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The inspiration for the event came from seeing many great ideas that have been brought to life by members of ChristChuch over the last few years. A common pattern emerged; someone with a good idea connected with others with the resources and skills to help turn the idea into a reality. Why not catalyze this process, by giving people a platform to pitch their ideas and what they need to take it to the next stage?
 
We decided on simple criteria; the ideas had to be ‘good’ - reflecting Kingdom values, with a clear aim to serve society. As soon as word got out about the event, an amazing deluge of good ideas began.
 
So, on a mild Friday evening in January, 12 pitchers were given five minutes each to pitch their idea. The pitches were as brilliant as they were diverse - from dad-oriented baby-wear, through decor-friendly fire blankets, to franchises for ex-offenders and food vouchers for the homeless. The venue - the crypt of St James’ Clerkenwell - could have been straight out of Dragon’s Den itself. Around 80 people came to hear the pitches and to offer their advice and support over a glass of wine afterwards.
 
Thanks to great pitchers and a great audience, the feedback has been really encouraging. The pitchers are now pursuing multiple offers of help, contacts and even funding. We hope to run a similar event in a few months time - and we’re also thinking about other ways to support those who are already pursuing their good ideas.
 
This initiative works really well in a big church that is already buzzing with ideas, but there’s no reason a few churches in an area couldn’t get together and organise a similar event, pooling resources across congregations, and helping people find like-minded others to connect with and see their ideas take shape. If you’re thinking of doing something similar, you might find these guidelines that we gave to pitchers useful.
 
If you’d like to see the idea in action, look out for it in one of the breaks at this year’s Everything conference - we’ll be hosting a mini-Pitch event to inspire you and hopefully make some more great connections. Don’t forget to book into the conference in advance to save 20% on the ticket price. Now that’s a Good Idea if ever I heard one.

The Everything Dinner draws together people from all walks of life who are passionate about seeking the flourishing of our society, for a three-course meal in a central London location. Renowned author, social analyst and public speaker Os Guinness will be joining us for the evening and speaking on “Christian influence in the public sphere”. This will be an inspirational evening with opportunities to ask questions, connect with others, share stories and see the potential we have to make a difference together in our nation.
 
This year’s venue will be the Lime Street Exchange, situated in the heart of the City of London, within easy reach of several mainline and underground stations. It takes place on Friday, 16 March at 7:00pm.
 
Follow this link to book your place and choose from a selection of delicious menu options. Please note that this ticket does not give you entry to the Everything Conference on the following day. Tickets for the conference are booked separately through this link.
 
Places at the dinner are very limited, so book your place as soon as possible.

Alasdair Coles has had a unique career path. An academic neurologist, conducting research into multiple sclerosis in one of Europe’s finest teaching hospitals, he has recently been ordained in the Anglican church. Alasdair’s experience as a Christian in neurology has been a very positive one, and as he begins to minister in both the church and the workplace he is discovering some valuable connections between faith and science.
 
Being Human: More than a Brain
Revd Dr Alasdair Coles, Neurologist, University of Cambridge & Addenbrookes Hospital
 
Spirituality and the Soul
Ever since I stopped wanting to fly fighter planes, at around the age of fifteen, I’ve wanted to be a neurologist. I specifically wanted to work with people who have diseases of the brain. The thing that has always interested me is finding out how much the physical structure of the brain can explain our behaviour.
 
In a church environment my interest in the brain and its behaviour is obviously out of the ordinary compared to a lot of ministers. I often talk about my amazement at the way the brain is put together, and in a pastoral context I’m much more open to the body influencing our state of mind. One of the attractions of the Christian faith for me is that it’s ‘embodied’. The Bible recognises that we are bodies as well as rational moral beings.
 
We are dependent on our brains to be conscious and aware, to reflect on ourselves, to have moral reasoning and to have desires and hopes. We have a brain that has the capacity for religious experience. We may or may not find ourselves in an environment (social or biological) which allows this religious expression to thrive. Each person then has the ability to decide for themselves whether or not to allow this spiritual awareness to flourish and at that point God can intervene. When you deal with someone who’s struggling, then looking at their physical state is absolutely as important as their spiritual and mental state. I think that is a very important first start for tackling problems: staying fit, getting rest, not drinking too much, not abusing drugs. You’ve got to make the best of that person’s brain and body and then they’re giving themselves the best chance to be spiritually aware.
 
I believe it is a mistake to say the ‘soul’ is an independent entity that tells the brain what to think. It is also a mistake to say that the soul is nothing but the brain and that everything a person does is explained by the neurons (brain cells) themselves. It’s obvious to me that that isn’t true or at least not true in any helpful ordinary way. Consider: how do we best explain personality? How do we explain human behaviour? You could explain a painting on the basis of the chemicals that make up the oil paints. That would be a perfectly true explanation but most people would find that thoroughly unsatisfactory as an explanation of a painting. They would want to say, ‘There’s more to it than that, someone made this, it has a significance that is dependent on the oils but ultimately it has nothing to do with them.’ Human thoughts and behaviour are dependent upon, but in some way separate from, the material of the brain. You can either believe that God made us or that evolution made us or both, but we are made for a purpose.
 
Faith and Work
My hospital community lacks prominent Christian voices. It’s interesting that the hospital chaplains will tell you that the group of people they have most difficulty approaching are the ‘alpha male’ senior doctors. We are a very distinct tribe and closed off. Academic neurologists are a very unspiritual group of people. It is very unusual for a neurologist to be a credited minister, and religion and spirituality are not welcomed as topics of conversation. Although I’ve never encountered any hostility, I’ve certainly met with curiosity but rarely positive support. The most common reaction is lack of interest or a feeling that this is slightly eccentric. However, one person has made a great deal of difference to my faith in the workplace. I am very fortunate to have a friend and colleague who is a strong Christian. We agreed a few years ago to meet together to read the Bible and pray once a week. Then we decided to open up to all Christians in our workplace. Now up to fifteen people meet once a week to study a Bible passage and pray. We pray for the hospital, for the people working here and for the patients. Leaving aside what that means for the institution and whether there should be more of it, for me it’s powerful that I bring my faith to work and that people around me know that I’m a Christian so I can be held accountable for that.
 
The ‘added value’ of having a faith comes in lots of different ways. One of the things it has done is to make me ask if there is a neurological basis for religious experience. How do we fit faith into the working brain and at what level? These issues have never been a problem for my own beliefs. I think if anything my faith has encouraged me to keep asking questions, because at heart I think I’m just a child who’s enthralled with things. I have come to understand that feeling of pleasure and joy as a gift from God and an encouragement for me to carry on.
 
My interest in the structure of the brain and how it affects behaviour is stronger now than it ever has been. I would say that my faith encourages me to look into ‘the book of life’ and read the work of God. Neurology is what I like and what I’m good at, and I think God shares that pleasure with me. It’s never been a problem for me and I’m always surprised when I meet people who talk about conflict between the two.
 
 
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This is an extract from Test of FAITH: Spiritual Journeys with Scientists, Ruth Bancewicz (ed.), (Milton Keynes: Paternoster, 2009/Eugene, Oregon: Wipf and Stock, 2010). Used with permission of the publishers and the Test of FAITH project.  www.testoffaith.com

But these are no ordinary fashionistas. In many ways they contradict the stereotype of the fashion industry being vapid and shallow. The pair attend Alliance member church Holy Trinity Brompton and have a deep sense of God’s calling them into this industry.
 
Their luxury clothing brand has featured in the media spotlight in recent months. Their popularity was also boosted when the Duchess of Cambridge wore one of their stunning gowns at a charity event. “We’ve been quite fortunate with the press,” says Natasha. “People love a brand with a story.”
 
The name Beulah is a biblical term that means ‘to come from a place of darkness into one of light’; and that is what the girls are trying to do with their fashion brand. Natasha and Lavinia set up Beulah London after returning from a trip to India, where they became aware of the horrors of human trafficking while working with rape victims in the slums of Delhi and Kolkata.
 
Beulah London employs some of these women in India to create needlework for the products. “We’re trying to make sure that the production is ethical,” says Lavinia. “For us, it’s really key that we are transparent in what we’re doing. Our end goal is to have the girls involved in production.”
 
