Reflections from Revd Paul Rochester, General Secretary of the Free Churches Group

We are grateful to God for bringing us to another Advent and Christmas season. As we approach the close of 2024, we find ourselves already looking ahead to 2025. Meetings are being scheduled, plans are taking shape, and we anticipate both the challenges and opportunities the new year will bring. There will undoubtedly be difficult moments, but also exciting events we eagerly await.

This year has brought significant changes to the world. Political and social shifts have occurred on a scale not seen in recent decades. At the same time, we have witnessed remarkable advances in technology, including the rapid rise of artificial intelligence (AI). These developments prompt us to consider their implications for society. AI has the potential to transform the way we live and work, raising concerns about job displacement across many industries. I recently came across a church encouraging career development in trades; assuming that these areas of work are less likely to be automated by AI. Only time will tell how these changes unfold.

Churches, too, will be impacted by technological advancements, including how ministry is organised and conducted. In the New Year, we will host a seminar in London exploring AI and ethics within the context of local churches. Please stay tuned for more information and save the date—it promises to be an important discussion.

Christmas is a time to reflect on how the world was forever changed by the birth of Jesus Christ. He entered a world in darkness, alienated from God, to bring light and restore the relationship broken by sin. Today, disruptive politics and technology are reshaping our world, revealing both great opportunities and significant pitfalls. While we cannot halt change, we can strive to influence it for good. Regardless of our political beliefs, we should aim for peace, justice, and the flourishing of all humanity; not one group thriving at the expense of others, but a coming together, even amidst deeply held differences. Kindness and love must guide our actions, with faithfulness to the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Jesus came to proclaim and establish the kingdom of God, and He remains with His people, through the Holy Spirit, to see that mission fulfilled. As His followers, we are called to continue preaching the kingdom and living by its principles in a world that often cannot grasp the truth of Christ. Christmas reminds us of His birth, yet it is sorrowful that so many still do not understand the profound significance of His coming and how it can transform lives and society for good. The mystery of Christ remains hidden to many. I am praying that God will open the eyes of people across the world to see the truth of Jesus, the Son of God and the Saviour of the world.

The world will continue to change, as it always has. However, amid these changes, may we remain steadfast in keeping Jesus at the centre of all we do. He has come to bridge the gap between humanity and the Father and to bring us back into a restored relationship with God.

Stephen Seamands, in his book Ministry in the Image of God, asserts that it is not more therapists and moralists we need. He speaks of our greatest need being authentic Christian communities - communities where the “heart of God is home, where the humble and wise learn to shepherd those on the path behind them, where trusting strugglers lock arms with others as together they journey on.”

There is something profound about connecting people to God and aligning our hearts with His. This authentic experience of God is what we all need, and Christmas reminds us this was made possible through the birth, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

God bless always,

Paul Rochester

Reflection from Revd Helen Cameron, Moderator of the Free Churches Group

In a long ministry of more than 35 years in a wide variety of contexts which has meant me preaching in all kinds of locations and on all kinds of occasions, I have learned many things.

I have learned to carry a torch in winter so that I can light my path to the church building in order to see where I am walking and not fall over into mud or on one glorious occasion - the village duck pond.

We all need light to flourish, to be healthy and to grow, and that is true not just for plants but also for people. My husband, whose hobby is astronomy or star-gazing, tells me there are very few locations in the UK that are truly dark – many urban communities are over-lit and light pollution can be a problem and stars cannot easily be seen. The little island of Sark in the Channel Islands promotes visits to its “dark skies” for those who want to see and study stars. Darkness is therefore not always a bad thing and sometimes we learn things in the dark, from the dark. Dark is necessary.

It is, I think, what we do with darkness that matters. Most of us get to rest then, and we are thankful for those who work and serve others in the night. Some people abuse the darkness to do evil things and that makes some people nervous of the dark. Darkness itself is not evil but what we choose to do in it and with it can hurt others. The darkness can feel overwhelming, can exacerbate our hurts and fears until we no longer feel able to tell if we are running from monsters or frightened of shadows. This time of year can be hard. Christmas as a season can be hard when you feel dislocated from the joy and celebration of others.

