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Work Forum is GO!Mark Greene on a major new mission initiative

also inside:

Workplace CommandmentsJohn Parmiter says keep taking the tablets

Prized BooksTeam LICC commend six of the very best

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Edition 31November 2011

Thanksgiving for God ’s faithfulness during an eventful, innovative and fruitful year in the life of LICC.

‘Great is the Lord,and most worthy

of praise.’ Psalm 48:1

We thank you, Lord, for your inspiration, leading and faithfulness in this past year: — For the testimonies of lives flourishing, of churches growing, of workplaces changing, of new directions chosen, of risks embraced, of seeds planted long ago bursting into life.

We thank you for constantly amazing us with your grace and generosity: — For the volunteer who arrived at just the perfect moment, the cheque on just the right day, the insights and articles offered when inspiration had run dry, the forgiveness freely given;

— For deadlines very unexpectedly met, for encouragement lavishly extended, correction humbly offered;

— For your grace seen more clearly in retrospect than at the time;

— For your provision in uncertain and difficult times.

We thank you for the people without whom we would not be able to do this work:— For those who pray, and encourage, for those who design and print, repair and maintain, dust and clean;

— For individuals, families and Trusts who’ve given financially with great generosity, sacrifice and faithfulness.

We thank you for our partnerships in the church: — For the enthusiasm and generous wisdom of the leaders of denominations, Christian organisations and churches who work with us;

— For our collaborations with the Baptist Union, Elim, the Methodist Connexion, the Salvation Army, Anglican dioceses and churches, New Wine, Mission Scotland, Momentum, Scripture Union, Soul Survivor, Spring Harvest;

— For the stories of pastors who have prayerfully and perseveringly and courageously led change and transformation in their communities.

We thank you for those working with us in workplace mission:— For creative and innovative partners in learning and teaching about mission in the workplace: the younger workers in Scotland, delegates to Toolbox and Executive Toolbox and those who offer wisdom and insight and testimony;

— For our growing team of Workplace Associates, and the way they touch the lives of thousands.

We thank you for our colleagues:— For the life of your remarkable servant John Stott, for his example and inspiration to LICC, his humility, his simple life, his love of your Son and his commitment to serving him in all.

— For those who work here full-time and part-time and for those who volunteer.

We give you thanks for all these things and more,

for grace on grace lavished on us in your Son,

for the work of your Spirit and word among us.

To God be the glory.

‘Great is the Lord,and most worthy

of praise.’ Psalm 48:1

we invite you to join…

Because…

4. Research continues to confirm that the area of life in which most adult Christians fınd themselves least prepared, least taught, least supported, least prayed for and most pressed is the workplace.London Institute for Contemporary Christianity, 2011

1. England will never be converted until the laity use the opportunities for evangelism daily afforded by their various crafts, professions and occupations.Towards the Conversion of England, 1945

2. The real battles of faith today are being fought in factories, shops, offices and farms, in political parties and government agencies, in countless homes, in press, radio and television, in the relationship of nations. Very often it is said the Church should go into the spheres but the fact is that the Church is already in those spheres in the persons of the laity.World Council of Churches, 1954

3. The primary action of the church in the world is the action of its members in their daily work.Lesslie Newbigin

Of course, no one is suggesting that the church stops engaging in church-based, community mission or stops sending people overseas. No, the church’s mission framework is not flawed, it is incomplete. Indeed, the key opportunity for the church is not just to release people in paid work into their mission but to release of all God’s people into their mission wherever they might be… workplace, home place, school place, club, supermarket… wherever their frontline is. Church communities – pastor and people – are there to help one another be fruitful in

mission wherever God has called us. So we need a richer framework for mission:

v Yes, supporting those called to mission in the local community near the church

v Yes, sending and supporting those called to mission in communities beyond their national borders

And also,

v Sending and supporting those called to mission in the communities they are part of, week by week away from the church building.

Right now, the work movement in the UK has reached a critical stage. There’s a growing awareness of the missional opportunity and all over the country there are individuals and small groups and sometimes quite large groups that are pursuing God’s call. Nevertheless, most people have not heard the call and many, many of those who have may think that it’s a grand idea but can’t find a way to make it work in practice. They accept the vision but wonder, as one worker put it: “Is it just a pious hope or is it a radical possibility?”

