We’re pleased to announce that The Belfrey is now a collection point for the IT ReUse project. IT ReUse collects donations of computers and mobile devices, which they refurbish and then pass on to disadvantaged people in York, free of charge. As well as helping people in need, this gives devices a second life and prevents them going to landfill. 

The Need

It’s estimated that 9% of the population of York, approximately 15,000 people, don’t have access to the internet and so are excluded from online services such as education resources, medical appointments, banking, benefits applications, and the online social activities most of us take for granted. This ‘digital divide’ was brought into sharp focus by the pandemic. As a response to this,  IT ReUse was formed in July 2020 as a partnership between York Community Furniture Store, City of York Council and Changing Lives. They aim to make a difference by repairing and repurposing donated devices and passing these on to people who have been referred to them by community support workers from various agencies across the city. They can also help with providing a data allowance and linking people up with one to one training to help them get more digitally confident and connected.

How can you help?

 IT ReUse are experiencing very high demand for referrals and they need devices to refurbish in order to meet this. You can now drop off your unwanted devices at The Belfrey, either in the collection box at the back of church when the church is open on Sundays or during the week, or at the Parish Centre during office hours.

Here’s some guidance from IT ReUse on what they are looking for:

• Mobile devices must be manufactured after 1st Jan 2012. Laptops, desktop PCs and monitors after 1st Jan 2009.

• Mobile devices must be donated fully reset (there’s no way to crack the security otherwise).

• You may want to factory reset your laptop or PC prior to donation, but if you’re not able to, they will do this and destroy any data stored on it using industry standard software.

• Items with cosmetic damage or actual damage are fine to donate (they aim to fix these or recycle them as a last resort if not fixable).

• Peripherals including keyboards, mice and webcams are also great to donate, but no printers please.

IT ReUse are also looking for volunteers to help them with the project. Maybe you have skills in IT repair and configuration that you could use in this setting, or you’d like an opportunity to learn or improve? Further information on volunteering with them is here.

Earnestly Desire the Spiritual Gifts! 

Allen Dixon

I am sure that you, like me, have found our recent talks at church on the gifts of the Holy Spirit in 1 Corinthians 12-14 very encouraging!  

I grew up in a church that didn’t really know anything about spiritual gifts – even though it’s right there smack in the middle of the New Testament, the authoritative document of our Christian faith.  We knew about people who had a “gift” of speaking clearly or baking well.  But the gifts of the Spirit are something quite different – these go straight back to the beginning of the Christian church.  In the book of Acts chapter 2, the first Christians were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in unknown tongues in worship to God.  The rest of the New Testament shows time and time again how Jesus worked through his followers supernaturally through gifts that they hadn’t been born with but that God’s Holy Spirit activated within them – to heal people, to speak God’s specific word to people, to have supernatural wisdom and knowledge about what to do and what was going on.  

These spiritual gifts didn’t end when the last of the original apostles died, but we see the Christian leader Irenaeus in the second century explained how these spiritual gifts worked.  In the third century AD the Christian leader Novation explained the spiritual gifts and how Christ uses them to perfect and complete his church.  Even St Augustine in the 4th and 5th century AD, who was thought to have been rather sceptical about spiritual gifts, later in life talked about a blind man and other miraculous healings that had taken place recently.

In 1 Corinthians 14, Paul talks about two particular spiritual gifts in particular – (1) the gift of prophecy, which is – simply put – understanding and giving out God’s specific message on a particular issue or situation.  And (2) he talks about the gift of speaking in tongues – which you might call a supernatural prayer language – which helps us communicate with God when English or our other human language is just not good enough!  Paul says basically three things about these gifts.

1 - Follow the way of love, and eagerly desire the gifts of the Spirit, especially prophecy!

Before Jesus came, prophecy was sort of looked at as a job description – this person is a prophet, the rest of us are not prophets.  I think sometimes in the church today we still see roles in the church and spiritual gifts as something that only professional church leaders have, and the rest of us punters only admire from a great distance!

