- Hill Road
- Folkestone
- Kent
01303 252259
Email Us
The Messenger
Folkestone Baptist Church
Hill Rd and Capel
SUMMER ISSUE 2009
July-September
“But they that wait on the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint” Isaiah 40:31
Welcome to the summer edition of the Folkestone Baptist Messenger, covering Hill Rd and Capel. So what’s in this issue? There is feedback from the recent Baptist Assembly in Bournemouth, Mollie Messenger meets local author Pam Godden, Kath Koster writes about the remarkable lives of identical twin sisters from Ayrshire and Chris sends his Message from the Manse. We need to remember Chris and Katy in prayer as Chris prepares for his sabbatical. In Capel, Colin and Gillian are already on sabbatical and we remember them in prayer too as they take a well-earned rest!
We offer special greetings to any visitors to our church and town at this time of year. Please take our love back to your home churches and enjoy your time with us. If you live here but are new to us, please make yourself known – you are most welcome here!
Belinda Walker
Editor
Please note that the views expressed in this publication are not necessarily those of the ministers or leadership team
WISH YOU’D BEEN HERE
Belinda Walker offers some thoughts on the recent Baptist Assembly in Bournemouth
I had the honour and privilege of being your delegate at the Assembly this year. The theme was ‘Who Do We Think We Are?’ and focussed on our core values and identity in this, the 400th year of our Baptist tradition. What were my main thoughts and impressions?
President Kingsley Appiagyei
President Kingsley was commissioned and introduced to us. My impression of him is of a small, unassuming man but with a giant heart for the Kingdom. A copy of his address is available via the order form on the concourse or via the Assembly website www.baptistassembly.co.uk. Jonathan Edwards, the General Secretary, spoke warmly of him in his closing address and said ‘we should listen to this Godly man’. Amen.
PRAYER POINTERS: Please pray for our brother Kingsley as he seeks to lead us, the Baptist family, in God’s purposes for us in this coming year.
Worship
The worship was uplifting. We heard a gospel choir from President Kingsley’s church the first night – and found ourselves sitting just in front of them as our new President spoke. We were among those calling out ‘Hallelujah brother!’ and similar as he spoke. I felt right at home as my first church in London had a similar congregation. Look out for me leaping up and shouting “Preach it sister/brother! Hallelujah” during one of Katy or Chris’ sermons soon – if I pluck up the courage, which I doubt I will....
The worship band worked hard and led us in a variety of different styles during the weekend – both the lively and some more reflective songs from the Iona community.
The Seminars
I chose to attend the following
Self Worth, God’s Worth – Youth Worker Liz Etherton led us through how the media promotes a culture of negative self image, especially in the young. She encouraged us to remember how we are made in God’s image and how to encourage us in encouraging others and helping young people develop a positive image of themselves as God’s precious children
Adrian Plass – Baptists on the waterfront -The Sailors’ Society held a special event which involved the somewhat dangerous activity of eating a cream tea and listening to a talk by Adrian Plass at the same time. At one point in the proceedings you almost lost your Delegate as I almost choked on my scone. Tears of laughter are all too rare and Adrian managed to combine his humour with more serious moments as we remembered the work of the Sailors’ Society. There is more on their work in the ‘Focus On....’ feature in this issue of the Messenger
Baptist Peace Fellowship – Fellowship of Reconciliation members shared about a recent visit to Israel/Palestine. We heard stories of some brave people, both Palestinian and Israeli who were forging friendships. The thing I remember most is a sign that had been put up outside a farm where Jews and Christian and Muslim Palestinians worked together. It read “We refuse to be enemies”.
Creation Care
The assembly had a carbon offsetting scheme and also recycled the communion cups this year. There were recycling points around the halls and we were also given jute bags which we could either keep or leave at designated point to be used next year. We also heard a creation care song on the main stage. This seminar was excellent and was based on the FutureShape DVD (available to borrow from me). The website mentioned in Bookworm Corner this issue also has a list of ‘green theology’ books. This is an issue that Christians have been late coming to. If anyone has a ‘green brainwave’ about our church please talk to me, Paul Lanza or Gloria Guest.
Walking on eggshells? Jewish/Christian relations – the title said it all, we learned of how the relationship between our faiths has been characterised recently by guilt on part of the Christians and victimhood on part of the Jews. We debated how we could work closely together on issues that affect us. A lively debate broke out about whether Jewish people should be evangelised or not.
Deliberation sessions, BMS missionaries, new ministers and honouring those who have died in the last year.
