Feature Feature 7THE BAPTIST TIMES | Friday, September 30, 2011 Friday, September 30, 2011 | THE BAPTIST TIMES 6

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AUTUMN, according to the poet John Keats, is the season of mists and mellow fruitfulness.

Ask an insurance underwriter for his or her view on this time of year and you’ll probably receive a somewhat terser comment about bonfires, gutters blocked with leaves and the first frosts of impending winter making pathways slippery. I

It doesn’t exactly conjure up the same romantic mood as Mr Keats, but he didn’t see the insurance claims that begin to cross underwriters’ desks more frequently as the days grow shorter.

We know it’s autumn when we switch our heating back on, and that’s a good place to start getting your home ready for the cold part of the year.

Rather than waiting until everyone else puts their heating on and many faults are reported, it is best to give your heating a test while the weather’s still warmer. That way if there is a problem, the heating repair firms won’t be inundated with other call-outs.

Leaves are another thing to keep an eye out for in the autumn. While an annoyance for many keen gardeners, they can turn into a darned nuisance when great soggy bundles of them clog gutters and drainpipes.

If a gutter is blocked, the water still has to go somewhere and that somewhere will probably be over your brickwork and window frames, causing damp and water damage. The best thing all home owners can do is check your gutters at least once during the autumn and have a look at your roofs as well.

Cracked tiles or rotting lead flashing around a chimney breast may be fine in summer, but come the wind and driving rain of November and it’s a very different story.

The reference to November leads us neatly on to November 5: Bonfire Night. Whether it’s Guy Fawkes Night or you’re just burning some of those autumn leaves, bonfires do need some care and attention.

They should be kept well away from the house and any sheds, outbuildings or wooden fences.

Also, don’t leave bonfires unattended and never use petrol to ignite a fire. To have all bases covered, it won’t hurt to have a bucket of water handy in case things get out of control.

If a firework display is on the cards as well, again it’s good practice to have some water on stand-by. Common sense is the key to staying safe and having fun.

With everything taken care of, there is no reason why you shouldn’t be able to enjoy the mellow autumn days in your home without any hiccoughs.

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Is your home ready for autumn?Kevin Thomas, head of field operations at Baptist Insurance, gives some helpful tips ahead of the season

zzHeadland’szstoryzKieran Banks feels he is helping to unlock potential – and the congregation at Headland Baptist Church have embarked on quite a journey as a result.

When the former head teacher was inducted into the pastorate in January 2010 (pictured) he became the Hartlepool church’s first paid minister in 15 years.

His arrival has coincided with a flurry of activity that has seen the church grow its membership and increasingly reach out to its community.

The children’s club on Tuesday nights has mushroomed, and there is now a youth group on Thursdays, from which a number of the teenagers have attended a youth alpha on Sunday.

The church has launched a luncheon club for the older generation who live locally but don’t go to church. This attracts between 20 and 30 people each month, and plans are afoot to introduce a short service. nativity plays, involvement in the

mission at the Tall Ships Hartlepool 2010, when the church was helped by a team of 10 from Spring Baptist Church in Texas, and leading a Churches Together event at Christmas have also featured.

although the church has a small fellowship, it is growing and has hosted several baptisms with more on the cards.

Kieran is reluctant to take too much credit – the church had been taking some encouraging steps which led to the need for his arrival – but acknowledges he has helped to spur things on.

‘When i joined them the fellowship was

definitely growing, and what’s happened since is not directly attributable to me. But i’ve played a part in encouraging and providing contacts, opening up the possibilities.

‘For instance the will was always to do the youth work, but they weren’t getting the people in. i’m a governor at a local school, and we’ve been able to get the message out.’

Church secretary Gwynneth Hauxwell is under no illusions about Kieran’s impact, made possible because Home Mission pays for half his salary. ‘Kieran has been like a breath of fresh air, challenging us passionately to embrace the whole Gospel of Christ, and to acquire, equip, and employ disciples of him.

‘We are very grateful for the support from Home Mission, as we would not be able to maintain a minister without that. We thank everyone who shares in giving in this way.’

alongside the increased outreach is a deepening of faith that a full-time minister

can help provide. The church has had a couple of weekends away as a fellowship.

‘They love the word, are really keen on expository ministry, the focus on grace and Christ,’ says Kieran.

‘Their appetite for the word and for prayer is discernibly growing.

‘Together we are definitely growing and are full of hope. it’s a joint venture that has definitely been made possible by Home Mission.’

But he adds that the fellowship does not want to rest on its laurels. ‘The church definitely has an ambition to be free of the need of Home Mission. it’s committed to growing.’