Lavinia and Natasha certainly look the part. But the fashion industry is not where they thought they would end up. Lavinia is a theology graduate, while Natasha previously worked at auctioneers Sotheby’s and for Al Gordon, worship leader at HTB.
 
Giving up full-time employment to start a fashion label was a daunting prospect, but, as Natasha explains: “We both had to be obedient and listen to what God called us into doing. It was incredibly risky and quite a scary thing to plunge ourselves into, but I think He’s really blessed our obedience in that.”
 
I’m surprised at how candid they are about their faith. They give glory to God for the business’s popularity and dotted around their office in Parsons Green are Bible verses and words of inspiration.
 
They are just as open with the secular press, who often focus on their Christianity in newspaper articles. It’s strange to hear about faith within fashion, but they are up for the challenge of being salt and light.
 
“We’re called to be in the world and not of it,” says Lavinia. “You can’t shed light in dark areas if you don’t go into those areas… People are really drawn to our difference and our faith is quite a conversation starter as people are always intrigued by it.”
 
The girls really want to bring hope through their fashion label. They have recently joined the UN’s Blue Heart Campaign against human trafficking and a proportion of the profits from each product they sell will go towards the initiative.
 
“Our whole aim is to make women feel beautiful both inside and out,” says Lavinia. Little touches, such as inscribing many of their items with, “Love like you’ve never been hurt, dance as though no-one is watching, sing as though no can hear you,” means they are doing just that.
 
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This article has been copied with permission from Evangelical Alliance UK and was originally published in Idea Magazine.

What is Enter the Pitch?
 
It’s a competition to win £25,000 production budget and also a load of professional help to make a short film drawing inspiration from the Bible.
 
Where did the idea come from?
 
In 2007, Bible Society was working on a campaign in Manchester to engage young people. We wanted to come up with a film concept and that led to the idea of bringing together a group of people to support and initiate a competition. The connection between the Bible and Hollywood has been very strong, right from the word go, both in creating historical dramas and in terms of shaping the arc and the story line of many different stories. There are lots more cracking stories in there, though, that have never been made into epic films.
 
We wanted to see what people’s ideas were and then raise the game. One of the challenges for anybody who’s trying to progress in filmmaking is finding the funding to really raise their game. What is lacking in the film industry is people with pots of this kind of money. Offering a prize of £25,000 is about substantially raising the game to a industry level for short film making.
 
So where have you been able to get that kind of money from?
 
Our funding is drawn from a number of sources and individuals, I won’t state who the individuals are, but we’re very grateful for their support. The organisations that are currently participating in this are Pinewood Studios, The Grand, Clitheroe which has a solid link across music, theatre and cinematic arts – and crucially Bible Society. We’re increasingly seeing wider interest in participating in our project and we welcome and invite that.
 
It’s not all about the money though, is it, you’ve got some amazing people on board as judges, helping to make the films and giving of their time and expertise to the winners – Nev Pierce, Nick Park, David Suchet, David Oyelowo, Stuart Hazeldene and X-Men producer Ralph Winter to name just a few. How does a guy working for a charity based in Swindon manage to get these people to give such a huge amount of their time?
 
I am really thankful for the way this network has come together. I already knew Nick Park [creator of Wallace and Gromit], and without that, almost certainly getting contact with some of these people would have been very, very tricky indeed. I also owe a huge amount to Mark Blaney and Jackie Sheppard of Footprint Films who have been with me every step of the way as consultants to the project. They have been outstanding and tireless supporters of the project, bringing feature-level business skills to the short film format.  I’m also grateful to Nev Pierce [Editor-at-large of EMPIRE magazine], who was a contact through a former colleague. I’ve gone to these people because I’m interested in their work, and am committed to working professionally and at a proper standard with integrity. We’ve had to work slowly, building the relationships, the contacts, the networks that add up until the point where you have a certain momentum and others are able to join in.
 
For example, the screenwriter Stuart Hazeldene is on the panel this year, he joined us after David Oyelowo, on the panel in 2010, invited him to join us. 
 
In such a relationally-based industry, it has been important that the people who work with us have enjoyed it; they’ve found that it’s been encouraging to them and a positive experience. They’ve seen that we’re serious about what we’re doing; we’re not just trying to get a bit of free polemic or using it for a didactic purpose, but are genuinely interested in the process of creating something excellent, and just happen to have a particular source of inspiration.
 
Christian films tend not to do very well in the UK. Is part of the goal of Enter the Pitch to try to change that?
 
We’re not about making specifically Christian films. In fact our film makers are not necessarily Christians or of any faith disposition, and we welcome, and have welcomed, people of all backgrounds to participate in the competition. We are interested in the genuine dramatic human nature of the stories in scripture, and in drawing people to something which is enduring and universal. I firmly believe that film makers are the very best story tellers and are the very best at identifying those enduring human stories in a way that speaks to a new generation.
 
Can you explain how the process works?
 
We’re looking for a 2-minute pitch for a short film. To pitch you must upload a short film onto the website selling your idea. (The site will open to submissions in summer 2012. Register on the site to hear when dates are announced).
 
A panel will review all the pitches and create a shortlist which will then be uploaded onto the website. The public then have one month to watch a minimum of six pitches and vote for a minimum of three. The reason we do this is to ensure that people vote on the quality of the pitches, not just for their friends.
 
The top twenty pitches are then viewed by the judging panel, who whittle them down to ten. These ten finalists are invited to come to Pinewood Studios for a weekend to present their pitches live to the panel. We’re pretty unique in being a live pitching competition, and for those ten, the prize really is the opportunity to simply put their idea in front of a professional panel in the industry. You can’t buy 20 minutes with people at this level; you have to have shown your merit to get this far, and the experience people have gained from it has been a benefit in and of itself.
 
The judges then select a final three, who are invited to stay on and give a longer pitch the following day. Interestingly, our top three pitchers over the last two years have all gone away the night before and come back with a more thoroughly worked up and developed proposal. They have shown themselves to be adaptable to the critique from the panel. It’s a very creative and consultative process as well as obviously being quite nerve-wracking and testing. It means, though, that those who go through to the second day of the final weekend actually have shown their ability to address the weaknesses that have been uncovered in their pitch and take it to another level. That’s part of the business as well. If you’re going to a studio to pitch an idea anywhere in the industry, those kind of skills need to be developed, and they’re not necessarily skills that people learn in film colleges and places where they are honing their practical film making skills.
 
Wow, that’s an intensive process. It’s no wonder you’re able to come out with such high-quality films. What has happened to Simeon Lumgair and Rob McLellan since they won the 2009 and 2010 competitions?
 
Simeon has got several film festivals coming up, one based in Toronto, one in India and one in China, and he is working on a number of projects he’s got on the slate as well as running his film company, Quirky Motion.
 
Rob is just at the beginning of his year, he’s only just entering Rahab into competitions now, so we will see what the festival circuit looks like for him. He has had one invitation to screen already, so that’s looking very positive. He has also received an invitation to consider directing a feature in America as a result of his trip out there [as part of his prize], and has received a number of other professional approaches. So for Rob it looks a very, very positive year coming, though it’s always difficult to predict exactly how it will fall out. We are currently exploring the development of the Rahab short as a feature, following particular interest from the industry.
 
That’s amazing, so it really can launch someone into a career in films!
 
Yes, I’ve got a video of Rob in Hollywood, after we’d taken him to meet with the people at Industrial Light and Magic, and he’s really excited. He says, “You win the competition and that’s just the start. It changes your life forever!”
 
So for anyone considering entering in 2012, what are your top tips for making a stand-out pitch?
 
My top tip is that story is key. Make sure that your pitch really conveys your story, whether you do that by speaking to the camera or by showing a clip of what you think it’ll feel like or even by doing just story boards, you have to above all be telling us what is your compelling story. If you have not read Save the Cat by Blake Snyder you could do far worse than to start with that excellent book. Snyder would tell you that if you can’t sell your film with the title and the log line then you haven’t got it yet. With only two minutes to pitch, that is advice well worth following.
 
