Dear Friends,

We wish you a joyful and peaceful Christmas, through the celebration of Immanuel with us.

Thank you so much for all your love and support this year, it means a great deal to us.

Tomorrow, the residential Community disperse  for their Christmas break, and will return ready to welcome guests for the New Year House Party which begins on Sunday 29th December. Our next livestreamed Sanctuary service will be on Wednesday 1st January from 4:30pm.

With love and prayers from Phil, Di and the whole Scargill Community.

Here’s is Di’s latest reflection:

Last weekend, I was visiting All Souls Church in Leeds and for most of the morning I found myself comfortably sitting in front of this altar table.

I was repeatedly re-drawn to its gentle depiction of the nativity story. It was the curve of cloths uniting the Magi with Mary, then Jesus and finally Joseph which held my focus. In this world of war and conflict, fear and pain, Jesus came in all simplicity to save and to serve. 

Here I also saw humbleness and respect flow between the Magi and the Holy family, perhaps asking the same of us but also reminding me that Jesus came to bring peace and healing.

After a while I became aware that the curve continues with the candlesticks, forming perhaps a cup or a chalice reminding me that this is also the place to come before God and receive both bread and wine. A place where we can commune with God and God with us. A place where forgiveness is given, and love is offered.

I pray that you will have, allow yourself, the time to stop and rest, just for a few moments and sit before this altar table.

I wish you all a God-filled Christmas. 

One reason why I love this festival, is that it’s a wonderful excuse again to go over the top with candles, to fill the church with candle light as we celebrate the one who is the light of the nations. It is good and proper to go over the top!

The encounter of the holy family with Simeon and Anna is deeply moving and the long wait for them to see the Messiah is at last fulfilled. Simeon, in the Orthodox Church, is referred to as St Symeon the God-Receiver, as the Greek text indicates that he receives Christ into his arms. It is a beautiful and vulnerable encounter. Simeon in the fraility of his old age receives in his arms the vulnerable, totally dependent Christ child. Simeon’s arms are open to receive Jesus, there is a willingness to receive, to hold close, the “consolation of Israel.”

When thinking about Simeon’s encounter as the God-Receiver it led me to consider my prayers and my willingness to be open to Jesus, to hold me and receive him. I’m not sure I’m that good at it. Henri Nouwen in his book “with open hands”, says that prayer is no easy matter, and that the first challenge we face is to open our hands which are often clenched (metaphorically and literally). It is difficult, if not impossible, to receive when our fists are clenched. So why do we have clenched hands? Well for all sort of reasons, we could be holding tightly to jealousies, resentments, anger, our ambitions, failures, perhaps our need to be in control. Whatever we are holding tightly, seem indispensable and they begin to shape our lives.

When we dare to open our hands we are making ourselves vulnerable, as we begin that long journey of trust that all Jesus has for us is unconditional love, for as he gives himself in this love it is vulnerable, generous, self-giving and transformative.

I pray that you and I might be like Simeon, a God Receiver, hands and arms open to receive all that God has for us – I think we will be joyfully surprised! And as we are to able receive we will begin to shine his love to those around us, yes perhaps like a flickering candle, vulnerable and inviting.

The story so far – Naaman has gone down to the River Jordan, swallowed his pride, (and who knows what else!) and dipped himself seven times. He comes up cleansed from his skin disease, grateful, with a changed heart, acknowledging Elisha’s God ‘that there is no God in all the earth except in Israel’. And of course, it was this exclamation from Naaman that made him realise the difficult and complex situation he was going to have to face when he went back to Aram.

He tentatively and apologetically asks for forgiveness for when he goes back he will have to go with his King to the house of Rimmon and bow down while the King leans on his arm. Poor Naaman, having just experienced and realised the truth about God he finds himself in a place of compromise where he would be outwardly going against his earlier emphatic declaration. Adrian Plass, who writes on this wonderful passage, says, “Well is it OK to do that? Or not? Or what? Have I got to make a stand?”

