Dear friends,Welcome to this Winter edition of the CalvaryNewsletter.

Jesus rebuked the Jewish leaders of his day for theirfailure to recognise the times they were in. (Matthew16:3 – “you cannot interpret the signs of the times”)(Although it is a little more complicated than that. Jesushad just fed 5000, and then they requested an additionalsign from heaven. This makes perverseness and blind-ness part of the situation that Jesus was challenging –Matt 16:1-5 etc.). Who can tell the times we are innow? Economically Europe seems to be in a completehole, with the USA not much better. Apparently ourgovernments and financial experts have all been bor-rowing eye-watering sums of money, and suddenly ithas come to the point where doubts have surfaced overwhether it can all be paid back. Political leaders havesaid that this is the worst crisis facing Europe since itwas engulfed in war in 1939-1945. At the time ofwriting public sector workers are set to strike as thegovernment is set to rein back future pension provision.On which side of that argument does fairness, reason,and justice lie? On the local front – after a long periodof inactivity and decline, the area of Brighton in whichthe church building is situated is about to benefit from(so we hope) at least five major upgrades and develop-ments. These are the Level, the Open Market, theformer Co-op building, Ann Street, and a previously“abandoned” area between London Road andBrighton Station. What are we to make of all this if weare believers in the Lord Jesus Christ?

1. We need to distinguish between the climate ofpolitics and the economy and the outlook for theKingdom of God. David Smith, the Christian writer, once observed thatthe West has disproportionate material blessing fromGod, but along with this comes a spiritual unreality anddeadness. The economic outlook may look bleak, andone does not wish to minimise the effect on people’sincome and morale and prospects. We pray and do allwe can to minimise those harmful effects. But a bleakeconomic outlook certainly does not imply that thespiritual outlook is bleak. Who knows but that God’sprovidence may cause the opposite to be true? Maybea little spiritual reality will seep back as politicians andpundits are forced to admit that their great power andpride led them and us into folly which results in a timeof humbling.

2. We need to be extremely grateful for theblessings that we have been receiving and con-tinue to receive as a nation.David Wells, the USA based Christian analyst, observedthat never has a major civilisation had such security andplenty based on such flimsy foundations. The prosperityand security that we have enjoyed for the last 60+ yearsis undeserved grace from God. Just ask our overseasfriends who have no running water, no internet access,and dare not leave a car parked out on the streetovernight. One wonders whether we are sufficientlythankful! “He has done you good by giving you rain fromheaven and crops in their seasons, he provides you with plentyof food and fills your hearts with joy” Acts 14:17. He haslong been giving us blessings that we don’t deserve.

3. We need to have a faith deep enough and aspirituality real enough to sustain us in prosper-ous times and in difficult times. Economists and political leaders seem able to surviveonly in conditions where the economy is constantlygrowing, and life is always getting better. Christianspirituality can easily mould itself to the spirit of the age. “God will make us richer, and healthier, life will alwaysget easier. Christians are good-looking, young, and al-ways successful”. This focus is the mark of“Christianity-lite”. It is the false prophet who is quietabout sacrificial living and the pursuit of holiness abovethe benefits of this world. Let us not be troubled orshaken too much by news of the shakings of this world.Even though the earth give way and the mountains fallinto the heart of the sea – we will not fear! (Psalm46:2,3,4) There is a river whose streams make glad thecity of God! God is able to keep his people, and save hiselect, and build his church. Jesus Christ is on the throneof the universe for the benefit of his people. Habakkukhad remarkably defiant faith when he declared: “thoughthe fig-tree does not bud, and there are no grapes on the vines[and the Euro stutters, and economic growth is flat ] …yet I will rejoice in the LORD, I will be joyful in God mySaviour (Habbakkuk 3:17).