Mark Greene writes: It’s the biggest mission field in the UK, the biggest gap in church discipleship. And so, after much prayer, we at LICC are launching a major new initiative to support the workers, and the churches they’re part of, in their role in God’s mission in and through daily work. There are some 29.14 million workers in the UK, racking up some 1.1 billion working hours a week. And right there alongside them are some 1.5 million Christians who spend more waking time with their co-workers than pretty much anyone else in their lives. It’s an extraordinary opportunity for Christians to pray for work, workers and workplaces; an extraordinary opportunity to contribute to better work, happier workers and more productive and profitable workplaces; an extraordinary opportunity to show and share how Jesus makes a difference to a life; an extraordinary opportunity to grow in godly character, in confidence in the Gospel… And it’s also an extraordinary opportunity for local churches to have an impact on places and people far from their own doors. But it isn’t easy. Still, with that kind of opportunity you’d have thought that every single one of the 47,000 churches in the land would be working hard to ensure that young

people were being taught how to choose a career, new workers how to start well, seasoned workers how to make a transformational impact with God, and whole congregations how to pray and support their missionaries in the workplace. The reality, however, is very different. Yes, it’s certainly true that in the last 15 years, there has been significant progress in this arena. There’s been a flurry of good books on work and the big conferences have all offered seminars and workshops on work. It’s true that many denominational leaders have taken initiatives to get good materials into the hands of their pastors and it’s true that quite a number of churches have run courses on work. Praise God for it all. And for the fruit that has already been seen. But running a course, or preaching a series of sermons, or doing a couple of seminars, is, in isolation, very unlikely to create the knowledge base, the skill base, the prayer base or the support base required to grow and persevere in living out the Good News in today’s increasingly pressured workplaces.

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…the LICC Work Forum

A Richer Framework for Mission

An Untapped Opportunity

Others are experimenting in churches – some fruitfully, many getting stuck after the early euphoria of positive responses to a sermon series or a housegroup course. And of course there are a number of other local and national organisations committed to workplace mission and we

have worked with many of them. Still, we are all relatively small and many, including the Diocesan initiatives, have allocated less than a full-time job to this vital arena. Between us all, chaplains apart, I doubt there would be more than the equivalent of 30 people working full

What then will enable this cause to move beyond a minority group of enthusiastic pioneers to a mainstream movement that brings glory to God and blesses the nation, its workplaces and workers? What strategic initiatives need to be undertaken that have the potential to enable the church in the UK to release its people into fruitful purposeful engagement in the contemporary workplace? Overall, four things are required…

1. A clearer vision of God and his missionCertainly there is a compelling numerical argument to be made for workplace engagement. However, the primary reason why churches should be engaged in work and helping their people engage with work is because it is an obedient response to God’s call to see his will done on earth as it is in heaven, not just in neighbourhoods and homes but in factories and offices and schools. Similarly, workplace mission is an obedient response to God’s call to be a blessing to the nation we are part of and it is an obedient response to his command to disciple all nations – for workplace ministry is now the primary model for overseas mission. Indeed, in many countries, particularly Muslim ones, work provides a natural context to develop the relationships of trust and mutual respect that are vital in Gospel-hostile cultures.

2. A focus on prayerIt should always be so, but overall local church communities have not prayed as much for work as other

areas of life. Furthermore, it is important to see that the call to whole-life mission presents challenges for congregational life and for the life of Christians beyond the church building that are simply too big to even begin to imagine that they might be overcome by compelling argument and competent organisation. As Jesus says, “Apart from me you can do nothing” (John 15:5).

3. Churches committed to discipling Christians for their frontlinesIt’s great that there is an increasing number of trailblazing individuals who are having an impact at work but we will not change the workplaces of the nation unless we change the nation’s churches. Indeed, one of the distinctives of LICC’s approach is to never forget the vital role that local church communities should play in helping Christians fulfill their mission at work. Workplace ministry should not be reduced to a church approved special interest but needs to become a natural expression of whole-life discipleship.

