At Last: Two New Blog Links...

I get locked out of this blog more often than I am in! But there are some newer posts on Premier Radio's new website "community". You should be able to visit my page here:

http://premiercommunity.ning.com/profile/JohnRuffle

although I'm not certain if you have to be a registered user to view or not. As I am heading up a teaching project for our department at the college where I work, I also have a college-authorised blog which is more up to date than this one.. here's the link:

http://alstutor.blogspot.com/

Meanwhile, I'll try to get some photos and update this one shortly...

'Just Passing By'

A typical journey in west London -- our Underground system, and into Knightsbridge where Harrods is located. Opposite Harrods, we find a rough-sleeper, complete with cardboard 'blankets'.

But the rest of us just pass on by, not caring or maybe not knowing how to respond. A society of contrasts. Our local church is one of about a dozen churches of different denominations that are part of a night shelter project during the winter months. At least 35 men and women get a warm meal and friendship 7 days a week during these months. At our 'Riverside' centre, we welcome our guests with more than just the basics - we have table clothes, candles, flowers and live music. I was privileged to work on the project last winter - I learned so much from these precious brothers and sisters of mine, often leaving the shelter with tears in my eyes. Thanks to the fabulous cooks, and the dedicated volunteer staff, we have without question the best meal in London - at any price. These guys have so much to offer us all, yet they are out on the margins for all sorts of reasons. And I do so little for them. Let's encourage each other to remember the poor - and they are right here on our doorstep!









London streets: A new meaning to the term, "Just passing by" (left)

Back from Break

Yep, it's back to lecturing work and currently, I am just now finishing the first full week of enrollment of new students. I also volunteer my time working with our student Christian Union - so just as a little reminder to remember us in prayer, here's a picture or two of last year's service held at St. Mary's West Kensington.

Please pray for our Christian Union student leaders especially, some of whom are under great pressure at home. Also, that we can beat the timetabling problems of previous years, in order to get as many together at one time as possible. We would like to reach out creatively and sensitively to the student population and see the Christians grow in discipleship. One idea is to invite an Orthodox priest to address the CU, as we have a growing number of Orthodox students from Eastern Europe. Altogether, we have over 120 nationalities in a college of around 20,000 students. Quite a big parish! Although there pictures are old, I was back at St. Mary's Church last Sunday night, as guest preacher. I consider it a sacred privilege to bring God's Word to his precious people here.

Locked out of my blog!

Four months and no posting - the reason being mainly because I locked myself out of the blog! I will try to keep this a little more up to date; so much is happening, but I am trying to keep family central to what I do. I've cut back on loads of "extra" things that take my time, including the Internet based prayer group that I've hosted since 1995 or 1996. Most recently, our hosting company pulled out of supporting on-line groups, and resulted in our loosing all our archives from 2001 onwards. I do however, have the original documentation for the agape.com group I hosted from the early days of the Internet. Frankly, teaching in a college full time, completing my masters in pastoral theology, running a film club at our local church and being the dad, husband and family pastor my wife deserves keeps me occupied around 18 hours a day, but I'm not complaining. Life is full, and wonderful - but it is all down to Jesus' sustaining grace and power. Wonderful! - Oh and the awful picture of me ion a suit is off the blog but is this one really any better?

Finding God in a Night Club

Ekklesia is an influencial UK-based think tank that presumes upon itself the role of being 'Christian' voice in the UK. Frankly, they fail to represent classic or orthodox Chrisitan opinion in any shape or form. None-the-less, engagement is better than anger, so I wrote a response to a piece they posted yesterday, and they were gracious enough to post it to their site. Then this morning I came in, and found that all sight of my article had vanished, (although my name still comes up on a site-based seach). So -- for better of for worse, here is what I wrote:

“Ekklesia researcher Jordan Tchilingirian, who is also a club DJ said: "Young people, including many Christians, don't make the same sacred-secular divisions that many bishops do. Young people can find God in a night-club or at a gig as easily as they can in St Paul's Cathedral" he said.”

My response:

I agree that the sacred-secular divide is a residue from the Enlightenment, but is it really that easy to "...find God in a night-club..." unless the Christian faithful are intentionally planting seeds of hope and dialogue, along with an element of challenging young people to think through life's issues?