Gwynneth agrees. ‘Our vision is to see people of all ages responding to the gospel and becoming followers of Jesus, then making other disciples as they allow the Holy Spirit to take control of their lives.

‘We are excited and challenged by what God is doing and will do through his very ordinary people at Headland Baptist Church.’

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The Revd Roy Cullen is the minister of Grange Baptist Church, Birkenhead, and senior minister of Wirral Chinese Church

THe BiGGeST impact that the association has had in my life and in the life of

the church was some Bible study material Phil Jump, our regional minister, wrote for Back to Church Sunday.

One of the studies was on Mark 2, when the paralysed man was taken by his friends to see Jesus. One of the questions the study asked was ‘Who are the people that were stopping the paralysed man and his friends getting to Jesus?’

We discussed this in our study group and discovered it was the religious people. The study went on to ask ‘i wonder how many religious people in our churches are stopping the community outside from getting to know Jesus because of who we are, because of what we are?’

We all enjoyed that study but that night that issue really struck home for me as a person and as a pastor. i felt that it was time that i looked at my life and how i was

doing ministry. Was i stopping the community from meeting Jesus?

The same week of the Bible study a residents’ association was being launched in our area and i had an invitation to go. i didn’t want to go, because being a traditional Baptist, i believed that we did our evangelism in the community but the main work was in the church.

The challenge from the Bible study came back to me. it was as if God was speaking to me personally about this, saying ‘Maybe you are the problem – get into the community.’

So i went to that residents’ association launch and got involved with it. One concern raised was there was nowhere for the young people to go in the area. So i very foolishly said to them, ‘Come over to our building, it’s empty!’

That offer led to a conversation with a local authority youth worker and two and a half years ago we started a community youth club at the church.

From around a dozen young people attending we now have an average weekly attendance of 85-90. That has put our church right at the heart of the community.

That was not all. i was then invited to become chaplain of the local YMCa, which is across the road from us. We have started a drop-in centre at the church for the homeless and people struggling with drug and alcohol issues which attracts more than 70 people a week who we feed and talk with. recently some of them have started

coming to church. i am also chairman of the local

Foodbank which will be launching across the Wirral Peninsula in november, involving dozens of churches and people from the local community.

The life of the church has totally changed. We are still small, but we have achieved amazing things in these last three years – and it began with that study that the association provided. We have been very much involved in the community and we needed the expertise of the association to advise us, to encourage us when we got a little nervous about what was going on, and to stand with us.

Phil Jump, our regional minister, has been an inspiration to me personally. He’s not perfect but he is one of the Lord’s servants to our churches and he and the association have been a great encouragement and a spur to mission.

JuST imagine seeks to take our Baptist churches on a three-year journey together to capture a fresh passion and understanding of

what Home Mission is all about. Over the next few years we

will prayerfully imagine how God is already working through current Home Mission-supported situations. We will also invite you to dream together about what could be done for the Kingdom if we cared a little more for each other

and gave more sacrificially.Just imagine was developed

by representatives from our 13 regional association teams and the national resource, who all have a passion for the way they see God using Home Mission funds to support, equip and empower a range of situations across our denomination.

Their prayer is that as we ‘walk together and watch over each other’ the Baptist family will learn to love each other with greater compassion, care more deeply about what God is calling others

to do, and move us to step out in faith and give with a new spirit of creativity and generosity as a Baptist people.

So why is Just imagine so important now?

in many ways Home Mission is one of our Baptist family’s best-kept secrets, and many people in our churches know only a little about what we call Home Mission.

at a challenging economic time, as we make decisions about giving five per cent to Home Mission from our church budgets, many have lost the connection between

a figure in the church accounts and the exciting and humbling ways those funds are used to make a difference for Christ’s Kingdom.

Over the next few weeks Baptist Life, the BuGB website and fresh posters which will start arriving in our churches will gently invite us all to Just imagine. So look out for these resources and join us in a new journey to discover what God is asking us to do as a Baptist people.

When we started working on Just imagine it felt like a project, but as we have prayed and grown

the theme it has become more like a new spiritual adventure.

We are already developing ways we can be more creative in our storytelling, such as a fresh all-age worship pack written by a father and son team, audio-visual materials, use of social media and much more.

We are also setting up online giving to Home Mission and a new Legacy Programme in the near future. So join this exciting journey and lets find out together where God is leading us.

Just imagine if we didn’t.

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Rowena’szstory

‘i WaS loved into life,’ says rowena Wilding.

She grew up on the deprived Chelmsley Wood estate on Birmingham’s eastern fringe.

