Mission & Links at St. John's Church

The Bible Society At the start of 19th century Thomas Charles, a minister in North Wales, sought to make the scriptures freely available in the Welsh language, following the visit of 15 year old Mary Jones. She had walked over 20 miles across mountain paths to buy a Welsh bible. On hearing this plan Joseph Hughes asked “If for Wales, why not the kingdom, and if for the kingdom why not the world?” Thus in 1804 the British and Foreign Bible Society (now the Bible Society) was launched. It’s first translation was published the same year, a translation of John’s gospel into the Canadian Indian Mohawk language.

There are now 130 national Bible Societies worldwide and part or all of the scriptures have been translated into more than 2,300 languages and dialects. Today the Bible Society is rising to the challenge of ensuring that the message of the Bible can be heard in today’s world and that it is known, loved and understood. A variety of initiatives are in place not just the translation work which is ongoing. There are also programmes such as: Faith Comes by Hearing - which seeks to put the Bible onto tape enabling it to be heard whilst people are going about their lives. Bible a Month Club - whereby for a small regular donation a Bible will be donated somewhere in the world where it is needed each month. Specific Projects – such as literacy projects which seek to provide people with an opportunity to meet with the Bible and to learn an invaluable life skill, or media festivals which seek to bring the drama and reality of the Bible to as wide an audience as possible. Further information about the Bible Society’s activities and history is available from its website: www.biblesociety.org.uk Alan Ramay (Tel. 853250) is the St John’s representative for the Bible Society

Syrian Orthodox Christian School in Bethlehem Project

In March 2000 Canon Andrew White of Coventry Cathedral led a diocesan pilgrimage to the Holy Land. There the group met members of the Syrian Orthodox Christian Church in Bethlehem. Many in this community of 3000 (including 800 children) have missed out on formal education due to the lack of recognition of Christianity in local schools.

At the start of the new Millennium came new hope as the Barnabas Fund together with members of Coventry Cross of Nails Community bought a dilapidated building in the suburbs of Bethlehem suitable for conversion to a school. Reconstruction commenced using local labour and volunteers. The school opened in September 2003 with just 15 children. The quality of care and education was quickly recognised and demand for places grew rapidly necessitating the need for more accommodation. A third floor was added to the build in 2006 providing 5 more classrooms.This was officially opened in September 2006, a very high profile occasion with many foreign visitors and local dignitaries of church and state attending. Canon Justin Welby represented Coventry Cathedral on behalf of Bishop Colin and presented a new Cross of Nails. The intake increased to 117 children in 2006 and this year 2008 there are 145 children two of which are from Muslim families.

The school is in fact recognised to be one that is offering the highest standard of education and pastoral care and trainee teachers are sent to the school form Bethlehem University as part of their teaching experience. Further extension to the school is planned, and it is our prayer and hope that this will be completed to enable students to be educated to Grade 12.
The aim of the school is to preserve the Aramaic language of Jesus.
The Mission of the school is to educate the young in a healthy environment that cherishes and caters for the spiritual, psychological, mental, physical and social aspects that comprehends love, peace reconciliation and democracy with the full understanding of human rights.
There is no state funding because the school is Christian. Therefore like every Christian school in present day Palestine revenue depends on fee-paying students and outside financial help.
Many supporters have visited the school since its conception in the year 2000. All have been overwhelmed by the reception they received from the children, teachers and parents, all are so delighted with the school which is a Beacon of Hope in a very dark area of the world. They send their sincere thanks for your prayers and support.
The situation in Bethlehem has improved since the days of the Intafada. However there is still a very high level of unemployment resulting in the fact that families find life very hard and many continue to suffer from lack of food and basic medical care. We therefore continue to seek funding to pay for teachers salaries, school fees for the very poor children who would not receive a Christian education and provide equipment for the new classrooms.

The SOCS committee raise these funds by encouraging church members and local school children to support the project with their prayers and financially. We also organise social events to raise funds. Members of the committee are always happy to come to your church or group and give a presentation.
If you can help to improve the lives of the children in Bethlehem with your prayers or financially. Please make your donations payable to Coventry Cathedral Bethlehem School Project. For further information please contact John or Jean Radford 01926-854475

Why support this project
Families will remain together as a unit
Young people will have a good Christian Education
The project will encourage other Christians in the Holy Land.
Education will bring greater opportunities for work.
Respect for a marginalised Christian community will increase.

How can YOU Help?

