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I would like to begin this week’s letter by giving thanks for Ying An the Baptist Union Development Fund Treasurer who is leaving us to work for the SNC Lavelin. Ying has had a fascinating journey in these last five years; coming to Canada, learning English, coming to First Baptist Calgary, working at the Baptist Union (being hired by Michael Packer), coming to faith in Christ and contributing to the life of our denomination.

Ying was not only our treasurer, but is an engineer. Ying’s warmth, clear faith, and graciousness is one of the highlights of my experience in the Calgary office. When Ying first came to the Union she was learning English and sometimes found it hard to find the right words to express herself. Now that Ying is leaving we are all having a hard time finding the right words to express ourselves. It is our turn to struggle with the right words. While Jack Borchert and Stu Dinsmore (amongst others) will have more to say as they know Ying better, let me end with a verse, Romans 8:38-39, whose theme is “there is nothing that separates us from the love of God in Christ”. Some people are reminders that the Lord is near. Ying is one of them. Go in the Lord, Ying, and with our blessing.

By the time you read this a fascinating week will have unfolded as I continue to be oriented to the works of the Baptist Union. It began on September 19 as we set up our trial run of our Resource Centre (see last week’s letter). Today (September 20^th), I am preparing a report for the board and finalizing agendas for Senior Staff on Wednesday (the senior managers of our work who meet twice a year).

On Thursday the 22^nd and Friday the 23^rd the Executive Staff meet. Who on earth are they? They are the Area Ministers; Paul Pearce and Sam Breakey with Ken Theissan the Area Minister Designate for the Heartland. John Prociuk, Director of Ministry, Jack Borchert, Executive Director of Baptist Union Development Fund, Brian Stelck, President of Carey Hall, David Holton, Director of Administration and Finance and Linda Kilburn, Executive Assistant, along with myself.

Friday evening, September 23^rd, had Sam Chaise, the Baptist Union President, leading the Planning and Priorities group for the Board through to Saturday at noon. This group looks at some of the policy, research and planning issues that we must use to prepare for the fuller board meetings in October. It includes Sam, as the President, David Connop, Beth Millard, and Marshall Miner, who are Vice-Presidents of various policy groups, as well as representatives from a variety of ministries including the Baptist Union Development Fund, Carey Hall, and other Senior Staff.

I’ll have a break on Saturday afternoon and Sunday and catch a 7am plane to Calgary for a day of meetings with the Calgary office and Pam Stevenson regarding the Resource Centre along with Jake Kroeker of First Baptist and some others.

Tuesday I’ll be in Edmonton with the Edmonton Area Ministerial for a good part of that day talking about visioning and planning process that we hope to undertake with the Baptist Union. On Wednesday I will be in Saskatoon to meet with several folk from two churches; Cal Malena as Chair of CBM, Terry Summach and Rob Priestly around some creative ideas, and Paul Matheson from First Baptist Saskatoon.

I will be attending the Carey Hall board meetings on October 1^st and also attending the Affinity Group meetings that are being led by Gary Nelson in Calgary the following week.
I thought I would give you an overview on the variety of experiences in our ministry in the Baptist Union. I am thankful for your prayers and excited about the work we are undertaking together.

Warmly,

In Christ,

Jeremy Bell

As Canadians we so rarely allow ourselves heroes. We save our adulation for people in their dying rather than pausing to give thanks for them when they are with us. We are getting better. We almost allow ourselves to give thanks for Romeo Dalerre, Katrina LeMay Dolm or Ric Hansen. But these folk are too few and far between. The very public and disgraceful display of Peter Newman and Brian Mulroney do little to help the public discourse on public figures we admire. Terry Fox is different. Terry (someone we refer to with the familiarity of his first name) is someone we love. With few exceptions (except perhaps Tommy Douglas and Cardinal Leger, interestingly, both pastors) there are few Canadians in the last fifty years to whom we are so attached.

This year marks the 25^th anniversary of Terry’s run for cancer research. Three million children in 10,000 schools will join in a run in Terry’s memory and to contribute to a fund that has raised over a third of a billion dollars in the last 25 years.

