It’s that time of year again! Christian Aid week is nearly upon us and thousands of churches will stand together to speak out for change.

Did you know that about 100,000 committed volunteers will go out and put their faith into action, raising funds to help some of the world’s poorest and most vulnerable people.

Are you one of them? If not, it’s never too late to lend a hand and show support. Why not join Britain’s largest house-to-house collection – an extraordinary act of witness, demonstrating to our communities that we care about poverty and justice.

This year, Christian Aid Week tells the story of remarkable change taking place in a community in rural Sierra Leone. Sierra Leone is one of the hungriest countries in the world. But helped by Christian Aid partner the Methodist Church of Sierra Leone (MCSL), some people there have found the tools to move beyond hunger and speak out for the changes they want to see.

You will be able to see for yourself if you visit the Fishing Heritage Centre in Grimsby between May 12th – 27th 2012 when you can visit the free exhibition in the Centre’s Café Gallery and find out more about Mo-Albert; a fishing community in Sierra Leone whose lives have been transformed thanks to your donations to Christian Aid.

Some of the young people and adults from the Circuit are also taking the Humber Bridge Challenge when we see how many times we can cross the bridge between 2pm and 5pm on Saturday 12th May 2012. If you feel like sponsoring the ‘Grimsby OompLoompas’ (don’t ask), you can donate online if you visit https://www.justgiving.com/teams/GrimsbyOompaLoompas

Just in case you have missed the news the Olympic Games are being held on our shores this summer.  It feels like there is a news item about it every day now from one place or another and we are all being encouraged to get involved.  I think I must be the only one who hasn’t dusted off the running shoes and started to get fit.

In our area we are privileged to be able to see the Olympic Torch as it passes though our villages and towns.  Do keep a look out for the Praise Bus that will be following it providing music so that we can all make a ‘Joyful Sound To The Lord’.  Anyone with a music group with instruments and/or singers are being asked to join in.  For more information contact Mrs Bonfield on escallsbus@btinternet.com

It is a great national event and I am sure we will have much to celebrate as the Medals are being awarded, but do spare a thought for all those who have worked so hard in the last four years to prepare and be the best they can to be pipped at the post and so returning with no award at all except that they have taken part which for them will be devastating but to us a massive achievement and we must offer praise wherever we can.

Sadly though there is a darker side to the Olympic Games and most other major sporting event that we hear little about.  That is the increase at these times in Human Trafficking in order to fuel the needs of visitors and those taking part in the games.  These innocent people are lured from the poorest and most deprived areas of the world and our own towns and cities with the promise of work and fair wages only to find themselves being used and abused in the most appalling ways.  Often as a consequence, even if they escape the clutches of those who are perpetrating these crimes, they are unable to return home because they will be treated as outcasts and some find themselves cruelly beaten and even killed because of the crime they are perceived to have committed.

Since 2006 the Methodist Women in Britain, former Network, have been highlighting this cruel crime and working hard to bring it to peoples notice and working with other agencies to create safe havens for the people involved.  There is a comprehensive, multi-faceted approach to human trafficking involving many different agencies working together to improve legislation, enforcement, international co-operation and support for victims.

It is easy to think that we are too far away from the ‘action’ of the games but sadly we all need to be aware that vulnerable young women in our own area have the potential to be groomed and used in this way.  It is not so long ago that a vice ring was discovered within the sight of Beverley Minster.  So please do your part.   You may not be an athlete of any kind but we can all keep our eyes pealed for any evidence of this cruel crime and report it; or if you want to learn more and spread the word, or find out about the work of the Safe Homes that have been set up and continually require financial aid to support victims. To find out more go to the Methodist Women in Britain website  www.mwib.org.uk

Nevertheless please enjoy the games that provide us with inspiring scenes of human endeavour and may these spur us on to work tirelessly for justice and mercy for everyone.

Diane Patrick

The main denominations, within themselves, embrace many approaches to worship and varied approaches to mission and outreach.  Rich treasure.  Smaller gatherings, often breakaway from an existing worship centre, reveal a bewildering number of shades of opinion and ‘certainty’ about Gospel realities.  The only ones to fear, perhaps, are those who insist they are right and the rest of us are lost and fallen.  Those who accept difference are, I am convinced, the ones who have begun to realise how amazingly wide the love of God, the accepted need for Jesus and the everywhere-at-once Holy Spirit truly are.

I’m a lifelong Methodist. Married an Anglican.  Genuine covenant relationship! Preached and worshipped in the churches of several persuasions, enjoyed the variety of styles and emphasis and been enriched as well as educated in them all.  At home with ‘other’ Christians.

The recent PROUD TO BE A METHODIST poster has irritated me.   I’m happy to be a Methodist but celebrating separateness angers me.  Pride?  Implying we’re better than the others?  That’s a nonsense, of course.

I saw a cartoon some years ago, set in the caveman days.  Outside one cave sat a modestly loin clothed man holding a placard with the wording: HERE BE CHRISTIANS.  That’ll do for me!  I’ll always settle for the things which bind us together in that all-encompassing, never-failing, utterly humbling love of God.

Walking through Lent without a denominational or sectarian label, mind open, heart aflame with hope, will bring us whoever and whatever we are to the ultimate eternal truths. Thanks be to God!

Brian Smith

I was surprised to read that John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, had at times in his life an annual income which would equate to around £900,000 in today’s terms. This would put his earnings in the same category as the annual salary of Stephen Hester the RBS chief! This mammoth income was gained through the sale of books, donations and public speaking.

Wesley had his rule of life about money –his trilateral.

Gain all you can - Use your time well, be industrious, work hard and make money, but not at the expense of our life, our health, our minds or those of others.

Save all you can - Consider your spending! Sometimes the sparkly things of life can distract us from that which God calls us to. If we have this attitude to wealth we are more able to complete Wesley’s trilateral.

Give all you can - This was the motivation of the first two points. If we earn and save all we can we are better positioned to give.  Wesley identified, self, family, God’s work and those in need. He maintained his lifestyle based on the original £30 a year he had. It is estimated that at the height of his income he gave away 98% of his money – totaling an equivalent £19million over his lifetime!

We may not be able to match these grand totals but fresh consideration of that we earn may affect our use of it.

Imagine what could be achieved if I did this, you did this, the House of Bishops and even Mr Hester did this. What a different town, nation and world we may see.

Richard Melling

But, of course, they rarely if ever work as we had intended, particularly if we have over-indulged in resolutions and made too many of them for there to be any realistic hope that they might be kept. Our failure to keep them in turn brings about guilty feelings and lowers our self-esteem. It isn’t much fun going into the dark, cold and already rather miserable days of January with the added burden of feeling that we have let ourselves down by making promises we haven’t kept. And if, for the most part, we haven’t kept them, what was the point of making them in the first place? So perhaps we ought not to regret the passing of the New Year resolution too much.

Maybe not; yet there is something significant and important about making resolutions and not just at New Year. At his trial Socrates famously and truly said that the unexamined life is not worth living. Many of us drift (or these days rush) through life without taking significant time to examine whether we are heading in the direction we feel to be right, still less whether we have made any progress in dealing with our faults and failings.

At least New Year resolutions give us the opportunity to look seriously at some of these things and to make some effort to amend what clearly needs changing. Such resolutions certainly don’t have to be limited to reactions to seasonal over-indulgence. The way we sometimes treat other people will often be where we need to start. Providing we don’t induce guilt by trying to change too much at once, and providing we remember that God both forgives failure and  supplies strength,  resolutions – New Year and otherwise – can be a valuable reality check.