In2venture

Thought it might be a good idea, early on in the year, to publish a couple of features on the organisational members of the In2venture Community: COAC In2venture and In2venture FOG.

So, first up is COAC.

COAC In2venture was founded in the mid-late 1990’s by members of Cockerton Methodist Church & St Mary’s Cockerton in Darlington. The main aim of the organisation is to extend traditional forms of Church youth work into new areas, namely outdoor activity. The team over in Darlington is heavily volunteer based and is approaching 2013 with renewed vigour. You can view their programme here.

COAc’s round up of their 2012 activity is here CoAC_Summary_2012

Happy New Year from In2venture!!

Looking forward to a year of: adventure; people; youth work; exploration; challenge; community; fellowship; faith in action ……………………………………..  keep reading!

Our new site went live at the beginning of October and according to those helpful folk at WordPress enough people visited it to fill a new Boeing 787 Dreamliner 6 times over!

I’ve got to be honest with you, I’m really searching for Christmas inspiration this year. Advent has come & nearly gone; Christmas day is just five days away & I genuinely only gave it a first thought in the last 48 hours.

As far as my In2venture memory serves we’ve never had a Christmas message from one of our Trustees before so big thanks to Jon Price for sharing some timely & serious thoughts that really get to the heart & the reality of the Christmas story then & now.

But mine is not the greater reality in this world I imagine – of food and feasting and festivities.  This makes me think of the distance between myself and the story of Christmas.  There is the distance of time (lots and lots of centuries of time) and culture (I’m not a Jew living in the Second Temple era).  But I’m also on the wrong side of the wealth divide.  The Christmas story and the common story of this world is of the shepherds out in the field and the anxiety of a pregnant couple on the move looking for a roof over their heads.

Does this distance matter?  I think so.   I’ve seen time and again how so many of us compartmentalise our lifestyle from the truth of the Christmas story told and retold and lived out  in many guises, and whenever the grace of the Word made flesh is heard.

Jesus arrived in a stable not a palace at his birth. Jesus departed on a donkey not a war charger near his crucifixion.  Jesus told powerful truths of abundant grace with his parable of the Banquet (to which all and sundry are invited, especially the poor and outcast).  He taught not to show favoritism to the rich and powerful or to seek the places of honor.  He speaks most disturbingly of a judgment based on how we clothed the naked, fed the hungry, met the needs of the thirsty and visited those in prison.  Jesus says salvation has come to a home when Zacchaeus not only accepts who Jesus is, but is moved to generosity towards the poor and making restitution for those he had ripped off in his business dealings.

James, looking back on all this, writes that the “religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world” (James 1v27).  Paul writes in many different ways about the sin that creates a distance between us and God and between each other.  Christmas reminds me of the distance between the stable and the palace, the shepherd and the princes, the meagre meals and abundant feasts, the humble and the proud.  Christmas reminds me too, that when the Word became incarnate, Jesus began the ultimate journey to the Cross to overcome this distance.

We went caving yesterday as part of pilot community programme. It was a good journey and has parallels in all sorts of areas of the charities work. The story is told in Clare’s photos below:

I’m a fan of the Bishop of Bradford – Nick Baines. He writes a blog that’s well worth reading.

Yesterday he did Pause for Thought on Chris Evan’s Breakfast Show on Radio 2. His script is below:

I was on a train, my head buried in emails and papers, when I heard the voice of the ‘train manager’: “This service will shortly call at New York.” Great, you might think. except that I was on my way from Bradford to London… and the last time I did the trip, we didn’t cross the Atlantic. Eventually I worked out she was actually saying ‘Newark’… the place in the Midlands. 

Funnily enough, this reminded me of when my kids were young and we were in the car going on holiday. My youngest son asked – having watched Star Trek the day before – “Why do they keep saying, ‘Beat me up, Scottie’?” Oh, how we larfed… 
But, it’s actually easy to mishear stuff, isn’t it? We do it all the time – often without even realising it. I guess our mind expects something and doesn’t process what really comes out. A bit like hearing the choir singing “While shepherds watched their socks by night” or the Kop singing “You’ll never work alone”. 

Mishearing is just something we all do. The people at the back of the crowd at Jesus’s ‘Sermon on the Mount’ in Monty Python’s Life of Brian hear him say: “Blessed are the cheesemakers” – and people still don’t hear what he actually said about an upside down way of seeing the world. 

So, I wonder what we make of the 2011 Census figures issued yesterday – especially the news that the number of people claiming to be Christian has dropped considerably since 2001? Well, you can hear the statistic and think Christianity is on the way out… or you can ask yourself why Christians continue to feed the hungry, shelter the homeless, clothe the poor – and do all this without fuss or fame across the nation. Yes, others do it, too; but, it is often the churches that organise it consistently. Like InnChurches in Bradford providing shelter and food to hundreds of homeless people through the winter months. 

So, when I hear the stats, I dig deeper into the story. As the Rolling Stones put it, ‘Sticky Figures’ can be misheard. 

Didn’t they?

Alan’s Christmas thinking 2012:

At our staff meeting the other week I spoke about life chapters and life transitions. At this point all who were at the meeting will switch off, so I had better say something a bit different. by putting a Christmas theme to it!

Life chapter- things going well, life is good and stable, we are motivated full of hope.

Life transition– things not stable, things are changing, we feel uncertain, lack motivation self-confidence is hit, we might feel hopeless.

These are natural part of life and we move between the two depending on the circumstances we face or are in. Each transition, if worked through with support and prayer, is preparation for the next chapter in our lives.

I know that is easier to say than to achieve depending on the situation we are in, but this fits for me in our journey of faith with Jesus and shows the relevance of the Christmas story. We go through good and bad times, chapters and transitions.  Dealt with well, our journey helps us grow in faith, even though many times we feel like we are going backwards or standing still. It means having the love and support not only of God, but of the people around us, family and friends being there in whatever we are going through, whatever we have done.

God gives us unconditional love and it is essential we give the same towards each other. If we are to be supported and accepted and loved as a child of God, unconditional love from others is essential. In our relationships with others it is essential for us to show unconditional love if we are to love and support and accept others as fellow children of God.

It has been said of God’s grace

Nothing we can do can make God love us more

Nothing we can do can make God love us less

Can this be said of me or you?

The Christmas story is full of chapters and transitions of hope and hopelessness, good and bad, joy and sorrow.

 I am not going to do any spiritual talk on Christmas, but challenge both myself and you to look afresh at the journey of all those involved on that first Christmas . Let us look expecting to find something new, helpful, comforting, or challenging on our journey in whatever stage of life we find ourselves.

We had a cracking day out today!

A group of six guys taking part in one of our new community programme events plus Alan, Graham & myself: Blencathra; Halls Fell Ridge; Blue Sky; Snow; Winter Gear; Great Company – it had the lot.

There’s an album on our Facebook Page

I’ll write up route details etc. on my own page in the next couple of days.

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In2venture is now on  Twitter.

Click here to keep up to date with our Christian Outdoor Ministry & give us a “follow”

If you don’t have a Twitter account you can sign up here

We saw an early taste of winter in the Lake District this weekend. The above photo is of Alan & Graham on the summit of High Spy. There wasn’t quite enough snow for the ice axes to actually get used but they did come out of the cupboard. There is a full write up here and some more photos on facebook