We need God!

I have been away for a few days this week, enjoying time with family and watching with great joy as our kids played well with their cousins. Then I came home and catched up on news stories. Before we went away we heard the news of Margaret Thatcher’s death – and the really sad news of Rick Warren’s son’s death. I cannot believe the torrent of filth and hate that has emerged on social networking sites, particularly twitter, about both. I was aghast by how much of it came from Christians…

Since we’ve come home I’ve read and watched stories about the horrific rapes in Syria and the disgusting murders of babies carried out by Dr Gosnell. My stomach flips, my heart sinks and an overriding sense of sickness pervades my body as I think about what humanity is capable of – in terms of practical acts, but also through vitriolic outbursts. I don’t really feel like commenting on the specifics of any of the above. So many others have done that eloquently already. All I want to say is we need God – so so badly! I hope and pray that hearing such news brings all Christians to their knees. I am sure that is the case with the most recent news stories, but unfortunately it appears there is so much hate within the Church itself. Our society – locally but also worldwide – is in dire need of its Father. It doesn’t need to see his people divided, lashing out at one another. We need to look at ourselves humbly once again – after all who are we to ever cast the first stone? We also need to come before our God, united, to cry out for his salvation for the world.

We need you God!

Why faith should hurt

God never promised that staying close would be easy.

Westernised Christianity doesn’t seem to cost that much these days. Has it become too sanitised, or compartmentalised so that it doesn’t intrude onto the rest of our busy lives? Having grown up in a US church that fell apart due to an overbearing pastor I’m wary of being prescriptive. But a lot of the ‘discipleship’ I see around me doesn’t have much sense of ownership. People just don’t seem to take responsibility for their faith anymore.

For the rest of this post, please click here to read my guest blog for Threads.

Thanks 🙂

Inspiring mothers

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Today, as you are all fully aware, is Mother’s Day. It was wonderful to help the kids at church give out flowers to each of the mums there. And also great to see how many people have posted messages online honouring their mums. To those of us who are mothers it can be a real inspiration – but also hugely sobering. I long to be someone my kids look up to; aspire to be like. It has been so special to receive the hugs and declarations of love today – but I want to be someone that my kids are proud to have as their mum each and every day. I am intensely aware that sometimes I really don’t make the grade.

My daughter decided to paint a portrait of me today and it was interesting to see how she viewed me – I especially liked the splodges of purple and pink paint she put all around my head. Somehow it seemed to make me look funky, more ‘with it’ and fun than I probably am!

Today I also preached in church for the first time. It was terrifying – far harder than leading worship. It was humbling to see how God used it – the words that came during the worship tied in with what I spoke about, which was hugely encouraging for me as I prepared to speak. I was worried it was too simple a message, but it seemed to touch many and I had the privilege of praying for people who responded at the end. I didn’t realise how hard it would be though – I looked down to find my hands literally shaking! But I held it together and was calm – until I talked about how much of an inspiration my mum is to me. Then I had to take a moment… or two. And I’m writing this tonight to honour her; for her unwavering faith in the midst of intense suffering. I don’t understand everything she’s had to go through, and is still going through, but I do so appreciate everything that she has taught me along the way. She has remained absolutely resolute in her faith – even when everything has screamed at her not to – including her own body.

We need to learn from our elders, as we really aren’t as together and wise as we often make out. I’m so proud to have a mum I can look up to and learn from. Thanks mum, I love you 🙂

Taking stock on International Women’s Day

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I am currently editing a fantastic book that seeks to empower women by freeing them from the chains of needing to seek affirmation constantly and looking for the answer to the question Am I Beautiful? It reminds us that as women made in the image of Beauty itself, we are all indeed beautiful, so we need to learn to rise above all the pressures – self- and society- and culture-applied – to accept that. And it also urges us to remember that there are far too many bigger issues, far too many pressing needs, for us to simply be preoccupied with ourselves. We need to be able to move on and make a difference, to be the world changers that women significantly seem to be. The brilliant author, Chine Mbubaegbu, cites some UN statistics:

‘There are 900 million women and girls facing extreme poverty. Women own just one per cent of the world’s wealth, we earn just 10 per cent of the world’s income and half a billion of us can’t read or write.’ And yet, it is being recognised around the world by governments and development agencies that women certainly make a huge difference when given the chance. That, while we earn less than men generally, when we do work we reinvest 90 per cent of it into the health, nutrition and educational needs of our families – as opposed to the 30–40 per cent of men that do so.

