Christmas Event Proposal: Jo Gambi - Everest Climber

Wednesday 9^th December 2009

7pm

Winchester Law Courts

Tickets available from

Louise Mellish 07763 945140 and Kate Stainton 07796 148818

Email: kate-lou-naomi2@hotmail.co.uk

Complimentary mince pies and mulled wine

£10.00

All profits to Naomi House

Who is Jo?

Jo entered the Guinness World Records for the fastest female ascent of the Seven Summits. She is also the second British woman to ever climb Everest’s North Ridge. In 2005 Jo Gambi and her husband Rob, became the first couple to climb the ‘Seven Summits’ in record time and ski to the North and South Poles. Jo is the first woman to achieve this. Remarkably they achieved these records not only while Rob was in remission from his second bout of cancer, but also in spite of facing death along the way, while stranded high in the Himalaya.

Learn and be part of the solution - Homelessness in Winchester

Homelessness meeting at the Trinity Centre (Bradbury House, Durngate Place).

a. the meeting

I met Jan and Pauline (Dix) outside the police station at 6.45 - clearly Jan has persuaded them to let her out early for good behaviour. We walked for a couple of minutes until we reached the Trinity Centre.

The purpose of the evening was for the 3 represented charities to explain what it was that they did.

b. the Charities

The Trinity Centre

The Trinity Centre is a newly refurbished building (costing in excess of 2 million I am told), which functions as a drop in centre for the homeless and those suffering from mental or physical abuse. Their clients are the long term homeless, those with housing problems and women suffering domestic abuse. They offer food (breakfast and lunch), physical health care (Pauline Grant from church does a day or so a week as GP), advice/ support with benefits, accom, sign posting to mental health and alcohol services etc. One (of the very few) staff members commented that often people come in for just a drink, but as they sit and become comfortable, they begin to share about other needs they may have. Approximately 60 visitors per day are to be expected, who have access to some I.T. training, assistance with C.V.'s the opportunity to bathe or shower, and get professional advice on the various issues which seem common amongst those dropping in.

Emmaus

The idea of a French Catholic priest following WW2; the premise is that the residents become 'companions' (to other residents), committing to working a 40 hours week, relinquishing all right to benefits - only the housing benefit being claimed directly by Emmaus. The residents may stay in the house for life, but seldom do. Although a world wide movement, each Emmaus is run as a local charity, whose aim is to quickly become financially self sufficient through their shop sales. The shop is on the Emmaus campus (next to the recycling centre), and sells the goods brought in by you and I. This includes, dining room furniture, sofas, small electrical goods. There are 22 beds. They are all full. They have had 96 referrals since March 09.

The Winchester Churches Nightshelter

Open at 6pm, providing a bed, dinner, and breakfast for up to 15 people per night. They give out blankets to those who they cannot accommodate. The nightshelter is unable to open without volunteers. A no drugs and no drink environment, breathalysing on the door against the drink-drive limits. They charge a £2 fee to enter, to encourage those wishing to stay so save a small part of their benefits, and take some responsibility for their welfare. Regularly turning people away.

c. the issues

Funding:

The annual costs of running the Trinity Centre are 500k, of which currently 150k is provided by the local council - this means approx. 70% of the income is generated by applications to charities/ lottery grants etc. The Winchester Churches Nightshelter seems to run on both donations and grants - the nature of the donations includes financial, to clothes, blankets, and hot food. The Nightshelter will be reapplying for grants within the next year, with no certain assurance that these will be granted. The contribution from the Council has decreased over the last year. Trinity too has seen a drop in the number of funding applications which go on to be successful. At one point, 1 in 4 or 5 were successful, now the number is nearer 20. This inevitably means that there are less staff (redundancies were made recently), spending longer on administrative work in order to gain the same or less funding. Emmaus aims to be self sufficient within 12 months, but clearly benefitting from substantial initial investment in order to provide the building.

Volunteers:

The Trinity Centre will on occasion have to 'shut' to clients due to lack of staff. It seemed that there were 2 administrative staff usually in the building, and a few part time key workers - one of whom works with families in particular. However, there is a desperate need for more volunteers to help - the hours between 10 and 2pm seemed particularly challenging for them.

d. the opportunities

• The Trinity and the nightshelter are wanting volunteers; Nightshelter needs people from 6pm, particularly those willing to sleep over (as two people are needed on site for health and saftey purposes). The Trinity needs volunteers in the day time, particularly between 10am and 2pm. This could be for one day a week or more regularly; the role would be 'befriending', support, etc.

• The nightshelter also needs the ongoing support from local churches of regular meals (these are heated up on site).

• Emmaus were asking that people donate to their shop, visit the shop and use their coffee shop.