4. A commitment to learningThis isn’t to say that there are not many individuals who have wisdom and experience. Indeed, as Hewlett Packard’s former MD said: “If Hewlett Packard knew what Hewlett Packard knows we’d be world beaters.”. The same might be said of the church: “If Christians in work knew what Christians in work know we’d be world-changers. But we don’t. So there is a need to listen with bibline ears to those who are already fruitful and a need to go deeper in drilling for the insights, disciplines, processes required to help Christians work out how to bring God’s love into every aspect of their working lives.

time. In sum, although we have some biodiversity in the movement – praise God for that – we don’t yet have critical mass or momentum. And beyond that, despite much good work done, there are significant gaps in our combined research and development.

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Foundations for Fruitfulness

You’ll be aware that LICC personnel have been pioneers in envisioning and supporting Christians and churches for the workplace since our foundation in 1982. In the last twelve years, we have contributed in four main ways:

v Championing the cause

v Developing and distributing wisdom and resources (see the box for a summary)

v Helping churches and church leaders to support Christians on their frontline at work

v Growing capacity – identifying and developing an excellent team of some 15 Workplace Associates who not only speak all over the UK and beyond but have written a number of books and resources

It would, I think, be fair to say that, by God’s grace, a great deal has been achieved with a persistent but relatively modest investment of time – in the last four years around 25% of my time. In the last two years, as LICC’s broader work has addressed both the core theological challenges facing the church (e.g. The Great Divide) and the question of how to create disciple-making churches (The Imagine Project), we have initiated a number of pilot projects to address the key strategic issues.

With such a range of innovative work, it was clear to us that we would need to find a new way of working and new capacity if we were to follow through effectively in developing and distributing wisdom. In reality, we have known that we needed to increase our investment in work for some years but it was only last year that it became clear that the time was right to move forward. So, we will launch the LICC Work Forum in January next year and staff it with the capacity to build on the

momentum we already have and develop and distribute the learnings in a variety of media and, we hope, in innovative ways through the denominational and organisational partnerships we already enjoy. With that in mind I am delighted to announce that we have appointed Charles Hippsley as the first Director. Charles is currently the Chief Operating Officer of a London-based Private Equity company. He brings his considerable experience in work, strong strategic and

New initiatives include:

1. WorkStart – building on and disseminating the learning from our ongoing partnership with Mission Scotland to help young adults in their first decade of work.

2. ChurchWorks – identifying the kinds of relationships and processes that help churches equip the workers in a sustainable way.

3. Executive Toolbox – building on LICC’s general Toolbox programme, helping middle to senior executives make a transformational impact in their organisations and, we pray, over time providing both new sources of wisdom and a cadre of mentor/accompanists for the wider church.

4. Workplace Associates – building the church’s capacity by training and developing the excellent team we have and identifying new associates.

5. PrayerWorks – an innovative project led by Beverley Shepherd that offers churches and individuals fresh ways to pray for work, workers and workplaces.

6. Groups at Work – identifying and developing best practice for a range of different types of work groups.

7. Impacting Theological Colleges – if we don’t train the trainers to help Christians on the frontline of work we will never see the transformation of the church or the nation’s workplaces.

8. IVP Work Series – working with IVP (I am the series editor) to widen and deepen published reflection on work. Four titles have been published (see p8 for news of the latest title), and others are in the pipeline.

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Perennial Pioneers & New Initiatives…

Starting January

project management skills and a long-held, deep commitment to this cause. He has taught on workplace issues in a variety of contexts and has been an LICC workplace associate for two years. He will take up his post in January. We are also in the process of appointing an Assistant Director with responsibility for WorkStart and ChurchWorks. In addition, the Forum will be supported administratively and we will increase our communications capacity to ensure we can get the message out in appropriate media. I will continue to contribute to this area, offering about 25% of my time. All in all, these new appointments will increase our paid team’s hours on work by a factor of twelve. And that we hope will, by God’s grace, increase the impact over time by at least a similar factor. Overall, the full salary costs of the Work Forum will be £175,000 per annum excluding developing resources and overheads. We therefore need around £350,000 for the first two years. Very encouragingly we have already received or been promised £270,000. An extraordinarily generous response. We do, however, still need an extra £40,000 per annum to break even. Please do consider whether you can become a Work Forum Partner either by committing to pray for the initiative (we will send you occasional but regular prayer points) or by making a financial gift at whatever level you can. (If you sign up for the prayer bulletin or make a gift you’d be welcome to have a free copy of our six part small group DVD resource – Christian Life & Work.) Every prayer and every gift will enable us to do more to envision and equip Christians for what Howard Butt, one of the patriarchs of the US workplace movement, calls “the high calling of your daily work.” Please get behind this. It is time to give this area of mission the kind of investment in prayer and talent and finance that is required to make a sustainable difference to the workers and to our nation. To the glory of the Father.