But as Jesus was returning to heaven after his resurrection he told his followers – “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you.  You will be my witnesses to the ends of the earth.  You will speak with new tongues, you will lay your hands on the sick and they will recover.”  (Acts 2:8, Mark 16: 17-18). Not just the original twelve apostles or our professional church staff, but you, you, you!  There are some people who regularly exercise the gift of prophecy in the church, and the Bible for example in 1 Corinthians 12 talks about these people as “prophets”.  But they’re not the only ones that can exercise this gift.  What does Paul say – eagerly desire the gift of prophecy.  You, you, you!

What does this look like in the New Testament and in today’s church?  This receiving and giving of God’s words for the moment is more interactive, more of a personal and group dynamic than we saw in the prophets of the Old Testament.  In 1 Corinthians 12 the Bible calls this a gift of wisdom and a gift of knowledge, which is given out as the Spirit leads.  The Bible also says in 1 Thess. 5:20-22 that we should “not treat prophecies with contempt but test them all; hold on to what is good, and reject any kind of evil.”  We should listen for, pray about, and weigh up whether it’s God and what kind of wisdom or knowledge he may be giving in a particular situation.  But we can be confident that he can and does still speak to his people prophetically.

A couple of examples of prophetic words I’ve had and seen: One was a few years back when I was thinking about leaving my professional job at that time and starting my own consulting business.  I was very concerned about the finances – who would hire me, how much they might pay me – starting off with an income of zero rather than a routine deposit to my bank account.  Karen and I had been praying about this, and we went to a meeting where people were praying, giving what they felt were God’s prophetic words of wisdom and knowledge to each other, and weighing up what was said.  Someone came over to me and said, “I noticed the pocket on your shirt, and I feel like the Lord is saying he wants to put money in your pocket.”  I thought, wow, this speaks directly into my concern about our finances if I was to go self-employed.  And about ten minutes later, on the other side of the room, someone else came up to me and put a £5 note in my pocket.  I got the message of that word of prophecy – God was going to take care of our finances if I went self-employed, which I did, and he did!

One more quick example.  Karen and I were leading an Alpha group at a church we attended in London, and we were praying for our visitors and I had a sense or a ‘picture’ of a particular person in the group who didn’t yet believe in Jesus, and the picture was that he had some sort of damage or blackened area on his left shoulder.  We gave out the words like this to the group without mentioning this guy or any other particular people, and used some ‘comfort words’ so they could test the words and see if they were from God, you know, “I don’t know, but I think the Lord may be saying….someone here has some damage/blackened area on his shoulder.”  This particular person looked pretty shocked and his hand shot up – He had had a brick wall fall on his shoulder about three years before, and he had had pretty much constant pain, migraine headaches and loss of sleep since then.  The Lord had given us this prophetic word – the Lord’s personal message to this guy.   We prayed for the Lord to heal him, and a few days later he told his wife who was a Christian – “Don’t get too excited, but I haven’t had any pain in my shoulder since those people prayed for me at Alpha.”  The Lord spoke his prophetic word to him through us – the Lord healed him when we prayed for him – and I guess it won’t surprise you that he became a very happy, enthusiastic believer in Jesus!

2 - Speaks in tongues in prayer to God!

The gift of tongues is a way to communicate with God in a language that God understands but that we or other people may not understand with our earthly minds and language skills.  Verses 2 and 3 of 1 Corinthians 14 explain this really well – “For anyone who speaks in a tongue does not speak to people but to God. Indeed, no one understands them; they utter mysteries by the Spirit.” And then again in verse 14 – “If I pray in a tongue, my spirit prays but my mind is unfruitful.”  I think this is a really exciting promise, given that our words in English or our other native human language often are not adequate to express what we want to say to God.  He can give us a spiritual language – the gift of tongues – by which in our deepest spirit, using words and communications which are mysteries to us and to others, we can communicate in the deepest and most profound way with God.  

