The background is that we currently have a VA Church School in the Parish that we have fantastic links with.  It’s an outstanding school, but it’s only a single form intake.  Every year the school receives far more than thirty applications for the Reception class. Inevitably, meaning that we are unable to offer all the parents, who would like to send their children to the school, a place at a single form entry Church school. This situation has become more difficult in recent years as demand for school places in South Manchester, and indeed across the city, has outstripped supply.

Due to changes in legislation, the Local Authority is no longer able to set up new maintained schools and has therefore increased the admission numbers in many schools across Manchester. However, the demand for more school places continues to grow, and the only way in which to meet such demand is to set up either free schools or academies.

So we’ve set off on this journey, the bid has been approved by the PCC and the School Governors and was announced at the APCM.  Now the start of the slog…

Abide has been going now for six months and finds its identity in two places.  Firstly in gatherings and then secondly in a missional lifestyle focused around the ‘Five Rhythms of Grace’.  We gather every second Tuesday for a shared meal and then on the fourth Sunday of each month at 18.15 for an experimental service, alongside this we’re involved in various missional activities in our locality.

The term, Rhythms of Grace, is taken from Eugene Peterson’s (google him) translation of Matthew 11:28: “Walk with me and work with me – watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace.” It’s a series of statements that sound quite highbrow, but really are just a good way of learning how to follow Jesus without embarrassing God.

Rhythm One
By God’s grace, I will seek to be transformed into the likeness of Christ.

Rhythm Two
By God’s grace, I will be open to the presence, guidance and power of the Holy Spirit.

Rhythm Three
By God’s grace, I will set aside time for prayer, worship and spiritual reading.

Rhythm Four
By God’s grace, I will endeavour to be a gracious presence in the world, serving others and working for justice in human relationships and social structures.

Rhythm Five
By God’s grace, I will sensitively share my faith with others: participating in God’s mission both locally and globally.

These five rhythms are not rules that dictate behaviour, but a starting point to help us to understand who we are, and what we need to do to grow as disciples of Christ. Remember, this is a journey we walk together.

The Rhythms of Grace have been developed by the Community of St. Chad in Lichfield Diocese.  We’re really grateful to them for the prayer and thought that they’ve put into the development of them.

A lot of missional training seems to be directed at people when they are training for ministry, be that through pioneer ministry or other forms of ministry, and my feeling for sometime has been that we need to bring that creative missional thinking to Priests in normal parish contexts. I think that the greatest learning happens with these two bouncing off one another.

So far we’ve spent time with Sue Hope from Bradford diocese, Phil Potter from Liverpool Diocese, The Bishop of Bolton and others too but perhaps the most valuable aspect is having people together sharing their experiences of mission in ordinary parish contexts.

I’m Ben, married to Ruth and have two children.  We live in Didsbury, Manchester and have been in the city for about 12 years.  I’m the vicar of a church called St. James & Emmanuel and alongside that I work across the Diocese of Manchester encouraging people to think creatively about church – I’m what’s called the ‘Fresh Expressions Missioner’.

I’ve been involved in many different projects over the years and the easiest way to get to know me is to nose through the pages on the website and you’ll soon get a feel for me.  If you want to contact me then use this contact page.

Next weekend I’m really excited as we have the inaugural ‘Spirit Walk‘ in Manchester that has been developed by Frunt.  The Spirit Walk is a site specific sound installation that takes participants on a meditative journey around Manchester city centre.

In six locations around Manchester Gmex there will be six meditations being broadcast.  To hear these meditations participants will need to collect a set of headphones and a map from the ‘Spirit of Life’ stand at the Mind Body Spirit Fair in the Gmex.  A person can then go on a 30 minute pilgrimage around the city centre interacting with the urban environment and through that discovering glimmers of the Divine.

This is a project that I’ve been working on for the past six months.  The map and guide book can be downloaded.

The Spirit Walk is aimed at the spiritual searchers who will be at the MBS fair.  However, if you’re keen to participate but don’t want to pay to get into the fair then drop me an email or text and I can arrange for you to participate without having to pay to get into the MBS fair.

On the 18th December 2011 Mohamed Bouazizi a street vendor in Tunisia had his goods confiscated to the authorities, he didn’t have the right pass to sell goods and he didn’t have the money to bribe the corrupt officials. His scales were confiscated and he was reported slapped and spat on by a municipal officer. At 11:30 am he ran to the governors office to demand his scales back. When the governor refused to see him he dowsed himself with petrol, lit a match and set himself of fire. He died 18 days later…His actions were tweeted, blogged about, shared on facebook, sent by instant message and suddenly and spontaneously a movement began. People gathered to protest and the protests grew like wild fire, The Tunisian government fell, and then it spread all over the middle East, Bahrain, Yemen, Algeria, The dictators of Egypt and Libya fell and the movement still continues to this day. The Arab Spring, perhaps the most significant piece of history of 2011.

But do you ever wonder what if? What if on 18th December, Bouazizi had decided to accept the status quo. Accept the oppression, accept how things were, accept a life of exploitation and suffering. Would it have happened? Would Gadaffi still be terrorising the people of Libya? Would Egypt still be under the oppression of Mubbarak? The ripples that his self-immortalisaton started became waves and those waves are still bringing about change in the middle-East today. All catalyzed by one persons act of righteous defiance.

It takes a person to drop that pebble into the pool to create the first wave, it took Mohammed Bouazizi, it took Rosa Parks, it took Gandhi, it takes a person to catalyse a movement for change. A movement for justice and a movement for peace. It could be a simple act of righteous defiance, Rosa Parks refusing to stand up, or it maybe what the person embodies exposes the world to the possibility of a new future. Through those people, and those acts of righteous defiance the imagination is opened up to what could possibly be.