Elisha’s response is surprising, liberating, and gives hope to all of us faced with on-going difficult times or impossible situations, ‘Go in peace’. Not exactly the response he expected yet what beautiful three words they are! Adrian goes on to say, “that was all Elisha said and it seemed to be all that was needed on that particular occasion. Through a prophet, who is more interested in hearing the authentic whisper of the Holy Spirit than blindly following patterns and pre-conceptions, God was cutting Naaman a little slack, and this new follower of the one true God was probably even more grateful than before, don’t you think? How lovely to be told that you can go in peace when you are expecting a thick ear or a thunderbolt.”

The wonderful truth about these words ‘Go in peace’ is that it gives us opportunity to have a dynamic, life-giving dialogue with God. These three words are not closed but are open and spacious words.

Elisha cut Naaman some slack, and Jesus cuts us slack too. Our community promises has the response – “with the encouragement and guidance of the brothers and sisters who share this pathway, we will try our very best to follow the example of Jesus”. Each night I reflect on my day and sometimes I realise how my relationships or attitudes has not lived up to the promises I have made. I have messed up, and I can’t quite get it right at the moment. Jesus forgives, he says have a good night’s sleep, lets work together on the difficulties, ‘Go in peace’. And he says this with affection and love.

Elisha begins to give us an understanding of God’s compassion and Jesus shows it to us fully. I pray that we will learn to live and move in it.
In the All Age services during SummerFest we sang our Naaman song – words by Bridget and Adrian Plass, sung and produced by Anna Andersson on the attached music file – enjoy! We had three weeks of it!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6g5YeJ6jPdw

So what should be a Christian view towards the strangers and those who come into our midst? Have we something positive to add to this debate? In the Old Testament we get some commands from God himself who in my understanding should not be messed with! In Leviticus 19 it says that we should treat the foreigner as if they were a native born Israelite, and love them as we love ourselves.  It also says in Deuteronomy, “you shall love the stranger for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.” And in the New Testament St Paul in Romans speaks about extending “hospitality to strangers”. And of course, Jesus, as well as many other Biblical heroes, was a refugee, displaced and living in exile.

I wouldn’t want to be a politician, what a nightmare job, but it does seem clear to me that treating immigration with a hardened heart, indifference and resentment is not the way forward. There does needs to be fairness for all, and understanding that is peppered with a great deal more compassion.

The rhetoric such as ‘let’s get tough…’ and a hardened attitude I feel is motivated out of fear. For when we are fearful, walls go up, our lives shrink in every way and we become less open to those around us. Someone said that “fear is the darkroom where Satan develops our negatives” and the media feeds our fears until there is no room left to welcome the stranger. St John reminds us in his letter it is that perfect love that casts out fear. We live by a different attitude.

So Christians have a prophetic voice, a different message to what we are reading in our newspapers. A message that is based on fairness and compassion but also honours the stranger among us. I wonder what honouring the stranger would look like in our churches and communities?

Not that we have got it sorted here at Scargill, far from it, we are a work in progress. Our Community Promises say, that with the help of God, and with the guidance and encouragement from one another we will try our very best “to welcome the stranger as we would welcome Jesus himself, putting their needs before ours and treating each one as a royal guest.” It is deeply challenging!

St Paul puts it succinctly again in Romans – “Welcome one another, then, just as Christ welcomed you, for the glory of God”. Christians are working from a different script from the loud, fearful rhetoric that we often hear around us.

At the time we were pumping water from our spring, which runs close to the river, and this swept into our water supply making it undrinkable. We had brown water with bits in – not nice. And, of course, we then had the challenge of having no drinking water for 70 people. It made me realise just how dependent we are on water, this life giving stuff, and we soon found ourselves down in Skipton buying out all the 5 litre bottles of water. We got through 40 of these in one day. We take clean water for granted but, of course, for many in our world it is not so easily available.