Second, Paul says the gift of tongues is not the main gift that we exercise out loud when we get together as the church.  It certainly sounds like the Corinthians were getting together and all talking so loud and so long in tongues that it was hard to get any other messages through that might have been helpful to those who were gathering.  See what Paul says in verse 5 – the gift of prophecy is more useful in a church gathering than the gift of tongues.  Verse 27 – if someone does speak in a tongue publicly in church, someone with the gift of interpretation of tongues should interpret that word for the gathering. If there’s no one to interpret, verse 28, the speaker should keep quiet in the church and speak to himself and to God with that tongue.     

Paul is not discouraging the gift of tongues here – he says “I thank God that I speak in tongues more than all of you!” (verse 18).  But he is saying, look, this is a wonderful and powerful form of prayer between you and God that by all means you should use, but please do this out loud in church only if there’s someone there who can interpret what you are saying for the rest of us!

3 - Use the gifts of the Spirit in ways that build up the church!

I hope it’s obvious to all of us that the gifts of the Spirit are not a matter of personal accomplishment or pride, or something that is only for our own benefit. They are gifts – freely given by God without regard to our own merit – for the purpose of building up all of us in the church. We see this in verse 26 – “When you come together, each of you has a hymn, or a word of instruction, a revelation, a tongue or an interpretation. Everything must be done so that the church may be built up.”

I’ve found that prophecy, tongues and the whole list of other spiritual gifts that Paul lays out can be powerful ways of helping people see the reality of Jesus and experience him saying and doing things that are specifically relevant to their own lives.  This can help people believe in Jesus who never had a clue beforehand that he is actually real.  These gifts are also wonderful ways of praying for and helping Christian believers who have uncertainty about what’s going on, or have spiritual or physical needs.  

In our Belfrey group – as I’m sure happens in yours – we try to take time regularly not just to pray for each other but to listen for God’s words of wisdom, knowledge and prophecy for each other, which we obviously must weigh up to see if they really are from God.  But I’ve found that not just our homely advice and sympathy but also God’s specific words which come through his spiritual gifts can be so helpful as we meet and pray for each other.

“Therefore, my brothers and sisters, be eager to prophesy, and do not forbid speaking in tongues. But everything should be done in a fitting and orderly way to build up the church!”  1 Corinthians 14:39-40.

How will you and your community be preparing yourselves to celebrate Easter during Lent this year? One way to do this is through fasting. Here are some ways we’ll be doing that at The Belfrey.

Lent is a time of fasting in the Christian church, as we prepare our hearts to celebrate Jesus dying and rising again at Easter, and in reflection of the way He fasted for the same period of 40 days (Matthew 4:2). The fast traditionally starts on Ash Wednesday - the 2nd of March this year - and you might already be considering something to give up for Lent.

If you've never fasted before then how about doing it for the first time this year, and join in with your community at The Belfrey? Lent fasts can include things like giving up meat, chocolate or wine, or even something that distracts you like social media or TV. Some people find it helpful to fast one meal a day, or for one day each week.

Another way we can respond and prepare ourselves during Lent is by picking up a specific discipline to help us reflect, like reading the Bible in 40 days, or going through a devotional (there are some great online ones by The Bible Society and Tearfund, among others).

To help encourage us all to use this season meaningfully, here at The Belfrey we invite you to join a church-wide fast on Wednesday 9th March, before our Worship & Prayer Night at 7.30pm that evening. Think and pray about what would be safe for you to fast - it could be one meal in the day, fasting between daylight hours, or even giving up a treat you particularly enjoy (chocolate is one example!). Share yours with a trusted friend or someone in your Belfrey Group so they can encourage you. You might even consider continuing this Wednesday fast throughout the whole of Lent…

Photo by Yannick Pulver on Unsplash

It has been exciting to start work on our Social Action Programme and even in the short time I've been working on this I can see there will be many practical ways we can show the love of Jesus to our city. Here’s a quick update on what’s been happening over the past two months.

Research. As we think about how best we can use our £1M Love York Post Pandemic Fund, I’ve begun research on our three focus areas of Poverty, Mental Health and Youth and Families, meeting up with a number of charities and churches in York as well as the council and York CVS. My aim is to build up a picture of what social action initiatives exist now, what and where the needs are, and to identify gaps and opportunities. This will help us plan strategically about where we might allocate money and resources. I’ve also met with the House of Prayer team to pray and listen to God for the work.