But because Christmas is not all about feeling cheerful, or pretending we’re not hurt or afraid, I think that is understandable. Christmas is about hope, about recognising that even the deepest darkness is no longer impenetrable because the light has come. The light that comes in Christ will prevail, the darkness will be quenched. We can say, even when we don’t feel it, that hope has come to us.

In the opening verses of John’s Gospel we read the hope-filled and stirring words,

‘the light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it”

We are, as God’s beloved children, the followers of Jesus of Nazareth, called to give an account for the hope that is in us as I Peter 3:5 reminds us. In the darkest of days for all the citizens of the world the light of Christ will shine brightly in us and through us so that we reflect the glory of God.

Hope is not always about being able to remove the darkness in our lives, and the life of the world. There is a lot to be sad about. However, we can and must give an account of the hope that is in us even when so much is uncertain because we believe God is author of all, the giver of life, of every breath and he holds us all in a loving embrace. So we believe no-one is ultimately lost and we believe nothing can separate us from the love of God seen in Jesus Christ our Lord. We are people of hope. We have a hope that is based not on how the world looks on any one day, or on the progress of humanity to think of others rather than themselves but based on the word made flesh and come among us. Our hope flows from our knowledge that God is with us, bearing our burdens and healing our wounds. God is with us transforming us, redeeming us, making a place for us in the eternal life of God and at the very last, bringing us safe home.

So what do we do in the darkness?

A friend of mine was born and raised in Wales, he speaks Welsh first and English as a second language. He told me a story once I have never forgotten. He was visiting his grandparents on the island of Anglesey and they had taken him with them to their chapel where there was a festival of hymn singing going on.

 The Chapel was full, everyone singing in 4-part harmony. It was wonderful and beautiful and stirring. Then the lights went out and the entire chapel was plunged into darkness. What had happened? A power cut!

My friend said he has never forgotten what happened next – there was no hesitation, no laughter, no interruption, what happened was that people went on singing in the dark. They went on singing, in the dark.

They could do this because they were familiar with praise. This group of Christians were determined and faithful, not easily put off their stride, they persisted. The light of their faith continued to shine despite the darkness around them.

So, what of us in this Advent and Christmastide 2024?

We are called to be persistent in our faith and in our prayer in and to keep praising God, to be kind and generous, to reflect the light of Christ in our relationships, our communities, our nation. The light shines in the darkness and it cannot be overcome.

Reflections from Revd Bob Wilson, Secretary for the Prison Chaplaincy & Free Churches Faith Advisor

Christmas is …

What words come to mind to you when someone says this? “For the children”, “Too expensive”, “So commercialised”? Or maybe some more positive remarks, “a time for family”, “a time of peace”, or “a time of giving”. I would say that the most common one I hear in prison is “hard”!

Christmas, the time when we celebrate the birth of Jesus as a baby, to Mary and Joseph, in temporary accommodation, in an occupied country, is a wonderful time, but it can be a hard time. It is hard to remember what we don’t have, what we have lost, where we would rather be. All true for Mary and Joseph, and maybe true for us too. Many of us will have lost friends, family, maybe our liberty this year.

But “To us a child is born, to us a son is given” and that birth was unlike any other birth in the history. The child born is the Son of God, the Prince of Peace, the Saviour of the world. A birth that will change time itself. Not a birth that turns back time, but a birth that gives us hope that time is no longer our enemy; neither hard times, nor good times. We no longer need to see the hands of time as a countdown to be feared, but we see that today, this is the time for life.

Christmas, above everything, is a time for change. A change that God can bring, a change that will bring a whole new order in our lives, a change to how we see everything.

Our Prison Chaplains this year will see many who are struggling in their lives to see beyond the gloom and darkness that is real and everywhere. They will be encouraging thousands of men, women and children to take a little time to pray, a little time to look for and at the Christ child. Maybe we all need to do this anew. Pray as I alone know how to pray, in my own words. Pray that the God who gave us the gift of a saviour at Christmas will step into my life again to lighten the darkness, to scatter the gloom. Maybe we can pray, along with our chaplains, our prisoners, our brothers and sisters that, just as a child was born to Mary, something new and life-changing might be born in our lives this year.