• Pray for peace in the Holy Land
• Pray for the school and head teacher Mrs Amal Behman, and the children and teachers.
• Raise awareness of the situation (invite a SOCS group member to give a presentation).
• Buy a piece of equipment for the school or give a donation

St. John’s Links : John & Jean Radford. (854475)

Today 1.3 billion people live in extreme poverty. Tonight 800 million people will go to bed hungry and this year 12 million children will die before their fifth birthday.

It needn’t be like that. We can hope for a better world, where everyone lives a full life, free from poverty. And we have the power to turn that hope into action. Hope is about doing, not dreaming. It makes things change. Since 1950, life expectancy in developing countries has risen by 20 years, access to clean water has doubled, child death rates have halved, and food production has grown 20 per cent faster than population.

The unprecedented economic development of the last few decades has created unprecedented wealth, as well as pockets of extreme deprivation, across the globe. But it’s not simply a matter of economics. Poverty has been eroded partly because people have fought together for justice: rich and poor, North and South, people of all faiths and all races. They didn’t give in to despair. They hoped – and acted.

Christian Aid is an agency of the churches in UK and Ireland working wherever the need is greatest, irrespective of religion or race. It believes in strengthening people to find their own solutions to the problems they face, to support local organisations which are best placed to understand local needs.

During Christian Aid week every year 350 000 volunteers in the UK and Ireland collect money to help the world’s poorest communities. In this parish we raised £3,000 in 2005 and supported the Make Poverty History campaign by finding out more about poverty and how to beat it, signing campaign cards and joining with others to pray.

For further information contact Sue Proctor the St. John’s Parish Representative (Tel. 856212) or go to the web site: www.christianaid.org.uk.

The Church Army is a society of evangelists within the Anglican Communion which exists to enable people to come to a living faith in our Lord Jesus Christ.
The society focuses on the following five areas:
1. Area evangelism - raising the profile of outreach by training and resourcing churches.
2. Children and young people - providing training for youth workers.
3. Church planting - establishing churches in new situations, building relationships between church and community.
4. Homeless people - providing accommodation and training to homeless people by helping churches to be involved with projects and initiatives.
5. Older people - encouraging older people to recognise their gifts and helping them to reach out to their neighbours, and working with churches to meet the needs of older people.

They are leading by example in all the work being done among the people on the edge of Christianity - bringing them into a relationship with our Lord Jesus, and reaching those outside our churches whom the Church cannot reach. They are challenging us to join them in going into the communities and take Jesus and His saving power to those who are lost. All things can happen, if we believe in the things we pray in Jesus name.

The Church Army desperately needs the help of Christians everywhere to pray and give, to enable this work to carry on and expand. This is so that Jesus can come to the people in the areas where the established church is struggling and change the lives of those who otherwise may never know Him.

In recent years St John’s have adopted the Church Army project “The Bridge” which is based at the Marylebone Project for Homeless Women in central London. It was led by Captain Mark Dadds and his wife Sister Heather Dadds. The Bridge vision was to further develop Christian community in a way which enables women in temporary accommodation to move on to a new local community where they can play a full and valued role.
The Bridge project has now been finished by the Church Army: - Mark & Heather Dadds are now seeking God’s guidance for their future work. All their work will be taken on by the Marylebone hostels project so they still seek our prayers and support to keep this important work and commitment going for Jesus.

The Marylebone project is a project for homeless women and comprises of two residential hostels, a mental health residential unit and a day drop-in centre. These combined offer individual rooms for 110 homeless women in London. There are always 4 emergency beds. The day centre provides training activities designed to encourage social interaction and self confidence. There is also a weekly Christian reflection group.

Church Army has now changed the way they train their new evangelists. Church Army’s mission – based training programme is led by Elaine Storkey and has been validated by York St Johns University. Instead of 3 years training in-house at their Sheffield Training College they are now being trained in the community among people in their every day lives (hands on training). They have re-ordered their training centre in Sheffield and are relocating their support centre from Sidcup, Kent to Sheffield, which will now be their main centre.
There are training enablers doing work among the trainees in Leamington, building the church at Warwick Gates. There one worker has set up a new group in Warwick School for 12 – 15 year olds and has called the group ‘Wired’, developing a Christian community among them and giving them the chance to connect with God through Jesus. He is also serving in a street cafe giving free drinks to the homeless and clubbers. It enables him to get one to one with people in the street and also engage in the community in a variety of ways: - i.e. giving away food in the poorer areas of the estate, outreach into schools, alpha in the work place and messy church.