Secondly, think about how you change the context from how the original story was told to a more contemporary context. There are various techniques that people have used to avoid some of the more difficult comparatives, so horror or science-fiction genres enable people to leap to a different context and retell the story in a new way.
 
My third tip is avoid all polemic. It never works, whether you’re trying to make a point about how miserable and horrible this book is, or when it becomes nothing but a sermon on screen. Neither of those things belong in our competition. We’re interested in good human stories that have a enduring relevance.
 
Finally, I really think comedy hasn’t been plundered enough. It’s a natural human reaction to laugh at things we find difficult, and sometimes it’s a good way of exploring what we feel about those things. There is some laughter to be had at all the strange moments in the Bible.
 
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The winner of Enter the Pitch 2011 has just been announced and his project is now in development for a shoot later in the year. Submissions for the 2012 competition will open in summer 2012. Visit the website and register to be kept in touch with the key dates, but don’t wait until then to start finding your story and filming your pitch.
 
Main picture: After the announcement of the winner of The Pitch 2011: Right to Left: Winner Tim Bassford, runner up Jodi De Souza, Judge Nick Park (creator of Wallace and Gromit), Steve Lancaster (representing one of the sponsors: The Grand, Clitheroe), runner up Carolyn Goodyear and Producer for The Pitch Luke Walton.

Picasso, speaking of the creative process, once said “I dream my painting, then I paint my dream”. Our nation will benefit hugely from those who will dream big and then follow the dreams that God gives them, so I want to ask you: What’s your dream?
 
The dreaming process is incredibly important. Without it we spend a lot of time and energy on things that neither fulfil us nor make the unique difference that God designed us to make. So take a minute to ask yourself, what is it that God has put on your heart? What would be your contribution to God’s mission?
 
Here are a couple of signposts that can help indicate whether you’re on the right track:
 
It will be fun. Whatever your contribution to God’s mission is to be, it will be great, huge, enormous fun for you! You should pinch yourself from time to time that you’re really allowed to serve God and do this. It may mean that there are days when you sleep less or get up early because you’ve found something that demands your attention, your energy, your passion and your life. Eric Liddell, the Olympic Athlete profiled in the film Chariots of Fire, expressed it like this: “God made me fast. And when I run I feel His pleasure.”
 
It will be worth sacrificing for. When you’re following your dream, you’ll find you are willing to sacrifice things you never thought you could give up. There may be times where you’ll take a job with a lower salary, you might live somewhere you never thought you’d live, or work with people you never thought you would work with. Any time you get a bigger vision you’ll find that suddenly there are things you’ll sacrifice that you never would have done otherwise.
 
It will use your gifts. Do you know what your gifts are? Do you know yourself? There are some people who are really energised by being around people – they wake up talking in the morning, talk all day, and go to bed talking! They just love interacting with people. Whatever their contribution is, in their part of God’s mission, it is with people.
 
Others love organising things. If they go to an event that is badly organised, it frustrates them, and they struggle to concentrate on what is being said because of how it is organised. If that’s the case for you, then you need to be finding your part of God’s mission, then getting involved in the organisation and the running of it. It should fit with your gifts.
 
It is important to know who you are and where your gifts lie, and also to understand that no big dream has ever been implemented by just one person. As you start to dream, it’s easy to think ‘I’m the key player in this task’, but that is not always the case. William Wilberforce is the name we associate with the abolition of the slave trade, but without the great team he had around him – famously known as the Clapham Sect – bringing their money, their influence and their gifts to bear on the situation, he would not have achieved the great victory he did.
 
Remember too that your walk with God is as much about the person you become as the goals you achieve. Ireneaus said “The glory of God is a man fully alive”. When you’re living in your dream, having great fun, feeling God’s pleasure, that is when you will bring most glory to Him. And that of course is our ultimate aim.
 
So what steps should you take?
Firstly, try to get a clear sense of the end goal, even if that is 20 or 30 years away. It is very important that our churches have some men and women with what one writer calls ‘big, hairy, audacious goals’.
 
Don’t over-worry about getting the details precisely right, because it will develop over time. Nevertheless, without a clear goal, you will be unable to take any useful steps, or to share your vision with others and get them on board.
 
Secondly, ask yourself ‘What can I do tomorrow to make a step towards it?’ Knowing the destination you’re heading towards is important, but sometimes people get so focussed on the end goal that they never get going. The only way to get there is to start doing something.
 
I once had a meeting with Patrick Dixon, an amazingly prolific author and business consultant, often described as a ‘Futurist’. I asked him how he managed to achieve so much. He told me: “Every morning I get up and ask myself ‘What can I do that will bring the most glory to God in the next ten minutes?’ and I do it. As soon as I’ve done it, I ask the question again, and I do that, then I do the next thing, and so on.”
 
My encouragement to you would be to think about what you can do to work towards your goal in the next 24 hours. Maybe it’s dropping an email to someone whose advice you need to get, or making a phone call, or booking a place on a course you think would really help you. Decide what that thing is, then do it. And when you’ve done that, think of what the next thing is and do it. It’s vital that we learn to live with what Martin Luther King called “the fierce urgency of now”.
 
Thirdly, don’t let fear shape you. Decide not to procrastinate or give in to fear or insecurity. Or to put it the other way around: challenge fear. If there’s something you know would move you closer towards your goal but you’re tempted to let fear get in the way of doing it, face up to that fear, and do it anyway.
 
If you were to do even one thing a week that makes you scared, but would take you another step towards your part of God’s mission, you would be amazed at the progress you could make in a single year.
 
At the Everything conference on 17 March 2012 we will be hearing from and about several people who have dared to dream big, then faced their fears and followed the dream. They are people who have found their place in God’s mission and are making a remarkable difference as a result.
 
Tickets on the door will be £25, but booking in advance gives you 20% off that price. Follow this link and your ticket will cost just £20. Hurry though, there are a limited number of tickets available, and when they’re gone, they’re gone.
 
Why not make booking your ticket the one thing you do today to move you nearer to your big, hairy, audacious goal? You won’t regret it.

Medellín, Columbia, was once known as the murder capital of the world, with gang violence fuelled by drug-trafficking and controlled by a deadly mafia. Crime and social breakdown were the trademarks of the city, and to many the situation must have seemed hopeless. Yet today Medellín is a popular tourist destination, having undergone what has been described as a ‘dramatic transformation’. The key? An improved transport system.
 
This report from the BBC in summer 2010 identifies a vastly-improved metro system and a cable car as central to the regeneration of the city. Both have made it easier for poorer residents to travel into the business centre from their favelas on the hills surrounding the city. “If the view isn’t spectacular enough for you,” comments the reporter, “You can always borrow poetry and literature from one of the Metro’s four libraries.” Tourists now visit the former no-go areas, while residents are able to travel much further afield to find work.

A succession of visionary local leaders set about removing the intimidation and violence that were part and parcel of the drug trade here. Their main aim was to connect the mountainside slums with the rest of the city.

   
After putting the Metro into place, Mayor Sergio Fajardo moved onto phase 2 of his plan: to ensure that the city’s most beautiful buildings were situated in the poorest areas. State of the art schools, parks, museums and libraries bring in the tourists, but also encourage aspiration in the slums’ young people, to such an extent that “Medellín has become an example of how urban transformation based on good architecture can reshape the mentality of its inhabitants.”
 
“From the time I was a child, it was clear to me what aesthetics meant as a tool for social transformation, as a message of inclusion,” Fajardo explained in an interview with architect Giancarlo Mazzanti, “Underneath it all is the most important word in all of those urban interventions in which architecture plays an important role: dignity… The poor are habitually given crumbs, but our proposal was to give them the very best. We had to break away and show another way.”
 
The whole article is well-worth a read, as it gives a fascinating insight into the heart of a man who sought social justice for the poorest of his city, and set processes in motion which are well on the way to achieving that goal.
 
Farjado’s tenure as mayor ended in 2007, but his legacy lives on, and this Christmas the poor of the Comuna 13 district were given a new gift – a series of outdoor escalators scaling the 384m (1,260ft) hillside and saving them a climb equivalent to 28 flights of stairs - daunting enough at the best of times, but soul-destroying to face at the end of a long day’s work.
 