On the Wateraid website it says that “every minute, every day, people suffer and lives are lost needlessly because of a lack of safe water and sanitation. This daily reality is for 748 million people.”

One of the things we did at Scargill during our Summerfest programme last year, which was great fun, was to raise money to twin our toilets to provide safe and clean loos across the world (see www.toilettwinning.org).

One of our pathway promises is about speaking out for those without a voice ‘ will you speak up bravely for people who are rarely heard, helping our heavenly Father to fulfil his dream of seeing the hungry fed, the sick looked after the naked clothed and victims of injustice release from their chains.’

This week made me think that perhaps there is more we can do to help our brothers and sisters across the world. Wouldn’t it be good if we all twinned our toilets? It only costs £60 and it would make a real difference.

Back to our water. The Estate Team worked hard pumping out our reservoir – cleaning it out. Today our water is running nice and clean, and tomorrow we will be able to start drinking it again.

We love our Estate Team, and we also love our spring water – and we are grateful to God for it.

When I was thinking about all this, I was reminded of Jesus’ words from Matthew 10 v 42 ’And if anyone gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones because he is my disciple, I tell you the truth, he will certainly not lose his reward.’

Not a bad incentive!

Back at Scargill , we have just said goodbye to our Easter houseparty. An amazing week where we journeyed with Jesus through Holy Week to the joy of Easter Sunday.

One of the things that struck me is how Jesus went out of his way to show people who he was through his actions. A good example of this is Palm Sunday where Jesus rode in to Jerusalem on a donkey, and the significance of entering the city from the Mount of Olives.  Jesus didn’t speak a word yet he was saying so much through his actions. He was saying, ‘Look, I’m your King!’. And, of course, the Resurrection is the amazing sign of who Jesus is and what he came to do, but yet even though some his closest friends didn’t get it. Just look at Luke 24 and the story on the road to Emmaus.

So some of the questions I have been asking myself are, “how do I recognise Jesus today?” and “is my life dulled to the presence of Jesus or preoccupied with self-interest ?”

On another point on the same subject, I challenged the Community recently to think how people could recognise Jesus just through our actions, through the way we treat and serve people? Loving actions, a welcoming smile, to be kind, a willingness to say ‘yes’, to go the extra mile can say much more about God’s love than words that are divorced from action. And, of course, Jesus longs to show his love through us even though we are weak and fragile. St Paul reminds us:  ‘But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us.’ 2 Corinthians 4: 7

I heard a lovely story about Rowan Williams when after they had walked the stations of the cross he rhetorically asked the question, ‘Why is there no stations of the resurrection?’,  which he answered, ‘we are the living stations of the resurrection’.

So, how do people recognise Jesus? Through you and me.

So this January we are concerned about having enough sun screen rather than thinking of shovelling snow which has been our usual occupation at Scargill. It is nice and warm in Brisbane, and tomorrow we travel down to Sydney for a week. Such hardship!

With more time to reflect, one question I have been asking is how thirsty am I for God? King David has such a desire to know more of God in his life and in Psalm 63 he speaks of this yearning.

“God – you’re my God! I can’t get enough of you! I’ve worked up such hunger and thirst for God” (The Message)

Can’t quite remember when I last felt like that. One thing for sure though is that I would like to have David’s desire. The sentiment “I still haven’t found what I am looking for” resounds often deeply within me. St Paul in Ephesians 5:18 speaks about go on being filled with the Holy Spirit. It is constant asking and probably should be a daily discipline. For without the Holy Spirit I am stuffed (hope you like my profound theological vocabulary). How can I know Jesus, how can I have a blazing love for him? How can I be inwardly transformed and therefore a lively witness to all that Jesus is and all he has done in my life? Where do I get the desire to read scripture and hopefully make sense of it? Through the grace and love of God, through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.