Mission-based training is not cheap:- it is expected to cost around £100 000 in 2010 to run the Warwick Gates Centre of Mission. Please pray for the workers there and feel free to drop in and meet these servants of Jesus at Warwick Gates Church near Heathcote Hospital.

More information is available from www.churcharmy.org.uk or from
Derek Jakeman, St John’s Church Army Representative. (Tel. 856793)

Church Pastoral Aid Society (CPAS)

CPAS is an Anglican evangelical mission agency working with churches, mainly in the UK and Republic of Ireland. We enable churches to help every person hear and discover the good news of Jesus Christ, helping churches become more mission-focused by developing effective leaders at all levels: training, resourcing, empowering and inspiring men, women and young people who point others to Jesus.

Our vision is to be at the forefront of leadership development in churches, including:

• Developing men and women to become more effective in leadership.
• Equipping churches to train a generation of children and young people for leadership.
• Helping young people aspire to and prepare for leadership.
• Inspiring young people to offer themselves for ordination, including pioneer ministry.
• Equipping leaders to be effective in reaching and discipling children and young people through Ventures and Falcon Camps.
• Working with our 500 patronage churches to develop effective leadership.
• Promoting research and sharing expertise on church leadership issues.

For more information, please visit the CPAS website at www.cpas.org.uk

Crosslinks is one of the Anglican missionary societies. Its motto is “God’s Word to God’s World”. It has a strong evangelical emphasis and is working through its mission partners all over the world. It was founded as the Bible Churchman’s Missionary Society in 1922 and changed its name a few years ago to reflect the changing nature of mission. This change has been from purely “sending” missionaries to “exchanging”
missionaries (or partners) and there are now a number of partners working in the United Kingdom.

In addition to supporting mission partners the society also has a programme of short term work (Short-term Mission Involvement Learning & Experience - S.M.I.L.E) suitable for those who have anything from a week to a year to spare. This work can involve activities such as working alongside missionaries, teaching, building, working with children.

St John’s Kenilworth has a link through Crosslinks with Julian Brown. Julian is married to Mei Hwa, from Taiwan and they have a young son, John.

For further information please contact Ken Pollard, Crosslinks Parish Secretary, St John’s Kenilworth. (Tel. 856149) or view the web site www.crosslinks.org.

Kenilworth Deanery Dresden Link

Keep peace-making going!

Since 1994 there has been a link between parishes in Kenilworth Deanery and a number of parishes in and around Dresden, based on the relationship between Coventry and Dresden that there has been since the bombing of those two cities in World War 2. Every couple of years a group of about twenty people fly across either from Dresden to Kenilworth Deanery or vice versa. See this link for more information.

Kenilworth Youth For Christ

Our aim - to inform, to inspire, to enthuse.

Our Mission - to take the Good News relevantly to every young person in Kenilworth, wherever they are - in the street, in School, in Church, in Clubs or in the Home.

"Effective youth ministry starts with us realising our own value and worth to God. It continues with us passing on that sense of significance and self-worth to the young people we know and work with. The biggest buzz then comes when THEY start passing it on to others". - Paul Wilcox, YFC Director.

K.Y.F.C is a charity in its own right, funded entirely by the faith-giving of people in Kenilworth. We operate under the auspices of the National Y.F.C organisation who offer advice, resources, management skills and prayer. Our full time Youth Leaders are Chris and Tina Adams who live on Rounds Hill with their children Pippa and Michael. Our activities are overseen by an Executive Committee which meets monthly and consists of members of the various Kenilworth churches. They are also the Trustees of KYFC.

St John's representatives are currently Diana Barnard, Ian Jones and Clive Sutton; Knights Meadow is represented by Graham HYDE.

See also the national Youth for Christ web site: www.yfc.co.uk

South American Missionary Society

This society is a partner with the Anglican Church in South America. The countries covered are :

It’s mission is: “Give thanks to the Lord call on his name; make known among the nations what he has done.”( Ps 105:1) and the work includes the following:

• Theological training, church schools and teacher training
• Marginalised groups, street children, orphans, AIDS victims, new town projects.
• Bible translation into native tongues
• New church plants
• Link latin partners
• Youth Work
• Church work and outreach
• Cross cultural mission

Publications:
Magazine called SHARE - three times yearly
Prayer diary - whose doing what were and when
Prayer letter - news and items for prayer from Bishop
Maurice Sinclair
Photo gallery - showing all mission partners and accepted candidates

Noteworthy comment in a thesis on grassroots church growth in Latin America stated “ The spread of the Gospel amongst the masses constitutes one of the most significant shifts in Latin American History”.