We honoured our newly accredited ministers as they were presented to us on stage. They then came down from the stage and sat among us – we simply turned to those nearest and prayed. I was again amazed at our inclusive Baptist family. Those ordinary members like me had a chance to pray equally with these lovely brothers and sisters and it was not just left up to those on stage. One man was missing as he was gravely ill and was not expected to live. I forget who prayed for him but will not forget the prayer “may his journey be peaceful and his arrival joyful”.
We also had the chance to see our new and returning missionaries – including Julia! and had visual live links to some serving in dangerous and lonely places overseas.
A moving and dignified moment was when the names of those who had died and gone to meet our Lord in the last year were shown on large screen.
PRAYER POINTERS: Remember to pray for Julia and the other missionaries both new and returning. There were fewer this year so please pray for an increase in years to come. Please prayerfully consider if God may be calling you.
The deliberation session gave us two motions to vote on. Both were carried. The first called for ‘Mosquito Alarms’ to be banned. These are the audio alarms that emit a high pitched and deeply unpleasant noise which is painful for anyone under 24 to listen to. This linked in to the generally perception in the media that our young people in this country are out-of-control foul-mouthed yobs. I was proud to wave my yellow card on your behalf to pass this motion.
The second motion called for more humane treatment of asylum seekers and to confer the right to work on asylum seekers waiting longer than six months for final resolution of their case, and to bring to an end the detention of children. Once again I was pleased to be able to wave my yellow card on your behalf to pass this motion.
PRAYER POINTERS: Please pray for our young people and the families they are growing up in. Perhaps ask God to lay one particular young person on your heart and pray specifically for them.
Pray also for the chaplaincy team at Jarlswood detention centre as they battle heroically on behalf of vulnerable and frightened asylum seekers
Other highlights
Sitting down at breakfast in the hotel and finding that Graham Thomson was at the next table. He sends his love to us all.
Bumping into my old Pastors, Mike Wood and Paul Goodliff and Josephine, a good friend I had lost touch with.
All in all, a wonderful experience and I thank the church for allowing me to go as your delegate. I have every intention of going to Plymouth next year and would encourage everyone to come (well, maybe not everyone as that would be very discouraging for the person invited to preach here that weekend...). Barbara and Mick, next year’s delegates, are in for a treat!
BOOKWORM CORNER
Hello everyone. Yes, it’s me. The Bookworm!
A few people have asked me to give the website address again for the site which reviews Christian books. You can find it at www.thegoodbookstall.org.uk . It really is very good and well worth a look! There are lots of reviews and information on what’s available. It is easy to feel left out if you don’t have internet access but you can go down to the library in Grace Hill and take and the helpful staff there can show you how to use the computers there.
Have you read The Shack by William Young? It is a very powerful book in which God is encountered in an unusual way. It has generated a lot of controversy! Personally, (or should that be wormally...) I found it a deeply moving and inspiring work of fiction. Some Christians have not been comfortable with the bits of the theology but others have found it theologically sound. You can join in the debate on www.thegoodbookstall.org.uk .
Happy reading and see you in the autumn!
KATH KOSTER HAS SENT IN THIS FASCINATING ARTICLE ABOUT TWO REMARKABLE WOMEN
In 1843, identical twins Agnes and Maggie were born in Ayrshire. They grew up to be two very remarkable Victorian women. Their mother died when they were just three weeks old. Their father, a lawyer, inherited a fortune amounting to £200,000 from a cousin of his. The girls were brought up to go the Kirk every Sunday. The Minister, Mr Robertson, was noted for his learning. He was fluent in several languages and was also keen on art. He was a very close friend of the family and encouraged the girls in scholarly pursuits. From school they went to England and were ‘finished’ at a school in London.
When they were 23 their father died leaving them with no relatives nearer than America. After a suitable period of mourning they decided to travel. Having already visited France, Germany and Italy with their father, they thought of the Middle East. Taking with them a female friend, Grace, they went by train to Turkey, visited Cyprus and went up the Nile to one of the cataracts. From Egypt they went up to Jaffa from whence they rode to Jerusalem on horseback, back to Greece, Venice and Paris and so home. Too old to marry, (in those days one was ‘on the shelf’ in the twenties) what were they to do? To cut a long story short, fluent in German, Spanish, French, Greek, Hebrew and eventually Syraic (the language from which Aramaic developed) they came to Sinai and the monastery of St. Catherine where they spent much time studying and photographing ancient manuscripts.
