An Adventure in Ministry

  I' m a huge Christmas fan! When it comes to the festive season I am all in! I have already had my decorations up for over a week and eaten multiple mince pies. I love continuing Christmas traditions from my childhood and over the years we have worked to build new traditions both with my older step daughter and now my little girl. This year we are even having an elf to visit (I’m sure I will regret this one!)  One of my absolute favourite things to do over the festive period (and I have already watched more than I care to admit this Christmas already!) is to get up early, sit with a cup of coffee by the light of the tree, and watch a cheesy romantic ‘Hallmark’ Movie! I absolutely love them! The film where the Christmas hating girl from the city returns home to the family Christmas tree farm that was left to her by her late aunt. When she returns she finds that it is in danger and  She only has a few weeks to save it. At the farm, the only employee is  a surly and ha...

  One of the things I love the most about Christmas is the food! There are so many delicious things to eat and drink over Christmas and I find myself guarding the cupboards and fridge in the build up declaring “You Can’t Eat that…It’s for Christmas!” This year God has been challenging me and my thinking of advent and in a funny way it has changed the way I consider all those Christmas treats!  Advent is a season of waiting and is all about awaiting Christmas and the birth of Jesus. Throughout this time we wait with anticipation and expectancy, and there seems to be a stillness in the waiting. This is often contrasted sharply with the preparation, the busyness and ‘doing’ of sharing the news about the coming of Jesus.  For many years I have found this a really difficult tension. I feel guilty about the ever, growing to do list if I slow down to the advent rhythm of waiting  or even stop for a while. I often feel too, however, that I am failing to wait well if I go abo...

For many people the carol ‘O Holy night’ is one of their favourite carols and when listened to live, it is bound to bring goosebumps! This french song began as a poem written by De Roquemaure, but he soon realised it was better suited to a song and sent it to a friend Adolphe Charles Adams to compose the music. Although Adams was Jewish, and therefore didn’t celebrate Christmas, he composed the tune and it was sung at midnight mass on Christmas eve. It wasn’t long, however, until this song caused controversy with a tune written by a Jew and Roquemaure leaving the church to become a socialist and it was banned in the church. However, people continued to sing it and its popularity grew.  It is an endearing history, however I came across a couple of stories connected to this song that really challenged me, hundreds of years after it was written. There is a legend that in the Franco-Prussian war, on Christmas eve 1871, a French soldier sprung up from the trenches amidst fierce fighting...

  One of the things that I love about Christmas, particularly as someone within the Salvation Army, is carolling. I play in our brass band and I love when the time comes to begin to play carols! Often we sing Christmas carols but don’t really take notice of the words or where they came from. Recently as I have been looking at some of the Christmas Carols we sing, I have found some fascinating stories. For the second Carol in my series of Christmas Carols unwrapped we are looking at a beautiful carol - ‘It came upon a midnight clear’ This carol was written by Edmund Hamilton Sears in America the 19th Century. It was written at a time of great personal turmoil. He was a pastor and had recently suffered a breakdown as a result of the stresses of ministry and had moved back to a congregation he had previously shepherded.  Sears was also struggling with the state of the world around him. The United States were at war with Mexico and further afield there was revolution in Europe. Th...

  Recently I have been doing a deep dive into some of the hymns and songs that we sing in church, considering the stories behind them and how they impact our understanding of the song and indeed faith itself. As the season of Christmas approaches (or if you are anything like me, it is well and truly here already!) I thought it would be interesting to do a blog series on some of the songs and carols we sing at Christmas and using their backstories, see what God might teach us anew.  Our first Christmas song is one that most would never consider a carol about Jesus, but is one with plenty of hidden meanings! If you know me in person, you will know that I am one of those people who can never simply sit still and do nothing, I always have something on the go! So one way in which I have found really useful as I try and switch off is by doing cross stitch. In the last few years I have completed some pretty complicated projects (see the photos below) Currently I am working on a Chris...

Do you ever get songs stuck in your head and no matter what you do, or whatever song you try to listen to it doesn’t seem to go? It is often a cheesy pop classic or a tv theme tune. I have had a song stuck in my head for a couple of weeks now and it is my favourite Christmas carol! It’s a little bit late now as we are a week before Easter! However a few days ago as I pondered the words of the last verse I was struck that now it is more relevant than ever. The Carol is ‘In the Bleak mid winter’ written by Rossetti and the final verse reads: ‘What can I give him poor as I am? If I were a shepherd I would bring a lamb; If I were a wise man I would do my part, Yet what I can I give him, Give my heart I have always loved this verse of the carol and when sung on a cold evening in a dark church lit by Christmas trees and chritingles, I always imagine these epic characters in their unlikely roles in the birth of the saviour. I always imagine the shepherds ...

One of my favourite verses in the Christmas story is tucked away in Luke chapter 2. In verse 19 it says: I have always fond such wonder in those verses, pondering when and why she revisited those treasured memories.  As a church we are reading through the book of Luke for advent and on day 2 I came across a similar verse further along. It is in the only stories we read of Jesus’ childhood. It was after Mary and Jospeh had lost Jesus, only to find him at the temple teaching the teachers about his father God. In verse 51 we read: Now I have had a tough few weeks. December as a minister is crazy busy as it is but there have been so many exciting, scary and difficult things to contend with too. On top of that we have come against a lot of enemy opposition including two flat tyres in ten days, a husband with a broken tooth and a baby with regular explosive poos!!  The past few weeks have provide much to think on and much to ...

Over the past couple of months God has really been speaking to me about the issue of opposition and facing difficult times, and in particular the last couple of weeks has shown this to me in stark contrast. Over the Christmas period At the Salvation Army in Mold we have been incredibly blessed by the generosity of the people in our community. We regularly receive donations of food from both Sainsburys and Tesco and in the run up to Christmas we were collecting and distributing food daily. We also, with the help of generous donations from the public, were able to provide hampers to families in need to ensure that they can celebrate Christmas too. We also ran a toy appeal and were able to give children all over Flintshire a present to open on Christmas Day. All in all thousands of people were effected by the work of the Salvation Army and we pray that many of those saw the face of Jesus in the extravagant love we tried to show.  A highlight for me was on Christmas Eve as Father ...