Simon Ponsonby, who recently spoke at Scargill, speaks of how we settle for less, when there is so much more to experience and know of God. He quotes Billy Graham who says “the desperate need of the nation today is that men and women who profess Jesus be filled with the Spirit.”

Jesus says “let anyone who is thirsty come to me, and let the one who believes in me drink.  As scripture has said, ‘out of the believers heart shall flow rivers of living waters.'” (John 7)

Come Lord Jesus pour out your Spirit on us today

Wet and Wild at Scargill Summerfest

These last 2 weeks we have been enjoying Summerfest at Scargill. Summerfest is an all age arts festival where we have guest artists, all age teaching, a myriad of activities and a chat show every evening. It’s full on!

These last 2 weeks I  have doing quite a lot of speaking and succumbed to ‘foot in mouth’ when trying to quote Jackie Pullinger. It is funny that when we are tired  when brain and mouth sort of come disconnected.  I found myself saying she had lived for many years in the Walled Garden, and yes, we do have a beautiful Walled Garden at Scargill but sadly this is not where we will find Jackie Pullinger. For those of you who don’t know, Jackie spent many years working in the Walled City area of Hong Kong, bringing ‘cups of life giving water’ to prostitutes and drug addicts.

The verse from Matthew 10 that speaks about giving a cup of cold water to one of these little ones….has been resonating in our hearts and minds. There is nothing so refreshing as a cool glass of water. It is worth spending some time thinking about those who have been living water to us, those who have shown us kindness and compassion, who offered us ‘a cup of water’. It is good to give thanks for those who have brought us to life by their generosity and their belief in us, and, of course, not all these people will be Christians. I was remembering my primary school teacher who encouraged me and helped me believe in myself when education was such a struggle. Who are those who have offered cups of water to us, that have made a difference to our lives?

But, the challenge then is how can we be living water for others?

We are privileged to have this living water within us and we are called to give it away, not to hold it for ourselves. I’d like to encourage you to think about who you could give a ‘cup of living water’ to this week. It could be a word of kindness, it may be a ‘phone call to a friend we have not spoken to for some time in order to show them how we love them, it may be a listening ear. It will be an act of love that will bring life. Jesus brought life to the woman at the well (John 4) and we too have this opportunity to give Jesus to others, as the source of living water. Isn’t this just a wonderful gift that we can offer?

A friend posted this wonderful prayer on Facebook.

Holy Trinity, Well of love, Refresh us with your presence. May we drink of your life-giving water, Filling us with you, Overflowing to all those around us.

His reason for wanting to do this is his longing for people to know the wonder and joy of the saving love of Jesus. This was his agenda. Paul’s words are very challenging to us as he is asking us to put aside our own judgements, and sometimes the desire to show the error of others  – It would be so nice if others could have the same understanding as us!

Accepting others and journeying with them, to be their friend and their servant is at the centre of Paul’s heart. I love the way the Message version puts it: “I have voluntarily become a servant to any and all in order to reach a wide range of people: religious, non-religious, meticulous moralists, loose-living immoralists, the defeated and the demoralized – whoever…I’ve become just about every sort of servant there is in my attempts to lead those I meet into a God-saved life.”

Paul is not saying that by accepting people we are agreeing with them, but his longing is that through his life, in word and action, they would experience the love of Christ. This ability to accept people as they are comes from a growing understanding of our own identity in Christ, that we are his beloved, and that our lives are about showing others that they are God’s children and deeply loved. Our security is rooted in our relationship with Jesus.

We want this attitude to be at the heart of our life here at Scargill.  We want to accept people who come through our doors even though they may not fit into our tidy theological understanding and this can obviously be disturbing.

Yet, however uncomfortable it may sometimes feel, our hope is that we show the warmth and accepting love of Jesus.  I am sure many of us have been into churches where there have been such strong theological statements about God and life, that have felt so rigid and unyielding that it leaves very little space for dialogue or movement – It can be suffocating.

