Archive for the ‘Engage’ Category

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Getting engaged – the latest from Biblefresh

Sunday, May 9th, 2010

Biblefresh is an exciting new church-wide initiative, inviting UK Christians to take a fresh look at the Bible, and get deeper into the story it tells. SGM Lifewords is one of more than forty agencies taking part in the campaign, providing creative ways for churches to read the Bible together, to train in Bible teaching and learning, to support Bible translation, and to help local communities experience the Bible for themselves. This week, join us in prayer for this initiative.

  • The Biblefresh campaign is aiming to get the whole of the UK church engaged with the whole of the Bible for the whole year in 2011. If we’re not familiar with the Story of which we are a part, how can we hope to live it out in our culture and context? Pray for all the preparation and planning which is going on this year to make 2011 a year of Bible engagement. Pray that the UK church will find a fresh enthusiasm for the Bible and the story it tells through the projects, programmes and ideas made available through the campaign.
  • SGM Lifewords’ contribution to Biblefresh is a new project called Twelve. It’s an invitation to delve deeper into the story of the Bible, to explore the themes and grapple with the questions it raises. We’ll be making downloadable resources, art and media available to help people engage with the story with heart, mind and imagination – and we’ll be inviting as many people as possible to join us on a journey through the story in 2011. Please pray for inspiration and creativity for all those working on this project.

  • SGM Lifewords will be exhibiting with Biblefresh at the Christian Resources Exhibition in Esher from the 11th to 14th May. And in the spirit of the initiative, we’re doing something a bit different this year. We’ll be using our whole stand as a canvas, and handing it over to artist Abi Spendlove, who will be drawing a dynamic and colourful response to the story of the Bible, incorporating ideas and conversations with visitors to the stand. Pray for the team as they make the final preparations for CRE. Pray that this will spark the imaginations of visitors to CRE, and inspire them to think creatively about Bible engagement.

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Biblefresh: it could change your world

Monday, March 8th, 2010

A few weeks ago we mentioned Biblefresh, a new initiative to encourage churches across the UK to celebrate the Bible in 2011. Timed to coincide with the 400th anniversary of the King James Bible, Biblefresh will see agencies, colleges, festivals, churches and denominations working together to help christians to engage with the Bible in new ways.

SGM Lifewords is taking part in a variety of ways, and you can find out more about our plans here.

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Is the church tired out?

Wednesday, July 15th, 2009

That’s the question raised recently by a research report from LICC and Spring Harvest. They surveyed 3,000 British Christians to see what kind of issues people faced in their lives, and the challenges they encountered in their faith. 55% of respondents replied that ‘fatigue’ was the main challenge to their walk with God.

The same number of people, 55%, reported that time pressure and stress were problems for them, 45% struggled with long working hours, and 47% wrestle with the so-called work/life balance.

The report was commissioned ahead of the annual Spring Harvest conference, and aimed to pin-point specific challenges to the church in the UK.

What should our response be to this? Perhaps we should be more aware of the pressures that people are under, and think carefully about whether the church lifts burdens or adds to them. We also need to ask some questions of ourselves – the gospel is a message of freedom, and Jesus calls us to rest in him and in his presence. Shouldn’t Christians in the UK be wary of kudos in busy-ness, and be confident enough to live at a slower pace? It is, after all, only when we slow down that we have time for others around us, and time for community.

It was with the issue of busyness and burnout that SGM Lifewords released the booklet Walking in the Desert. It uses the story of Elijah to tell a story of exhaustion and new strength found in God. You can order it here.

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Complete our Bible survey

Friday, May 29th, 2009

SGM Canada is doing an extensive research into why people do or don’t connect with the Bible. In particular, they are ultimately interested in what helps and what hinders people connecting with the Bible. You can help by completing a short survey they have prepared. Thank you very much in advance!

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Engaging with the economic crisis

Tuesday, November 11th, 2008

Free market capitalism has so shaped our imagination that we have come to define human thriving in purely economic terms. As free market ideology fails, there is an opportunity for the church to step up with a new definition of what it is to be human and to live well.

Alan Roxburgh of Allelon replies to Colin Greene’s thoughts on the economic crisis.

Read the full post on the Metavista blog.

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The theology of the financial crisis

Monday, October 20th, 2008

Rev Dr Colin Greene, head of theology and mission at SGM Lifewords, reflects on the current financial crisis over on the Metavista blog.

