Society Profiad and the Start Something Tour

I seem to have neglected this blog yet again, apologies. On my Welsh blog I discuss just about anything but because my english blog is more specialist in nature i write on it less often unfortunately. If you want to read more of what I’ve got to say and hear me voice my opinion on technology, culture and other worldly things then you’ll just have to learn Welsh so you can read my Welsh blog!

But on to matters at hand. I’m a member of an alternative hip-hop outfit. Yes, that is bizarre for someone working on a PhD in theology I hear you say. Well, it’s fronted by my brother, Cynan. Cynan is a prominent Welsh personality and he is a Christian like me. With a John Peel session, his own BBC Radio program and a string of TV appearances already under his belt he has turned in this project to try and fuse two of his keenest interests – his personal faith and alternative hip-hop. I write and record the music and let Cynan front the whole thing. It works out well as – it’s a kinda Liam and Noel relationship just with theological banter instead of fisticuffs. The band’s called Society Profiad and we have also started a label of the same name and hope to help other alternative Welsh Christian artists release their material.

Before the Society Profiad we were in a band called Kenavo – we had a few good songs and during 2004-2005 we giged often, got decent airplay on the radio but we never really put enough effort into-it to do anything of it. The hight point I guess was supporting the Goldie Looking Chain on the tour they did just after braking through. But on the night of that gig a huge thunder storm engulfed north Wales, there was a power cut and we didn’t get to play our set after all the hype! You can listen so some on Kenavo’s songs on the myspace. Cynan has re-written some lyrics for some of the best songs and we hope to use them with the new project.

We recorded a few tracks with Society Profiad last summer mainly because Cynan was asked to preform a rap at a Tearfund advocacy event at the Eisteddfod. But since last summer we haven’t developed more on the project; that is until now. We’re going on tour end of this month – the Start Something Tour – supporting The Reprecussion. Steff Elis a good friend of ours and Tom Whitman will also be joining us on tour. We are all Christians, so I guess this is my first step into the true Christian music sub-culture. Very frightening. Kenavo, by the way, was not a “Christian band” as such.

Here is the promo video for the tour and remember to visit the site and I look forward to seeing you on one of the nights…

Noise

I’m preaching tomorrow at a small Welsh Church at Bae Colwyn. I’ve never been there before but I’m looking forward because a good collage friend of mine was bought up in that Church and as I understand he’s home visiting his parent this weekend so he’ll be there to hold me and my sermon accountable!

I must admit that I haven’t really felt all that great over the past few days. Start of the week I did a lot of meetings (one in Swansea in relation to the Welsh Church plant that’s happening there soon and the other in Llandrindod in relation to Gobaith i Gymru and Beibl.net) and traveling around then by the end of the week I had my head down stressing over my PhD. This time yesterday the last thing on my mind was the idea of going out to talk about the grace and faithfulness of God. Actually, for many years I refused accepting God’s call to go and preach his word and lead ministry because I didn’t feel holy and spiritual enough. But as I felt God’s calling getting stronger and stronger in my life I realized that, in a sort of way, the fact that I did not feel up to it on a personal level was the whole point. More of Him less of me, all of Him none of me.

We will never be good enough and if we think we are good enough then we’ve taken our eye off Jesus. I still don’t feel holy and spiritual enough but now I know that my shortcomings will always be dealt with by Jesus and his work. Being humble is hard work but when you discover true humbleness it’s such a great relief. To know that it’s not about you, it’s not about how spiritual you are, it’s not about how you can best be holy this week. Not at all. It’s all about giving up and just resting in God and let him lead and carry you. Getting to that point is the essence of faith and as I have been preparing for tomorrow God has lead me back to that place of rest and assurance in him. I am not ready to preach but God has lead me to be ready – there is a small but importance difference.

For Christians, like me, who are busy busy with lots of things I have come to realize that spending downtime in quietness is essential to reenergizing your faith. I was reminded of this twice tonight as I prepared for tomorrow. First of all you can listen to Tim Chester talk about his book The Busy Christian’s Guide to Busyness over at his blog. And also I watched NOOMA Noise | 005 for the first time tonight. It really helped me refocus and put my mind, thought and faith back in the right place, or on the right person, after a hectic week.

Enjoy the NOOMA:

Report from the Tony Campolo meeting, Carmarthen

Saturday night I went to the Tony Campolo meeting in Carmarthen. The Chapel was packed out, possibly as much as 500 there, seldom do we see preaching meetings attracting so much people in Wales these days. Most of the people there were from the Baptist Union of Wales’s English convention which was held during the day but also a good number of local folks turned in – many of them Welsh speakers which was very encouraging.

The meeting started with some worship lead by a well rehearsed local (I presume) worship band. They launched through a few modern day classics like King of Kings Majesty, Mighty to Save and Light of the World before powering through the victorious Crown Him With Many Crowns. The Spirit’s present was very much felt during the singing by all who were there. This was followed by a word of prayer and a reading from scripture then Campolo took to the pulpit.