Scargill is about offering a safe place where the transformative love of God can do its mysterious work. As Ann Lamott says, ” God loves you exactly as you are and far too much to leave you as you are”.

Loving and accepting people for what they are can give us permission to adopt a different narrative if that is what is required.

First up – Quantity. One of the great joys of being part of the Scargill community is the amazing variety of people that you meet. Each week we welcome various groups and individuals and each person brings something unique and something that is life giving. Then of course there is the community we are bundled together with, all from such a variety of backgrounds and experiences of God. It’s a rich, sometimes challenging, but always growing and stretching experience.

Secondly – Quality. Joining community is an opportunity to witness and be part of the unrivalled excellence of the Holy Spirit working in the real world with real people. One of the delightful aspects which keeps us on our toes is seeing how God’s loving spirit moves and works, sometimes in the most unexpected ways. The Holy Spirit is most definitely ingenious. Being on community here at Scargill inspires an openness to what our gracious God is doing and having the courage to join in.

Finally – Questions. Many people come, as guests as well as community, with an array of questions. There is space and opportunity to ask and discuss and perhaps even solve some of the burning questions that are important to your personal walk with Jesus. As one visiting clergy said ‘This is a safe place to say dangerous things.’

And of course as one community member just enthusiastically said to me, ‘I hope you got quirky in there!’ Hmm, will have to think about that!

So quantity, quality and questions and even quirkiness… all good reasons to consider joining community. QI don’t you think?

The resurrection though gives us a another view –  a full tomb is a bit of a disaster! Empty is liberating and life giving, Jesus is risen, the tomb is empty, death has lost its sting, sin and satan are defeated. God has had the last laugh.

When thinking of the resurrection I think of Psalm 18:19; “He brought me out into a spacious place; he rescued me because he delighted in me”. Jesus is risen, the tomb is empty, life is to be lived in that spacious place, and we to are to leave our “tombs”, to leave them empty, and move into the spacious place that our generous God has won for us in the resurrected Jesus. It does take courage and a fair amount of trust. Our tombs whatever they may be, come with all sorts of names, unforgiveness and bitterness, fear, feeling useless just to mention a few.. We live in these tombs they become our home, they are familiar, and disturbingly comfortable. Scargill is about “lives shared, lives transformed” and hopefully with Jesus right at the centre he will loving lead us out of our caves that we have uncomfortably conformed to live in.

The challenge is to leave our tombs, and move into that spacious place, and breath in that resurrection air.

A blessed Easter to you all.

We have just finished our Palm Sunday service here in the Chapel at Scargill. Many a sermon has been given on this significant day in Jesus’ life. What struck me afresh is the adulation that welcomed Jesus from the crowd as he entered Jerusalem, and then in a few days time the same crowd will be shouting insults and wanting him dead. The crowd move from blessing to cursing with unnerving ease. Henri Nouwen says that to bless is to simply says good things about another. How crucial this is as we live in a world that gives out curses so liberally. If we bless one another our understanding of who we are in God grows and deepens. Curses destroy, blessings give life.

How important it is to bless, never more so than in Community which is full of relational challenges! There is nothing like living and working together to realise the need to bless when at times there is a deep desire to curse. Our community promises speak about building community for which we will need to be ‘consistently, transparently, constructively, unsentimentally loving’. People making their promises say, “We can learn and improve in our efforts to strengthen the bonds of love in this community. Sometimes we will get very cross with people and find it difficult to love them. Sometimes they will feel the same about us. We will not say anything about others that we would not say to them directly if love and wisdom required it. With God’s help, and with encouragement and guidance from the brothers and sisters who share this pathway, we promise to try our very best to follow the example of Jesus.”

As we begin to understand that we are called ‘beloved’, what a joy it is to enable others to find that truth for themselves. Henri Nouwen goes on to say that there are many ways that we can bless people:

“Therefore we have to be reminded of our belovedness and remind others of theirs. Whether the blessing is given in words or with gestures, in a solemn or an informal way, our lives need to be blessed lives.”

