EL Saturday

This is a final reminder of our grand opening at 3 pm this Saturday at The Evangelical Library, 5/6 Gateway Mews, Bounds Green. The plan is for a brief opening ceremony and then a service at which Robert Strivens will speak plus a cuppa. Do come if you possible can. No problems with parking on Saturday. Alternatively, tube it to Bounds Green then walk for 15 minutes.

John Langford

I recently came across a name unknown to me before - that of an 18th century minister called John Langford. He was apparently connected with the early Methodists but afterwards joined the Baptist Church in Eagle Street, London, under the pastorate of Dr Andrew Gifford. From 1766 he was pastor of several London churches, especially Blackfields in Southwark. He died about 1790. He preached a sermon on the death of Whitefield (1770) that was printed. It was called The exalted state of the faithful ministers of Christ, after death, described and considered. He also published a hymn collection (1776), which included his own hymns (A collection of hymns and spiritual songs). He was long remembered as a man of great spirituality and Christian meekness.

VDM

We were looking through the pictures at the Evangelical Library recently and we cam eacross a portrait of one John Langford VDM. What is VDM?

VDM is apparently a religious initialism variously derived from the similar Latin expressions verbi dei minister or verbum dei minister or verbi divini minister or even verbi divini magister, typically appended as a name suffix to a person's full name to denote his status (sometimes self-determined) as a "minister of the divine word". The typically informal designation emphasises the holder's acceptance of responsibility toward the Bible and preaching it.

The appellation can be used practically, by a person who acts as a minister or a lay minister despite not having an actual university degree or situationally, to momentarily emphasise that a minister holding a DD or something similar is or was not distracted by a wish for prominence or by merely esoteric concerns or conscientiously, as an alternative for those who sincerely believe terms such as "Reverend" are unwise or immodest (!).

Baptism and a wet handshake

We had a baptism on Sunday evening, a young man who has grown up in the church and is now in his final year in Southampton. Lots of family and friends were visiting and it was a great evening. I preached from the close of 2 Timothy 3. One of the possibly unique features of the evening was that I welcomed him into church membership immediately after the baptism. We normally do this at the communion table but this will not be possible.

Yng Nghymru 02

The rest of the family had gone on down to Eleri's sister's in Cardiff and I joined them that evening. The next morning Eleri's other sister and husband arrived and they all trooped off to St Mellon's to hear Ian Parry. I half wish I had gone but having been ill the previous Tuesday I thought it wiser to stay at home and read and prepare myself for the evening. In the evening I was preaching in Bethlehem, Sandfields, Aberafan. I had a lovely time with the minister Jeremy Bailey (who I know through the Westminster Fellowship) and his wife Jenny beforehand chatting about Port Talbot and sundry other things then preached in the evening to about 40 something based on Don Carson's chapter on the ironies of the cross. I then headed back to Cardiff where we stayed overnight before heading back to London the next day.

Yng Nghymru 01

I got ill last week so there was no report on my trip to Wales the week before. We headed down the day before Good Friday and I spent most of it with my sister in Cwmbran putting all my dad's phtos in two fat albums. We needed to do it together to ascertain who was who, what few could be thrown and to agree to put my parents's annual holiday snaps in a box. Nice time, though a bit taxing by the end.

Ev'ry time I see your face,
It reminds me of the places we used to go.
But all I've got is a photograph,
And I realise you're not coming back anymore.

A childhood memory

I grew up in a street in South Wales on a housing estate that was built in the fifties. If you walked around the corner from where we lived along another part of the same street you came upon what was to me always quite an impressive sight - a Baptist chapel that had been raised over a hundred years before and surrounded with a low walled graveyard and with a huge cedar tree. As a young child I never went there on my own but as I grew older and was allowed to roam a bit more, I would go with friends to look at it.

I have a vivid memory of a summer's day, a Saturday in 1969 when I was 10 and being there with a friend or two. There were obviously some big meetings going on in the chapel that day and we wondered what it was all about. Apparently, it was a valedictory service, what ever that meant. I cannot remember who our informant was exactly but - and this was the thing that struck me - a young man was going to go as missionary to Peru and he was going there because God had told him to go. I remember thinking at the time what a stupendous thing this was. I had already worked out that we were in a bit of a backwater in Croesyceiliog and it was not the happening place that one might read about, yet here we were and God himself had spoken to a local man and told him to go all the way to Peru. Incredible! I'm sure my ideas of how God speaks to people were very fanciful but there it was. It was happening in my own back yard.

I don't think that moment had any fundamental affect on my attitude to spiritual things over the next few years but it was one of my earliest contacts with real live Christians and one of the first hints of an amazing world which I have been exploring by God's grace ever since.

Le Tango

Another of these Youtube videos of mine.

Home Schooled

One of the things to come out in the obituaries for Malcolm McLaren was that he was home schooled to the age of 10 by his grandmother. That set me thinking about famous home schooled people. There is a little room for argument over what home schooled means but I think the following lists are interesting adn hopefully accurate.

