The Holy Pasty?

The weeks have flown past with the Summer holidays now over, my son went back to school on Wednesday (although he has 2 inset days this week coming!) and life has started to return to the routine. However despite the poor weather the holidays had a lot going on. Trying to keep up with everything along with entertaining a bored five year old in the rain has been tiring, now I need a proper holiday!

Following Silverstone and the Eden Sessions which took a lot of time and energy there was a concert in Camborne where Superhero were playing. A good concert with a strong gospel message that was shared. A couple of weeks later there was Creation Fest which was held in the Royal Cornwall Showground, which is in North Cornwall, so not too far for us to get to. Before going to that we made sure that we had a new magazine that we could take and give out and we managed to give quite a few away there. The purpose of Creation Fest is excellent, it’s a mission, but it involves some of Britains best Christian bands that want to show the love of Jesus to people. There is some teaching, a skate park, kids sessions and the gospel is the common thread through the whole event.

For us it was a good chance to meet up with some bands and get some interviews. So some of the delights we have coming up when I have typed them will be interviews with Superhero, Four kornerz, Shell Perris (this will be in the next mag issue), Scott Cunningham and last, but not least a pro skateboarder called Zac. So that’s a lot of stuff to type, you can see why I am taking my time before moving onto that mountain!

Last week I was able to work on both stuff for the website and fulfill my evangelistic calling as I visited Crealy and Land’s End and in between I was involved in a youth mission to Camborne and Redruth. You can read all about Crealy and Land’s End on the Soteria Website (www.soteriamag.co.uk) and you can see some of my photo’s on flickr from Land’s End.

The youth mission was brilliant, although to be fair there were some niggles. One thing that was apparent though was that God was working through the young people of my church and another local church to reach out. In fact I think it is fair that God was also working through these young people to reach in, into themselves! There have been times when some of them have questioned their faith, however God proved himself to them again and again through the week of the mission.

40+ people were prayed for on the streets of Redruth, and two young ladies gave their lives to the Lord. Many people were healed, both in the team and others who asked for prayer. However the most amazing thing in my book was that 17 people came to the Friday night celebration in Redruth Baptist. At least 10 of them were skaters from one of the local Skate parks, guys that I didn’t think would ever darken the doors of the church. Something about the groups that went out touched them. During the day there had been some searching questions asked and in the evening these guys were encouraged to pray for one another and to share needs for prayer. Wow! God can do great things through us, we only need to be obedient and listen.

My one great concern about the mission was the need for more about spiritual repentance and healing that about the physical healing. It reminded me a little of the lame man that was brought to Jesus for healing and he said “Your sins are forgiven”, perhaps we need a little more concern for spiritual well-being than physical, but this will come in God’s time!

Tags: Belief, Camborne, Creation Fest, faith, God, healing, Mission, move, Outreach, Redruth, repentance, Skate

OK so I haven’t updated this blog since I got home from Bracknell. Needless to say this is because I have partly been catching up on work that needed doing and partly because I have been creating new work for myself. D’oh!

It was exceptionally hot on moving day to bring my Sister’s stuff from Bracknell back to Cornwall, and I’m still not quite sure how we managed to get everything done in time – there was mountains of boxes, at least that’s what it seemed like to me. Between the four of us we managed to load the lorry with the furniture and boxes and all the other stuff that needed removing and left just about lunchtime, although we had been for an early lunch at the local KFC! I came down with dad in the lorry, leaving Mum and Sis to clean and then follow us down a bit later. We made good time, it was very hot and the window was down all the way, meaning I got Van passenger’s arm. Windburn and Sunburn and now that is peeling, not an attractive look!

Since then I have had shows to go to, another trip to organise and I have managed to redesign the Soteria website (www.soteriamag.co.uk), and also had meetings about redesigning the Redruth Baptist Church website (www.redruthbaptist.org.uk). I spent Monday helping Dad and trying to catch up on some review and then until Thursday I had the time to work on Soteria.

Thursday the 4th June was Royal Cornwall Show, a huge show in Wadebridge which Greg and I attended. It was very nice, with lunch provided in the press office by Royal Mail for members of the fourth estate! We went around many of the stalls looking at ideas for youth lifestyle for future issues of the magazine or website features. With this year being the celebration of 200 years of Darwin it was unsurprising that both the Seventh Day Adventists and a group of organisations both had displays on Creation and Evolution, promoting the idea of a literal creation. While I agree with the Biblical understanding of Creation in six literal days, I have to confess that more often than not, it’s a red herring for most people. However I couldn’t complain because when it came to Murdoch Day on Saturday our church was running a stall promoting exactly the same thing.

I think all the stalls, including our own, missed the obvious links with todays culture as well! If I were planning a stall I would want to get to the idea of “why does it matter to me?” The question is are you a random chance or are you a being planned by God with a purpose? If you are the first one then nothing I say will matter, but if God created you then what is the purpose of humans, what is the purpose of me. My way in of choice at the moment would be something like Wolverine and the X-Men, mutants, the next stage of evolution – or actually characters created by Stan Lee and others with a specific purpose?

I have to admit that our stall at Redruth’s Murdoch day was considerably better than those I saw up at Royal Cornwall! However it’s not a competition and each were being faithful to God using the gifts that they were given and should be commended. The other

stalls that represented Christianity at Royal Cornwall was a glorified Tea Tent for Churches Together and the Christian Surfers were also out talking to people and promoting the Creation Festival which will be held at Royal Cornwall Showground (7-13th August for further details see www.creationfest.org.uk)

Murdoch Day was very busy with the stall in town, which was well manned, and selling coffee, tea, cakes and patchwork fabrics in the church. I naturally gravitated towards the food and drink, but I was not there to eat, instead I chatted with people as they came and had their tea and coffee, making sure people felt welcome, and where possible sharing the message of Jesus with them!

So yeah it’s been a little on the busy side. I need to get some pictures up on the website of all this stuff, so hopefully that will be part of my job tomorrow, as long as I get some peace from Saul, my youngest boy, who is currently teething!

Tags: Creation, Darwin, Evolution, God, Gospel, Jesus, Journal, Magazine, Murdoch Day, Website