• There were a few homeless people at the meeting; a request was made that services worked together to provide hot drinks to those who don't make it into the nightshelter. People often sleep in the Friasgate car park - just opposite the MBC.

• The manager of Winchester Churches Nightshelter (can't remember her name) is sound - would be wise to run past any bright ideas with her for advice.

e. comment

Key themes of the evening included the rooms appreciation at the amazing work done by the charities, the appreciation of the charities for the amazing volunteers, and the councils disagreement that there was any significant problem. having never attended a meeting like this, I found this initially odd although towards the end of the evening this increasingly became rather darkly comic. I also found that out of the many councillors present, only 1 seemed to speak with any coherent meaning.

I found that people who began a question with 'as an elected member' didn't get to a question and usually caused people to heckle or laugh - neither responses being positive. I personally felt stirred with faith about the opportunity for the church to be generous in resource, volunteers, financial giving, and use the amazing people in our churches to help with the various big and complex multifaceted issues such as - how do you help people get back into work? I felt angry about the apparent lack of genuine engagement and concern by those elected.

I think any action will feel like hard work, because it will be. I also think it will be laced with the Holy Spirit, and see the beginning of revival in Winchester and the fulfilment of the prophetic words we have received as a church regarding worship. This will principally be because as the poor are counted amongst those who join the song of thanks to God, we will become a more complete body, and that God will pour out his blessing on a his people as they go 'Go out quickly to the streets and lanes of the city, and bring in the poor and crippled and blind and lame.' going in his name to make disciples. Fundamentally I think God will love this, and that he won't be able to withhold his extravagant blessing on something which reflects his Son so brightly.

Fancy being part of the answer?

This week you are spared from attendance of an official cell group.

In view of recent chats in group, and my own journey, I want to invite us all to attend the opposite event.

Event: Homelessness in Winchester

Date: Wednesday 28th Oct

Time: 7pm

Where: Bradbury House

Who: Local agencies, charities, the council, and the homeless

I will be leaving about 6.30 - if anyone wants a lift :-)

I had a great chat over a pasty and coffee with a couple of guys today. According to the advice of Stu and Steve, there are some definite opportunities for us to fill some gaps in how the homeless community are served in Winchester.

Please have a read of the below and let me know if you would be interested in helping in any ...

Starters for 7:

1. Volunteering for an established charity.

Get involved in the Trinity Centre so it can open more days. After a £2 million refit they can't get volunteers to open on some days - at least it wasn't the 3+ million we spent to have a building closed quite so often ;-)

2. Another Emmaus.

A huge undertaking, but for these guys Emmaus seems to be 'Mecca' (excuse the religious iconic reference). Guys 'that go in there get sorted'. How might we drive this forwards? It might not be Emmaus, but it needs to be as good.

3. The direct approach - 'Hello'

Food, drink and conversation - just chatting to guys on the street is a great move. You learn a lot about the lives behind the reddened faces, their preferred drinks, and local homeless communities here -apparently around 30 permanent homeless people for whom Winchester is home.

4. Supplies.

Collect and offer the simple things in life - shoes, socks, and blankets.

If I were to send out an occasional Facebook/Email/Tweet with needed items, would you be up for replying and dropping stuff by our house to then distribute? (simply drop a yes/no comment at the bottom of this blog :-)

Some of this could be given directly to the guys I've met, else we could give through one of the local charities.

6. Run a service out the MBC.

Did you know that the Iceland carpark is the main residence for the homeless not getting into the Nightshelter, and Emmaus? Our building is opposite this place. I wonder if we might run a soup service from within the foyer at the MBC. I will speak with Mark about this, and also try to find out about any policing issues which I suspect there might be. The aim would be do offer a service on a night or time when other services weren't available.

6. Read your bible.

Spend some time each day for a week reading your bible and thinking about God's love for the poor and the mandate over his church to go to them. As you reflect and begin to feel overwhelmed by the size of the challenge, read the above 5points and remember, we are asked to do what he has given us, not what he has given others.

7. We are each others neighbours too!

By the way we love oneanother will they know we belong to Jesus. Let's keep loving oneanother, looking out for each other, giving to oneanother, praying for oneanother, thinking the best of oneanother, and texting/calling/tweeting/talking-face-to-face with oneanother

Group last night, points for thought, and a notice

Good to meet last night. God speaks to use every week doesn't he!

This Sunday is the new bloke (and his family's) first week. Be great to be there, and also to pray for - for one thing, I'm praying this will be the beginning of a new journey for us as a church :-)

Few points for following up ...

1. Shockable. think about the 'ways to be honest' as one of the methods to help ourselves remain shockable! We talked about just being honest with close friends, about being ready to offer godly responses to friends rather than just pure tea and sympathy, and books like those by Neil Anderson and the Freedom course. We'll aim to follow this up next time we meet and see what people think and any steps taken, and how helpful they have been.

