The Fruitful Field
The Fruitful Field is a project about learning, formation, training, theological education, scholarship, research and development. It’s about the future of the Methodist Church’s connexional learning resources. It’s about equipping the Church and its ministries, equipping the Methodist movement in all of its contexts and formational communities, and equipping God’s people for discipleship and mission.
The Ministries Committee has issued a consultation document about The Fruitful Field. The Methodist people and all of the Church's partners, colleagues and friends are invited to read and reflect on the document.
Responses to the document should be received by 23 December 2011.
There is also a series of vodcasts with the Revd Dr Martyn Atkins about the consultation. They address some of the questions people are asking about the proposals outlined in the report. Click here to watch the first one.
In Brief
The big sing
The annual Big Christmas Sing (9-11 December) invites everyone who loves a good sing-a-long to Christmas hits, past and present, to raise money for Christian Aid. Events are diverse as they are festive, from classic carol concerts to karaoke with colleagues. It’s easy to get involved, and you can find out more here.
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Get in the Picture
This campaign run by the Baptist Union is a community event. The idea is to host a nativity scene in a community centre, school, shopping centre or leisure facility – and to take photos of people as they dress in costume and ‘get in the picture’.
It is an excellent opportunity for the churches in the local area to engage with the community, have a lot of fun and help others find out about the real meaning of Christmas. It's designed to be easy for you to run and other than a digital camera (and a computer) you won't need anything technical.
For more details, click here.
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The Nativity Factor
ITN is offering a prize of £5000 for the winner of the Nativity Factor – a YouTube based competition for people to rewrite the Christmas Story for a contemporary audience. There are a number of excellent examples already submitted which you can watch online.
The closing date for the competition is midnight on Friday 2 December.
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Roll on Christmas
Award-winning comedian Milton Jones is narrator of Roll on Christmas - an interactive retelling of the nativity as an animated farce on Facebook. The stars of this chaotic animation are anyone's Facebook friends – their faces cut out and stuck on toilet rolls depicting the usual Bethlehem suspects. Aimed at anyone over 18, Roll on Christmas has been devised by iconoclastic webzine Ship of Fools and Bible Society.
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What in the world is happening?
Click here to read about:
- Steve Pearce's recent visit to Pakistan
- flooding in Central America
- rebuilding life in the Cote d'Ivoire
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Closing the Gap
On 31 October, the Methodist Church, as part of the Close the Gap coalition, delivered a letter to the treasury demanding that a VAT loophole was closed. 750 activists emailed George Osborne to support this action. A week later, the government has done so, claiming these measures will save £100 million. Find out more here.
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#WeRemember
Last week a very different remembrance service took place. The brain child of Methodist James Thomas, and thought to be the first service of its kind, the Twitter Remembrance service featured hymns (music supplied by YouTube), prayers and readings, as well as observing a two minute Twitter silence. The service has received a lot of media coverage.
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Run the Race
Run the Race is the Methodist Prayer Handbook for 2011/2012. It draws on themes of spiritual training, perseverance, endurance and self-discipline as well as focusing on our solidarity with our brothers and sisters around the world.
Priced at £3.50 (plus postage and packing), Run the Race is available to order here.
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Free e-book edition of
A Gift of Christmas
The booklets are available in packs of 50 priced £5 plus postage and package. You can order here.
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Prisons Week
Prisons Week begins on Sunday. It seeks to pray for and raise awareness of the needs of prisoners
and their families, victims of offenders, prisons staff and all those who care.
Click here for details and resources.
Gift Aid raises £9.5 million
Well done to over 3,700 Methodist churches that have made tax reclaims through the central bureau service operated by the Connexional Team’s Finance Office. In this year, the last one in which 28p in the pound could be claimed, more than £9.5 million has been claimed from the government by churches across the Connexion.
Thank you to all who are able and chose to Gift Aid their giving to the Church, more than 75,000 people throughout the country. The average reclaimed per church was over £2,500 and the average reclaimed per donor was £126.
All claims received up to the end of September have been processed and submitted to HMRC, and churches should now have received their payments.
Please support your Gift Aid secretary and encourage other tax payers to use Gift Aid - it really makes a difference to all donations both large and small.
Take a minute - advent resource
Take a Minute is an Advent booklet/resource from the Darlington District taking readers from Advent Sunday (27 November) to Covenant Sunday on 8 January.