May God richly bless us all with spiritual blessings inChrist. Greetings on behalf of myself and fellow elderChris Fry,

Yours by his grace,

Philip Wells (Elder)

Newsletter

Winter 2011/12

Signs of the Times

evangelical churchCalvaryPreston Circus, Brighton

The church continues to give the gift of support to thelocal community via the London Road Local ActionTeam (LAT). The LAT has monthly use of the premisesfor a modest charge, and the gift of time of one of theElders – Philip, and one of the church congregation –Charlotte Overton-Hart. Charlotte has ably taken oversince Christina Summers stepped down to take up herrole as a Councillor. In July 2011 Philip and Christinareceived a local award, Excellence in Partnership Awardfrom Sussex Police, Brighton and Hove Division. Theceremony took place in the presence of the HighSheriff of Sussex, MP Mike Weatherly, and chief su-perintendent Graham Bartlett together with invitedguests. The citation says things like “… you are con-gratulated and thanked by Brighton and Hove Division… [in] galvanising the community and helping to co-ordinate the response of the police and other agencies.The responsibility you have shown is a great example toothers and you should be proud of the numerous suc-cesses attributable to the LAT … ” The original re-commendation came via the outgoing Inspector – RobLeet (who writes in “Preston Pages”). Given that thedescription might be thought to err on the rosy side,nevertheless let us note with humble thanksgiving thatChristian “light has shone before men, that they may seeyour good deeds and praise your Father inheaven”(Matt 5:16). We record too our grateful thanksto Christina for the large part she played in this teameffort, and earnestly wish her well in her greater re-sponsibilities as a Councillor.

Philip Wells

I joined this fellowship about two years and six monthsago. All was going well; then one day they startedtalking about camping. One thing I don’t do is camp-ing. In my previous fellowship I went camping, not forcamping, but for the fellowship Then ‘camping’ waschanged to ‘going to hostel’. That seemed so muchbetter to me and so I put my name down very gingerly.As the time to go got closer I started getting cold feet.The thought of sharing a room, being with the fel-lowship 24/7 seemed a bit too much, so I startedbackpeddling. But Chris talked me into going. I evenvolunteered to drive there. Well. the actual eveningcame and I drove to Arundel the long way round (andgot lost!). Praise God the accommodation was great, thestaff at the hostel were very friendly and very helpful.The food was great and getting to know people wasgreat also. We had just the right amount of teaching, funtime and free time. I was really blessed to have beenthere and I hope I was a blessing too. Highlyrecommended!

Arsema Amare

There is now a core of 5 teachers with others soon tostart to take turns to teach. We have continued usingthe syllabus and materials produced by TNT.

Each lesson is staffed by 2 adults. There are six childrenin the 3 to 7 age group with two now aged 11 who havebeen meeting in a separate session from time to time lastautumn. We hope to soon be resuming this aspect ofchildren’s work on Sundays. During the summermonths 2 families were worshipping with us andnumbers swelled to 10 or more youngsters, but theyhave since moved to new settings outside Sussex.

An idea that we gained from a training event is nowbeing introduced, when possible. This is for the assistanton one Sunday to prepare and teach the next Sunday,in order to develop the continuity in the club for thechildren.

Thank you to all who serve in this vital word ministryand for all the prayers that have been made for theLord’s blessing upon the work. I believe it has beenimportant to share in ongoing regular prayer that theLord would add more families and children to thechurch fellowship.

Roger Kinross

LAT Update

Church Weekend

Sunday Club

Pictures from the Church Weekend

August 2011 saw the “Astrokids Save the Planet”Holiday Club take off at CEC, piloted by Joe and SueHayes from Wigan. We were blessed to welcome Joe andSue, who have been presenting children with the gospelthrough Holiday Clubs for many years. “Astrokids” wasa child-engaging gospel allegory, following the‘Christianity Explored’ scheme, which presented Mark’sGospel for seven to eleven year olds.

Much lateral thinking with cardboard packingcases by Joe and Sue, plus a wonderful paintedbackdrop by Ellie Wells, transformed the churchinto a space ship interior, complete with sound

effects. The telling ofthe gospel was cent-ral each day, withmemory verses tolearn and the chil-dren helped to clearlyunderstand and re-member who waswho in the story.More fun was addedwith songs, gamesand theme-relatedcrafts.

A gradually increas-ing number of chil-dren attended duringthe week,with amaximum of 22, as

teams were encouraged to bring friends. A few goodcontacts were made with local residents. Spaceshipcrew, who also ably organised refreshments and crafts,were Maria, Katy, Brenda, Angel, Min and Julie plussome help from mums.

Both children and adults had a great time, culminatingin a picnic in Preston Park and the successful launchingof rockets made from plastic bottles. It was enjoyableand very helpful for us to work with and learn from Joeand Sue: we look forward to building on the experiencewith future events.