Governance. I’ve been setting up the governance for the Post Pandemic Fund. We now have a PCC sub committee that will act as the Social Action Programme Board, providing oversight, direction and decision making for the programme and authorisation for allocation of fund money. This Board met for the first time on 1st November and will meet regularly as the programme progresses.

Love Your Neighbour. Working together with Tony Holmes (who coordinates the Belfrey Love Your Neighbour ministry), we’ve been developing ideas for how we as a church can get more involved in helping people in our city. 

How can you get involved?

• Pray. Please pray that we can continue to put good foundations in place for the Programme going into 2022, especially in building relationships with other churches and organisations. 

• Help with research. I’ve lots of contacts to follow up, but always open to more, so if you have a connection to an organisation working in one of these focus areas in the city that you think it would be good for me to know about, please do get in touch! My email address is alison.dawson@belfrey.org. 

• Love Your Neighbour - Get involved with some of the amazing projects we are partnering with, including the Besom Christmas Hampers. Read about all the projects in this week’s Belfrey Newsletter or contact tony.holmes@belfrey.org to get involved

To sum up, together we’re building a picture of what God wants to do in the city, through listening prophetically as well as practically hearing how we can partner with churches and organisations already providing valuable support to the community of York.

I have always loved fashion and fabrics and I like shopping! There’s something about the tactile feel of cloth and all the different designs and colours on the fabric. Somehow I cannot imagine a world without the creative input that fashion brings.

But, and there’s a big BUT coming:

What about the exploitation of workers in the fashion industry, the high pollution levels and the depletion of natural resources that all go into the production of fast fashion. Then there’s the shocking waste, approx 85% of textiles end up in landfill each year or are sent to developing countries for them to deal with. I could go on...

None of this sits right with me, and the more I read the more overwhelmed I’m feeling. I now feel guilty about shopping!!!

So how could I help with this huge problem? Buy less of course.

Then my creative brain kicked in I could:

• Remake the clothes that are now too small in my wardrobe. This is called refashioning, so creative!

• Check out the charity shops in York, some are great for evening dresses and so cheap!

• Invest in new eco fabrics garments being sold on the high street, but do your research first, a lot of them are not as good for the environment as they seem!

• Mend old clothes - this might sound boring but you could spice it up with some hand embroidery and there’s plenty of videos to help on YouTube. You could make a feature of it for example: if there are holes in your jumper, embroider a bee or flower over them.

Top tip.

Embroidery and sewing have a very calming effect, it’s good for your mental health and will give you a lovely sense of achievement when you finish your project. God is speaking to us and letting us know that we can change through simple ways by giving us tools to keep calm and letting us feel more in control to take on the bigger picture. We have a very long way to go but I feel I’ve started small, why not join me? Together we can somehow help with the bigger problems.

A prayer: Wisdom to care for the Earth.

Lord, grant us the wisdom to care for the earth and till it.

Help us to act now for the good of future generations and all your creatures.

Help us to become instruments of a new creation founded on the covenant of your love.

             - The cry of the Earth

Plastics are one of the most useful but also the most harmful aspects of modern life. We could not do without them in our homes, our cars and our industry yet at the same time they poison our seas, our rivers, our countryside and harm our wildlife. And via microplastics, the small bits that have so many uses, they are getting into the food chain too. 

Reducing plastic use is often quite difficult because of how prevalent plastics are in society, so recycling is essential. Think how many items in our homes are of plastic and the things we buy every week – milk and juice cartons, margarine containers, ready meals, sauce bottles, wrapped vegetables – you just can’t escape it! For example, Coca Cola produces 3 million tonnes of plastic packaging a year, which is about 200,000 bottles per minute.. Recycling can also take some effort, especially in York where hard plastic can only be taken to somewhere like Sainsbury’s because the Council don’t recycle it.