We often have trouble in our church communities dealing with community heroes, calamities or villains, for that matter. We often find it awkward for some reason to think about the events in our world that everyone else is talking about. Many of us cite examples of churches that have seeded the sacred to the secular. When Karl Barth said one should preach with the Bible in one hand the newspaper in the other. Many of us have observed and are afraid of an imbalance. Just because talking about current events and issues is different it does not suggest it is impossible.

The Sunday morning after Terry Fox died I was on a summer holiday in a worship service that was inordinately packed for a summer Sunday. Terry’s passing was mentioned in the prayer but no where else in the service. About halfway through the sermon a women in the congregation got and in a deeply torn and grieving voice challenged the preacher as to why he was not speaking to us about Terry. Without waiting for an answer she stormed from the service. The minister (one of the most gifted preachers I know) had probably not yet arrived at the point of his message touching on Terry, but the pain of the woman in her loss (face it, Terry’s loss was a collective loss) was too much for her to bear. This scenario unfolds often in our churches on Sunday morning, but without anyone bothering to interrupt the proceedings. The silence of the church on public issues (never mind justice, evangelism or social concerns) is deafening. We confuse separation of church and state (essential in every culture) with an abdication of the prophetic (a topic for another day) or a lack of pastoral concern for what we are all going through in everyday life. Many of our church folk exit the building emotionally and spiritually when the issues of the day are ignored while we slavishly keep to the preset teaching plan. I am not suggesting Sunday should  be devoted to the last horror from the newspaper. I am suggesting we can no longer afford to be duplicitous in a collective ignorance.

There are several ways to address this that may be helpful. I have tried each of these with various effectiveness. The call to worship and pastoral prayers are clear and right places to  re-contextualize and to respond to events around us. I have often seen the use of moments of silence (not nano moments but actual clear spaces of time) to reflect on an event and find that asking people to stand for that near the beginning of the service is especially helpful.

We need to let people grieve or recover. More importantly we need to declare that in the midst of war, hurricanes, the death of a loved one, famine and other fearful things that God and his people are “a very present help in times of trouble”. We need to recall Peter’s words to Jesus, “Where else can we go Lord?” or the Psalmist in Psalm 116 who cries, “I love the Lord because he has heard my voice”.  I have also set aside a prepared sermon for a Sunday to preach on a more pressing topic (at times started a series on suffering as with 9/11 and the Tsunami). For practical reasons a simple and clear comment at the beginning of a sermon is often more helpful than changing the entire talk. A comment combined with the offer to pray with people after the service points us back to the care of God and opens up discussion and prayer amongst one another when we are most in need of it.

So thanks be to God for Terry Fox and others like him. Thanks also to the Lord for His presence in times of trouble and for the prayers of encouragement from God’s people when we so sorely need it in these difficult times. May we by the Spirit and scripture discern our response to these difficult days and find God’s perspective in them.

Warmly

In Christ,

Jeremy Bell

We want to talk this week about resources for personal, congregational and spiritual foundation.

When it comes to resources it is probably best to refer to Charles Dickens’s comment in A Tale of Two Cities; “It was the best of times and it was the worst of time.” It is the best of times because there is a seeming abundance of good quality, culturally relevant, biblical material that is available. It is the worst of times in the sense that much of the material is very expensive, written by people we don’t have a working trust with and frankly, for many of us in this sprawling territory called Western Canada, material that is hard to access. (I tried to access a nationally reviewed book this week only to be told no one had it and its’ Winnipeg publisher might not ever re-print it regardless of demand!)

We are about to launch a resource centre in the Baptist Union with a twist. Well, there are several twists. Firstly, books, DVD’s and other resources will be available to order through our website. Secondly, after visiting the web, surveying the material you will have the material sent to you within that working week. If you order on Monday-Thursday for instance it will find its way to you on or before the following Friday. Thirdly, the package you receive will contain a stamped and addressed return envelope to return your resource material back to the Union Office when you are finished. This service will be available by mid-November, in time for many excellent Advent and Christmas resources.

The selections below are being used for a pilot project in a sample group for September through October. We’re working out the ordering, responding and retrieval systems to offer clean, effective encouragement and ministry to one another. Future listings will include everything from Gumbel to Blacaby, Stott to St. John of the Cross, the Alpha Marriage Course to our outstanding array of authors like Bruce Milne, Mark Buchanan and Stan Grenz amongst others.