At St. Catherine’s meals were very rough and ready, food being served on sheets of discarded manuscript. Agnes used these to eat and study at the same time. One morning her scholarly eye saw a fragment of ‘palimpsest’ (that was the name given to a piece on which further writing was superimposed) what she recognised as a verse of the Gospels. She searched and found 358 pages in Syriac glued with damp and and dirt and used her tea-kettle to separate the pages. Underlying the more recent script she found a copy of the four Gospels of very early date, possibly 4th century. It is now know as the Syriac Sinaiticus. The two ladies became honoured scholars and after many adventures they ended their days in Cambridge with a string of honours, but never having lost their simple Scottish faith.
Extremely learned, very eccentric, long-lived and wholly inseparable they died and their portraits adorn the end wall of a hall in Westminster College, Cambridge. The sisters had bought and presented the site in 1894
PRAYER POINTERS: Thank God for the gift of intellect used wisely. Thank God also for a sense of adventure which these women exhibited – we may not be called to go overseas but we can ask God for the same spirit of adventure that will enable us to go where he has called.
Kath Koster has sent in this meditation on the Lord’s Prayer which was given to her by a friend from Scotland, Janis.
THE LORD’S PRAYER
I cannot say ‘our’ if my life has no room for others and their needs
I cannot say ‘father’ if I do not demonstrate the relationship in my daily life
I cannot say ‘which art in Heaven’ if all my interests lie in earthly things
I cannot say ‘hallowed be thy name’ if I who am called by his name, am not holy
I cannot say ‘thy kingdom come’ if I do not accept God as King in my life
I cannot say ‘thy will be done’ if I resent or am disobedient to His will for me
I cannot say ‘on earth as it is in Heaven’ if I am not prepared to devote my life on earth to His service
I cannot say ‘give us this day our daily bread’ if I ignore the needs of my fellow man
I cannot say ‘forgive us our debts as we forgive others’ if I harbour a grudge against anyone
I cannot say ‘lead us not into temptation’ if I place myself where I am likely to be tempted
I cannot say ‘deliver us from evil’ if I don’t fight evil in he spiritual realm with prayer
I cannot say ‘thine is the kingdom’ if I do not give the King the obedience of a loyal subject of that Kingdom
I cannot say ‘thine is the power’ if I fear what men say or what the neighbours think
I cannot say ‘thine is the glory’ if I seek glory for myself
I cannot say ‘forever and forever’ if my horizon is bounded by the things of time
I cannot say ‘Amen’ if i do not also add ‘cost what it may, this is my prayer’
PRAYER POINTERS: Use this powerful prayer to think about, meditate on, and pray through and make your own
Message from the Manse
This quarter our pastor Chris offers these thoughts….
THE SECRET OF CONTENTMENT
A Quaker offered property to anyone who considered himself contented. When a man came to claim the house, he was asked “If you’re contented, why do you want my house?”
Contentment is a difficult thing to grasp a hold of. It’s something I’ve been struggling with over the last couple of months. We live a fast-paced life in a fast-paced world. Why? I would suggest it’s because of discontentment. We are encouraged not to be happy with the life we have. You need a new car – in fact the government will bribe you with a £3000 trade in on your old one. You need new fashion items. The eighties are back in fashion, so it’s out with crop-tops and in with leggings and pop-socks! You need a good holiday- because you’re worth it.
The problem with life this way is, we’re never happy. We can never just relax with what God has given us in life and just enjoy. Life is about being discontented and striving for more. If everyone turned around one day and said, “I am content with what I have. I won’t buy anything other than the basics for life” then our whole economy would ground to a halt!
The apostle Paul somehow found that secret. He said, in Philippians 4:11b-12 “I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances. I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want.” This is an amazing thing to say. To really be content when your neighbour turns up with a smart new car and not to secretly desire to have one too. To really be happy that your friend is in good health, and not to be moody and upset because your own health is failing. To not be thinking “I want that holiday, I want the perfect family, I want that beautiful house, that successful and soaring career. How does Paul do it? What is the secret of contentment?
Well, he goes on in Philippians 4:13: “I can do everything through him who gives me strength”. Keeping your focus on Christ helps us to gain perspective. It’s not that Christ gives Paul everything his greedy little heart desires. That’s not what Paul is saying – not for one second. Quite the opposite. Christ strengthens Paul to be able to cope when he has been stoned half to death, when there is no food in his belly. It is being strengthened by Jesus that helps Paul to be content.
The key is to keep our focus on Jesus and He will supply all our needs. Sometimes, I think the desire for more stuff comes from an insecurity within us – a feeling that if we don’t have this or that product we will be missing out, we are somehow not as good as the bloke next door. When we keep our focus on Jesus He meets our every need. When we know we are loved, accepted, forgiven we really don’t need to run after more stuff.