No one disputes that it is possible for a person to find God in a night club. The question is, will they? The primarily intention of the average clubber in west London where I live, is almost certainly to simply "have a good time". I question how many out there on a Saturday night are on an immediate and desperate quest for God. An apostle of the ‘pre-modern’ Church of the 1st century indicates why this might be: “…the god of this present age has blinded their unbelieving minds so as to shut out the sunshine of the Good News of the glory of the Christ, who is the image of God.” (2 Cor 4:4, Weymouth). I therefore suggest that a contextualised, intentional dialogue is therefore needed. For instance, a local community pastor and I run a film night periodically in our community. We do not push Christian "message" movies - but we do endeavour to provide a safe non-church space whereby life issues may be thought about in the context of society rather than the church, and where questions can be raised.

So while I agree with Jordan Tchilingirian that there is an over-arching sense of the spiritual that goes beyond church walls, there also needs to be an intentional engagement for Christian spirituality to have meaning and engagement in everyday life. As Robert E. Webber says in 'Ancient-Future Faith', "In the post-modern world evangelisation will take place within the various cultures of the world" (p 146). I endorse the Bishop of Manchester, the Rt Revd Nigel McCulloch, in that as a part of our own media culture herein Britain, (paid for by public licence fees), Radio 1 has no right to be excluded from intentional dialogue when it comes to Christian spirituality.

Christian Gunned Down in Kashmir

There are a lot of stories I could have highlighted right now. Yet this picture of children in Kashmir featured on www.mnnonline.org tells of hope and innocence. Yet violence abounds very close to home, as the following Mission Newwork News report filed on 29.11.06 tragically reveals:

Kashmir (MNN) -- A tragedy has hit a ministry in the predominately Muslim region of Kashmir. Bob Savage with Partners International says they're supporting a program called, 'Seeker Seminars' for Muslims interesting in learning about Christianity. The first convert from these seminars became actively involved in evangelism. However, his story took a tragic turn.

"He would bring people to these seminars when they happened. As often happens, a guy like him attracts bad attention. And, some people were watching him and threatening him and they just came up and point blank range and shot him." He leaves a wife and five children.

Will these 'Seeker Seminars' continue? Savage says, "People are nervous, but they'll go on. I mean, all of these guys, they know that it's a lot of risk what they've been doing. That's part of their life. Out of their commitment to reach these areas they just keep going back. You've got to admire that. It's really heroic."

Full story: http://www.MNNonline.org/article/9324

The Nativity Story: My Daughter's Take

The Nativity Story: Here’s my 17 year-old daughter’s review hot from a 23rd November 2006 London preview, so this is a typical teenage take on this new motion picture release. “The film has a realistic spin”, she told me shortly after exiting the theatre, “but toward the end it got so overdone; like the Christmas films with a star shining through a hole in the roof of the stable scenario. Then, the wise men appear right there in the stable, on the same night Jesus was born, and lo and behold, there were three of them!” (Contrary to popular myth, the Bible never does mention the number of wise men.)

“The film was well paced at the beginning,” she agreed, “but toward the end, it seemed rushed, like they had to finish off the 100 minutes of screen time.” This may reflect the tight production schedule – how many movies make it from a blank piece of paper to world-wide theatrical release in 12 months? An amazing accomplishment by any standard.

Asked about the humour angle, my daughter thinks that it “..could have done with a little humour; yes, the wise men did add some comedy flavour, but it wasn’t that funny. Oh, and by the way, let’s change the name, the title reminds me of every single nativity film you’re ever likely to see.” She rated it in the 7/10 range, (the rating on imdb linked to this piece reflects my rating, not hers – parental privilege, let’s call it!)

Interesting that I had to remind Rebekah who Keisha Castle-Hughes is, considering both young women are the same age, but she made the connection in the end, and thinks Keisha turned in a quite tidy performance. For me, I take my hat off to Mike Rich, for turning out that screenplay in one month, start to finish, and to Catherine Hardwicke for getting this to the screen for Christmas.

Regardless of how she rated the finished screen-time, at least my daughter got to see “The Nativity Play” several days earlier than Pope Benedict XVI (who is enjoying Turkish hospitality right now) for its Vatican world premier. My take on the film is that it takes us back to the time when one could openly be thankful for that quite amazing birth so long ago, and not have to make apologies to be politically correct (don't get me started on that one!)

I would like to think that this big-screen rendition will do at least as well as Mel Gibson's "Passion" at the box-office. But regardless of its commercial outcome, the "Nativity Story" is sure to touch and change countless lives around the world. Frankly, that is all that matters.

My original review can be read on International Movie Database - click the link below:
http://imdb.com/title/tt0762121/usercomments-8

The Fellowship

A quick plug for "The Fellowship" is in order. This international group of ministers started life in the 1960s under the direction of Gordon Linsey, who was the editor of a famed magazine, "The Voice of Healing". During the 1990s, 'The Fellowship' came to Britain, and is now looking toward a bright future bringing ministry together from across the denominational spectrum. Not that "anything goes" - the basis of the organization is to assist "full gospel" ministry around the world, and includes all who love our Lord Jesus Christ in spirit and in truth.

