tom was interviewed by Time Magazine, and articulates some of the themes from this book. High profile interview, and a fine articulation (though some of Time’s questions seem a bit muppet)

2007 in Review

We had a fantastic Christmas. Thank you to everyone who worked so hard to make it special. Last Sunday we had a service looking back at the year that was, and as part of the evening there was a slide show of some of the highlights of the year. Here it is so can hold onto those memories. Thanks to Pete for the soundtrack – not just of the year in review but of  the year as a whole.

The COTC Manifesto

This sunday we were looking at a barnstorming passage; Jesus’ woes to the Pharisees and Teachers of Law in Luke 11. You can find the sermon on the resources page.
I resisted the temptation to have a field day and instead tried to put our own house in order. This critique of the religious institutions of Jesus day seemed painfully relevant, and so I suggested six commitments based on the six woes that would form the basis for a manifesto for church on the corner.

UPDATE. This manifesto has provoked plenty of discussion (which is good!) but it is important to recognise that these commitments are not some random ideas, rather it is a direct translation of the six woes to the Pharisees in Luke 11 put into practice. Just wanted to clear that up!

L’abri


I just got back from a retreat at L’abri in Hampshire. L’Abri (French for “the Shelter”) is a beautiful sprawling manor house in the countryside and home to a christian community, about 10 permenent ‘workers’ and 30 to 40 visitors or students. They have a nice rhythm of work, study and relaxation, and mealtimes are given over to discussions on all sorts of topics. It is very welcoming and I felt immediately at home there and met a fantastic bunch of people. It turns out that they know COTC quite well, and have had lots of people from here visit them in the past. I have been meaning to go for years since I read Schaeffer’s writings, but am very glad that I finally got round to it.

Jailbird

stoney.jpg

Mark Stoney borrowed the Cloudsley room upstairs at church a few weeks ago, to record the video for ‘Jailbird’. They put up some very cool wallpaper that I really should have got them to leave, and the video includes a comedy selection of random objects from around church (see what you can spot – I have seen 5 objects so far) and that fireplace I never really liked.

Pasts Unearthed


Lots of you will know Fiona Fouhy who is a graduate from central St Martins. She uses the hidden stories lurking within the urban landscape surrounding Kings Cross and St Pancras in her triple exposure photographic images.
Fiona is showing new work (an installation with historian Alan Dein) for the Arrivals2007 festival celebrating the opening of the channel tunnel rail link at St Pancras.
There is a private view on the 17th November and a few other events happening in the area – see www.arrivals2007.org.uk for more information

Ethical Living


With all our talk about Justice and the kingdom of God over the last few months, I have had a number of conversations with you guys about what we do about it. We talked at church about the impact of Uzbekistani Cotton – which is just the sort of things which seems too obscure to care about – however its buying it supports massive environmental damage, devastated communities and slave labour. Hard to imagine that your choice of T-Shirt could involve you in that level of wrongdoing.

So while we will think more about what we should be doing as individuals and as a community let us not understimate the significance of how we spend our money, and where we encourage others to spend theirs.

Often the problem is that shops just don’t know where their cotton comes from, so refusing to buy stuff because it may come from somewhere like Uzbekistan (which 14% does) seems appropriate.

So where do you suggest we choose to spend our money? My top tip is Howies – who have a new shop on Carnaby Street. I love this company – thoughful, organic, ethically sourced or recycled cotton products – even the buttons are natural, and they are funky with it – check out the ethics page on the website – a real feel good brand.

What other organisations would you recommend?

Time

//www.flickr.com/photos/88039438@N00/800649201/

Chatting to Pete Burnham after football last night (good result for the vaders!) about the idea of tithing our time. It came up for me when I was preparing this talk on generosity. It is often said of people working in London that they are cash rich/time poor. I don’t know about the cash rich bit at all, but the time poor bit I think we can relate to. As much as the answer should be that we do less, that may be very hard. A different approach might be to discipline ourselves to use our time better.

How about the idea of tithing 10% of our time – (that would look like 4 hours a week, or two days a month) – to do something for no financial gain, but using our talents for the sake of others. I have a feeling that some big companies even encourage this sort of activity. 4 hours a week of volunteering, either at church, or in the community or for a project or campaign that you are passionate about. What do you think?

[photo by corcc]

The peoples republic of heaven


This term at Church on the Corner we are studying Luke’s gospel, a series called ‘The peoples republic of heaven’, an intentionally provocative title which should become clearer as we go on. Luke is unique, and quite distinct from the other three gospels, with its own purpose and message. Gospels are not simply collections of stories about Jesus, but intentional theological and pastoral writings that are written to challenge, teach and rebuke us and shape us as the people of God.

Sermons from this series can be found on the Resources page

But also there are some reflections from our studies in James over the summer, on Prayer, Hospitality, Generosity and service. They are intended to shape the way that we live out our community together. I have recorded the first of them and you can download it here; Learning to pray

As part of that process of thinking about prayer here is a pdf of an order for evening prayer which you may want to use in your homegroup, or to pray on your own. And you can find resources for daily prayer, including readings and seasonal prayers from the CofE website; Morning prayer, evening prayer and night prayer.

Come bow before your Maker

This is one of our favorite songs at COTC, written by Sam Chaplin. He says

“This song was written partly in response to the ‘me’ focussed songs around and written so that anybody of faith or none could sing without having to sing words about their own response that they may not be able to fully own”

Come, bow before your Maker,
Come, kneel before the Lord.
Come, glory in his goodness,
Come, feast on his delights.