So may Jesus Christ richly bless you as you journey with him this Holy Week.

Sadly the towering trees which used to line the long driveway up to Scargill House have had to be cut down. At this melancholy time Scargill’s Director Phil Stone reflects on community, culture shock and how sometimes seeds need to die if they are going to live…

This last week has been sad and significant for Scargill. Our treasured avenue of horse chestnuts, which has been part of the landscape for the last 50 years and more, have become diseased and dangerous and have had come to down. Interesting and surprisingly what has been left is a new vista where the surrounding hills look even more inviting and attractive.

We are gradually becoming aware that the rhythm of life involves some small and some significant deaths so that God can bring new life and new beginnings. The rhythm of cross and resurrection are central to our lives. Scargill itself was resurrected, but not before it had to go through a death in 2008. The whole estate was up for sale and the long ministry of Scargill had finished. The place was dead. God though had not wiped the slate with either the place or the ministry.

When Di and I came to Scargill to grow and develop the ministry at the beginning of 2010, we were excited about the new adventure, but after a while I was wondering what we had done. From being a vicar in a large inner city parish, an area dean with responsibilities, I had come to Scargill where there was just a handful of us and 10,000 sheep. However lovely those sheep are, they are not great conversationalists, and regarded me as a sort of mint sauce threat (probably rightly so). After a couple of months of this I was feeling diminished, and well out of my depth. I went to see a wise friend who listened and shared a verse from John 12: “Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit”

Something had to die in me, for something new to come alive – never easy, often painful, but necessary. We can never jump to resurrection until we go through our own cross. Three years on Scargill is alive and thriving. The place is beginning to bear much fruit, but what is most significant is that I have deepened my understanding that I am loved by God, that I am called “his beloved”. Sometimes God has to strip away old securities so he can help us find again our true identity.

This week we begin Passiontide, with the invitation to journey with Jesus through Palm Sunday next Sunday, onto the Cross, and then onto the joy of Easter Sunday. As we journey with Jesus may we also know that he journeys with us as we face our crosses We need to ask him for courage.

This week new trees will be planted down our avenue at Scargill.

Our resurrection life continues.

The community at Scargill is always warmly welcoming new members and wishing a fond farewell to others as each person’s contract is staggered so that as we grow and change we can maintain consistency. If you are interested in spending some time as part of our community or know someone who might be interested then click here (especially if you/they have professional catering experience!). Feel free to use the contact information in the link to get in touch and start a conversation going to work out if Scargill is the right place for you to explore more about life, community and God.

Last week I was down at Coventry Cathedral attending a conference entitled Faith in Conflict. It was full of quite important influential people, I had to behave like a grown up! One of the things that we discovered (which isn’t rocket science) is that conflict is normal. You could almost hear a collective sigh of relief and I know that from my experience here at Scargill we have had to work through quite a bit of conflict over the last few years. Just because we are followers of Jesus doesn’t mean we are going to get on all the time.

What is really important is how we deal with conflict. Often we are either confrontational and shout with a ‘come on if you think you’re hard enough’ attitude or the other equally unhelpful attitude is to go into silence and avoid confrontation at all costs. But what we are encouraged to do and the way forward – is to speak and to listen. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow says, “If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we should find in each man’s life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility.”

Of course living in community this is essential if we are going to grow and become a place of reconciliation. The quality of our relationships is an authentic witness of God’s love. This is the heart of the Gospel. In fact one of the speakers at conference said that reconciliation is not the warm up act to hearing the Gospel – it is the Gospel.

Whenever we are reach out (and I’m not talking about with a fist!) to somebody we are in conflict with we are doing the Gospel. St Paul reminds us in 2nd Corinthians 5 that Jesus has reconciled us with God, our relationship with Him has been put right. We are called to be ambassadors of reconciliation.

It’s not an optional extra.

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