1. Gordon Fee, How to Read the Bible and Get the Most Out of It

2. C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

3. Brian Maclaren, A Generous Orthodoxy

4. Gary Haugen, The Good News About Injustice

5. 2 workshop CD’s from Holy Trinity Brompton in London

6. The Celtic Book of Prayer from the Northumbria County (a book I use for my daily devotions)

We are providing these resources for three simple reasons. We want good resources within the reach of every leader and church in the denomination. “Easy Reach” can mean overcoming economic, geographic or cultural barriers. We want people to feel they can freely sample and “test drive” material to discern whether “fit” for self or church. Lastly, we want to encourage the inter-pollination and sharing of ideas, learning, good reading, and good listening so that we will encourage one another and deepen in our walk together in Christ.

We want to make resources accessible with the testing out material to be straightforward. We want to see the Baptist Union weave one of its many strands of community by sharing resources together; resources where you live, whatever you can afford, and however the Lord is leading you.

Thanks be to God.

Warmly in Christ,

Jeremy Bell

P.S. Remember we will test drive the resource centre September through October, and put it on-line on November 8.

This week’s letter is in three parts but despite that will be briefer than some of my earlier notes. I want to begin by commenting briefly on Hurricane Katrina. Then I want us to reflect on some items for prayer and finally turn to the personal choices that we all need to look at as we enter the fall.

Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath will have profound effects for many years, if not generations to come. We have become somewhat insulated from disasters that afflict our world – from war to famine, earthquakes to tsunamis. We have even become regionally isolated in our own country when we have heard but not been moved from our own experiences of ice-storms, floods, fire storms and droughts. One American leader made the comment that his own culture “had developed an enormous capacity to have patience with the suffering of black people”. While I agree with him, it is incumbent on each of us as Canadian Christians to ensure we do not develop any tolerance whatsoever for the suffering of any in our land and I wonder who we are willing to ignore and who we are willing to embrace. Let us pray for all those affected by the events of Katrina and prepare to learn lessons from these experiences. Gary Nelson, General Secretary of Canadian Baptist Ministries, has said that CBM is coordinating over 75 volunteers from Canada in a relief effort. Please contact them if you would like more information.

I want to emphasize prayer for youth and children in this newsletter. I am especially concerned for campers and staff returning from our denominational camps and the new season of youth groups, Sunday school and other activities that will be starting soon. Maybe “concerned” does not convey the right notion … in fact I am very excited about the work that is going on in our midst in children’s ministry. I was particularly challenged to read in the bulletin from New Life Community Baptist Church in Duncan this last Sunday the statistic that 83% of those who sit in church on Sunday came to faith before the age of 13. That fact says something about the significance of early childhood contact with the Faith but also says something about our lack of effectiveness in adult evangelism. By the way, New Life celebrates its work with children by regularly having over 280 out on Sundays…. thank you Lord! So let’s pray, encourage, mentor and support our ministry to children and youth as we begin this fall.

Lastly, a story on a personal note. A primer for the fall. I have a terrible relationship with the TD Canada Trust in Duncan, British Columbia which is near a cottage we often visit as a family. Whenever I visit this particular branch (incidentally, the staff are tremendous and very patient) I am in holiday mode and therefore forgetful. This last July was the worst when money that I had taken from my account got left (by me) in the cash dispenser never to be seen again. My bank machine experience is a bit of a metaphor for my requests of God especially in this fall season. I go about the usual rituals of asking God for relationship and much else only to either ignore or neglect to receive what he has offered. Often in the fall we set out with intentions of personal spiritual formation and growth, asking of God and others, only to walk away from all that he has for us. I sense that this comes from getting caught up in a lot of fairly understandable business rather than beginning with clear, intentional listening time with God as we enter our fall together with Him and with one another. My wife Kerry has often reminded me (and I need constant reminding) that the word obed (the root of obedience obviously) means “to listen”.

Even now Lord Jesus give me a longing and capacity to listen.

Warmly,
In Christ,

Jeremy

We left off last week sharing about all the things I had come to learn from our Kenyan partner churches.  You may recall that the main parts of that learning experience were their unity in Christ expressed in worship, care for one another and their care for the community at large.  I was also very much moved by their sense of joy as expressed to the Lord and to one another.  I found it an exhilarating challenge as to how we will become a people in the Union that reflect some of those very strong commitments in Christ that our Kenyan brothers and sisters continue to experience—a profound sense of worship, commitment to church planting, clarity about social justice and equally concerned that people come to faith and mature in the faith.  Above all, I know that the Lord wishes many of us (those who do not already share in God’s joy) to re-discover the joy of the Lord in our lives.  May we, like Nehemiah, experience daily ‘that the joy of the Lord is our strength’.