Medellín’s leaders have been tough on crime and on criminals, but they have recognised that reducing crime-rates is about far more than simply fighting crime. It requires taking a good, hard look at the bigger picture and making changes across the board, often to things which seem to have little immediate bearing on the issues in hand.
 
The transformation of a community requires every inhabitant of that community to be treated – and regarded – as a valuable participant in its flourishing. A giant escalator may not be the answer to every city’s problems, but it meets the needs of Comuna 13. What is the big need in your community? What could you do to meet that need, and to restore dignity and hope to those who need it the most?

However, in an increasingly sexually progressive culture, where there is more and more pressure for SRE (Sex and Relationships Education) to be a value-free/ unbiased/ neutral/ information only, activity, ‘religious’ teaching on sexuality can often be viewed as being intrusive, overly moralistic, ‘sex-negative’ and out-dated.
 
It is against this backdrop that, in 2005, a production company set out to see if doing things the ‘God-way’ still had any relevance, in a brave 3-part BBC series. They found Christian Youth Workers, Rachel Gardner and Dan Burke and together created and filmed the very first Romance Academy project for twelve teenagers from North London. It ran for five months, consisted of 2-hour weekly sessions and encouraged the young people to abstain from sexual activity for the duration of the project (through a joint pledge), in order to explore the value of relationships and each other.
 
The result?
 
Well, let’s just say that 6 years later, Romance Academy is still going strong. It is now a registered charity training and equipping other youth workers and working in different contexts across the country. We passionately believe that the world is built on the success and failure of our relationships, which is why our material is built around biblical wisdom for relationships: faithfulness, love and commitment – virtues that are vital for human flourishing. Whilst there is no explicit Christian teaching in our material, our faith still informs what we do.

As Sex Educators, we want young people not only to be informed but also empathetic: to think, feel and care about themselves and each other – to see the bigger picture. In order for us to do this even better, we feel that there needs to be a greater focus in wider SRE on the spiritual dimension. Sex is after all, more than simply a physical act.
 
Spirituality is about the cultivation of the inner world that encourages reflection, imagination, and the development of moral character. Whether religiously tethered or not, it engages young people’s creativity and enables them to deal with issues on a personal level – providing a framework for understanding the purpose and meaning of sex and opening up discussion about identity.
 
Editor of the Pacific News, Kathie Dobie, puts it like this: ‘‘Who’d have thought that teenagers talking about sex would end up talking about their souls…’cos that’s what they’re talking about isn’t it?  Not the adventure of skin on skin…but something bigger than themselves to live for.”
 
For that reason, it is not uncommon to hear reports from some of our Christian RA leaders that conversations about sex have lead to conversations about faith. As we all know, life is a journey. At times we need to be told where we’re going wrong and at other times we need understanding and companionship for the road. Romance Academy wants to help young people towards a greater understanding of themselves and so has deliberately designed a project that facilitates big discussion and creates space for journeying and exploration. In a sense, meeting young people where they’re at and talking about issues to do with sexuality, will always mean that spirituality is never far behind, we just don’t choose to start there.

Fundamentally, RA believes that good SRE should be about the heart, as much as it is about the parts and helping young people have access to people, places and projects that alleviate some of pressure to be sexually active can be a lifeline. Good Faith and Good Sex both depend on this belief–that each one of us is free. Free to say no or yes. Free to be ourselves, free to love, free to have faith.
 
Romance Academy’s big vision is to break the cycle of damaging relationships. Practically, we would love to be in touch with/train more leaders to engage with the hot topics. We think it’s important that the church engages with this stuff and we’d love, one day, for every young person in the UK to be within 10 miles of an Academy. Since our re-launch in January 2011 we have licenced around 80 organizations to use our material, with 2012 looking set to be even bigger. We are passionate about partnership and believe that joined up thinking across the secular/sacred divide, can ensure that a generation of young people are able to embrace their self-worth, appreciate their interconnectedness and exercise their freedom to make choices that don’t damage themselves or others.

Meanwhile, other members of the family were sending people out across the world, planting churches and winning the lost in many other nations. What a great family! And what a great summary of the heart of the Everything conference.

We are thrilled to be welcoming Dr Os Guinness, a direct descendent of this family, as our keynote speaker in 2012. Os will be giving us some practical ways in which believers can connect with and influence their world, and through interviews and short videos we will hear the fascinating stories of others putting this into action, including:

Award-winning comedian Paul Kerensa, a script-writer of the hit comedy show Miranda, explaining how a Christian can bring something of God into a secular comedy-writing team;
 
Three businessman-brothers telling us about the really innovative way they are fighting the sex-trade;
 
Finding out why a small group of people have committed to live in an inner-city community for a number of decades and how they are seeking to bring about change within that community;
 
And much more!

I will also be speaking, and we will complete the package with Spirit-filled worship, prayer and ministry. It’s shaping up to be an amazing day.

Whatever you are passionate about, Everything 2012 has inspiration, ideas and tools you can put into practice in your world – you don’t want to miss it. Advance tickets are on sale now for just £20 (tickets on the door will cost £25), so click here to book, then spread the word.

Heart and Mind: Understanding Science and Faith
By Deborah B. Haarsma, Associate Professor in Physics & Astronomy, Calvin College, Michigan

It’s almost a universal human experience to look up at the stars in the dark night sky and say, ‘Wow, that’s amazing! That’s beautiful!’ But as a Christian, I have a deeper experience. I not only see the wonder and the vastness of the universe but see a connection back to the Creator who made it. I believe that the God of the Bible created all that we see in the whole universe and part of what God has commanded us to do is to study and take care of it.

As an undergraduate I majored in physics and music. Then I went on to do a PhD in astrophysics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Boston.

I see the fact that we can do science at all as a tremendous testimony of God’s faithfulness: the laws of physics are stable in every time and place where we test them. There’s a great passage in the Bible (Jer. 33:25), where God says he has “established my covenant with day and night and the fixed laws of heaven and earth…” God is speaking to the nation of Israel and points to the fixed laws of nature as a testimony of how faithful he’s going to be to his people. The only reason that physics works at all is that experiments are repeatable, and the only reason they’re repeatable is because God is faithful in governing the universe.

I can understand how some scientists look at the natural world and decide not to believe in God, because I don’t believe that nature gives us proof of God. There are a few scientists that have come to faith because science pointed them that way but I think for most of us it was something in our personal lives. It was a person we met, it was seeing Christians in action, it was finding that Christianity explains human nature, it was sensing the presence of God. These non-scientific arguments are more important in making a religious commitment than logic and scientific evidence.

It’s unfortunate that both the Bible and science have been hijacked at different times. There are people who will take scientific evidence and say, ‘We have a scientific explanation for X, and therefore God is not involved in X and we don’t need God.’ There are other people who say, ‘Science can’t explain X, so God must be involved and that’s proof of God.’ The two sides argue against each other, driving each other to more extreme statements. I think both sides are completely wrong. Both make the assumption that a scientific explanation is opposed to God’s involvement. In the Bible, though, God is described as in charge of every part of the physical world in regular patterns. In my view, science is merely describing how God works in nature. God is also present in the X that science doesn’t understand yet but it’s foolish to use that as proof of God’s existence. God wouldn’t disappear as soon as a scientific explanation for X is found.

Everybody brings their own perspective to science, so it’s impossible to have pure scientific results without any other influence. I think most scientists today see science that way: as a human activity. We talk about ‘The standard model of particle physics’ or ‘The big bang theory’ or ‘The theory of general relativity.’ We say ‘model’ and ‘theory’ instead of ‘law’ because we know that we don’t have it all figured out yet. So how do we know that the results of science are reliable at all?

Science functions as a community, with people from different philosophical or religious backgrounds working together. In my research I’ve collaborated with people of many different belief systems. We can work together because we all recognise the worth of this kind of investigation. All scientists share certain philosophical beliefs: that the universe is regular in its operation; that there are regular laws; that humans are capable of understanding and describing those laws; that we need to do experiments to test those laws and make sure our understanding is correct. We might all come to those beliefs from a different angle. I come to them because I believe in the Christian God who faithfully governs the universe. An atheist might choose to believe them just because they seem to work. We can overlap in those beliefs even while disagreeing about other things, and where we overlap we’re all doing science on basically the same playing field.