LICC Administrative & Operational Support

LICC Biblical & Cultural Support

25%Mark Greene Assistant

Director

Charles Hippsley

25% 25%Admin Comms 15

Workplace Associates

Championing the causeGrowing in wisdom

Building capacityGetting the message out

Pledged

£270K

Funding required

£80K

‘Unless the Lord builds the house, its builders labour in vain. Unless the Lord watches over the city, the watchmen stand guard in vain.’

Psalm 127:1

Top row: Alex Lloyd Davies, Andrew Myers, Beverley Shepherd, Brian Draper, Curt Hopkins, Daphne Clifton, David Henderson. Bottom row: Grant Smith, James Featherby, Jeremy Harbinson,

John Parmiter, Paul Valler, Robin Scurlock, Ruth Walker, Shirley Jenner.

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The Work Forum at LICC

The Team

Our Workplace Associates

The Finances

John Parmiter’s Ten at Work is out now. Here John, a partner in a multi-disciplinary property consultancy and an LICC Workplace Associate,

outlines the book’s refreshing approach to the Commandments.I have been a Christian at work for nearly 30 years. It took me a while to make sense of an adult-found faith and the place it should have in my working life. Most of the answers I found emerged from a journey with David Prior and others involved in a workplace ministry near where I worked. But what sparked the book was hearing J John speak on the Ten Commandments in a large tent on Clapham Common. Could they be related more directly to the workplace? With J John’s encouragement, I got thinking and practising (and failing) and writing. Work is self-evidently a very significant part of most people’s lives. Our work colleagues and workplaces can have a huge impact on our emotional and physical well-being, on our confidence in God and on our own behaviour and attitudes. Today’s turmoil in the markets, the crises in banking, the greed of some corporations and the scandals of

Parliament are all, in large measure, due to the failure of a work culture that has become increasingly morally bankrupt, value-free and corrosively de-humanizing. Solutions are needed at the deepest spiritual level. And so I began to ref lect on The Ten Commandments in the light of the Gospel, exploring how applying the commandments to different areas of our lives – relationships, priorities, balance, ambitions – might liberate us to lead a more godly, integrated life.

ThemesIn relating the commandments to the workplace, I adopted four main lenses: the lens of love, the lens of the Cross, the lens of grace and the lens of culture.

LoveThe commandments are essentially about love and relationships. God gave them to the people of Israel and to us out of love:

as protection, to define our freedom and as a framework for our relationships. Jesus sums up the commandments in the great commandment – love God, love your neighbour: “All the law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments” (Matthew 22:40). Similarly, Jesus reminds his hearers of the centrality of obedience to God’s commands to our love relationship with God: “If you obey my commands you will remain in my love...” (John 15.10) and “If you love me you will obey what I command” (John 14:15). Loving others can be quite a challenge, especially at work: the foreman might be a bully, fellow teachers might be undermining, the commanding officer intimidating, the manager a liar, or the ward sister a tyrant. On the other hand, your boss may be an inspiration and your colleagues incredibly supportive. For most of us our workplace is a pretty mixed place in terms of positives and negatives, whatever setting we find ourselves in. Even if you work from home, you will still face challenges with those you do business with. But for all of us, there are opportunities to show selfless, generous concern, to show love.