Or maybe just pray that, while Christmas will be hard, you will be able to see a way through to the other side!

And maybe then, rethink the ending to the sentence …

Christmas is …

A happy and peaceful Christmas to everyone

Revd Bob Wilson

Free Churches Faith Advisor to HMPPS

Reflections from Revd Sarah Crane, Healthcare Chaplaincy Steering Committee

Like many of us I am a bit surprised to find myself in December. This year has gone so quickly!

The Healthcare Chaplaincy Steering Committee (HCSC) sits under the Free Churches Group (FCG) Board and is responsible for supporting and shaping the work of Revd Dr Mark Newitt, Secretary for Healthcare Chaplaincy at FCG.

For the Healthcare Chaplaincy Steering Committee it has been a really full and positive year. We have welcomed a number of new members to the group, Linford Davis and Terry Bentley, both bringing a wealth of experience within healthcare and social care chaplaincy as well, as a broader perspective from other denominations within FCG. Our goal is to as representative as possible of the breadth of our member denominations so we are delighted to have made these appointments. This year we also said a big thank you to Mark Burleigh and Kate Le Sueur, who stood down at the end of their respective terms.

As always in 2024 we have been grateful to Mark for his passion and enthusiasm for the support and development of healthcare chaplains within the FCG and beyond. Through the year, either individual or in partnership with others the FCG has offered:

• Our Annual Study Day in June exploring being on the margins through art, research and story.

• Three Nourishing Roots days shared with chaplains from other contexts providing space to meet and reflect together on our spiritual wellbeing.

• Monthly Pop-Up Reflective Practice providing hour-long sessions for chaplains to come together and reflect on their practice.

• A monthly Research First Journal Club building research literacy through critiquing a recent journal article.

• the Narrative newsletter, and information digest which goes out monthly to more than 600 chaplains within the FCG and beyond.

We are also very pleased to see more members of the committee representing healthcare chaplaincy in other places. Janelle Kingham, Mark Newitt and I have all become directors of the UKBHC in the past six months. (Janelle has also become Vice Chair of the Network for Pastoral, Spiritual and Religious Care in Health.) It is good to know that Free Church healthcare chaplaincy is part of the broader work and conversations which take place across the four nations of the UK and within the representative bodies and other stakeholders.

We look forward to the year ahead in confidence of being able to continue to support chaplains and to influence practice in ways which promote public safety, professionalism, and person-centred care within all healthcare chaplaincy contexts.

Just as chaplaincy requires us to sit with faltering and stilted humanity in moments of raw struggle and real human experience, may we this Advent and Christmas know that the child in the manger comes to do the same for us. As we prepare for Jesus’ coming, we can hold fast to the promises of the Kingdom of God, both now and in all its fullness.

Sarah Crane

Chair, Healthcare Chaplaincy Steering Committee

Fellowship – it’s all in the genes!

I’ve got some intriguing news to share with you. Each person reading this is unique … and, at the same time, not any more significant than anyone else. Perhaps even more staggering, all readers are related to each other. Everyone is your relative, your cousin!

In his book “A Brief History Of Everyone Who Ever Lived -The stories in our genes the geneticist and Radio 4 presenter, Adam Rutherford, reveals:

We have all two parents, and they had two parents, and all of them had two parents, and so on. Keep going like this all the way back to the last time England was invaded, and you’ll see that doubling each generation results in more people than have ever lived, by many billions.

He points out that this is of course not feasible as there are more people living today that the relatively miniscule population in, for instance, the Middle Ages. Instead, he says:

The truth is that our pedigrees fold in on themselves, the branches loop back and become nets, and all of us who have ever lived have done so enmeshed in a web of ancestry. We only have to go back a few dozen centuries to see that most of the 7 billion of us alive today are descended from a tiny handful of people, the population of a village.

Wow, as I reflected on these words about the fundamental interconnected of all human beings, the image of Paul in Corinthians came powerfully to mind: All of you together are the body of Christ. Each one of you is a part of that body.