If many scientists with different viewpoints can get together and come to the same conclusion, that gives you some sense that they are probably on the right track. It is unlikely that they are all biased in the same way. The scientific process, including the way that scientific papers are reviewed, helps us overcome biases and get at something closer to the truth. There’s a similar process in biblical scholarship, where different scholars share their work or work together. Christians read the Bible in different ways and see different meanings in the same passage, so not everybody is right about their own interpretation. The practice of correcting and challenging each other helps them come to a better understanding of Scripture.

I believe that God would not say something through the Bible that contradicts what he reveals though the created world. The conflict comes at the level of human interpretation. We could be wrong in how we interpret the Bible or wrong in our scientific interpretation of nature (or both!). As Christians, we can’t deal with conflicts by throwing out science or ignoring parts of the Bible because we believe God speaks through both. Instead, our role is to continue to investigate both aspects of God’s revelation and keep looking for that underlying truth.

This is an extract from Ruth Bancewicz (ed.), Test of FAITH: Spiritual Journeys with Scientists (Milton Keynes: Paternoster, 2009/Eugene, Oregon: Wipf and Stock, 2010). Used with permission of the publishers and the Test of FAITH project.  www.testoffaith.com

Heart and Mind: Understanding Science and Faith
By Deborah B. Haarsma, Associate Professor in Physics & Astronomy, Calvin College, Michigan

It’s almost a universal human experience to look up at the stars in the dark night sky and say, ‘Wow, that’s amazing! That’s beautiful!’ But as a Christian, I have a deeper experience. I not only see the wonder and the vastness of the universe but see a connection back to the Creator who made it. I believe that the God of the Bible created all that we see in the whole universe and part of what God has commanded us to do is to study and take care of it.

As an undergraduate I majored in physics and music. Then I went on to do a PhD in astrophysics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Boston.

I see the fact that we can do science at all as a tremendous testimony of God’s faithfulness: the laws of physics are stable in every time and place where we test them. There’s a great passage in the Bible (Jer. 33:25), where God says he has “established my covenant with day and night and the fixed laws of heaven and earth…” God is speaking to the nation of Israel and points to the fixed laws of nature as a testimony of how faithful he’s going to be to his people. The only reason that physics works at all is that experiments are repeatable, and the only reason they’re repeatable is because God is faithful in governing the universe.

I can understand how some scientists look at the natural world and decide not to believe in God, because I don’t believe that nature gives us proof of God. There are a few scientists that have come to faith because science pointed them that way but I think for most of us it was something in our personal lives. It was a person we met, it was seeing Christians in action, it was finding that Christianity explains human nature, it was sensing the presence of God. These non-scientific arguments are more important in making a religious commitment than logic and scientific evidence.

It’s unfortunate that both the Bible and science have been hijacked at different times. There are people who will take scientific evidence and say, ‘We have a scientific explanation for X, and therefore God is not involved in X and we don’t need God.’ There are other people who say, ‘Science can’t explain X, so God must be involved and that’s proof of God.’ The two sides argue against each other, driving each other to more extreme statements. I think both sides are completely wrong. Both make the assumption that a scientific explanation is opposed to God’s involvement. In the Bible, though, God is described as in charge of every part of the physical world in regular patterns. In my view, science is merely describing how God works in nature. God is also present in the X that science doesn’t understand yet but it’s foolish to use that as proof of God’s existence. God wouldn’t disappear as soon as a scientific explanation for X is found.

Everybody brings their own perspective to science, so it’s impossible to have pure scientific results without any other influence. I think most scientists today see science that way: as a human activity. We talk about ‘The standard model of particle physics’ or ‘The big bang theory’ or ‘The theory of general relativity.’ We say ‘model’ and ‘theory’ instead of ‘law’ because we know that we don’t have it all figured out yet. So how do we know that the results of science are reliable at all?

Science functions as a community, with people from different philosophical or religious backgrounds working together. In my research I’ve collaborated with people of many different belief systems. We can work together because we all recognise the worth of this kind of investigation. All scientists share certain philosophical beliefs: that the universe is regular in its operation; that there are regular laws; that humans are capable of understanding and describing those laws; that we need to do experiments to test those laws and make sure our understanding is correct. We might all come to those beliefs from a different angle. I come to them because I believe in the Christian God who faithfully governs the universe. An atheist might choose to believe them just because they seem to work. We can overlap in those beliefs even while disagreeing about other things, and where we overlap we’re all doing science on basically the same playing field.

If many scientists with different viewpoints can get together and come to the same conclusion, that gives you some sense that they are probably on the right track. It is unlikely that they are all biased in the same way. The scientific process, including the way that scientific papers are reviewed, helps us overcome biases and get at something closer to the truth. There’s a similar process in biblical scholarship, where different scholars share their work or work together. Christians read the Bible in different ways and see different meanings in the same passage, so not everybody is right about their own interpretation. The practice of correcting and challenging each other helps them come to a better understanding of Scripture.

I believe that God would not say something through the Bible that contradicts what he reveals though the created world. The conflict comes at the level of human interpretation. We could be wrong in how we interpret the Bible or wrong in our scientific interpretation of nature (or both!). As Christians, we can’t deal with conflicts by throwing out science or ignoring parts of the Bible because we believe God speaks through both. Instead, our role is to continue to investigate both aspects of God’s revelation and keep looking for that underlying truth.

This is an extract from Ruth Bancewicz (ed.), Test of FAITH: Spiritual Journeys with Scientists (Milton Keynes: Paternoster, 2009/Eugene, Oregon: Wipf and Stock, 2010). Used with permission of the publishers and the Test of FAITH project.  www.testoffaith.com

The Gospel According to Peanuts
How A Charlie Brown Christmas almost didn’t happen

by Lee Habeeb
 
Few headlines about network television make me giddy. Fewer still make me hopeful that all is good in the world. But back in August of 2010, I read the following headline from the media pages with great excitement: “Charlie Brown Is Here to Stay: ABC Picks Up ‘Peanuts’ Specials Through 2015.” The first of these to be made, the famous Christmas special, was an instant classic when it was created by Charles Schulz on a shoestring budget back in 1965, and thanks to some smart television executives, it will be around for at least another five years for all of us to see and enjoy.

What people don’t know is that the Christmas special almost didn’t happen, because some not-so-smart television executives almost didn’t let it air. You see, Charles Schulz had some ideas that challenged the way of thinking of those executives 46 years ago, and one of them had to do with the inclusion in his Christmas cartoon of a reading from the King James Bible’s version of the Gospel of Luke.

The more things change, the more things stay the same.

As far back as 1965 — just a few years before Time magazine asked “Is God Dead?” — CBS executives thought a Bible reading might turn off a nation populated with Christians. And during a Christmas special, no less! Ah, the perils of living on an island in the northeast called Manhattan.

“A Charlie Brown Christmas” was a groundbreaking program in so many ways, as we learned watching the great PBS American Masters series on Charles Schulz, known by his friends and colleagues as “Sparky.” It was based on the comic strip Peanuts, and was produced and directed by former Warner Brothers animator Bill Melendez, who also supplied the voice for Snoopy.

We learned in that PBS special that the cartoon happened by mere serendipity.

“We got a call from Coca-Cola,” remembered Melendez. “And they said, ‘Have you and Mr. Schulz ever considered doing a Christmas show with the characters?’ and I immediately said ‘Yes.’ And it was Wednesday and they said, ‘If you can send us an outline by Monday, we might be interested in it.’ So I called Sparky on the phone and told him I’d just sold ‘A Charlie Brown Christmas,’ and he said, ‘What’s that?’ and I said, ‘It’s something you’ve got to write tomorrow.’”

We learned in that American Masters series that Schulz had some ideas of his own for the Christmas special, ideas that didn’t make the network suits very happy. First and foremost, there was no laugh track, something unimaginable in that era of television. Schulz thought that the audience should be able to enjoy the show at its own pace, without being cued when to laugh. CBS created a version of the show with a laugh track added, just in case Schulz changed his mind. Luckily, he didn’t.