The CrossSecondly, the Commandments are to be seen, though the lens of the Cross. Because of what Jesus has done, because we are new creations, because the Spirit works in our lives, the Commandments are not merely rules we cannot keep, burdens we cannot carry but ways of living that God enables us to fulfill, as we submit our whole lives to the Lordship of Jesus Christ. As Ezekiel prophesied, God moves us to follow his decrees: “I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of

Taking the Decalogue to Work

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flesh. I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws.” (Ezekiel 36:26-27) We no longer have the appetite to break his commandments.

GraceThirdly, the commandments are good news. God has taken the initiative to give us these commandments to provide boundaries for our freedom. Our worklife, as part of our whole life, can be a life lived in response to what God has already done. God not only took the initiative, as he sent his son who won the victory on the cross but God also continues to take the initiative. We are now ‘in Christ’ and he is at work to help us overcome the pressures of the workplace – the gossip, the criticism, the belittling manager and the pilfering colleague.

The culture of workEvery workplace has a culture. The atmosphere in your workplace might be a critical one, which infects all who work there, or there might be a boss who shames staff in public, causing his subordinates to do the same down the line. Or it may be ‘OK’ for stuff to be taken from the stores, days taken off as sickies, items bought on the company credit card, expenses inflated. These kinds of behaviours are not going to be fixed by external regulators or codes of conduct because they are essentially spiritual issues. And the place that needs fixing is our heart. So, each chapter of the book contextualizes the issue that it deals with – the coveting heart, honesty, truth-telling, rest, family life, modern idols and so on – and then suggests a range of ways in which we might respond in love, and in co-operating with the Holy Spirit as he does his work of transformation in us and so impacts the lives of others in the workplace.

No. 10 & its consequencesTake the tenth, for example: “You shall not covet your neighbour’s house. You shall not covet your neighbour’s wife, or

his manservant or maidservant, his ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbour.” Exodus 20:17 The Hebrew word for ‘covet’ implies more than just wanting something, it means actively seeking to desire, yearn for, lust after or seeking to acquire something with an evil intent. At its heart, the word describes an attitude rather than a deed, just as Jesus explained that sin begins in our hearts. So, coveting is not just about protecting other people’s property but an activity, a process, or way of thinking that will harm us, not just others. That is why God has prohibited it. He knows what we are like and what we are capable of; and what we are vulnerable to. In our workplaces, we can often lose our sense of contentment because we allow covetous thoughts to undermine our contentment with what we already have. If we don’t covet then we avoid that gnawing thought-process that starts with, If only… If only I had the equipment they have, I could do my job properly. If only we had that manager leading us, we would be ahead. If only we had the head teacher from that school we could be in better shape. How might we apply th is commandment? Well, in a contemporary workplace context our neighbour could be a competitor, a rival team in our organisation, or simply our colleagues. It’s more than just the people who work next to us. In addition, this commandment refers to six areas that connect to our working life. In workplace terms:

v A house is an important asset – a factory, warehouse, retail store, school, hospital or any real estate; a portfolio of another organisation’s assets; whatever is another’s assets.

v a wife (includes a husband, of course) refers to right relationships; and could apply to relationships with customers, colleagues, staff, competitors, suppliers, clients and so on.

v A manservant includes employees, contractors, freelancers, temporary staff and takes in competitor’s staff, or a rival

team; it also relates to the controversial area of poaching staff.

v An ox was the beast of burden, the necessary means of production. In today’s terms: plant and machinery, tools and equipment, intellectual property, software and business systems.

v A donkey was the means of transport. Today, it would include distribution systems, pipelines, freight, air transport, shipping and the whole world of logistics.

v Anything – is anything. Anything that belongs to someone else; that is theirs and not yours.

We make too many comparisons. But ‘more’ will not satisfy. We want, so we act. We act and we and others can get hurt; and it can offend God. In recent times we have lived in a culture increasingly characterised by greed and we have seen it turn to fear as the recession bit. How, whether in a culture of greed or a culture of fear, might we co-operate with a loving God as he works out his purposes in our hearts? In the book, I suggest 6 ways forward:

1. Cultivate our knowledge of the creator

2. Cultivate an attitude of gratitude

3. Cultivate stewardship

4. Cultivate relationships

5. Cultivate giving

6. Cultivate priorities

And as, over the years, I have tried to cultivate these ways of thinking and living, I have found myself recognising that the Lord who liberated his people from slavery in Egypt liberates me today from the captivity of wrong-thinking. Praise to Him.