Mike Dayus, (tel. 01676 533039). St. John’s Link Person

Web site - www.samsgb.org -

Kenilworth-Uyogo Friendship Link

Started in 1979, when the people of Kenilworth raised over £2400 for its International Year of the Child project to enable a Mother and Child clinic to be built and equipped in the village of Uyogo in the Tabora Region of Tanzania, using local materials and labour.

Over this long period of time, our support has grown and we have supplied funds for many projects, building wells, the need for clean water being a major requirement to improve the health of the villagers. In addition we have supplied funds to refurbish the village school, build teachers and nurses accommodation. (See picture) One of our latest projects has been the refurbishment of the Mother and Child clinic and Dispensary and this is now complete. We also send medical supplies for the Clinic every year.

Members of the village send their sincere thanks to you for your support. Please continue to pray for them and support the events that the committee organizes to raise funds to improve the quality of the health, education and living standards of this third world community.

The committee members from St. John’s are Hazel Jackson, Ann Sheard, John Radford and Peter Fisher who will be pleased to tell you more about the link.

Please try to attend our AGM Tuesday 7th April 7.30pm Kenilworth Methodist Church to celebrate our 30th Anniversary and meet Mr Elias Masatu our special quest.

The Church Mission Society

The Church Mission Society is a voluntary association of people united in obedience to the call of God to proclaim the Gospel in all lands and to gather the people of all races into the fellowship of Christ’s church. This means that all members of CMS try to participate actively in Christian mission wherever they are, in their home country or abroad.

During its 200 years CMS has sent out more than 9000 men and women to share the Gospel - teaching, setting up schools, and hospitals and engaging in direct evangelism. Today CMS works in Africa, the Middle East, Europe and Asia. It works as a partner with national churches and agencies in over 30 countries.
Our mission partner is Gail Phillip. She joined the staff at Christ Church language centre in Bangkok, Thailand in April 2000. She is now principal of the Kindergarten at Christ Church and is currently overseeing the opening of a new child care centre in Banchang.

She can be contacted at:
Christ Church,
11 Convent Road,
Bangkok 10500
THAILAND
email: gailphillip@hotmail.com
Sue Proctor is the St. John’s Link, 856212.

Tools With A Mission

Tools With A Mission is a Christian Charity that sends gifts of good quality tools into many countries. It enables those who receive them to earn a living and change their world.

In 1981, John Bennett decided to support missionary work by collecting, refurbishing and sending tools overseas. At first the tools were collected and repaired as part of a school educational project. But looking back it seems that God was in this venture because over the years, from small beginnings TWAM has grown. In 1995 TWAM moved from its small premises into a large barn near Ipswich. Perry Barn houses an office, workshop and storage area and here a happy band of volunteers sort, repair, refurbish, and store all the tools that come into the barn from all over the country, mostly from Christian churches and organisations.

When requests come from the mission field abroad the tools are collected from the store, catalogued for customs clearance, all paperwork is prepared and the tools are crated or containerised for shipment. Then the shipment is taken by lorry to Felixstowe docks and sent on its way with a prayer that many lives will be touched by this expression of the love of Jesus.

Tools means almost anything ranging from saws to sewing machines, pumps and mallets to axes and spectacles. In many developing countries many localities are without electricity or families can't afford a connection. Therefore manual sewing machines, hand tools, and non-electrical duplicators are very much in demand.

What are we doing locally? Well we have recently opened a new industrial unit in Binley, Coventry. We hope this will become the centre for the Midlands operation and soon we will have a phone line set up with broadband and an email address.
This is a huge step forward which has meant taking this unit in faith that we will be able to meet the ongoing expenses connected with such a venture such as rent and utilities. The unit has been fitted out with racking and work benches. We are hoping to refurbish tools and repair sewing machines here as well as sort and send out haberdashery items, sewing kits, carpenters kits, builder’s kits and others.
The Unit is at 8 Lifford Way, Binley, Coventry. CV3 2RN and we are open every Thursday and Friday from 9.30 am to 3.30 pm so people can bring their tool and sewing machines to the Unit during those times.
So if anyone is interested please contact either David Wheeler (857155) or Peter Fisher (853706).