As I share with you some of these deeply encouraging things let me comment on some of my concerns. Africa has become the funding darling of so many in the last few years. There has been much comment on the desperate plight of countless people in this painful continent.  So much need and yet so many challenges to meeting that need.   What can a single denomination do in the face of such difficulties such as war, drought, injustice and privation?  I found myself thrown back on one great declaration that my humanity found its unity with my African brothers and sisters because we were united in a common Lord.  I found that my humour (many of my friends would agree here) and my everyday life illustrations made no sense whatsoever to my Kenyan friends.  I constantly wondered how to bridge the gap between us and marveled at how others like the Stelcks were able to do so. There was one wonderful moment that stood out to me.  I was trying to illustrate how we need to keep being filled by the presence of God with an illustration from Billy Graham.  I cupped my hands together and had a student pour water into them. I could not contain the liquid and consequently leaked water all over the classroom.  “I need God’s constant infilling,” I announced, “because I leak”.  We all laughed together in our common recognition of God’s provision for us in our common need.  I came away with concerns that I need to know more about the dilemmas of cross-cultural language and the concerns I had around the issues of money, dependency, social justice and sharing both the faith and love in Christ.  I embarked on some reading that I want to share with you.

Before my trip I began to read “The End of Poverty” by the Harvard economist Jeffrey Sachs.  I am reading it in a sort of community with those from every political and economic stripe.  Its thesis it that we need to help those in the global economy who are showing signs of improvement and help them to do even better.  Sachs has the support of those from the left like Stephen Lewis and those from the right like the British magazine “The Economist”.  The second book that I am plowing through is John Reader’s award-winning book “Africa: A Biography of the Continent”.  Its title needs no explanation except that it is an exceptional read and explains much of the background of African challenges.  I am also reading “Britain’s Gulag” by Harvard historian Caroline Elkins which is an inflammatory book on the end of empire in Kenya.  (I am finding as a person born in Britain that I am both fascinated and challenged.)  Finally, I wish to recommend the biblical and radically hopeful book “Good News About Injustice” by Gary Haugen which my wife Kerry pointed out to me in a bookshop at Holy Trinity Brompton two weeks ago.  Haugen suggests that we are fairly adept at sharing our faith with people and even competent at feeding many who are hungry but that we have a long way to go in changing the structures and patterns that hurt people in the first place.  Haugen is the head of International Justice Mission and told a story that moved me in its simple forcefulness.  It is a story that reminds me that when I ask God to feed the hungry he is more often than not asking me to take what he has given me and feed those in need on his behalf.  I will share the story without comment save to say that it is a story that I am greatly chastened by.

“A preacher asked me (and the rest of the congregation) to consider a scene that has stayed with me ever since.  He asked us to recall the story of the feeding of the five thousand. The disciples brought complaints about the hungry multitudes to Jesus and he responded by compassionately blessing bits of food from a boy’s lunch of five loaves and two fishes.  Then he gave them to the disciples and the disciples gave them to the people.  They ate and all were satisfied (Matthew 14:19).  The speaker asked us to imagine a scenario in which the disciples kept thanking Jesus for all the bread and fish – without passing them along to the people.  He asked us to imagine the disciples starting to be overwhelmed by the piles of multiplying loaves and fishes surrounding them, yelling out to Jesus, ”thank you , thank you, thank you”—all the while never passing  along the food to the people.  And then beneath the mounting piles of food, the disciples could even be heard complaining to Jesus that he wasn’t doing anything about the hungry multitude.”
– “Good News About Injustice” by Gary Haugen

Lord save us from our own blindness and lead us to faithful and fruitful places in You and Your world.

Warmly,
In Christ,

Jeremy Bell

If you have been following these letters this summer, you will know that I have
been traveling in Britain and have been in search of various resources for the
Baptist Union and attended the Baptist World Alliance in Birmingham.