Brenda Ellacott

2011 Holiday Club

It is rocket science! Fun and games in Preston Park.

Following on from the last newsletter, on 16th OctoberAnthony Smith was received into membership at YorkBaptist Church and the transfer of membership wasnoted at our 19th October Members’ Meeting. We ex-pressed thanks for all that Anthony did amongst us,notably the Church administration and music. He nowhas a contract with Sussex University until the summerof 2012, and so visits us from time to time.

Bearing in mind our historical railway connections(founded 135+ years ago as the Brighton RailwayMission). ‘All change’ is perhaps the cry in relation toour church administration. At the Members’ Meetingwe also confirmed the ending, at her request, of ourcontract with Christina Summers’ company, KairosTime Management Ltd as of 30th October . More re-cently Christina has requested that she be released frommembership to attend Thumbprint church (LewesRoad). Please continue to pray for Christina in this stepand in the busyness of being a Green Party CityCouncillor representing Hollingdean and StanmerWard as part of the Green Party minority administra-tion to run the Council.

At the end of October, I took on the ChurchAdministration in addition to work as ChurchSecretary and Church Treasurer. Some of the work it isfairly familiar as I was Church Secretary for some 30+years before handing over to Anthony. On a personalnote, if this had come about a few months ago it isdoubtful that I could have done so. But the Lord hasbeen good in that my health has greatly improved andin July I was able to come off anti-depressant medica-tion. My son Andrew upgraded to a new Apple i-maccomputer and I am using his old one. It has taken mea while to migrate from RISC OS to the ‘Mac’ but itdoes mean that I can cover most things from one ma-chine, though the church accounting software onlyruns on a Windows PC. Christina had carried out tre-mendous work in the areas of the legislation by whichwe are governed as a charity, church public building andworkplace (employment and health and safety law, foodhygiene, cleaning, and maintenance work on thepremises and so on). Some of this needs taking forwardto completion and the rest keeping up to date! Anthonytoo did sterling work on the Church Website, Googledocs and calendar. Anthony is still assisting us withfacebook as I haven’t yet succumbed to social net-working! The weekend I ‘took over responsibility’ foradmin, the Calvary website was hacked. With help from

Anthony and Philip Wells the site was back to normalwithin a couple of days, and I have been able to furtherupdate and correct the website. I have put up theSummer Newsletter (apologies for the long delay!) Theintention is to update the photos on the website.

In the spring we had two break-ins by the breaking ofthe bottom sashes of two of the west transept windows(one each time) and a number of items stolen, includingthe silver trowel used by Mrs Gates in 1895 for thefoundation stone of the Primary (now The GatesRoom). It has taken a while, but the insurance claim isnow finalised. We have, as a consequence, now improvedthe security with anti-theft measures to the south-westand south-east corners of the building. Nevertheless, wesuffered a further break in in January 2012 and so weare considering further measures.

I must confess to being called in by the District Judgeto the Brighton County Court! Our Solicitor is also aDistrict Judge, and he had the sub-lease ready for de-livery to the Chairman of the Brighton and Hove CityMission, so I visited the judges’ chambers to collect itfor onward delivery! The lease has also been forwardedto the Railway Mission’s solicitors, so at long last thismatter of ‘perfecting’ the agreement with the RM intoa lease is progressing.

Another long-outstanding current matter has been theproblem with the fact that the details on the industry’s‘ECOES’ system of our electricity meter being thesame at pre-nationalisation in 1948 hadn’t been up-dated and when we have previously sought a betterdeal, we couldn’t do so. This has now been rectified (afurther electrical pun for the technically minded!) andthe switch is going through. For historical reasons thegas supply has been on a domestic tariff, and althoughgetting the gas at a cheaper rate, we ran the risk of beingmoved to the correct SME Business tariff. This too hasnow been dealt with and the switch is currently goingthrough. Overall our energy bills should be lower.

Our thanksgiving target this autumn was £1250 forupgrading the main hall lighting. We have now reachedthe target and the work has been put in hand.Thecontractor is due to commence it shortly.

Thank you for your prayers for us. This time I’ve ma-jored on practical issues, but elsewhere in this editionshould be news of other activities including ourNovember Church Weekend in Arundel.

Ray WingateCalvary Evangelical Church

is a registered charity, no. 1089327.To find out more about us, check out

www.calvary-brighton.org.uk

Church Secretary