Each Sunday has a full set of readings accompanied by one reading for every day of the week, with each week having a particular theme. Through the themes and readings there is encouragement to be involved in the harsh reality of the Advent and Christmas season.
Alongside the readings there is an invitation to ‘take a minute’ to be actively involved through prayer and practical action. Further suggestions and ideas for action can be found on the Darlington District Website.
New resources on Singing the Faith plus
Almost every day, it seems, there is something new to find on the Methodist Church’s website for hymns and sung worship, Singing the Faith Plus.
Many items have been suggested by site users, such as a complete alphabetical index of Singing the Faith first lines, complementing the range of search options already on the site. We are hearing, too, that many people would like more background information about hymn authors and specific hymns – we’re beginning to build this up (Marjorie Dobson’s 'Jesus, the carpenter' and Geoffrey Ainger’s ever-popular 'Born in the night' for example).
Worship resources for celebrating the new hymn book in your local area are available and, as we enter Advent, look out for similar support materials plus all the suggestions of hymns to accompany lectionary readings during this thought-provoking season of the Christian year.
Wanted:
Contributions for the new prayer handbook
If you have a prayer or photo which you think might be suitable for the new Methodist Prayer Handbook, please submit it to the editor, Primavera Quantrill, by 20 December 2011.
The title of the 2012/2013 Prayer Handbook is Crossing the Chasm.
Crossing the Chasm will examine the theme of reconciling discipleship; living the peace of Christ in a broken world and being drawn into God’s programme of reconciliation within ourselves, our Church and our world. The title comes from the Hermann Stuempfle's hymn ‘When the bonds of love are breaking’.
Prayers should not exceed 120 words or 12 lines. Shorter prayers and prayers for specific themes or countries are more likely to be used.
Click here for more information.
Contributions for children and young people are particularly welcome. To help, a session plan exploring the issue 'Peace in a broken world” has been created. At the end of the session, young people are encouraged to write a prayer that could be submitted for the handbook. (There are also specific resources for those working with younger children.)
You can still use the session even if you choose not to write prayers for the handbook- although we hope you will!
To download this resource click here.
Messy Church training for young people
The Methodist Church and Bible Reading Fellowship's Messy Church Team are co-hosting an exciting day for young people who are or will soon be in leadership roles in Messy Church (helping on the craft team, or leading the celebration, for example). Designed to give young people the skills to share their ideas and opinions and to give church leaders the skills to listen to this age group effectively, as well as to draw together the ideas of young and older people as to how Messy Church can meet their needs more effectively, this is a day on participation techniques very much focused on the Messy Church context. It is open to people from all denominations, not just Methodism.
The day is aimed at young people between the ages of 11-18 with accompanying adults. If you are above this age and would like to attend, please find a young person to bring with you. To keep the balance of voices, we request that no adults come on their own.
It takes place at Methodist Church House, Marylebone Road, London on Saturday 21 January 2012, 11.00am - 4.00pm. Cost: £5 (under 18s) £10 (over 18s).
For more details contact Penny Fuller.
Connecting Disciples Conference
This conference for lay employees, children and youth workers will explore how Methodists use the ‘means of grace’. There will be Bible studies, keynote speakers, worship and workshops around the theme of graceful discipleship, as well as a chance to network with other people with similar roles.
Speakers include Martyn Atkins, general secretary, Mark Wakelin, the president designate and secretary for internal relationships, Christine Elliott, secretary for external relationships, John Ellis, secretary for Connexional Team operations and Helen Cameron, senior Methodist tutor & co-director of the Centre for Ministerial Formation, Queen's Foundation for Ecumenical Theological Education.
It takes place at High Leigh Conference Centre, Hoddesdon, 5-8 March 2012. Click here for further information and booking details.
Rural mission & ministry postgraduate diploma or MA
A new part-time programme leading to a postgraduate diploma or MA in rural mission and ministry is being offered by the York Institute for Community Theology in conjunction with the Arthur Rank Centre.
Using reflective practice, ministry and mission, with a deliberate focus on the rural context, it is aimed at lay and ordained people practising in a rural setting. Modules include:
• the rural context in contemporary Britain
• developing and evaluating models of rural ministry
• rural mission: theology and practice
• critical reflective practice in rural contexts
For more details click here or email the Revd Richard Andrew or the Revd Graham Jones.
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