Ten at Work is published by IVP at £8.99 and is available from the LICC’s online shop. You can download all ten of John’s LICC lunchtime talks on the Ten Commandments from www.licc.org.uk/engaging-with-work/workers/10work/

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Members of the LICC team choose six books from recent years which have helped to inform our thinking and our living for Christ –

in the church and in the world.

Michael W. Goheen

A Light to the Nations: The Missional Church and the Biblical StoryBaker Academic, 2011

An engaging treatment of the perspective that the whole Bible is ‘missional’ in that it tells the story of God’s mission to bless all nations, a plan which comes to its culmination in Christ, and which is continued through the church. Essential reading for those who want to explore the biblical basis for mission not merely as a specific activity performed by the church but as the very essence and identity of the church in the world. Antony Billington

James Davison Hunter

To Change the World: The Irony, Tragedy, and Possibility of Christianity in the Late Modern WorldOUP, 2010

What is the place of Christianity in contemporary society? How do believers live out their faith under the conditions of the late modern world? How do we make an impact as Christians in today’s world? Despite the emphases of the North American lens, Hunter’s critique of current models

of ‘transformation’ and his alternative paradigm, ‘faithful presence’, open the door to a vital discussion. Tracy Cotterell

John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge

God is Back: How the Global Rise of Faith is Changing the WorldPenguin, 2009

Co-written by the editor of The Economist and the magazine’s Washington bureau chief, this is a highly readable, plain speaking, but robust account of the worldwide renewal of faith, particularly in Christianity and Islam. Although sweeping in its scope, it is perhaps especially helpful for Christians who want to reflect on the rise of Islam in the West and the implications of living in a multi-religious world. Mary Hippsley

Eugene H. Peterson

The Pastor: A MemoirHarperOne, 2011

In an age when we are rushed, willingly distracted, and determinedly pragmatic, church leaders need the wisdom of brothers like Eugene Peterson. And this is his story. Those who are familiar with his works will not be surprised to hear that this is no ‘celebrity’ life history. It’s a reflection on his work of being a pastor – one who knows that spiritual growth takes time, that it happens in the midst of ordinary life and that this ordinary life is the site of the sacred. Neil Hudson

Howard Webber

Meeting Jesus: Inspiring Stories of Modern-day EvangelismSalvation Army, 2010

This is a slim volume that, to the great surprise of its author, was voted Book of the Year by Christianity magazine. Having known

Howard Webber for thirty years, I wasn’t at all surprised. Howard is a passionate practitioner of personal evangelism. Consequently, this is not a book of theory on how we might be more effective evangelists. Instead, it is a simple, honest sharing of his experiences in seeking to

share the gospel with others. It will warm your heart, strengthen your faith, and challenge your complacency.Chick Yuill

Roy Godwin and Dave Roberts

The Grace Outpouring: Blessing Others Through PrayerDavid C. Cook, 2008

This is the heartening story of Ffald-y-Brenin, a retreat centre in Pembrokeshire, and the amazing flow of God’s blessing out to the surrounding communities, to farms and businesses, to passers-by as well as to visitors, believers and those who profess no faith in Christ. Expect your faith in God to be stimulated, your trust in prayer to be strengthened, and your confidence that God is ‘swift to bless’ to grow. Bev Shepherd

Prized Books

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Coming Up at LICCA Day in Colossians – Raised with Christ, Resident in ColossaeJanuary 23, 9.30am - 4pm

Seated with Christ at the right hand of God, the Colossian Christians are also called to live out their lives in the here and now, their identity in Christ touching every area of their daily existence – as shepherds and farmers, as wool dyers and market traders. Faced with the challenges of following Jesus in an indifferent or hostile society, Paul’s letter orients us around the word of the gospel and the majesty of Christ, showing who Jesus is, what he has done, and how that works out in the everyday lives of ordinary men and women. Combining teaching sessions with opportunities for discussion, this day workshop will be suitable for all those who would value an opportunity to dig deeper into Colossians, exploring how Scripture nurtures and sustains Christian identity and discipleship in the world today. The day will be led by Derek Tidball. Formerly Principal at London School of Theology, Derek is Visiting Scholar at Spurgeon’s College. He has also served as pastor of two Baptist churches, and as head of the mission department of the Baptist Union. A highly-respected Bible teacher, Derek is the author of many books, including most recently In Christ, In Colossae: Sociological Perspectives on Colossians (Paternoster, 2011).