The second big battle was waged over voiceovers. The network executives were not happy that the Schulz’s team had chosen to use children to do the voice acting, rather than employing adults. Indeed, in this remarkable world created by Charles Schulz, we never hear the voice of an adult.

The executives also had a problem with the jazz soundtrack by Vince Guaraldi. They thought the music would not work well for a children’s program, and that it distracted from the general tone. They wanted something more . . . well . . . young.

Last but not least, the executives did not want to have Linus reciting the story of the birth of Christ from the Gospel of Luke. The network orthodoxy of the time assumed that viewers would not want to sit through passages of the King James Bible.

There was a standoff of sorts, but Schulz did not back down, and because of the tight production schedule and CBS’s prior promotion, the network executives aired the special as Schulz intended it. But they were certain they had a flop on their hands.

“They were freaking out about something so overtly religious in a Christmas special,” explained Melendez. “They basically wrote it off, like, hey, this is just isn’t going to be interesting to anyone, and it’s just going to be like a big tax write-off.”

Melendez himself was somewhat hesitant about the reading from Luke. “I was leery of the religion that came into it, and I was right away opposed to it. But Sparky just assumed what he had to say was important to somebody.”

Which is why Charles Schulz was Charles Schulz. He knew that the Luke reading by Linus was the heart and soul of the story.

As Charlie Brown sinks into a state of despair trying to find the true meaning of Christmas, Linus quietly saves the day. He walks to the center of the stage where the Peanuts characters have gathered, and under a narrow spotlight, quotes the second chapter of the Gospel According to Luke, verses 8 through 14:

And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them: and they were sore afraid. And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, which is Christ the Lord. And this shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger. And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying, Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace and goodwill towards men.

“ . . . And that’s what Christmas is all about, Charlie Brown,” Linus concluded.

The scene lasted 51 seconds. When Linus finished up, Charlie Brown realized he did not have to let commercialism ruin his Christmas. With a sense of inspiration and purpose, he picked up his fragile tree and walked out of the auditorium, intending to take it home to decorate and show all who cared to see how it would work in the school play.

When CBS executives saw the final product, they were horrified. They believed the special would be a complete flop. CBS programmers were equally pessimistic, informing the production team, “We will, of course, air it next week, but I’m afraid we won’t be ordering any more.”

The half-hour special aired on Thursday, December 9, 1965, preempting The Munsters and following Gilligan’s Island. To the surprise of the executives, 50 percent of the televisions in the United States tuned in to the first broadcast. The cartoon was a critical and commercial hit; it won an Emmy and a Peabody award.

Linus’s recitation was hailed by critic Harriet Van Horne of the New York World-Telegram, who wrote, “Linus’ reading of the story of the Nativity was, quite simply, the dramatic highlight of the season.”

A Charlie Brown Christmas is equaled only perhaps by the 1966 How the Grinch Stole Christmas! in its popularity among young and old alike. Thank God the Grinch-like executives at CBS chose to air the special back in 1965 despite their misgivings. If it had been left to their gut instincts, we would have had one less national treasure to cherish come Christmas time.

— Lee Habeeb is the vice president of content at Salem Radio Network, which syndicates Bill Bennett, Mike Gallagher, Dennis Prager, Michael Medved, and Hugh Hewitt. He lives in Oxford, Miss., with his wife, Valerie, and daughter Reagan.

This article originally appeared in National Review Online. © 2011 by National Review, Inc., Reprinted by permission.

I am not the slightest bit pessimistic, but I believe we always have to start with realism and then bring in our Christian hope.
 
What are you passionate about?
 
I often say simply that I love to make sense of the gospel to the world and make sense of the world to the church.
 
You were born in China, grew up in England and make your home, at least part of the time, in the States – does one place feel more like home than any other?
 
And my family is from Ireland and I have lived nearly ten years in Switzerland! I am happiest and most at home in Europe, and in particular in Oxford and London.
 
What would you identify as the biggest cultural differences between the US and the UK?
 
There are hundreds of differences I could mention, but two stick out. First, because of the disestablishment of religion, so that all religion is voluntary, faith has flourished in the US in a unique way. So spiritually speaking, the US is like the tropics where all sorts of weird, wild, and wonderful spiritual movements grow, whereas Europe is like the Arctic where believers huddle together against the chill. Another huge difference is that Europe lacks the ‘can do’ spirit of America, so the climate of enterprise hangs low like the clouds in the UK. It’s time we British recovered the ‘can do’ spirit, not as an expression of American- style enterprise but as an expression of faith in God.
 
What things from the UK do you miss when you’re in the US?
 
British humour, old inns and pubs, English cathedrals, knowledgeable London cabbies, good theatre, a sense of history, good expository preaching, tastes such as thick-cut marmalade, Horlicks, and steak and kidney pie, and wonderful old cities such as Oxford - for a start.
 
And vice versa?
 
I miss my American friends, and the generally far better weather.
 
Do you have a ‘life verse’ that inspires you?
 
I came to faith when God spoke to me through Luke 5:4 “Launch out into the deep,” and that sense of vision and venture has always stirred me most deeply. In the same way, my favourite hymn has always been the 9th Century Irish hymn “Be thou my vision.”
 
What are you reading at the moment?
 
Anything I can find on consumerism. I believe capitalism is at a critical point, and consumerism is an approachable angle on a critique we must all make. At a different level I am half way through Ken Follett’s Pillars of the Earth, and have just finished a biography of the French statesman Talleyrand.
 
What kind of content can we expect from your talks at the Everything conference?
 
I look forward to partnering with David Stroud. My contribution will be two ‘big picture’ talks - one on a vision of a new Christian renaissance, and one on the two words of Jesus that changed the world: “Follow me.”

———
 
Reproduced from Connect magazine, Spring 2012

So Steve, you sell scarves, right? What’s the big idea?

TwoToo is about bringing some warmth and hope to those who need it most.  For every TwoToo scarf sold we give another one away to a homeless person who needs help to keep them warm.

TwoToo is the opposite of most designer labels. Instead of implying exclusivity and superiority it expresses support and identification with those in need - a touch of equality in an unequal world.

What a great idea! Have you always been a scarf salesman?

No! I’ve spent most of my life as a Graphic Designer and I have been running my own design consultancy for the last 26 years. I was one of those insensitive people who felt that homeless people that I saw begging on the streets should just go and get themselves a job. However, I felt challenged about my attitude and wanted to do something about it. My church, St John’s, Harborne, was involved in the Birmingham Soup Run, so I decided to go along and see what it was like. My attitude was totally changed through meeting and talking to the homeless people and hearing the many different reasons why they’d ended up on the streets.

I started volunteering there one Friday per month. In the autumn of my second year with the Soup Run I thought it would be good to find a way to give the homeless people that we met something extra at Christmas. I wanted to be able to give them all scarves as a way to make them warmer than they would otherwise have been and to show that people were thinking about them.

Your website says you initially thought you could probably sell 50 scarves in the run-up to Christmas 2007. How many did you actually sell?

We usually had about 50 people turning up at the Soup Runs for food each night and so I thought that if I could find a way to fund the cost to buy 50 scarves I could then give those scarves away to the homeless people. I researched the cost to buy scarves wholesale and typical retail prices for similar items and realized that I could sell a scarf at a very reasonable £5 and finance the cost of a second one that could then be given away. I could have just bought and sold plain, non-branded scarves but I wanted to give the whole process some identity and that’s where the idea of TwoToo came in! I presented the idea to our Soup Run team who loved the idea, then presented it to our church leaders to see if we could potentially promote it to the church members. The support was so great that we ended up selling just over 500 scarves instead of the 50 that I’d been aiming for! 

We’ve now given away around 1200 scarves, and are hoping to be able to donate 500 more this Christmas.

I think one reason for its popularity is that people can identify directly with the concept. If they buy a scarf and are wearing it they can easily visualise the homeless person wearing theirs. Also I think people appreciate that we’re not just asking for donations so that we can give scarves away, instead they are actually receiving something of value in return for their money as well as them contributing to the cost of the scarf that’s given away.