His mercy’s everlasting,
His love is never-failing,
Compassionate and gracious is our God.
His truth is never-ending,
His grace is overflowing,
Compassionate and gracious is our God.

Let us rejoice, let us shout aloud,
For the Lord Almighty reigns.
Let us rejoice, let us shout aloud,
For the Lord Almighty reigns.

Copyright words and music © Sam Chaplin 1999 CCLI no. 124473

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for justice…


Our series on Isaiah is coming to a conclusion, and the theme of our concern for justice, and our understanding of the extent of God’s concern for our world is at the fore. You can hear the sermon on our resources page. It is making lots of us feel uncomfortable – which is not a bad thing, but I asked for us to be talking about about this issue together. What does it mean for us to properly live out justice and righteousness?

Who would live in a church like this?

 

We had a fine time on Sunday night, with the Archdeacon and the trustees of the Cloudsley trust visiting, loads of people and Sam going all Justin on us (I wanna try somethin’ right now. See they don’t do this anymore…).

Love this picture. The waving thing was intended as a homage to the classic COTC picture, but it came out the best by far. I particularly like Sarah Perrin’s messianic pose at the centre of the picture. Actually she does look a bit like Jesus…

Anyway – some of the bits from the service below:

Lyles Sermon is on the resources page, and you can also download worship from the evening.

‘O the deep deep love of Jesus’

The video “Until the Spirit is poured out…”

 

And that prayer.

Disturb us, Lord, when
We are too pleased with ourselves,
When our dreams have come true
Because we dreamed too little,
When we arrived safely
Because we sailed too close to the shore.
Disturb us, Lord, when
with the abundance of things we possess
We have lost our thirst
For the waters of life;
Having fallen in love with life,
We have ceased to dream of eternity
And in our efforts to build a new earth,
We have allowed our vision
Of the new Heaven to dim.

Sir Francis Drake

Community & Humanity


 “One’s own self-worth is tied to the worth of the community to which one belongs, which is intimately connected to humanity in general. What happens in Darfur becomes an assault on my own community, and on me as an individual. That’s what the human family is all about”.
Great quote from Tom P by Wole Soyinka in this article in the Guardian. Love the idea that in connecting to community we connect to the rest of humanity. Do you feel like church does that for you? How can we do it better?

Relationships and all that

Friday was mine and Angela’s 11th wedding anniversary. 11 Years. Crazy.
11 years ago was Cool Brittania, Britpop and Trainspotting. The internet was still a minority interest; Yahoo was only a year old, Google wouldn’t exist for two more years. It was the summer of Euro 96 when football came home and we were beaten on penalties by Germany (though we did put four past the Netherlands). Wallpaper magazine had its first issue (Still got it) and we loaded all our stuff into one transit van and moved to London.

Anyway, anniversaries are always time to think about relationships. We have had a lovely couple of days celebrating (the girls are with gran), including dinner at the amazing Acorn House (the most important restaurant to open in 200 years).

But in thinking about how to build a relationship that last it was interesting timing that I saw this article on the BBC –  Misery: the secret to happiness.

“it was important to explore what people mean by a happy and healthy relationship, because nobody’s life or relationship can be in a permanent state of happiness – there will always be more difficult times.”

We still find ourselves influenced by the romantisised hollywood idealism of falling into a fulfilling satisfying perfect relationship. And when our relationships fall short of that ideal we thing there is something fundamentally wrong. There is huge pressure on single people to find the perfect partner, and huge pressure on people in relationships to pretend that things are perfect.

The promise we make on our wedding day is not ‘I love you’ but ‘I will love you’ – in good times and bad, in sickness and in health, for richer and poorer. And love is not something you fall into, but something you plant and nurture, that blossoms and grows.

And that most famous of quotes on love actually says it all. 1 Corinthians 13 ‘Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.’

I think that we need to be much better at talking honestly about what our relationships are like, to manage our expectaions better, to do better at nurturing love rather than just expecting it to happen.

Church on the Beach 25th-28th May


The Bank Holiday is here, and the weather is looking good (at least until monday when the end of the world seems to be due). You can download driving directions here. We are staying at the Pitton Cross Campsite which is five minutes from the beach. There are some pictures of the Gower here. The nearest beach is the Beautiful Mewslade Bay or it is a short drive to the surfing at Llangennith or the famously stunning Three Cliffs Bay. Sunday is Pentecost and we will be having church on the beach.

Update – What a lovely weekend, despite some crazy weather. Video below…

Our new website

website.jpg

Over the last year or so the focus of our website has shifted away from the old static site and more towards our blog. The blog is much easier to keep up to date, and has the potential for rather more collaberation. So we have now moved over to the excellent open source tool ‘WordPress’, and I have combined the two sites. The hope is to get different people at COTC to manage particular pages, which should keep things fresh. It also has password protection on particular pages which is great. So for example there is a DCC page with highly sensitive information about carpets etc. So here we are, with a new website, it is not complete yet, and I am having fun working on it, but as you spot bits that need to be improved or added email me and I will fix it or give you a login and you can do it yourself.

Football tournament 2007


We had another amazing football tournament on Bank Holiday monday, despite the weather in the morning it was a fantastic day. Here is a video of the highlights, and there are lots and lots of photographs from the day on the Football page of the COTC website.