In a wonderfully satirical article written for the July edition of Prospect magazine, Julian Gough likens the global financial crisis of the last few months to the equally calamitous events we read about in the book of Exodus. When Moses walked into the pharaoh’s court with an ultimatum that said the enslaved Israelites were just about to go on a God directed walkabout, the royal court had no idea that their great and revered military and economic empire was just about to lurch into its own version of financial meltdown.

Read the full article…

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Colin Greene interview on the Metavista blog

Friday, September 26th, 2008

Colin Greene, theologian in residence at SGM Lifewords and co-author of ‘Metavista: Bible, Church and Mission in an age of Imagination‘, was recently interviewed by Paul Fromont. The conversation takes in the place of the Bible, the role of the church, and the nature of mission. All fascinating stuff, and here to read and discuss on the Metavista blog.

If you haven’t read Metavista yet, you can order a copy from Authentic Media or from Amazon.

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Putting the waiting back into wanting

Friday, September 12th, 2008

Operation Noah has launched an advent initiative for 2008 calling for ‘reclaiming christmas‘. As a response to the increasing consumerism of the Christmas season, they are suggesting a series of events for the first weekend of December, all about sustainability, and simpler living. Activities will include special services, present-making workshops, and clean-up operations around shopping centres. Several cathedrals will be taking part, including Birmingham, who recently hosted SGM Lifewords‘ Space Encounters prayer stations.

For more about the project, click here. Resources include liturgy and prayers, and check back soon for their alternative Christmas play, described as ‘Dr Who meets Dickens’ A Christmas Carol’. The project will be launched formally on 11th November with a lecture from Abbot Christopher Jamison, best known for the BBC series ‘The Monastery’, and the book ‘Finding Sanctuary’ (a book a number of us at SGM Lifewords have read and enjoyed.) Jamison introduces the idea:

“Advent is the traditional month of preparation before Christmas, a time of fasting and intense prayer, a time of eager expectation. It is above all a time to celebrate waiting as a normal part of human experience, when the Christian tradition invites us to wait for the birth of a child. In Advent we rejoice that we are waiting, that there is still time to prepare a way for the Lord and we celebrate the virtue of patience. By contrast, the consumer world tells us not to wait but to ‘buy now.’ Greed cannot wait, so to learn to wait is a simple antidote to greed.”

Operation Noah is the climate change initiative from Christian Ecology Link and Churches Together’ Environmental Issues Network.

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Posted in Advent, Church, Engage, Free resources, Historic Churches | 1 Comment »

silent sky

Wednesday, June 25th, 2008

My travels have taken me to many countries, where I have filmed stories that have amazed, moved, delighted and appalled me in equal measure. This is my blog from South Africa last year where I was filming stories of HIV/AIDS… it resonates still as it collides with the story of being life words.

Steve Bassett / Johannesburg may 2007

I close my eyes and see it still … a graveyard … the resting place of almost 1400 babies and small children … red earth graves upon which lay toys, teddy bears, Disney characters, broken memories, detritus of medication that did not work, empty babies bottles – the unbearable waste of the future unlived … the wind blows across the site, a pall across a theatre of war … red dust swirls in front of the panning camera lens … in one corner of the site a weeping funeral party watches as a grave is filled in, shovels glinting, turning the earth against the wind as the dear one is laid to rest so appallingly, tragically early … a lament strikes up, a woman’s lone voice guttural and raw but strangely beautiful … haunting … haunted … it is the only sound against the wind; the soundtrack of this devastating comment on the silent holocaust … 120 babies and small children every month buried, forgotten … until now in a small way I have to believe (or else I trample the hope that this sad sacred ground affords) that the camera gives a kind of voice, a kind of memory to give to a world that never knew them or even cared very much … this will stay with me forever, remain, lodge in my heart, take up residence in my soul … as will the compassion of the woman who cares for so many young lives, who stares at the scene and points way into the corner …”That’s where my first babies were buried; now, in just one year, we are here at 1350″… so everything has its place and we all have our pain, our search and our struggle … a final image … a broken blow-up plastic airplane is fixed to one small grave, a simple toy punctured and earthbound with broken wings … I look up and overhead a jet plane sails across the sky, white against the china blue, its vapour trail a comet of a thousand angel wings … oh they must soar, they must fly somewhere or else all above is silent sky and empty, unforgiving, vicious sun … and heaven unmoved as the children’s laughter falls ever more silent…

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