So what can done? Various things: lobbying the supermarkets, shopping for loose veg in the market or at a local greengrocers where feasible; buy stuff in glass bottles if possible; use the Refill facilities at Asda or shops like Tullivers or the Bishy Weigh on Bishopthorpe Road. Rethinking aspects of our life may be something the Lord is challenging us to do.

Finally I would love to start an organisation called Christians Against Plastic –anyone want to join me?!

I’m a keen gardener, and I’ve been aware for some time about the need to avoid using composts containing peat in the garden. I knew that this is because peat acts as a carbon sink, locking in large amounts of carbon, so they are a vital part of our fight against climate change. I knew too that peatlands are an invaluable habitat for flora and fauna, some found nowhere else. Created very slowly as layers of vegetation build up at 1-2mm per year, they can be destroyed in a very short time by being drained and harvested just so that I can put some compost on my garden.

So I’ve been avoiding using it as much as possible for at least the last 10 years. Thankfully that’s now a lot easier than it used to be! I confess, though, that I did this more out of a sense of duty, that it was “the right thing to do.” After all, peatlands? What picture does that conjure up in your mind? Somewhere flat, squelchy, boggy, surely not very interesting?!

That was certainly my mental picture until June this year when I visited RSPB Forsinard Flows nature reserve in the Flow Country, an area of around 1,500 square miles of peatland and wetland in Caithness and Sutherland. I was captivated by the wild, stark beauty of it and also its fragility, with notices not to step off the raised walkway in case some of its precious and rare flora and fauna was damaged by careless feet. I was stunned to discover that the Flow Country’s blanket peat bogs on their own store over 3 times the amount of carbon found in all of Britain’s woodlands put together!

Something shifted inside me as I stood there looking out at this beautiful and oh, so fragile wilderness, which could be so easily and thoughtlessly destroyed - and it's an experience that has haunted me ever since. It’s still a choice I need to make each time I buy compost or new plants for the garden. But my motivation has changed from feeling I “should” to a real desire to do whatever I can to make sure this and other peatlands are protected. Because now I have a picture in my mind of one of the beautiful places I’m trying to protect…..

https://www.rhs.org.uk/advice/peat

https://www.rspb.org.uk/reserves-and-events/reserves-a-z/forsinard-flows/

The consequences of climate change are, among others, intense droughts,

water scarcity, severe fires, rising sea levels, flooding, melting polar ice,

catastrophic storms and declining biodiversity.

(https://www.un.org/en/climatechange/what-is-climate-change)

Is it just me, or are you feeling overwhelmed by all this too? It seems like everywhere I turn at the moment there’s yet more information about the climate change emergency. It all feels so big and scary, and I feel almost paralysed - surely I’m too small, too insignificant to make a difference? What on earth could I possibly do?

But then I’m reminded of Jesus’ teaching about the kingdom being like a mustard seed. Once planted in the ground it grows into a tree big enough for the birds to perch in its branches. Or like a small amount of yeast affecting the rise of a large amount of flour. (Luke 13:18-21) Insignificant seeming things which somehow, in God’s economy, make a big difference. And I find this mustard seed faith taking root in my heart - perhaps I CAN do some small thing and trust that God will take it and use it.

Lord, what small thing would You have me do?

“We ourselves feel that what we are doing is just a drop in the ocean. But the ocean would be less because of that missing drop.” Mother Teresa of Calcutta

Written by Rachel Sterling. Artwork by Alice Wilkinson.

Recently, I was at an exhibition about Climate Change in Sheffield. Various researchers and PHD students were presenting their findings about the direct impacts of climate change. These varied from the shaking of buildings, to the rapid mutation of viruses to gripping art showing how poorer communities in the Global South are so often hit the hardest by the climate crisis. One research exhibit that particularly stuck out to me was that about Sheffield’s football ground flooding.