Chine’s citation of such facts and figures whetted my appetite so I went in search of more on the UN website. And found some other interesting ones:

  • Over the years women have begun to enter various traditionally male-dominated occupations, but are still rarely employed in jobs with status, power and authority or in traditionally male blue-collar occupations.
  • Women are still under-represented among legislators, senior officials and managers, craft and related trade workers and plant and machine operators and assemblers.
  • Specifically, women are still under-represented in national parliaments, where on average only 17 per cent of seats are occupied by women.
  • There is a persistent gender pay gap everywhere – while it has begun to close slowly in some countries it is still unchanged in others.
  • Despite all these changes, women still continue to bear most of the responsibilities around the home: caring for children and other dependents, preparing meals and doing other housework. Around the world, women spend twice as much time – at least – as men on unpaid domestic work.

While all of these facts start to get me riled, it is the information about violence against women that angers me the most. This is a UNIVERSAL phenomenon – not just occurring in so-called under-developed nations but right under our noses here in the West too. Our ‘developed’ nations can hide some horrific secrets under the surface. Charities such as A21 have done a great job in raising our awareness of such issues as human trafficking but there is so much more that can – and should – be done.

I was horrified to read the following in the UN stats report The World’s Women 2010: ‘In many regions of the world, longstanding customs put considerable pressure on women to accept being beaten by their husbands, even for trivial reasons. Whether for burning the food, venturing outside without their husband, neglecting children or arguing with their husband, in quite a few countries a very high percentage of women consider such behaviour sufficient grounds for being physically hit.’

Wake up women – and men – around the world! We are worth so much more. No one – absolutely no one – deserves to be treated with less respect than another. I hope on today, of all days, we can celebrate all that is good about womanhood and determine afresh to fight against the injustices that so many of our sisters in countries all around the world are facing right now.

Can’t settle down to work…

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Ever have one of those days when you simply can’t seem to settle down to anything? I am today – I can’t believe I only have half an hour left before I pick up my son from nursery and I’ve achieved nothing so far (apart from bagging a free book for my hubbie – yay- and having email conversations with publishers). I have managed to do my bible reading for the day. I’ve been finding reaching back into the Old Testament really interesting and thought-provoking, but today, when I read about a man sacrificing his daughter, all I could think was ‘really?’. My brain couldn’t go further than that!

Both my husband and I look and feel shattered. It has been an exceedingly long couple of weeks, partly because our church is in the process of trying to buy a building and there have been endless plans and letters to formulate. But today is submission day – so we’ve done all we can. Now, as well as praying earnestly, we need to turn to what else needs our attention – him to his preach and me to my writing. But I think we are both simply too wrung out. I am usually incredibly focused. I’ve been doing this work-from-home freelancing thing for a long time now, and I am always determined to utilise the first few hours of the day really well as that is my only child-free time. But today I’ve been meandering through the windows on my computer – looking at the drafted book I have almost finished and the half-written ideas file for a magazine editor. I can’t quite seem to actually get down to doing anything. But I think that may be because my body needs a little rest – it’s done so much already this week. The fact that I can’t focus on anything is my body revealing I need to slow down a little and take it easy today. This is really unlike me, but I’m finding I’m telling myself that it’s okay if I don’t actually achieve that much today. There is always tomorrow… 🙂

Feeling the squeeze

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Today is the start of National Marriage Week. I chuckled wryly to myself when I found that out, as this week has been incredibly testing. We’ve definitely felt the squeeze, due to many reasons – mainly outside of our relationship. We are still exhausted from the fantastic weekend of celebrations honouring our pastor and his wife as he retired, and now my husband is feeling the pressure of taking over the church and being the only member of staff for the next two months. I’m really busy juggling a lot of deadlines, including writing a book, and looking after our kids. I’ve also found it very difficult to be surrounded by a houseful of mess as my husband transports the church office temporarily to the studio at the bottom of our garden. That sort of thing really grates on me – and I have to be honest, I bit my tongue for three days but didn’t manage to keep quiet completely!

Each night has been busy since last weekend, with meetings already booked in. And each night we’ve been supporting others with difficulties – some with intensely bad news they are struggling with. While it is an honour and a privilege to serve them it is still hard when you are just plain tired yourself – and some of the issues have been so big it is hard not to be affected by them. I think the fact that we are not sleeping well even though exhausted is a sign that the stress is taking its toll. And this afternoon my daughter had a complete meltdown doing homework that I thought she would actually really enjoy. I found myself almost at explosion point and shouted inwardly to God ‘Not now – don’t throw anything else at me now’.

I left her to it and escaped into my office. And there were another series of tweets about National Marriage Week, which stopped me in my tracks. We absolutely HAVE to make time amongst all the manic-ness, responsibilities and people problems to just chill out, do things together we really enjoy and affirm and encourage one another. Because when tiredness and stress set in, it is always the person closest to you that bears the brunt of it. I know you know this, but I urge those of you that are married to use this week’s timely reminder wisely and let your husband/wife really know why it is that you love them. Use the commercialised, cheesy, annoying day that is Valentine’s Day to do something special – whether you choose to do it on that day or another just make sure you do something in the next week! I’m going to make sure we do…

Children really are sponges!

