Love your neighbour? First you've got to meet them. Here's how.

They teach that people should love their neighbour* but a major new study shows that churches are one of the few places most modern Britons might even meet them.

Ground-breaking new analysis of the friendship networks of almost 4,300 people aged from 13 to 80 has identified churches and sporting events as the last bastions of neighbourliness and integration in Britain.

Overall, it found that churches and other places of worship are more successful than any other social setting at bringing people of different backgrounds together, well ahead of gatherings such as parties, meetings, weddings or venues such as pubs and clubs.

*I think that was Jesus who said that, so it's not a surprise to find his followers modelling community (however imperfectly), more than most other settings. 

Media story here, based on some ongoing work by the Social Integration Commission (no, I'd never heard of them before either), with a report due out next month. I do sometimes wonder where else the children in our church (or indeed the adults) would get the chance to mix with such a diverse range of people: aged 0 to 90+, Navy commanders, nurses, single parents, widows, carpenters, engineers, teachers, Japanese, Romanian, Italian, Nigerian, kids from several local primary and secondary schools, Oxbridge degree, NVQ1, self employed, and I won't even start on the range of medical conditions. 

A few days after discovering our daughter had type 1 diabetes, a church member 55 years older than her had a chat: he told her he'd been diagnosed when he was 5, and it hadn't stopped him doing anything. To see the living, breathing proof of what we'd been told/read but hadn't really taken in was so reassuring, and just one aspect of the church being the church. 

I'm also reminded of something wise said by one of our tutors at vicar college: in church, just as we are enriched by the presence of others, so we are diminished by their absence. The church could do and be so much more if those who professed to be Christians realised that you do have to be part of a church to fully live that out.

h/t CofE daily news roundup

Happy Christmas

A brief reflection:

Oxford English Dictionary Words of the Year

2010 Big Society
2011 Squeezed Middle
2012 Omnishambles
2013 Selfie

From Big Society to Selfie in 3 years. Make of that what you will.

At Christmas, God's selfie (Colossians 1:15) is shared with the world, born into the omnishambles, to create a new society based on peace with God and with one another.

Thankyou for visiting: whatever this season means to you, I hope and pray you have a happy and peaceful Christmas.

The Foodbank

Latest cartoon in Dave Walkers current Advent series. Puts me in mind of a line from a church urban fund chap (can't remember his name), that's it's all very well pulling people out of the river, but we also need to ask why people are falling in in the first place.

Bishop of London's sermon at Margaret Thatchers funeral

Plenty of good things to chew on in Richard Chartres sermon at the funeral today, hearing the introduction on the radio:

After the storm of a life lived in the heat of political controversy, there is a great calm.

The storm of conflicting opinions centres on the Mrs Thatcher who became a symbolic figure - even an "ism". Today the remains of the real Margaret Hilda Thatcher are here at her funeral service. Lying here, she is one of us, subject to the common destiny of all human beings.

it struck the perfect note, and very clever use of 'one of us'

I also loved this story from Margaret Thatchers life:

One thing that everyone has noted is the courtesy and personal kindness which she showed to those who worked for her, as well as her capacity to reach out to the young, and often also to those who were not, in the world's eyes, "important".

The letter from a young boy early on in her time as Prime Minister is a typical example. Nine year old David wrote to say, "Last night when we were saying prayers, my daddy said everyone has done wrong things except Jesus. I said I don't think you have done bad things because you are the Prime Minister. Am I right or is my daddy?"

Perhaps the most remarkable thing is that the PM replied in her own hand in a very straightforward letter which took the question seriously.

Continue reading the main story

“Start Quote

Her upbringing was in the Methodism to which this country owes a huge debt”

Richard ChartresBishop of London

"However good we try to be, we can never be as kind, gentle and wise as Jesus. There will be times when we do or say something we wish we hadn't done and we shall be sorry and try not to do it again…If you and I were to paint a picture, it wouldn't be as good as the picture of great artists. So our lives can't be as good as the life of Jesus."

What a superb answer, both in what it says, and how it says it - in a way a 9 year old can understand. 

I imagine a lot of what he said will be lost as it refuses to come into proper focus when viewed through the standard political lenses. 

This bit also struck me:

She was very aware that there are prior dispositions which are needed to make market economics and democratic institutions function well: the habits of truth-telling, mutual sympathy, and the capacity to co-operate. These dispositions are incubated and given power by our relationships. In her words, "the basic ties of the family are at the heart of our society and are the very nursery of civic virtue". Such moral and spiritual capital is accumulated over generations but can be easily eroded.

Life is a struggle to make the right choices and to achieve liberation from dependence, whether material or psychological. This genuine independence is the essential pre-condition for living in an other-centred way, beyond ourselves. The word Margaret Thatcher used at St Lawrence Jewry was "interdependence".

Continue reading the main story

“Start Quote

...the dominant note of a Christian funeral service, after the sorrow and the memories, is hope”

Richard ChartresBishop of London

She referred to the Christian doctrine, "that we are all members one of another, expressed in the concept of the Church on earth as the Body of Christ. From this we learn our interdependence and the great truth that we do not achieve happiness or salvation in isolation from each other but as members of Society." 

That erosion is happening fast - it's hard to compare with life 20-30 years ago, but there seem's to be a greater sense of dependence, and less of a sense of leadership and social responsibility. From the unscientific basis of membership of local Facebook groups in Yeovil, there are quite a lot of people who will identify a problem and ask what the council/government/parents will do about it, but not very many who will say 'this is my community, so it's my responsibility, what can I do to improve it?' The main direction people seem to channel this in is into charity fundraising: which is good, but it still leaves  it up to organisations/agencies/charities to do the work. 

Sadly Thatcherism is identified less with 'sympathy and co-operation' and more with individualism and the free market, which naturally corrodes community. Big state New Labour hasn't done anything to rectify this. Cameron is attempting to kick-start the 'Big Society' by putting government provision into retreat, and loading charities with more need whilst their financial support declines. 

Margaret Thatcher's comments on happiness are right, but our politicians of all colours haven't really found a way to put them into practice. 

Fresh Expressions of Gym

A church on Exmoor has stepped in following the closure of a local gym, and is hosting 'bring and share' gymn sessions 5 times a week, with kit brought in from people's homes. Great example of big society stepping in where business has failed, and of a church knowing its place in a community.

The company who ran the gym say they are planning a re-launch in September, but based on their figures, it may be hard to make a local gym financially viable. Local folk, judging by the comments and campaign site, aren't impressed. In a sparsely populated area (as with church hosted post offices) maybe this is a different and more viable way of making facilities available to the community.

The Yeovil Ninja. Yes, Really.

Update 31.8: he's been on Channel 4 too. Catch it via 4 on demand for the next couple of days.
Well, it's not quite Street Pastors, but the chap seems to have his heart in the right place. (Vid is on the BBC site, so I can't put it on here)

I shall be watching the undergrowth more closely from now on. And good to see he's patrolling Ninesprings: had my own run-in with a group of foul-mouthed teens there a few months ago, who were driving every family away from the park with their language and behaviour. Next time I'll call The Shadow.