2. Next week - we are going to the pub (Blackboy).

3. Andy Foster - could you put some information on the blog about what you will be doing in Africa, and how we can support you and Grace?

4. Night-shelter food - Jane can you put something on here when you know what dates we might be able to offer some food to the night-shelter?

5. Andy Read - feel free to put a few thoughts about Mr Brian McLaren on here - be encouraging for people to read, and keep thinking about what it means to love our neighbour.

Byeeee,

Tom

Music and Mission - U2 light up the sky!

Jim Wallis article on attending a U2 concert with his 11 year old son

"In fact, what I love about a U2 concert, headlined by the Irish tenor with the sun glasses, is how it achieves such a powerful combination of art and social justice, music and message; and all with such fun. The New York Times titled its review of the opening concert in Giants stadium as “Fun With a Mission.”

As always on nights with U2, activism for human rights and democracy was lifted up. “Walk On” was dedicated to Aung San Suu Kyi, the opposition leader and Nobel Peace Prize laureate under house arrest in Burma/Myanmar. “How long has she been under house arrest,” asked Luke. “20 years” I said, and watched the look of concern and indignation on the face of a pre-teenager—at a rock concert. Luke also got to see a short video of a beaming Desmond Tutu, another Nobel Peace Prize winner, talk about “the kind of people” who make a difference in this world, and invited us all to join the One Campaign."

Full article from: http://blog.sojo.net/2009/10/01/music-with-a-mission-my-kids-first-rock-concert/

Hi guys, can't quite work out how to add a link to a Word document or anything, but have emailed you all the new rota for this autumn. Tom- how does one do it?!

Love & Communities

How can we be a community when some don't get home until 8pm each day, we're all flat out doing stuff, and this is England so we're just not that good at this sort of thing... As we talked about being like Jesus, we came up with some ideas and questions.

Action 1 - Jane to check when we might spend an evening cooking together to provide food for the night-shelter.

What we talked about...

• Following Sunday's 'Harvest Festival' we looked briefly at how this ritual found it's way into the church courtesy of Wikipedia

"Increasingly, churches have linked harvest with an awareness of and concern for people in the developing world for whom growing crops of sufficient quality and quantity remains a struggle"

• We then talked more broadly about how as God's people we might be Jesus body to people in need. We read Matthew 25 where Jesus taught that as we loved people in need we also loved him.

• Emma reminded us of the passage in Acts 4 where the early church cared for those in need, and I read out the section of Acts 2 expressing the care and love people had for those in their community. The Message translation here was really helpful!

And all the believers lived in a wonderful harmony, holding everything in common. They sold whatever they owned and pooled their resources so that each person's need was met. They followed a daily discipline of worship in the Temple followed by meals at home, every meal a celebration, exuberant and joyful, as they praised God. People in general liked what they saw. Every day their number grew as God added those who were saved.

2 challenges

• There were 2 challenges for us that we talked about

1. How to be a community in this kind of biblical style
2. How to love the 'poor' in a way moving beyond simply giving money

The 2 are related, and this is something we might work out together. But whatever we do, doing stuff comes from a place of being his so that what we do is in his strength, by his grace, and enjoys and shows his love.

Stuff we could do:

Ideas and thoughts we had...

- Meals. Make meals for the night-shelter - Jane to check the earliest date we could do this for - perhaps group on 14th could be a cooking evening together at Andy & Jane's!

- Sam. Pray for Jan's friend Sam - for healing, pray for Jan to have faith and be full of the Holy Spirit, pray that Sam comes to Alpha.

- Weekend Away again. So helpful to get time together and be a community beyond the 1.5-2 hours at Community Group. Maybe we should do this again - what do people think?

- Inspiration. Get people to come in and encourage us and help us think about what we might do

- Phil Hanks who has been serving at the Night-shelter,

- Tom and Marianne know someone working on the Southampton projects Jane talked about.

Stuff to consider:

- 'Not a one-off / build genuine relationships and trust' a key theme to how this will work.

• Jane talked about how this happened through consistent commitment in the Kids Club when visiting homes
• Jan reminded us of Phil Hanks story about only having actual conversations with people at the Nightshelter after helping there for a year - 'they think Christians are just weird' was i think the comment he made.
  

- Wealth a distraction.

Jan talked about how for us giving money is easy but can almost absolve from the responsibility of actually building relationships with people - the very means by which they will become open to the good news of the Gospel!