On August 1 my wife Kerry and I flew to Kenya to prepare for teaching at
programs sponsored by Canadian Baptist Ministries and Carey Theological
College.  When we arrived we stayed with Malcolm and Patty Card, CBM
coordinators for the region.  The Cards have very helpful experiences to share
and are most gracious hosts.  Kerry (who has a counseling practice and degrees
in physio, occupational therapy and counseling) team-taught with  Drs. Carla
Nelson and Sophie Parkins a ten-day counseling course to 40 teachers from all
over Kenya.  Caryn and Brian Stelck and I team-taught a course on Ministry and
Spirituality to 36 pastors, deacons and teachers–a course that Caryn and I
suggested would have been better entitled Spirituality and Ministry.  By the way,
Kerry and I were guests in the Stelck’s home in Mitaboni and I was deeply
touched by these gifted and kind people.

CBM offers a Diploma of Christian Teacher Education and Counseling using
Carey Hall as the institution of record.  Carey offers a Certificate of Ministry
course and has offered several of these over the years training hundreds of
students.  The students come from two denominations both of which are about
60 years old.  The African Brotherhood Church has 750,000 attendees in about
800 churches, about 150 “preaching points” and operates 700 schools.   The
African Christian Churches and Schools denomination has 250,000 adherents in
175 churches, several “preaching points” and operates 38 schools.

Kenya is a country which has just recently begun to experience some political
stability under President Kibaki and is experiencing some economic renewal as
well.  The two churches we are partnering with are also in renewal and growth
mode.  I preached at Kangundo and George Matheka, the minister, (also an area
minister for 49 churches) reported that the Kangundo church alone had started 6
new churches in two years.  Mischak Mukwilu at Kwale church (also an area
pastor in charge of 19 churches) had reported that his own congregation had
begun 7 new churches in 3 years.  The ABC denomination will not list a new
church as a church until it has 100 members!  Wonderful stories.  I learned a
great deal from these two denominations.  There are three main areas of note.

First, these churches have a strong sense of identity with one another.  This
identity begins with a unity in Christ and it “morphs” into a keen sense, shared by
all the churches that one of their main collective purposes is to start new
churches.  Wouldn’t that be incredible if that was our stated purpose?  How do
we declare our unity in the Baptist Union?  We assume our unity is in Christ but
how do we express that together?  What do we share as a focus amongst
ourselves?  We are beginning to experience common purpose in several things;
camping, youth, Carey programs both locally and globally, CBM, “God sightings”
at Banff and beyond, our new affinity groups and finally the new resources and
story telling on our website later in the Fall.  What I have just listed describes
some of the things we do together, but how do we build community over such
diverse geography and church experience?  The Kenyan churches taught me
that our unity is founded in our common Lord Jesus—more of that as the Fall
progresses.

Secondly I was struck by the Kenyan churches’ commitment to social concerns
and justice.  After their personal and community worship, after their common
goals in church planting and that people would come to faith in Christ, these
people are vehemently concerned with everything from HIV and Aids, education,
the addressing of orphans, widows, the treatment of women and economic
development.  They are a church that looks out for one another and those in
need in society and have a plan to implement those activities.  We in the Union
have a myriad of wonderful stories in the area of social concerns to share.  In the
months ahead we will be telling some of our own stories.

The last thing that I learned from our African partners was a sense of joy; joy in
worship, joy in greeting one another and joy in an expectation of what God will
do.  How do I experience joy personally and how do we do that as churches and
as a Union?

Next week we will look at some of the more complicated topics that come out of
our partnerships; cross cultural issues, the use of money, evangelism and social
concerns in balance amongst other things.  This has been a long letter.  Thanks
for reading!

Warmly,
In Christ,

Jeremy Bell

As you may know from a previous letter, I found myself in Birmingham, England in late July,
celebrating the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Baptist World Alliance.  This association
of Baptists from around the world began in Exeter Hall in London in 1905.

The two hour opening celebration had such incredible variety that it was deeply moving. It
represented all the good that occurs when people whose sole unity is the person of Christ,
come together.  There were choirs and musicians from four different continents.  There was a
parade of nations representing the two hundred nations I have mentioned in a previous letter.
While a DVD of the conference will be made available later, I want to give you a sampling of our
time as the conference unfolded.