1. Ten famous Christians

John Owen
Matthew Henry

Jonathan Edwards

John (and Charles) Wesley
John Newton
John Witherspoon

William Carey
Dwight L Moody
Hudson Taylor

C S Lewis

2. Ten Authors

Hans Christian Anderson

William Blake

Robert Browning

Pearl S Buck
Agatha Christie

Charles Dickens

Sean O'Casey

George Bernard Shaw

Mark Twain
Phyllis Wheatley

3. Ten composers and artists

J S Bach

Anton Bruckner
Felix Mendelssohn
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Francis Poulenc

William Blake

John Singleton Copley
Evelyn de Morgan
Claude Monet
Andrew (and Jamie) Wyeth

Streets song

This is the intriguing song by the Streets used at the end of the documentary mentioned last time.

Are we being persecuted?

There is still time to see the thought provoking BBC documentary "Are Christians being persecuted?" here.

Finchley and Golders Green

So the election is on us. I found this useful info at politics.co.uk for the Finchley and Golders Green constituency.

Sitting MP: Rudi Vis, Lab, standing down

Candidates:
Alison Moore, L
Mike Freer, C
Laura Edge, LibDem

Majority Election Result 2005: 741 Lab (1.7%) Majority Election Result 2001 3,716 L (8.5%)
2005 Swing: 3.4% L to C

Constituency info:

Pop c 106,000 constituency covers Finchley, GG, Childs Hill, Hampstead Garden Suburb in London Borough of Barnet (N London). NW of Hampstead, SE of Mill Hill and SW Friern Barnet.
Following a review, Boundary Commission modified constituency. It gains part of the Woodhouse ward from Chipping Barnet and small parts of GG, Finchley Church End and Garden Suburb wards from Hendon constituency, while it loses most of the Coppetts ward to the Chipping Barnet constituency.

Early medieval period - Finchley sparsely populated woodland. From 12th century farming began. Edgware, Highgate and London Railway (later GNR) reached here 1867. 1905 tram services established in Finchley, eventually replaced by trolley buses. 1933, Underground New Works Programme (35-40) announced. Lines through Finchley electrified and connected to Underground, Archway to E Finchley via new tunnel.
After WWII, introduction of London's green belt undermined pre-war plans for Underground here, and upgrading between Mill Hill E and Edgware abandoned. Line used by steam freight trains until closed completely, 1964.
GG has been place in the parish and manor of Hendon since c 13th century. Building of Finchley Rd (1827) resulted in development of a hamlet and by late 19th century around 300 people in the area.
1907, transport links improved by opening of GG tube station, leading to development of area west of Finchley Rd. Establishment of Hampstead GS brought major changes to area east of Finchley Rd. Temple Fortune Farm demolished and a retail district established along front of the road.
Finchley and GG constituency has a large and well-to-do Jewish population. Represented by Margaret Thatcher and a safe Con seat until Vis's unexpected victory 1997.
Lab's tiny majority certain to be overturned by Con gain in 2010. Possible an exceptionally good result for Cons could give them a share in excess of 50% here, as though national figures indicate this is unlikely, the swing to the Cons is sure to be above average here, looking at the nature of the voters.

Demographics: Housing: Owner-Occupied 63.1%, Social Housing 11.9%, Privately Rented 21.6%, Homes without central heating and/or private bathroom 6.4%
Education: Full time students 7.3%, Graduates 16-74: 44.6%, No Qualifications 16-74 15.8%
Ethnicity: Not born UK 35.9%, White 74.2%, Black 5.2%, Asian 12.3%, Mixed 3.2%, Other 5.1%
Faith: Christian 40.0%, Hindu 6.8%, Jewish 19.6%, Muslim 6.0%
Gender: Male 47.3%, Female 52.7%
Age: Under 18 21.0%, Over 60 19.0%
Local issues: Taxation, 'Static screening unit for Finchley Memorial hospital' campaign, Post office closures

Previous election results

2005 General Election:

Turnout 61.9%
Rudi Vis L 17,487 40.5%
Andrew Mennear C 16,746 38.8%
Sue Garden LibDem 7,282 16.9%
Noel Lynch Green 1,136 2.6%/Jeremy Jacobs UKIP 453 1.0%/Rainbow George Weiss Rainbow Dream Ticket 110 0.3%

2001 General Election:

Turnout 57.3%
Rudi Vis L 20,205 46.3%
John Marshall C 16,489 37.8%
Sarah Teather LibDem 5,266 12.1%
Miranda Dunn Green 1,385 3.2%/John de Roeck UKIP 330 0.8%

1997 General Election:

Turnout 69.7%
Rudi Vis L 23,180 39.7%
John Marshall C 19,991 39.7%
Jonathan Davies LibDem 5,670 11.3%
G Shaw Referendum 684 1.4%/Ashley Gunstock GreenPlaid Cymru Alliance 576 1.1%/D Barraclough UKIP 205 0.4%

We Them Getaways

My second son Dylan spent last Friday and Saturday recording some demos with a band he is in called "We them getaways". You can check them out here.

The phrase "Green Eye of the Storm" will be familiar to some readers of this blog (Tell it not in Gath. Get your inspiration where you can I say).

As you can see these boys are having a great deal of fun. It's the sort of thing I'd love to have done as a kid. We only got as far as recording a long lost track on a cassette player (a track called Mrs Jones by a boy called David Watkins and featuring the fiddle). We were called "Puncture Kit". I had a stack of songs that my mother threw out one day. I can still remember one or two. Don't hold your breath.

Malcolm McLaren

Malcolm McLaren, who claimed to have invented punk rock, died today aged 64. Whatever else may be said about him he understood pop music as this 1983 offering under his own name would suggest.

Happy All Fools!