Time: 10.00am - 4.00pm (coffee from 9.30am)

Venue: LICC, St Peter’s, Vere Street, London W1G 0DQ

Cost: £15 (£10 concession) – includes lunch and light refreshments throughout the day

Booking: Call 020 7399 9555, email: mail@licc.org.uk, or book online at licc.org.uk

Whole Life, Whole BibleJanuary 23, 6.30 - 8.30pm

Where we spend most of our time – at home, at work, in the neighbourhood – matters to God and to his mission in and for the world. Far from restricting our faith to the ‘personal’ sphere, disengaged from everyday living, Scripture encourages us to take the Lord of life into the whole of life. Join Antony Billington, Margaret Killingray, and Helen Parry, writers of LICC’s ‘Word for the Week’ emails – as well as guest speaker Derek Tidball – for an evening exploring how the big story of the Bible forms our minds, fuels our imaginations, and fashions our daily life. The evening also celebrates the launch of Whole Life, Whole Bible (published by BRF). Designed to walk through the unfolding story of the Bible in 50 readings and reflections, the book also demonstrates how God’s word illumines every part of life, enabling us to see differently and live differently – from Monday to Sunday, at home and at work, in public as well as in private.

Time: 6.30 - 8.30pm

Venue: LICC, St Peter’s, Vere Street, London W1G 0DQ

Cost: £8 (£6 concession) – includes refreshments and a copy of the book

Booking: Call 020 7399 9555, email: mail@licc.org.uk, or book online at licc.org.uk

A service of thanksgiving will be held at St Paul’s Cathedral, London on Friday, 13 January 2012 at 11.30am. Bishop Timothy Dudley-Smith will preach. All are welcome to join in a special service to thank God for the gift of Uncle John, to celebrate his service to the global church. This is a time to look back with awe and gratitude at a life lived to the glory of Christ. It is also a time to look forward to the challenge that John leaves with us: to envision and equip all of God’s people to take part in God’s mission to the whole world. There are 1800 seats that can be reserved and a further 300 seats available on the day on a first come, first served basis. Unfortunately there are no overflow facilities.

To reserve your place please go to http://www.johnstottmemorial.org/events/united-kingdom-memorial-service/ Only one seat can be reserved per email.

You will receive an email response ticket. Please print it out and bring it on the day. If you do not, entry cannot be guaranteed. If you would like to give a gift in gratitude to God for John, he requested that a l l g i f t s be d iv ided 5 0/5 0 between Langham Partnership (UK &

Ireland) and the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity. You can give direct or give online at https://app.etapestry.com/hosted/JohnStottMinistries/OnlineGivingUnitedKingdom.html

Memorial Service for John Stott

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The London Institute for Contemporary Christianity

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Editor: Mark Greene · TGWTW00A poem © Mark Greene

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All articles ©LICC – use only with prior permission from the publishers. LICC Ltd is a registered charity No. 286102

What was she expecting,

The girl with the wings of an angel in her eyes?

A child, yes, a son…

But having known no man in the Biblical sense,

Having no physical father to ponder,

What, she must have wondered,

As mind and stomach stretched,

Might a man, born of divine essence

And sweet obedience,

Resemble?

An angel, a seraph? Or some holy paragon?

With the first Adam’s pure fresh gaze?

Jacob’s smooth hands, Moses’ radiant face,

Or the wavy, raven locks of Solomon

And a body like polished ivory?

How would God manifest his glory?

Could she conceive this son of the most high,

Would choose to look really rather ordinary?

Miracles, she would learn, are not all discerned

With the naked eye.

Mark Greene

The Gırl wıth the Wıngs of an Angel

ın her Eyes