Rick Warren was one of the theme speakers at this conference (the Pastor from Saddleback
Community Church in California with whom many of us are familiar).  He had many things to
say, but two stood out: first he said that churches need to be known for what they stand for—not
always what they are against. I’ll let you discover what that particular observation means for you
in your own walk with God and your own church and community.  Secondly, (we will have the
DVD of this talk in our resource centre in October) he said that the church must slay the five
giants of the 21st century: spiritual dryness, self-centered leadership, disease (including,
obviously, HIV amongst others), poverty and illiteracy.  There are so many places that we need
to go with these topics but I will leave you with his words to begin to grapple with them.  The
second person who made a great impression on me was former American President Jimmy
Carter who spoke on the need to address more equitably the role of women in the life of our
churches in his Sunday morning Sunday school class before 13,500 people.  What I found
especially moving about Mr. Carter was when it was reported that as he received the Nobel
Prize for Peace, he announced before the assembled guests that “He lived his life because of
his faith in Jesus Christ”.  I wonder how many of us do the same—never mind actually take the
opportunity to say so.  Three women made a great impression on the conference.  CBM’s Carla
Nelson led an International workshop on AIDS.  Lauran Bethell received the BWA human rights
award for her work on the trafficking of women and children, for which, incidentally, Vancouver
has an internationally bad name.  Lastly the conference heard from Myra Blyth who was, for a
time, a senior associate at the World Council of Churches and who spoke with passion on a
clear and orthodox Christology which was part of the theological underpinnings of the
Birmingham conference.

For many people, the last time they celebrated diversity in their lives was when they went to
high school.  In our culture one of the few places you experience diversity is if you belong to a
welcoming and receptive Christian church.  The rest of the world represents so much of the
division and difficulty we find ourselves in that the church can represent a contrast.  I find it hard
to express the moving scene of so many diverse people with a simple and clear unity in Jesus.

This conference was not just another meeting.  It was truly and profoundly, in my view, an
opportunity for almost as many churches as are in the UN to re-covenant together in Christ.
That re-covenanting is around many topics that we explored that week at the Congress:
worship, evangelism, aid, justice, the alleviating of poverty, women and men, youth and many
other issues.  I’d ask that we do two things in the Baptist Union as we reflect on this Congress:
first, let us remember Alexander McLaren’s exhortation that we do all things in the name of
Christ and in the power of the Holy Spirit; and second, might we simply for ourselves, our
churches and our communities, ask the Lord one thing in prayer—“Please, Lord, make yourself
known to me in Your Son’s name, Amen.”  May we continue to grow in our relationship with God
and one another and with greater clarity of what we are called to do in these challenging times.

There were so many people you would have known from our Baptist family in Birmingham and
I’ll pass on a list of those who would be glad to share their impressions in a future letter.

Warmly in Christ
Jeremy Bell

We will pick up with the Baptist World Alliance meetings next week.

I want to comment briefly about the opportunities I’ve had to observe some resources for ministry in Great Britain as I spent some time before the Baptist World Alliance Centenary Conference. I intentionally set out to visit some churches that might model for us new life together in the Union and also have sought to find resources that we might apply to our larger work.

I went first to the Baptist Union of Great Britain’s Resource Centre in Didcot, Oxfordshire. Residing in a massive building in this small Oxfordshire town, the Baptist Union of Great Britain represents over 2000 churches and therefore has both the gift of great resources and a deep reservoir of diversity. The resource centre reflects this background. I have found some excellent work in the area of baptism and ethics and a new book on the subject of church and state which does not simply deal with the contrast between the Christian church and secular authority but also compares the Roman Catholic and Baptist approaches to this topic. Regent’s College, Oxford publishes a series of books on culture, common biblical commentaries & the arts and I was exposed to many other materials which we will inventory and add to our existing resources in the months ahead. Of particular value for us is a new book on worship which takes into account the British and Canadian experience that many Christians use during the church year (i.e. advent & lent) as helpful patterns for personal & corporate worship. I’ve also had a couple of lengthy conversations with Lion’s Publishing in Britain who put me on to what they believe to be an excellent bookstore/resource centre called St. Andrews bookshop (located in Greater Missedon. You have no idea what a hassle it is to get to this little town).