Back in 2007, Sheffield Wednesday FC’s Hillsborough stadium was flooded with water levels in the nearest river rising up to 15 feet higher than normal. The PHD student I was listening to was looking into how this is likely to happen again in the coming years. He presented various scenarios showing various levels of destruction as a result. This got me thinking about York and how our river also often breaks its banks. In my first year of University here, I got a very intense introduction to York with large parts of the city being underwater. With the climate crisis progressing the way it is, it is not unlikely that this will happen again here too. In David Attenborough’s recent documentary on the BBC - Extinction: The Facts, he talks about how floods are one of the most common impacts of the climate crisis we are seeing across the world, often in the Global South, at the minute but also here in the UK.

I felt drawn to press into what the Bible says about floods. Now, I’m not saying it’s time to build an ark or resort to panic. We know the promises of our mighty God to never bring a flood to destroy the whole Earth again (Genesis 9:11), however, I felt drawn to read into what floods have meant in the Bible before. We see that God uses floods to bring about great physical and spiritual transformation.

In Genesis 6, we see that God destroys the sin in the world by bringing a flood. Noah is obedient and ‘did everything just as God commanded him,’ (Genesis 6:22) so he is spared. In Matthew 7:24-29, we see that when the rains and floods come, houses that have been built on the rock stand firm and houses that have been built on the sand fall with a great crash.

In this season, my sense is that we should be asking ourselves, what have we built our house upon? What are we rooted in? If we have a firm foundation, we will remain, but if we have built on the sand, we will fall flat. In this season where it could be tempting to rush back into the way things were, into the business of life where we consume carelessly and rush from one activity to another without giving much thought to how we are impacting the world around us; I would encourage us as a church to pray about what we are rooted in and whether there’s sin that needs to be brought to light so that we can realign to do what God has commanded us to do, like Noah did. May we be rooted in Jesus’ great truths and promises. May we repent of our sin and turn to God.

Practically we can make a difference to the prevalence of floods in the world by:

• Planting our own trees or donating to tree planting initiative such as Woodland Trust

• Being an actively ethical consumer by not buying from companies who are known to support the deforestation of the rainforest, and also writing to these companies to demand change 

• Praying that in this time, our Church, our city, and we ourselves would be radically physically and spiritually transformed in accordance with God’s plan and will

Written by Abigail Isherwood. Artwork by Alice Wilkinson.

We are told in Genesis that we are to steward and care for creation. “The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it” (Genesis 2:15, NIV).

But creation is in crisis.

“Climate Change is the defining issue of our time and we are at a defining moment.”

The United Nations

“Climate change is already impacting people living in poverty. And climate change could push more than 100 million people back into poverty by 2030 if we don’t do something about it.”

Tearfund

"Reducing the causes of climate change is essential to the life of faith. It is a way to love our neighbour and to steward the gift of creation."

Archbishop Justin Welby

The climate crisis and the problems of climate change are not just about environmental conservation and protection. It is about climate justice. Climate justice means we not only look at the environmental degradation and damages caused by climate change, but we also focus on the people and communities who are suffering.

We have a lot to learn about how to become better stewards of creation in our everyday lives. We have a lot to learn about how we can better love our neighbours who are suffering as a direct result of this crisis. We have a lot to learn to become a people who hunger and thirst for climate justice. Jesus says “God blesses those who hunger and thirst for justice, for they will be satisfied” (Matthew 5:6, NLT).

I am excited and privileged to be leading an Eco-Advisory Group here at the Belfrey. The work we have ahead of us, as a whole church, will be challenging and require radical changes in our lives. But it is good and necessary work. And we have a good Father and a good guide in Jesus.

After the feeding of the five thousand, Jesus says to his disciples, “Gather the pieces that are left over. Let nothing be wasted.” (John 6:12, NIV). In our current climate, reducing waste, food waste, energy waste, general waste, is a brilliant, practical step to live more sustainably and better care for our environment. Jesus continues to remind us that loving our neighbour and caring for creation often looks like practical, everyday acts such as collecting the rest of the food to make sure nothing is wasted.

My prayer for us as we go on this journey is that together we become people who hunger and thirst for climate justice. May we be filled with hope and joy as we learn to love our neighbours who are suffering. And may our eyes be opened to the practical, everyday actions we can take to become better stewards of creation.