So,friends, the secret of true contentment? Fix your eyes on Jesus, trust him for your security.
“And the things of earth will grow strangely dim, in the light of His glory and grace”
Love and blessings
Chris
MOLLIE MESSENGER MEETS...
Dickens Corner in Dover was the venue for Mollie’s coffee and chat this quarter as she met PAM GODDEN, member at Salem (Dover Baptist). Pam is an author and has written, amongst others, Saints Divided and Saints in Peril, both about the lives of members at Salem in days gone by. She is also involved in the Good Book Library which comes to Hill Rd now six times a year and will return again on July 12th.
MM This is a lovely spot, Pam
PG: It is, Mollie. I like to sit here and watch the comings and goings here in the Market Square
MM: Yes, and you are a natural observer of people, Pam. I read your novel, Saints Divided and felt the characterisation was very strong. I felt I really knew the characters.4
PG: Thank you Mollie. I have always been keen on writing and English. I am surprised I passed my maths exam at school as I was always writing stories during maths lessons!
MM: Creativity is a gift. I really think we should encourage and nurture it in everyone including our children and young people. Have you written any other books, apart from Saints Divided and Saints in Peril?
PG: I have Mollie. I have written several. The two novels really came out of an idea that I had after our minister suggested to me that I should write a history of our church at Salem. I think he was expecting a 30-page leaflet but he ended up with a book! Of course, part of the research showed a major spat within the congregation and it was this that led me to write Saints Divided.
MM: Yes, I would certainly recommend it and the follow up. Two good sources would be our own church bookstall at Hill Rd or Vine Books in town. But of course they could also borrow them from the Good Book Library – the one that comes to our church every couple of months now. You are involved in that, aren’t you, Pam?
PG: I am, Mollie. I love reading and books and so a small group of us from the Dover area and your church have been travelling round our various churches with our crates of books, CDs and DVDs. The books are stored at Salem, but it’s a joint venture really.
MM: Hm, yes. We are having the library again at Hill Rd on July 12th. (both sip from coffee cups)
MM: Have you always lived in Dover, Pam?
PG: No, I moved here as an adult and became a member at Salem as I had always attended a Baptist Church. I arrived about a month after the old church had closed down so missed the opportunity to go in see the ‘old place’. It was demolished and Boots in now on that site. If I had known I would be writing novels set in the old church I would have made more of an effort to ask to go in and see it.
MM: Yes, a pity...
PG: Still, we are now established at the new site at Maison Dieu Rd.
MM: It’s a nice building, Pam. Things move on. Church buildings....
PG.....styles of worship.....
MM Yes, that leads me to my last question, Pam. I like to ask people if they have a favourite hymn or worship song that speaks to them in some way.
PG: Ooh, that’s difficult, choosing just one (pauses). Oh yes, I really like Come Down O Love Divine. It has poetry, and I think this is often lacking in the more modern songs. They have excellent words but often it is the poetry that is missing, I feel.
MM: Yes, worship styles are often the subject of debate.
PG: Mind you, the older songs are not necessarily better. It’s just that the old ones we still sing have stood the test of time. There were some pretty dire old ones, but we no longer sing them!
MM: Thanks for those wise words, Pam!
PRAYER POINTERS
Thank God for gifted writers, artists and musicians who use their talents to further the Kingdom. Pray that those in the congregation, children included, will nuture their gift and use it wisely.
Please pray for our brothers and sisters in Salem, Dover.
Think about using creativity as a way to prayer.
When there is light in the soul, there is beauty in the person
When there is beauty in the person, there is harmony in the home
When there is harmony in the home, there is order in the nation
When there is order in the nation, there is peace on the earth
Old proverb, source unknown
Jesus said
“I am the light of the world”
PRAISE GOD!
Praise God, praise God
Praise him when you feel happy
Praise him when you feel low
Praise him, praise him
Honour God, honour God
Honour him with your whole being
Honour him all your life
Honour him, honour him
Thank you to our mystery correspondent for sending in this poem
Focus on….
THE SAILORS’ SOCIETY
The Sailors’ Society exists to enrich and enhance the lives of seafarers throughout the world. At the heart of the Society are a dedicated group of Port Chaplains who serve all seafarers regardless of rank, nationality, ethnicity or faith.
The Port Chaplains visit thousands of ships during the year. When ships dock, they are often in a highly merchandised area, far from local communities and churches. The opportunity to go ashore is very limited. The desire of seafarers to attend a place of worship is made possible with the support of a Port Chaplain.
The objective of the Sailors’ Society is to replace isolation with belonging.