Many of you are familiar with Homestart in Vancouver which is funded by seed money from the Baptist Union Development Foundation. I have had conversations with Homestart in Great Britain, which has a considerably different emphasis and is based all over Britain, but in particular I have talked with those in Glasgow and Leicester. Homestart’s primary emphasis in Great Britain is not furniture but is, in fact, trained volunteers supporting families with young children through the difficult early years – but more of that later.

I asked for recommendations to attend a couple of unusual and renewing churches in Great Britain and received the names of two. I traveled to North London to visit Emmanuel Baptist Fellowship, an umbrella group of four related Baptist churches. I went to the mother church called Willesden Green. It is in a neighborhood which started out Irish, then embraced those from the Caribbean, Asia and finally from Africa. There are over 70 different nationalities worshipping in this church and it was personally very helpful to hear the preacher who happened that day to be from Ghana. His emphasis was on what he believes to be the lost discipline of Christians everywhere – waiting on God. His first illustration was the impatience he felt watching the microwave heat his food and he spoke in a way that challenged and renewed me. For all you Type A personalities out there (and there are many) he used the passage from Isaiah  40 that when we wait on God we renew our strength. So I came away from Emmanuel Baptist Fellowship with the encouragement to be more culturally diverse in the Baptist Union and to celebrate the diversity already found in the union. There are many stories that came out of my experience that morning that will have to wait for the personal conversations I know will come in the fall.

My Sunday evening church experience took me to North Watford (where I was born) to a place well known to many of you called ‘Soul Survivor’. If you’ve ever been to “The Place” at Lambrick Park Church in Victoria (former church of Tom Cowan, currently Sr. pastor at First, Vancouver) then you will have experienced much the same sort of thing I experienced that Sunday night. It is a church committed to contemporary arts, music & culture. There must have been almost 700 young people in attendance and it was a boisterous worship, a reverent and edgy time. One of the most interesting things I was able to take away was that when this church contemplates doing justice and outreach overseas, it does it in a big way. It was announced that a year from now they want the entire church (yes all 700 – 1000 of them) to go to South Africa to work in a township rife with AIDS and unemployment.

Well, that’s a sampling of a week of renewal, research, and personal challenges for me and Britain. The Lord be with us all as we ask Him to speak to us and make Himself known to us.

Warmly in Christ
Jeremy Bell

This year marks the 100th anniversary of the Baptist World Alliance which first met in the
Exeter Hall in London in 1905.  That long ago event represented about 7 million Baptists
worldwide coming from a little over 2 dozen countries.  Now the Baptist World Alliance is
representative of 211 denominations in 200 countries which include 46 million baptized
believers and over 100 million adherents making it the largest body of Protestant believers in
the world.  The story is only partly told in the numerical growth of this part of God’s family,
there are also great expectations of what God will be doing in the future.

Before we look at the present and future, let me take you back to the opening night of the
BWA assembly where an actor playing the first Chairperson of that 1905 founding
convention, Alexander Maclaren, spoke to those of us assembled in Birmingham.  “Alexander
Maclaren” told us that we must remember two things that were foundational to our Christian
heritage and faith: first, we must do everything in the name of Jesus and secondly, we must
do everything in the power of the Holy Spirit.  I could not think of any better reminder or
greater encouragement to begin a series of meetings than that—it is instructional for personal
formation and for the deepening of our communities.  This exhortation was followed by some
gentle advice from the Archbishop-elect of York who brought greetings from the Anglican
church in Britain and then said to the assembled throng: “Stay close to God, stay close to
humanity and bring both God and humanity together.  Both these servants of God were not
aping spiritual clichés but laying a foundation for the week.  You got the sense in the first two
days of the BWA (which, incidentally meets every 5 years) that this was far more than the
meeting of a network but the re-covenanting of a people before God.

The theme of this week is “Jesus Christ Living Water” and that theme is being embellished in
talks on justice and mercy, visuals, and music in every form that remind us of our thirst yet
draw us to the source of how that thirst can be met in Jesus.  There is such amazing diversity
here with over 100 countries represented in the 13,500 delegates.  There are about 150
Canadians and we are well served and represented by Bruce Milne, a just-retiring BWA vice-
president and Gary Nelson, our general secretary and newly appointed vice-president.  I’m
going to ask them to share their impressions a little later on in the summer.