I was explaining to my daughter just before bedtime last night why grandma, grandpa and granny are coming to stay this weekend. To put things simply I said, ‘Daddy is taking over the church on Sunday so there is going to be a big party.’ To which she immediately quipped back, ‘Well mummy God is actually in charge of the church – daddy will be the human who helps him.’ I asked her who had told her that and she replied, ‘You did mummy’ and then, amongst the bleary cloud of tiredness in my head, I did have a vague recollection of trying to explain to her a few weeks ago why daddy wouldn’t be the boss of the church, which is what she had been telling people! But I have to admit I was blown away that she had remembered it so clearly, and stated it back to me so matter-of-factly. It was something I had explained to her, therefore it was right. And that made me take a step back to think of the larger implications. Now I know we are told that children are sponges, but in the everyday busy-ness of life I can often forget that. Here was a real, bonafide example of that in practise.

I am often conscious of the way my children view my behaviour and sometimes copy it (yes it is the negative stuff I’m thinking of here!), and I know they come out with certain little phrases that they have picked up from either my husband or myself – that’s the way that family traditions/catchphrases are born. But I haven’t really dwelt that much recently on exactly how the words we say, and the way we explain things, get absorbed by our children. Tucking into bed time is usually a joint affair – I put our littlest into his bed after family prayers and my husband does the same with our daughter. One of the reasons it’s worked out that way is that she has an incredibly inquisitive mind, and usually picks that moment of the day to ask a deep, theological question. It is daddy who has a quick yet thorough answer easily on his lips! After last night’s exchange, though, I might take more opportunities to converse with my daughter just before sleep time!

Dying from hunger in a world of more than enough

Last week saw the launch of the Enough Food for Everyone IF campaign, which is something that I hope as many of us as possible from the Church will get involved in. I asked Chine Mbubaegbu, who was at the event, to write a guest post…

Photo by Tim Whitby/Getty Images ForIF, © 2013 Getty Images

Photo by Tim Whitby/Getty Images For
IF, © 2013 Getty Images

I was sure I had misheard.

Standing on stage in front of hundreds gathered at Somerset House last Wednesday evening, Love Actually star Bill Nighy said that two million children die a year because they don’t have enough food to eat.

Two million?

My mind couldn’t quite comprehend the figure.

Did he say two million?

That’s two million beautiful children who never grow up. Two million children whose short lives are made up of days filled with pangs of hunger. Two million children. Every year.

They die because they don’t have that most basic of human needs: food. And it’s not just children. Men and women are also literally dying of hunger.

But it’s not like there’s not enough food to go round. The Western world wastes so much food. The amount of food I must throw away would be enough to keep people alive. Which makes these statistics seem even more sickening.

We all remember being guilt tripped by our parents when we didn’t clear our plates as children. “Think about the poor children in Africa.”

And I recall thinking that me refusing to eat the peas (still, yuck) on my plate would have little impact on the “poor children”, so I’d rather not eat them thank you very much. It seemed like we couldn’t do anything about it anyway.

But now, the launch of the Enough Food for Everyone IF campaign, says that we can. The campaign is thought to be the biggest of its kind, with more than 100 development agencies and faith groups coming together to campaign for action on global hunger.

It challenges the prime minister to tackle four big IFs to help there to be enough food for everyone:

  • IF we stop poor farmers being forced off their land, and use the available agricultural land to grow food for people, not biofuels for cars.
  • IF governments keep their promises on aid, invest to stop children dying from malnutrition and help the poorest people feed themselves through investment in small farmers.
  • IF governments close loopholes to stop big companies dodging tax in poor countries, so that millions of people can free themselves from hunger.
  • IF we force governments and investors to be honest and open about the deals they make in the poorest countries that stop people getting enough food.

One by one, celebrities from all over the world (One Direction, Bill Gates, David Harewood and Edith off of Downton Abbey) took to the stage or appeared as if by magic on the video projection at Somerset House; each pleading with us to support the campaign.

Everyone loves a celebrity spot. And in the world we live in, getting celebrities on board means people will listen, you’ll get lots of media attention and probably more support for your campaign. It’s a shame the “two million children dying a year” statistic wasn’t enough to wake the world up to this injustice. It was enough for me.

Chine profileChine Mbubaegbu is Editor at the Evangelical Alliance,
including idea magazine and threads (voted best Christian blog at the Christian New Media Awards).