‘i believed there was no God where i grew up. Just pain and fear and abuse. i was physically and emotionally abused by my father until i was 12, when my mother realised that if we didn’t leave, we were going to wind up dead. We left with nothing but the clothes on our backs and found ourselves homeless.’

They found shelter with neil roberts, minister of the Home Mission-supported Baptist church, who with his wife Helen gave them a home until the Council rehoused them. But rowena’s mother found life very hard, and rowena found herself on her own much of the time. She became a drug abuser and overdosed at the age of 14, saying ‘i woke up in hospital bitterly disappointed.’

nothing changed for her until she was 16 and got her first job – as an elf in Santa’s grotto. There, she says, ‘i met a boy who

shared his faith with me. He befriended me, not to convert me, just because he wanted to show me that i was loved.

‘We talked about God for several months and i resisted, until he finally asked me a pertinent question; having tried and failed to fill the hole in my life with drugs, sex, alcohol, fashion, music and whatever else, what’s stopping me from trying to fill it with God?

‘i went to church with him the following week and listened to a sermon on romans

8; God uses all things for the good of those who love him and are called according to his purpose.

‘it was, i suppose, a Damascus road moment. all my anger and pain at what i’d been through dissipated as God showed me that there was a plan, that he was going to use every experience and every mistake to help others.

‘a year later i formally gave my life to God and was baptised and made a member at my local Baptist church by the minister who had given me a home three years earlier.’

now rowena’s married to the boy – now the man (pictured above with rowena) – who took her to church. She and andrew have just moved to edgeside Baptist in rossendale, where she’s been inducted as the minister.

She’d won a place at Birmingham university to study philosophy. ‘i loved it, but my heart and mind were in two places – i liked being at uni, but i was more drawn to getting involved with the church. i never really left Chelmsley Wood.’

a university Bible study group challenged her to see that her heart was for ministry. ‘That was the moment it really clicked, and i understood i was doing the wrong thing.

‘i realised that i wanted to work at a church and show the love that i’d been shown.’

Her three years at regent’s Park College in Oxford were, she says, the best of her life, though it was ‘incredibly tough’ – and she’d said that regent’s was the one college she wouldn’t go to (‘the idea of a Chelmsley bird going off to Oxford!’).

But she’ll carry her experience of grace into her ministry at edgeside. Looking back, she says, ‘i wouldn’t have survived and i wouldn’t still be alive it it weren’t for neil and Helen.

‘i saw a group of people demonstrating self-sacrificing love. i used to call Christians hypocrites; i was no longer able to do that.

‘i’d had so much negativity and sadness. The church gave me a family who believed in me and nurtured me into a functional human being.’

Crisiszmanagementz

everY so often something happens in the life of a local church and its community that turns everything upside down.

Such an event took place in the normally peaceful suburb of Westbourne in Bournemouth two years ago. in the early hours of May 8 ralph Millward, a local homeless man and Big issue vendor, was kicked to death while sleeping rough on his regular patch outside the doors of the local Marks and Spencer’s store.

Three drunken teenagers set on him after he refused to give them a cigarette, resulting in an attack which would cost him his life, devastate many families and shake a local community to its core.

ralph was well known around West Cliff Baptist Church. He’d been a regular attender at its weekly Open Door project, where homeless people are warmly welcomed, handsomely fed and have the opportunity to shower, receive fresh clothes, get their hair cut and access local support services.

‘We knew within hours of his death, that this was going to be a significant event, both for our church and the local town,’ said the revd richard Burfoot, West Cliff’s pastor.

The church and its ministers had worked hard to establish good relationships with the community over the years, and were well placed to respond to its shock and grief. This culminated

in a moving memorial service held in the church, which saw nearly 700 people from all walks of life gather to pray their respects to ralph.

They were less equipped to deal with the pressure from the media, both locally and nationally. as the news of ralph’s death began to break, the phone calls from newspapers, televisions and radio poured in, all wanting a response from the church.

Crucial to the way the church dealt with this was support from the BuGB communications department. Chris Hall took responsibility for dealing with media matters, including a significant presence from John Bird and The Big issue Foundation, right down to arranging countless interviews and finally managing the media presence in church during the memorial service.

T h e s u p p o r t w a s ‘outstanding’, says richard. ‘it freed us up to be the missionary people God calls us to be in such a crisis – alongside our grieving community, expressing the love of Christ, listening, loving and walking alongside those who were seeking to make sense of this crime that had violated the very heart of our town.

‘This really was a case of God’s mission being supported at home, reminding us that Home Mission is vital to the mission of the wider Baptist family and not just those churches in receipt of a Home Mission grant.’

Home Mission: telling the stories

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BUGB head of communications Amanda Allchorn introduces the new Home Mission Promotion project, launched this week