When the BWA first met in 1905, there were 3,000 delegates representing the developed
world in which 85% of all Christians lived.  This week in Birmingham is a reminder that a shift
in the face of Christianity has occurred with only 40% of Christians coming from the
developed world and 60% coming from the 2/3’s developing world.  Our diversity yet unity in Christ came, for me, in the high point of the first night’s service, when our actor friend
Alexander Maclaren, a woman from Africa and a young developmentally-challenged man
from England (who signed for us) led us in the Apostle’s Creed—one faith, one Lord Jesus
indeed.  Much, much more, next week…

Warmly in Christ

Jeremy Bell

Dear Friends,

As we begin a new stage of God’s journey and plans for us in the Baptist Union I would like to tell you about someone who changed my life earlier this year. Some of you have heard about him in my talk to the Banff Assembly in April but a refresher won’t hurt. I remind myself of this man at least every couple of weeks.

I discovered this “mentor” while reading Martin Gilbert’s book called The Righteous, a chronicle of Christians who saved Jews during the Holocaust of the Second World War. Gilbert is one of the most pre-eminent historians of the past thirty years and the official biographer of Winston Churchill. He does not suffer fools gladly and is particularly irate (as well he should be) about Christian inertia during the Holocaust. He writes however about a Ukrainain couple, farmers and Baptists, who looked out for those in need, offered hospitality and safety to a Jewish man hiding from the Nazis. They were a couple who were a people of the Bible and prayer and are just the kind of people I want to be like.

Finding two Jews who were hiding in the granary of a Polish peasant who had taken them in, David Prital told them he hoped to get in touch with those peasants who belonged to the Baptist sect. One of the Jews, taking him to a small gap in the wall of the granary, pointed out a typical Ukrainian house and said to him, “’In this house lives one of the Baptists, but you should be careful because in the adjacent house lives his brother who will kill you without any hesitation. Good luck!” In the evening, I left the granary and walked in the direction of the house that was covered with straw. I walked in the path between two fields, and my heart was full of anxiety and apprehension. Suddenly I saw a figure of a Ukrainian peasant walking peacefully in the fields. My instincts, which served me well in many dangerous situations, told me that I didn’t have to be afraid of this meeting. He approached me and immediately understood who I was. With tears in his eyes, he comforted me and he invited me to his house. Together we entered his house and I understood instantly that I had met a wonderful person. “God brought an important guest to our house,” he said to his wife. “We should thank God for this blessing.” They kneeled down and I heard a wonderful prayer coming out of their pure and simple hearts, not written in a single prayer book. I heard a song addressed to God, thanking God for the opportunity to meet a son of Israel in these crazy days. They asked God to help those who managed to stay alive hiding in the fields and in the woods. Was it a dream? Was it possible that such people still existed in this world? Why then didn’t I think about them while I was still in the ghetto? With their help and proper planning we could save many people!

They stopped praying and we sat down at the table for a meal, which was enjoyable. The peasant’s wife gave us milk and potatoes. Before the meal, the master of the house read a chapter from the Bible. Here it is, I thought, this is the big secret. It is this eternal book that raised their morality to such unbelievable heights. It is this very book that filled their hearts with love for the Jews.

One night, when David Prital was sitting in the granary, his host came in a sat beside him. ‘I see that you are sad and frustrated,’ he said. ‘I will sing you a song that may help raise your spirits.’ The peasant then started to sing from the Psalms: ‘When God returned the Jews to Zion’-and sang, Prital noted, ‘in Hebrew!’

[Excerpts from The Righteous: The Unsung Heroes of the Holocaust, by Martin Gilbert.]

We live in different yet very challenging times. “Whenever you give a cup of water in my name,” said Jesus, “you did this to me”. (Matthew 25)

Whenever I look for those in need or trouble I am looking for Jesus. Whenever I comfort or offer hospitality, whenever I open myself to ridicule or danger, whenever I protect the vulnerable, I do this to Christ. If I give to others I must be a person of scriptures and of prayer just as this Ukrainian family was. If not, I will never be able to sustain whatever acts of justice and mercy I attempt.

These are people I want to be like. They even seek to speak the language of others as they serve and comfort.

These are people I want to be like. Please Lord, may it be so. These are people I want our group of churches to be like; seeking others, hospitable, risk takers, and people of prayer and the Bible. Change, challenge and encourage us Lord…even now in the midst of a world in great need.
Warmly in Christ,

Jeremy Bell