The countdown begins

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Monday morning. A chance to re-focus after another hectic, but fulfilling weekend of fun and church activities. But this Monday morning is slightly different. Because, as I arrived home from dropping both kids to school and my husband off to the (temporary) church office, I realised that that could have been the last time I ever do the latter. The church office will soon be at our house because there is now less than a week until our pastor retires and my husband takes on the role. We’ve been planning and preparing for months now, and are really caught up in the celebrations we are planning for next weekend to honour our pastor and his wife’s tireless commitment and care to the church. But as I sat down with my Bible and cup of tea it suddenly hit me. That this time next week I won’t just be the associate pastor’s wife – I’ll be the pastor’s wife!

I had a sudden flash of the weight of responsibility, but fortunately the weight didn’t hang around for too long. Over the last couple of weekends we’ve had a chance to meet up with others of a similar age in a similar position, some that my husband did his training with, and it’s nice to know that we are not alone. It’s not that we are forging out by ourselves, blazing a trail that’s never been done before. We’re just doing it in our church, in the way we’ve been called to. Of course there are things on my mind that I’m slightly concerned about, and added stresses that have been creeping up on us both – but mainly on my husband. Life is going to go up another gear – again – and we will have to be really careful and conscious of our family at all times. Because we’ve already discovered in the preparation to this time that leadership can be a lonely place at times – even when you’ve got some good, close friends.

I am really glad we are in the position of having our pastor and his wife continue to attend the church, and indeed, continue to help. After a couple of months off they will be back! 😉 She does so much, including the church’s accounts, and he will be working part time in the office. It will be strange to begin with – there will be a new dynamic as he will no longer have any leadership responsibilities and both he and my husband will have to get used to that. But I know that we will really appreciate having them around. Because, for the moment at least, my husband will be the only full-time member of staff. So there will be lots to do… And they will still be there for those times when we realise that we’ve forgotten to ask about how to do something!

But how do I really feel in this countdown week? Proud – of my husband;of both of us for coming through some really tough years to get to this point; scared – I don’t feel qualified (but if my experiences as a worship leader are anything to go by that’s a good thing!); protective  – of our family time, of our kids (wow the spiritual battle that goes on at times is intense!), of my husband; humbled – that He’s called us for such a time as this for such a church as ours and … tired – well it is Monday morning after all! 🙂

Taking time out

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Yet again there’s been a good few weeks between my posts. Before Christmas I was frantically trying to finish work off so that I could take a complete break, and since the kids went back to school I’ve been busy again catching up with work. But I look back to the Christmas period with really fond memories. It was a time of relaxation in which I purposefully stayed away from my computer. The way that was kickstarted is funny really – a friend’s daughter slept in a travel cot in my office just before Christmas and she asked whether the cot could stay up until the New Year’s Eve party we were hosting. So the cot became a welcome barrier between me and my computer, forcing me not to turn it on! I’ve always made sure I don’t have emails coming through to my phone, as when I’m away from my desk I’m with my kids so I don’t want the lure of work emails distracting me from them. The result: I was free of social media for the entire Christmas holiday period!

I think I’d worked so hard last year that I was quite burned out, and having time away from everything – emails, Facebook, twitter, blogs – was really welcome. It also made me realise anew the wisdom behind God’s ordering and the taking of a day of rest each week. We were explaining to the kids at the weekend that mummy and daddy aren’t quite like other mummies and daddies they know from school – our weekends aren’t just full of fun and relaxation as part of our jobs are to lead the church – me with worship and my husband as an elder and preacher. So Sundays can be quite stressful. While my husband should have a day off in the week that often doesn’t materialise, and it is hard to keep it family focused anyway as the kids are at school Monday to Friday. So we find we end up with less time to ourselves. That’s the nature of things – but that doesn’t mean it’s always right.

Since coming back to work, and being in meetings where we’ve focused on our goals for the year and how we’d like to develop, I was really struck by how one woman prayed for me. She said, ‘God you’ve heard all the ways Claire wants to develop her worship ministry, but she has just said how her highlights of last year were when she had time with her family away from it all. Help her to remember to take those rest times, and to realise that you only expect her to do what she has time to do. Stop her from worrying about those things she can’t do.’ That prayer made its way into my journal, as I realised my tendency is to forget rest in the busy-ness of life. I love being busy, and I find it difficult to relax until everything on my ‘to do’ list is ticked off but what I’m holding on to in these first few weeks of January is that it is so important to take time out.

So my exaltation to you is also to take some time off regularly – and don’t worry about whether stepping back to rest will mean you are no longer ‘in the loop’. This is something that I can get anxious about – particularly regarding social media networking for work purposes. I think if I take any time off it will be detrimental to the career I’m building. I’m now reminding myself that my spiritual health is the most important priority and time off is vital. God has told me many times that I can’t help others and give out to the best of my ability if I’m burned out myself – I guess I need to start listening! I’ll let you know in a few months whether I’ve managed to take regular time off – bearing in mind that it’s only a few weeks before my husband becomes lead elder/pastor of our church so I know that will have a huge impact on our lives! 🙂