Who has received the benefit of all those donated scarves? 

Initially we were involved directly with handing them out to the homeless people we met on the Soup Run and they were genuinely pleased to receive them. They are often given secondhand items of clothing but they really appreciated that they were actually getting something new.

In the first winter we also gave scarves to vulnerable elderly people that the church had contact with, and a week later one lady said: “I haven’t taken it off yet, it’s really comfortable and warm!”

Since that first year we’ve worked to develop a network for distribution that ensures that the right people receive the scarves. Now that my wife and I are living in Poole, having moved in the summer of 2010, we have developed strong relationships with local homeless projects that really appreciate receiving and distributing the scarves to their contacts. These include Bournemouth BCHA’s St Paul’s night shelter ‘Sleep Safe’ Campaign; ‘Michael House, providers of emergency and longer-term accommodation to homeless people and Routes to Roots who provide Soup-Runs and a Drop-In centre in Poole. We will also continue to support the Birmingham Soup Run for homeless people and are working on finding other homeless projects around the country who would like to partner with us.

My wife and I moved to Poole in 2010 and joined Citygate Church in Bournemouth. It’s a great church, and we really identified with the work they do with homeless people and people in recovery from a variety of addictions. They work closely with ‘Michael House’ a local homeless hostel, which will be receiving TwoToo scarves this year. I’ve been promoting TwoToo through business networking events that I’ve been to and I’ve been really encouraged by the support that I’ve had from a number of marketing and PR people who have helped to get the news out at no cost to us at all.

How many staff do you have? 

Staff?! That’s just myself and my wife, Barbara. It’s been very much a ‘cottage industry’ so far with extra volunteers at busy times.

I would love to expand the business further and ideally on a ‘For profit’ basis, as I think that model is a better fit for TwoToo than either a Charity or Not-for Profit model. There is nothing unbiblical about making a profit and the main aim for TwoToo achieving a profit would be to able to give as many scarves away as possible.

What makes TwoToo distinctively Christian?

It is living out the call to help the homeless that Isaiah 58 best describes and Jesus repeatedly calls us to. However, the idea of TwoToo resonates extremely positively with non Christians and I’ve been surprised that a lot of the support that we’ve had has come from non church sources.

We’ve also always aimed to source our Scarves and T-Shirts from ethical sources. So far we have been buying from wholesale suppliers who profess to have ethical policies relating to their suppliers. If we can develop TwoToo to a larger business we’d like to be able to buy from source and therefore have more direct control on where we buy from.

There are a lot of people out there who have great ideas like this, but who aren’t sure how to act on them. What advice would you give them?

Being a creative person, running a design business and needing to have creative ideas on a daily basis, is a real privilege. The tricky part is deciding which ideas are the good ones!

In the same way that we need to have discernment in our spiritual lives, I find I need to have discernment of my creative ideas. If an idea comes to me and then is gone by the next day that usually means it wasn’t very good. TwoToo is one of those that wouldn’t go away! I had the thought of the original idea quite a few months before I shared it with anyone, and it kept coming back to me during that time. This is one of the signs of an idea that is worth thinking about! You need to have that confidence to push an idea forward as it does take a lot of time and energy as well as capital to start something like TwoToo.

Balancing TwoToo and the demands of church and family life can be difficult at times but I view TwoToo as a combination of my church commitment and everything I do, and I’m fortunate that I have an understanding wife! Rest is something that I’m not so good at but part of the plan in moving to Poole was to enjoy the area and I’ve recently taken up windsurfing, and Poole is the perfect place to start! 

Has there been a time when you wanted to give up?

Yes, I’ve frequently thought about giving up! Particularly when I’ve been putting lots of time in and not seeing results. Often people are really supportive, but when it comes down to it, nothing happens unless I do it!

As I mentioned earlier, a belief in what you’re doing is very important and in helping to keep your passion. Having confidence in the idea and that you’re doing the right thing is a very real help to keep me motivated. Since we started TwoToo in Autumn 2007, as each year has come around I’ve thought “Should we carry on?” So far the answer has been ‘Yes’ and this year I’m putting even more time and effort into it to push as hard as possible to see it there is a future for it.

Bottom line: what’s your big dream? What’s the difference you’re trying to make?

I am very aware that, on its own, giving away scarves isn’t going to cure homelessness. However it does create awareness of the situation and shows those receiving scarves that there are people who care about them. That in itself makes a real difference to a homeless person.

I would love to see the TwoToo concept being extended to other areas of need, it is very transferable to simply say ‘Buy x and we’ll give another x to someone else who needs it’. This concept can be sustainable as we’re not asking people to give us something with nothing in return. If they buy a TwoToo they are getting something in return for their payment.

Thank you so much for your time, Steve, your goal of donating over 500 scarves this winter is a pretty big one; remind us where we can go to buy a scarf and help the homeless.

Thank you for your interest in TwoToo. A full range of scarves for men and women are available and start at £5 + p+p each (which includes the cost of the scarf that’s given away).

Cops & Robbers started life in 2004 as an initiative of the Christian Police Association (CPA) London which aimed to reduce crime, particularly knife crime, amongst young people. Permission was given by the Metropolitan Police for comic books, telling true stories of ex-offenders and others who are now Christians, to be placed in cells. However, when the first edition of 10,000 was produced, permission was withdrawn as one of the stories showed a black man with a knife – a ‘racial stereotype’, according to the Met – even though this was a true story.
 
The Daily Mail and BBC got hold of the story and what might have been seen by 300 – 500 young people in custody, ended up in a national newspaper and on the BBC news with Des, the subject of the story, telling millions of viewers how the power of God had changed his life.
 
There followed a second and third edition of the comic published by me before I retired from the Met after 30 years’ service, but not before a special edition was produced in conjunction with T.R.U.C.E. (To Reach Urban Communities Everywhere, a Nicky Cruz organisation which uses ex-drug addicts and dealers to reach young people with the gospel). These editions were used around the country by police forces putting them in cells, by churches as outreach, and as part of Operation Blunt (a Metropolitan Police initiative to reduce knife crime).
 
In Devon and Cornwall the Youth Offending Team made the comic available to young offenders and several became Christians. Wherever the comic has been used it has been well received. It has been particularly well received by prisons and many thousands of copies have been given out for free.
 
Upon my retirement it looked as though there would be no more editions but in the space of two days, three things happened:
1. A friend at church offered to pay for an edition to be printed;
2. Devon and Cornwall requested a special edition to be done for them; and
3. Mike Smith, a Metropolitan Police Officer had a vision from God for young people to exchange their weapons for his: their guns and knives for Bibles.
 
This led to a new smaller ‘pocket’ edition being produced and distributed. The Metropolitan Police paid for 5,000 copies to be printed for use with Word4Weapons, a scheme started by Mike Smith in London where young people can surrender their knives and guns in specially adapted weapons bins and in exchange receive a Bible, a comic, information, etc. in a special ‘All I Need’ bag.
 
A chance meeting then led to Teen Challenge producing their own edition which they distribute when they do street evangelism six days a week in London. Some of the stories in the comics are from them and others from people who attend Transformed, a church for ex-offenders in Brixton.
 
With the help of supporters we produced a special edition in Thai for use by John Robinson, the first ex-offender I met after I became a Christian who, with his family, now works in prisons and orphanages in Thailand.  John wrote Nobody’s Child, a very moving story of a young lad brought up in care and with spells in prison before becoming a Christian.
 
It costs about £5,000 to produce each edition of the comic, and though most are given away, we rely on donations to raise funds for subsequent editions. In 2010 my church, Community Church Bishop’s Stortford, committed to support the production the next two editions. I am currently preparing an edition for 2012. I have been blessed by the work of a number of illustrators including one who works for Marvel Comics in the States and has done a wonderful job for me.
 
To date over 100,000 copies, 10 editions, have been produced and distributed. I am working with Avanti Ministries to produce a special edition for them and copies have been distributed worldwide as and when they have been requested. The stories are all available to read on the website where donations towards the work can also be made. All I ask from people if they would like hard copies is payment of post and packing and a donation.
 
God has been very good in starting this work and allowing it to continue. We all have a story, and these are very easy to follow, especially by those for whom literacy is a problem – over half the prison population have difficulties with literacy and numeracy.
 
