Beckenham Baptist Church

  Dear Friends, Each year at harvest time we support the charity Operation Agri (OA), a Christian organisation run mainly by volunteers and which had its beginnings in the Baptist Men’s Movement. The focus of this year’s appeal is called Vital Vegetables for Mozambique and OA is partnering with Oasis Global whose ethos is ‘a vision for community – a place where everyone is included, making a contribution and reaching their God-given potential’. Mozambique is a beautiful country with spectacular beaches, but it is very poor: ninth from bottom in the UN Human Development Index. 80% work in agriculture, but malnutrition affects many, with 50% below the poverty line. OA, whose strapline is ’Christian love in Action’, is helping women’s groups to learn market gardening, which means the vegetables they grow help them to feed families and earn money in communities that suffer from poverty and climate change. Women like Maninha Eusebio who says, ‘After training, we got seeds and started...

  Dear Friends,  ‘It has felt like we’ve been on a pilgrimage together’ was the comment made from the group of friends who I had made during the ten hours of waiting to file past the coffin of the late Queen Elizabeth II in Westminster Hall last week. And indeed on reflection that is exactly what it felt like. One definition of ‘pilgrimage’ is ‘a devotional practice consisting of a prolonged journey, often undertaken on foot or horseback, toward a specific destination of significance’. We had come to this sacred place where the body of the late Queen lay in this grand and imposing hall that has seen many historical events. In the group I travelled with there were a collection of people of differing nationalities, including a retired Anglican vicar. She and I wondered what had made people come out and queue for hours to walk past the coffin of a deceased monarch. Curiosity, fascination, gratitude, a feeling of being swept along by the emotion were all suggested, and I guess t...

  Dear Friends,  I’m sure like me, you will have been saddened to hear the news of the death of HM The Queen on Thursday 8 th September. Queen Elizabeth II reigned for 70 years and in that time saw many changes and advances in her lifetime. She has been described as the constant presence in all our lives for so many decades and it seems strange to think that she will no longer be there as this stabilising but also much loved figure in our public life. As I reflected on the news my overwhelming sense was one of gratitude and thanks for a woman who dedicated her life to the service of this nation and the Commonwealth and who, even as her health was failing, continued to faithfully carry out her duties as Queen. In the book entitled Our Faithful Queen published for the Platinum Jubilee which we celebrated earlier this year, there are various quotes and reflections for the young queen to consider as she approached her Coronation in 1953, the first of which was a prayer from th...

Dear Friends,  September 1 st to October 4 th is designated in the church calendar as the ‘Season of Creation’ or sometimes called ‘Creation Time’. It gives an opportunity for us all to renew our relationship with our Creator and all creation through celebration, conversion and commitment together, joining with sisters and brothers in the ecumenical family in prayer and action for our common home. It was in 1991 that the Ecumenical Patriarch Dimitrios I suggested that 1 st September, the first day of the Orthodox Church’s year, be observed as a day ‘of protection for the natural environment’, and this was later widened by the European Christian Environmental Network to the season we know today recommending that it be a period ‘dedicated to prayer for the protection of Creation and for the promotion of sustainable lifestyles that reverse our contribution to climate change’. We can often think that information about the changing climate is something of a recent phenomenon say with...

Dear Friends,  You are probably familiar with the words, ‘O Lord my God! when I in awesome wonder consider all the works Thy hand hath made’. These are the opening words of the hymn ‘How great Thou art!’ which has regularly appeared in the list of the nation’s favourite hymns. It started life as a Swedish poem ‘ O Store Gud ’ (O Great God), written by poet and lay minister Carl Boberg in 1885, and is said to have been inspired by a sudden violent thunderstorm which he was caught in on his way home from church one day. According to the hymnologist J Irving Erickson, Boberg and his friends on their journey encountered a thundercloud on the horizon and soon lightning flashed across the sky, strong winds swept over the meadows and billowing fields of grain, thunderclaps rang out loud, cool fresh showers of rain watered the earth, and then the storm was over, and a rainbow appeared in the sky. After the storm had cleared and Boberg had returned home, he opened his window and looked ou...

Dear Friends,  The quote, ‘From a small seed a mighty trunk may grow’ is credited to the ancient Greek playwright, Aeschylus, and it is true that from something tiny can come great things. This week sees the beginning of the 22 nd Commonwealth Games in Birmingham and I was interested to learn that the games came from an initial idea of an Anglican clergyman, Revd John Astley Cooper, who wrote an article in The Times newspaper in 1891 proposing the idea of a ‘Pan-Britannic-Pan Anglican Contest and Festival every four years as a means of increasing the goodwill and good understanding of the British Empire’. But it wasn’t until 1930 that the first ‘British Empire Games’ as it was then called were held in Hamilton, Canada, when 11 nations took part in eight sports including swimming, athletics, wrestling and lawn bowls! Today all 72 Commonwealth Games Associations are expected to send athletes to compete in 15 sports and it is estimated that over 1 million tickets are expected to be ...

Dear Friends, Last week I received an email from the Living Well Food Bank titled ‘Cost of Living Crisis Appeal’ letting me know that they had been successful in obtaining match funding from the National Emergencies Trust so that every £1 pledged is matched – doubling every donation (up to £250). The email says, ‘I am sure you are aware of the impact that the rise in cost of living has had on many in our community and nationwide, and the huge strain that this has put on foodbanks. In recent weeks we have seen an increase in the number of guests coming to our foodbank (handing out over 900 bags a month and a 30% increase from February 2022 – May 2022), with many feeling the impact of the increase in the cost of living and fuel, some having to make the choice between fuel and food. We have also had many Ukrainian families coming to us for help. A consequence of the current economic climate is that there has been a decrease in the number of food donations received and those supplied...