It has been my privilege to network with Anglicans, Catholics as well as non-liturgical churches in the quest to improve chaplaincy provision across Britain. It is early days yet, but the fellowship I've enjoyed has at many times, brought tears to my eyes, as I reach across the denominational divides - not with compromise, but with the transforming love of Jesus Christ. Please do visit 'The Felowship' website at http://www.fgfcmi.org and do contact me if you are based in the UK or Europe and would like info on joining or becoming involved in caring outreach and chaplaincy.

London: A Sunny Afternoon on 11th September

As I write, I am at the top floor staff room of the College where I teach in west London. Here, some six miles from Heathrow, I can see across London. I can see the Post Office Tower in central London and across, way across, into the country beyond Westminster and the Docklands. I can hear the gentle roar of a Boeing 747-400 banking hard as she climbs out of Heathrow Airport at around 8,000 feet. The weather is hot - most unusual for September here in Britain. A fairly average day at the beginning as a busy term - in this case, not. Because today is the afternoon of September 11th, 2006. Exactly at this time five years ago, a painstakingly-built Boeing aircraft was hurtling toward the second WTC tower, having been turned into a crude missile of mass destruction, laden with precious human cargo.

As did many others, I saw those surreal yet all too starkly real events unfold live on satellite television. I was in the hotel lobby, along with other fellow Full Gospel ministers who were attending our annual UK FGFCMI convention, where we had hastily abandoned an early afternoon business meeting when the first news came through.

How did I commemorate that bleak unfolding of evil five years on? As it happened, I've just come out of a class of foreign students - mostly Moslem - who are learning English. Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq and many other countries besides represented. We had the students get to know each other; find out where they were from; their aspirations for the future; their dreams and hopes. We had fun. I only briefly drew one student's mind to remember five years ago. After all, no one present would have been over twelve years old when 9/11 happened, and some of them have their own all too real personal tales of trauma and battle-zones to tell. Strangely, five years on, and we had fun. Fun being human. Trusting that these students really will remain human, and not give themselves to a spiral of sub-human evil of hatred and religious rhetoric.

Today, having fun seemed to be the best strategy. I think those who perished five years ago - whether American or British, or from abroad, and whether their end came in a lonely field in Pennsylvania, or at the Pentagon or in New York - those who perished (and I trust, their grieving families today) would want us to move on and make the bravest, boldest positive contribution to the societies we find ourselves servants within.

We had no two minute silence here in Britain. I wished we did. Yet even so, I can never forget. My life has been deeply marked - all the more so since September 11th is very bitter-sweet for me; today we celebrate our teenage daughter's 17th birthday. But in that English class this afternoon, God used these foriegn students to help turn my pain into a positive experience. They unknowingly helped me make a turning point today. Before taking the class, I entered our college prayer room. Perhaps strangely, not to pray. But rather, to phone a dear friend, Janice. A flight attendant with American Airlines. US based, often flying out of Boston. Five years ago, it took five days for Annette and I to establish contact with her and find that she was safe. She had indeed been aloft as the flights crashed, but that particular day, she'd been taken off-line her normal duties and was at thirty-some thousand feet winging her way toward Dallas-fort Worth for her annual re-certification. Some she knew however, had not been so fortunate and perished.

Quiet and un-assuming by nature, Janice agreed to do an exclusive taped interview over the phone with London's Premier Radio. When Premier called her, it turned out her interview went out live in London's drive time. I listened, as a transformed woman shared her faith and her confidence in Jesus Christ, and her determination to stay flying; fearless in the face of anything the enemy of our souls could bring. Janice was speaking for many millions of brave Americans that day, I felt.

It was the day Christians began to man the spiritual battle stations. Alas, many have returned to slumber, or worse, veered off into all sorts of crazy doctrinal aberrations. Meanwhile, Christ continues faithful in his promise to build his Church. Not by human effort or ambition. But by His Holy Spirit. Today, long after the natural dust has settled, I wonder how many of us can stand up tall with Janice, that dear American Airlines flight attendant, and truly be a surrendered part of that which Christ is building through love, compassion, understanding mercy and.. perhaps hardest of all - forgiveness.

I cannot do it on my own power. I can only do it through fresh surrender to Him who so loved us, that - despite the pain, laid His life down that we may live. I still cannot look again at the images of those Twin Towers falling. Yet, together with you, I can respond to His love and see our world change. And starting from within is the only real place any of us can begin that journey.

Blessings