Have you ever thought about Christmas as a moment of righteous defiance? A moment where God says, no, I won’t accept the status quo, no I won’t accept that my relationship with humanity is fractured, I refuse to wait and do nothing, I refuse to be apathetic and I’m going to do something about it. I’m going to reach out to you, I’m going to send my son to be with you and my son is going to embody all that I am and all that I want for humanity.

The stone is thrown into the pond, the ripples begin. A child is born, to a virgin in a stable in Bethlehem, surrounded by rich and poor, by people of different ethnicities and different religions. The ripples grow, the child becomes a man, people follow him, the man is crucified and rises again, the church forms and then 2000 years later the ripples from that stable in Bethlehem hit you. In this place St James Didsbury, 2385 miles away from Bethlehem, and 2012 years away from that birth…the ripples hit each one of us and bring us here tonight. The ripples of an act of righteous defiance, of a God that won’t accept the status quo but want to bring about change.

And that moment of righteous defiance exposes the world and all of humanity to what could be. What does it mean for humanity to be in relationship with God, what does it mean for God’s son to walk on this earth, what does it mean for God’s son to be born in a stable in Bethlehem? That act of righteous defiance releases the imagination. It gets the whole of humanity to think about what could be and how we start to live in the new order. Bouazizi was the spark that released the imagination, but it didn’t stop there, it needed people to pick up the revolutionary spirit and continue the change that was started on that street in Tunisia. And the change that was started 2000 years ago, a change that saw a man brought into the world who loved the unloved, who healed the sick, who brought justice for the poor, who release for the oppressed and taught us to love one another still needs to be carried on today. At Christmas as we reflect on the person of Christ it is a time to release our imaginations and dream and imagine a different world, but and fundamentally to live that imagined world, so that that imagined world ceases to be a imagined one but one that is real. One where the everyday experience of the people that we encounter is marked by love.

Christmas is a time where God reaches out to us and say imagine. Imagine a better world, imagine a new future, imagine a community based on love for one another. But Christmas is also a time where God ceases to imagine and acts, he acts by sending his son who is the embodiment of that new imagined order. Amen

For the millennium myself and some friends decided to visit St Ives in Cornwall, and on the 31^st December during the day we went for a walk and the ground was wet and we walked in long grass and hence my trousers got wet.  So when returning to the cottage, that belonged to some friends of ours, I got changed and took my trousers and decided to hang them in front of the fireplace. There was a mantle piece and on the mantel piece was a pot.  I used the pot as a weight to hold my trousers up whilst drying.  The fire started to die down so my friend and I went over to the fire to stoke it, my friend moved my trousers and the pot fell – It bounced off my head and land on the stone floor smashed into hundreds of pieces…A picked up a fragment and there were some initials engraved on the fragment.  BL. And my heart missed a beat…

I knew that BL stood for Bernard Leach, arguably the most significant British potter of the last 200 years. And I’d just broken his pot…I was horrified.  The next day I went to St Ives and in the Tate was an exhibition of his pots.  The whole of St Ives felt like a shrine to the man and I had smashed his pot.

Present day St. Ives is shaped in part by Bernard Leach and his contemporaries.  The past shapes the present.  And as I’ve been reflecting on tonight I have been asking to myself is how does that which comes before us, inspire us and shape us to live in the present and also act in the future.

As I walked around St Ives.  I started to really appreciate the influence of this man and how his work and methods are shaping a whole new generation of potters and sculptures today.  I am sure that he would be delighted that that which he started has flourished and grown.

We’ve looked back this evening, 400 years of the King James Version of the Bible, 130 years of the nine lessons and carols service and a two thousand year old story of the Birth of Christ.  And that has been beautiful, but I want to ask ‘So What?’  And when I say so what, I mean how does that looking back inspire us to act in the present and work towards a better future. The Bible when translated into English was done so that ordinary people could read the word of God.  And then once they had read it, it could inspire them to act in the present and imagine an alternative future.

We look back on a story, a story of God reaching out to each one of us – and that story should empower us to act in the present. The story of the incarnation, the birth of Christ, is one where God reached out to humanity and in the reaching out there is an invitation. An invitation to walk with God to seek a better world, to seek justice for the marginalised, to offer hope for the hopeless and good news to the poor.  That is the future imagination that the incarnation brings about a future hope, and that future hope is the antithesis of modern day cynicism.

When we look back on our beautiful tradition and our evocative stories we don’t look back on them to admire them from a distance.  To leave them on a mantel piece, to be dusted down once a year then placed back up there.  Because one day something will happen, a death, a tragedy, a question that life cannot answer and that pot gets broken.

We look back on that tradition, upon that narrative of the birth of Christ and we begin to live that narrative.And by living that narrative in the present we create movement, a movement that changes the present and gives a future hope.

That pot, that potter provoked the imagination of a whole movement of British Potters and sculptures.  That pot although gone is still alive, it lives in the collective imagination of the potters sat at their wheels, shaping the next movement in British pottery.

And that story that we look back on is still alive, it is shaping my life, it is shaping the lives of the people in this church community, it provokes our imagination to dream of and work towards a better world. It shapes our collective imagination so that we seek a better world of justice and equality because Jesus sought those things first.

It’s a history that provokes our imagination and hence inspires an alternative world view, a world view that says my worth is not in my affluence, my worth is not found in my status. My worth is found in a vulnerable child born in a stable, to a fourteen year old girl surrounded by cattle and oxen. My worth is found in the person of Christ born at Christmas. Christ who in the incarnation reaches out to each one of us and says welcome, Is the same Christ who reaches out to us today and say welcome, Welcome to God’s family and welcome to a vision for the future.

P.S. I know that alongside the Beach, the other thing that we haven’t got is a a team in the champions league last 16….