I have recently been appointed the Word4Weapons tri-borough co-ordinator (Southwark, Lambeth and Westminster).
 
The 2012 edition is currently being prepared. If any church would like to pre-order 1,000 copies for outreach, etc. at a cost of £250 (which includes delivery in the UK) please contact Bishop’s Stortford before the end of December 2011. This will help us to plan an increased print run which is much more cost efficient.

She was born in 1828 into a family that already had a history of social reform, and I shall let Josephine talk about her father from her book: An Autobiographical Memoir.

My father was a man with a deeply rooted, fiery hatred of all injustice… My father’s connection with the great public movements of the day - the first Reform Bill, the Abolition of the Slave Trade and Slavery, and the Free Trade movement - gave me very early an interest in public questions and in the history of the country.

The love of justice was a passion with him. Probably I have inherited this passion. When my father spoke to us, his children, of the great wrong of slavery, I have felt his powerful frame tremble and his voice would break. He told us sad stories of the hideous wrong inflicted on negro men and women.

 
In 1852 she married scholar and cleric George Butler, who shared both her Christian faith and her commitment to liberal reformation and together they had four children. However, sadly, at age six their only daughter died, and to cope with her grief Josephine threw herself into ministering to those with greater pain than her own, working particularly for the rights of women.

Josephine began a campaign in 1869 to repeal the Contagious Diseases Acts (CDAs) in the same year that they were fully introduced. These Acts were designed to protect soldiers from sexually transmitted diseases but placed the blame entirely on prostitutes. In addition it gave police the power to force an examination on any woman who could not provide proof that she wasn’t a prostitute. The women accused often had their reputations destroyed and this caused them to be unable to find work or lodgings, except in a brothel.

The CDAs stood in stark contrast to her Christian views that placed value on all people and so even when she realised that the chance of a quick victory was lost, she continued on regardless. Wherever possible she persuaded sympathetic MPs to introduce the repeal bill to Parliament even with no chance of success, as keeping it in the public eye was incredibly valuable. It would be 14 years before she finally saw the Acts suspended and three more years before they were repealed entirely.

At the same time, as part of another campaign for women’s rights, she saw the age of sexual consent in Britain rise from 13 to 16. This began to combat the child prostitution that Josephine knew existed in her hometown of Liverpool and also changed the laws that protected girls against sexual abuse. Before the bill was introduced only the father of the child could bring a charge of abduction so the law was useless if the father was dead or had abandoned the mother.

George Lansbury explains in his book Looking Backwards and Forwards (1935) some of the character that made Josephine the influential woman that she was.

[A] very gentle and lovable woman was Mrs. Josephine Butler. Once, in the big St. Mary’s schoolroom in Whitechapel, I listened to her with tears running down my cheeks as she told of the cruel and barbarous workings of the Contagious Diseases Acts. Mrs. Butler left a comfortable rectory to fight this fight on behalf of womanhood. She had to face tremendous opposition, gross distortion and misrepresentation. There was at the beginning no organisation, either of women or men, to stand with her. Nor did her own sex support her. But the unremitting toil of this fine Christian woman, not overblessed with physical strength, and not an orator in the accepted sense, at last won her victory, and the “C.D.” Acts were repealed.

Josephine also had a huge part to play in women’s education during the 19th century, a time when many girls resorted to prostitution due to poor education creating poverty. To respond to this need she started training them in more skilled work as well as setting up a small workshop to make envelopes. The profits from this endeavour helped cover the running costs of a hostel, which she had set up as a woman’s refuge.

In addition to her personal work for the women she came in contact with, she also became president of the ‘North of England Council for Promoting the Higher Education of Women’. One of the council’s activities was petitioning Cambridge University to admit women to its Higher Local Examinations, and they saw success in 1869, opening up a vast array of new options for women in education.

There is no doubt that Josephine Butler was one of the most remarkable women of the 19th century. Many of the reforms that she brought about in her lifetime still stand today and her life is an inspiration to all of us who seek to change culture for the better.

Uncertainty breeds faith
 
We find, in Hebrews, the famous verse, ‘Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.’  Faith is reliant on the unseen, the hoped for yet unrealised.  Without uncertainty, faith has no place.
 
When Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego were presented with the fiery furnace, they had a choice, a choice to doubt for a moment, one moment of weakness, and kneel to Nebuchadnezzar’s golden image, or to trust.  What would come out of their trust was uncertain, unseen, yet hoped for, they had surely never witnessed God pluck others from a fiery furnace but their response is never in question, ‘We have no need to answer you in this matter,’ they say, ‘Our God, whom we serve, is able to deliver us . . . if not, be it known . . . we will not serve your gods.’ Never had their future been more in doubt, and never had they a greater opportunity to rely on God.  Great uncertainty breeds great faith.
 
For the artist, every new endeavour, every blank page in the diary, every bank statement is an opportunity to rely on God.  Seek, at all times, His ‘assurance of the things hoped for,’ His ‘conviction of things not seen’.
 
Uncertainty breeds works
 
Imagine a sport.  Two teams take the field, both knowing the outcome, knowing the eventual score line, knowing who’ll score, who’ll miss, who’ll leave the field injured.  Do you imagine the blood is pumping, adrenaline flowing, or do you see the inevitable lack-lustre affair?  In life as in sport, uncertainty drives us.  James contains another famed passage on faith, ‘Faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead.’  Like the sportsman who believes, unknowing, in a favourable outcome, who sweats and strives for every moment of the game, every yard won, uncertainty demands we work, demands we give our all to grasp the hoped for, the unseen.  Without works, faith is dead.
 
Joshua never stopped striving for the unseen, promised inheritance.  When ‘all the people of Israel’ rebelled against God, and, in fear, refused to enter the promised land, Joshua, along with Caleb, still proclaimed, ‘The Lord is with us; do not fear them.’  When presented with the vast unassailable walls of Jericho, Joshua trusted in a plan that no human military strategist would advise, leading God’s people, step by step, undoubtedly hounded by taunts and cackles from the besieged city, on their circular march.  When ‘All the kings of the Amorites,’ were gathered against them, ‘Joshua [still] went up . . . he and all the people of war.’

Uncertainty, from a worldly perspective, leaves us slaves to indecision.  As Christian artists, great uncertainty leads to great works of faith.
 
Uncertainty Speaks of God’s Commission
 
When told by a certain scribe that he would follow him wherever he went, Jesus declared to the earnest man, ‘Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head’.  A life following Jesus is a life marked by uncertainty.  ‘Behold,’ Jesus said, ‘I am sending you out as sheep in the midst of wolves.’  He never called us to a life of certainty.  ‘You will be dragged before governers and kings,’ ‘you will be hated by all.’  The expectation of the Christian should be uncertainty, an uncertain life on earth, knowing that we are a people sent.  Jesus sends us, not to a cosy, rosy existence, but to one of challenge, risk and uncertain outcomes, for every moment of challenge is a moment to trust and better glorify Him.
 
‘Do all things,’ persevere in every penniless project, perform at every tiny venue, pursue every commission, no matter how small, ‘without grumbling or complaining,’ in spite of the uncertainty, in spite of the challenge, in spite of the obstacles, ‘that you may be blameless and innocent, children of God without blemish in the midst of a crooked and twisted generation, among whom you shine as lights in the world.’  This is what he calls us too, for we are his servant, in whom He will be glorified.
 
A Note on Certainty
 
Faith, in the face of an uncertain future, sets the Christian apart, but it is not, like our analogous sportsman, faith in one’s own ability, it is a faith set in The Rock of certainty.  The most common promise in the Bible is one of certainty, ‘I will be with you.’  ‘I chose you before the creation of the World,’ I knitted you together in your mother’s womb, ‘the hairs of your head are all numbered,’ when you sit and when you rise, I know, I shall renew your strength, I hem you in before and behind and lay my hand upon you, ‘I know the plans I have for you,’ even though you walk through the valley of the shadow of death, you will fear no evil, for I am with you, ‘behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.’ This is his certain promise to us, through all uncertainty, he will be with us, Immanuel.