It seems wonderful how the sense of Paul’s words written in the 1st Century finds a resonance in the Rutherford’s 21st century science. As Rutherford goes on to say:

The truth is that we are all a bit of everything, and we come from all over. Even if you live in the most remote part of the Hebrides, or the edge of the Greek Aegean, we share an ancestor only a few hundred years ago. A thousand years ago, we Europeans share all our ancestry. Triple that time and we share all our ancestry with everyone on Earth. We are all cousins, of some degree. I find this pleasing, a warm light for all (humankind) to share. Our DNA threads through all of us.

So, what does this mean for how we live our lives, relate to and connect with each other? From our perspective as Christians this echoes our belief that we are intimately bound to each other. At the ultimate physical level, in our core being, we are connected to our fellow humans.

By contrast, in the news and social media people rage about what divides us, about fear of our differences – whether it be difference in culture, class, or sexual identity. Concerns about immigration are built on such fears about difference and on demands that races being kept separate. Yet, again shockingly, Rutherford scientifically reports: There are no essential genetic elements for any particular group of people who might be identified as a “race”. As far as genetics is concerned, race does not exist.

So, let’s take an alternative perspective.

Charles Williams was a member of group, called The Inklings, that met in CS Lewis’ rooms in Oxford (and then in the Eagle and Child pub). They included a core group of Williams, Lewis and J R R Tolkien, occasionally joined by others like Dorothy L. Sayers and TS Eliot.

Williams was a rather strange man and an editor with Oxford University Press. He wrote lay theology; historical biographies, and supernatural novels. Lewis was bowled over by one of these novels, The Place of the Lion, and subsequently they became great friends and he invited Willaims to be a guest lecturer when Oxford University Press transferred from London to Oxford during the war.

Williams was challenging about to whom we should extend our Christian love and time. He said that you should give of yourself wholly to anyone you encountered, regardless of who they were and to live your life like this!

The traditional way in which we live our lives is in concentric circles of concern – with the family at pride of place at the centre. The concept of family is of course a really powerful and valued one; indeed, it forms the bedrock for how we live our lives. But it can be a problematic and narrowing concept in terms of how we prioritize our time and care for fellow human beings, with some inside the arena of our concern whilst excluding others.

Jesus provocatively said: “Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?” Pointing to his disciples, he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers. For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother.” Perhaps it is with these words in mind that Williams reflected on what it would be to live one’s life by giving of your attention and concern to whoever you came across, regardless of who they are and what previous connection you may or may not have had with them.

It may mean that the majority of your care and attention is still pragmatically given to family and friends as these are folk you bump into most, but the worldview and orientation is radically changed, and it opens the way for devoting considerable time to anyone, to strangers, to all in need. Indeed, Williams often gave of his time to anyone who came off the train at Oxford to see him.

This outlook seems a world away from many of the things that have been said during the heated election campaign we have all just lived through. After many weeks of wild claims, counter claims, and hopeful promises we may feel rather jaded by politics and politicians. But it is important, not least for the health of our democracy, to avoid becoming disillusioned by it all.

One of the many tributes to the MP Tessa Jowell who died in 2018, was that she made and saw politics as being personal. She always brought back each activity, each engagement, each policy, to the personal, to the individual.

I met with Tessa Jowell as Minister for the Olympics in the English pavilion in Beijing in 2008. I was working there on preparation for London 2012 Olympics and had arranged for the group of children with me to meet up with Tessa. She was late. When she arrived, it was clear that this was one stop in a massively hectic and busy schedule. BUT when she was with us, I had the overwhelming impression we were all that mattered.

After a long time with us, rather than her breaking things up, I felt I ought to, almost on her behalf, say I imagine you need to get off. But she said, no, she was here now for this group of children, and encouraged them to continue their discussion and questioning of her … and the meeting went on for some time until their questions naturally dried up.

Being open to others is part of our very nature; seeing how we are all connected, linked as human beings, intimately joined within the body of Christ. We are bound together in Christian fellowship in a fundamental, visceral heritage. Indeed, the insights gained from genetic science seems to provide a new revelation of what it is to be made in God’s image, where God’s omniscient creation is working within and through our genes, binding us all together as one.

Graham Handscomb is Chair of the Free Churches Education Committee and Professor of Education at University College London.