- Building Bridges. How do we build the bridge between church and people in need - a consensus was that Sunday mornings are perhaps not as well placed as they might be to welcome those not already members, but other ideas came up - see 'Stuff we could do'! We talked about the dangers of considering the radical social expression of love and the church as different bodies, and talked about how, as Winfam, we might grow in our conviction about how are Jesus body to the poor. It is for God's glory that his church will show his multicoloured wisdom and be littered with stories of grace.

Needs around us in Winchester:

- Families - families without fathers.

- Parenting - people who need help parenting.

- Everyday stuff - the everyday needs of the poor - e.g. need to plumb in a washing machine.

- Finance - people in debt need help

- Drugs - big problems in Winchester, drugs tend to be prescribed to avoid on-street sales, but then often prescription drugs are sold-on and fuel on-street sales.

Encouraging Stories:

Stories of places that God's people have found ways to love oneanother as a spiritual community, and reach out and love their wider communities:

• Jane shared some other examples of *working* communities, one being a community in New Zealand (Jane can you post the link on here?) and the other being in Southampton on the following Website which we then looked at together.

• The evenings run post just10 had a a limited response, but people came for help on some pretty vulnerable topics - what would happen if we actually told people about a service like this and ran it in a nice warm, welcoming place!

Isaiah 61

we finished by reading this and then praying...

The Spirit of God, the Master, is on me because God anointed me.
He sent me to preach good news to the poor,
heal the heartbroken,
Announce freedom to all captives,
pardon all prisoners....

Community Group Plan until Sept 2009

"you remain"

okay, so I did this song about a month ago, but was reminded of it as we read Heb 1:10 this morning, and was probably looking for an excuse to share it with you guys!

Heb 1:10
“You, Lord, laid the foundation of the earth in the beginning,
and the heavens are the work of your hands;
11 they will perish, but you remain”

You remain

Away this weekend to visit my sister and Harvey their new baby born last Sunday after a c-section.

Friday blues

Hello everyone.  A grey sky on a Friday in June.  Shame,

Massacre of the Innocents

Grabbed 20 minutes in the National Gallery on the way home last week.  I had never visited before, and found it a most enjoyable way to pass the time.  The Carravagios were my favourite.  

I was detained by this painting by Rubens 'Massacre of the Innocents'.  It depicts the soldiers of Herod killing all the baby boys following Herod's decree.  It is disturbing in the extreme.  Would a a photo portraying this event be permitted to be shown?  I doubt it.  Rightly so - but would it remind us that even those who appear civilized are guilty of terrible atrocities?

It seems that many of the images in the media place evil as the actions of the uneducated deprived - the knives and guns of the hoodies, and thereby keep us safe from feeling responsible - remote observers.  This painting somehow seems to remind me that evil is part of humanity's DNA.

Guantanamo Bay

Evening all - haven't seen a few of you in ages - hope you are all well... :-)

Thought the following article on Guantanamo Bay might be of interest to some.

Is this blog in danger of getting political?  Would that be a bad thing?  Big questions!

About to exchange....

Well,  that's been the story for the last fortnight but really, really should happen tomorrow.  

How exciting and how much stuff do we own?  Does anyone have a secret supply of boxes?  Do pray for peace and calm in our lives as we wade through chaos!

Highly recommended preach download

Hi - just wanted to put this up on the blog.

I listened to a great preach on the way in this morning, called 'continuous worship' given at Mark Driscolls church Mars Hill.

I think it is especially enjoyable for the blokes who will especially enjoy the frank and honest style, and references to blokes in culture.

Click to listen.

Checking-in 2nd day

Greetings from my second day in the new job. Thanks to all who have kept asking me how it is going... good so far. Early days, but they serve nice coffee in a nice office and I think I can do the job.

Chantmarle pics too

More pictures from the weekend...

Andy entertains with his dodgy Italian accent...

Cascarini brothers do their best to disrupt a well-organised game of cricket.

"Cheese!"

Tash struggles at speed Scrabble whilst Jan deftly hides her letters...

A quick salami and gorgonzola break!

Camfields enjoy Othello.

Paul and Carolyn keep order!

Chantmarle

A selection of pictures from our recent excursion to Chantmarle.  We had a lovely time.  Thanks for all the organisation Jon - much appreciated.

delirious postcard

The National

Just back from a weekend 'up North to see The National.  Bet £2, lost £2.  Tut tut.  

To contract or not to contract

The constant deliberation between choosing between a contract or a permanent role is tiring me out.  

This is worse than the Chinese or Indian dialogue, although in my case it's a Korean vs French/English (Samsung-perm vs Orange-contract).  

We nipped out to Lyndhurst today to help me try and get a clear head, back at home now I'm not sure it has worked.  One final chance to sleep on it.  Decision time in the morning.  Gulp.  

All ideas on a postcard to thomasfoster2@mac.com (please mark urgent)