Hearing that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, the Pharisees got together. One of them, an expert in the law, tested him with this question:
“Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?” Jesus replied: ” ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” (Matthew 22: 34-40)

His message was a warm but also hard hitting mix of a call to personal faith in Jesus and a challenge for Christians to live their lives in the light that Jesus laid it all down for them. His delivery was rather eclectic – he used a lot of humor and also used a lot of stories he’d picked up during the years to convey his point. But when needed he reverted to some good old fashioned Baptist staring the congregation out and shouting on us to repent and follow Jesus anew.

He finished his sermon with one of his often used motifs: “When you were born, you cried and everybody else was happy. The only question that matters is this: When you die, will YOU be happy when everybody else is crying?”

The meeting was bought to a close with the very Welsh, at the request of Campolo himself, Guide me O Thou great Jehovah. This was one of those meetings that I will remember for years to come.

Tony Campolo comes to Carmarthen

One of my favorite Christian thinkers of our time is Tony Campolo, I have huge respect for him. This Saturday he’s the keynote speaker at the English Welsh Baptist’s annual Union meeting and the evening meeting is public so I’m going to hear him speak live. I’ve been reading the books and tuning in to the podcasts for some years now so I’m really looking forward to see and hear him in flesh. It really saddens me that some Christians go around branding him as a Liberal only because he preaches the Kingdom of God in it’s full glory and not only personal salvation. He still affirms the importance of personal salvation only that he teaches that the Gospel is more than personal salvation only. In my view he knocks the nail on it’s head and brings a much needed counter emphasis to the evangelical world.

The meeting is at 7pm, Saturday 13th June at Tabernacle Chapel, Waterloo Terrace, Carmarthen – £5 on the door. Arrive early to avoid disappointment.

I’ll let the man speak for himself now….

A stand for civil rights

Ffred Ffransis, a veteran language campaigner and a committed Christian, was banned from taking a Welsh Bible into jail and forced to eat only potatoes while behind bars at Bridgend’s Parc Prison this week. Fred was sentenced to five days at Llanelli magistrates on Monday for refusing to pay an eight-year-old fine of £100. The 60-year-old campaigner said he was appalled at the lack of effort to serve the Welsh community. He was reduced to eating only potatoes because he refused to fill in an English-only form to request vegetarian food. After taking his Bible from him on the way in they didn’t provide him with a Welsh Bible in his cell either.

Ffred has been sentenced to around 6 years in total over the last 40 years, and has served around 4 years in prison. He has been sentenced to prison a total of 8 times. Here are the times he was sentenced to a lengthy periods:


• 1987 (Cardiff Court) – Campaigning for a body to develop Welsh Language Education (1 year – served 9 months)

• 1973 (Huddersfield Court) – Welsh language channel (1 year – served 9 months)

• 1971 (Mold Court) – Welsh language channel (3 years – served 2 years)

• 1970 (High Court, London) – In support of Dafydd Iwan, Road Signs campaign (3 months – served 2 months)

Personally I’ve been arrested four times in the past four years, but have never been given a prison sentence.

It’s very sad that even in modern post-devolution Wales Welsh speakers still have to resort to non-violent direct action to draw attention to our lack of civil rights in vast areas of day to day life.

Who created nations? God or Man?

Here is an adaption of a few ideas R. Tudur Jones gave in his paper Christian Nationalism (1979), it’s very interesting because although R. Tudur Jones himself is a Christian Nationalist he does not believe as many Christian Nationalists do that God created the nations. His understanding is that God ordained men to be cultural beings and through their cultural endeavor they created nations. So nations and cultures should not be guarded and kept simply because they were created by God but rather because they were created by man who created them under the Sovereignty of God.

Wales shares with other Christian nations the conviction that God has been at work in its history. The conviction goes back to the very dawn of our history when our forefathers began to become conscious of themselves as a specific people as the Roman Empire of the west disintegrated. The conviction can be expressed in many ways. It can be a powerful belief that the nation has enjoyed divine protection during the vicissitudes of its history. It can also be a belief that it is especially favored by God and is an elect nation doubtless this way of thinking owes much to familiarity with the Bible. The Bible has much to say about nations and their fate and. above all, it has much to say about Israel as God’s elect people. And it is quite obvious that Christian people in many lands have understood the histories of their own nations on the analogy of the history of Israel. It is a small step from this conviction to the assertion that nationality is to be understood as one of the ordinances of creation, a radical form of community created by God.

But God did not create nations, God created man and man formed nations. This is why it is misleading to talk, as some theologians have done, of nationality as one of the “orders of creation”. At the same time, the various forms of society that man has evolved during the centuries have a close connection with God’s work as creator.

When we turn our attention to a nation’s life, we realize that all cultural work of its people has a deep religious significance. It has to do with their obedience to God. If they produce social institutions, or works of art, or literature, or systems of jurisprudence and of economics, in the light of God’s covenant with man, that Nation’s life has not been in vain. To extinguish such a nation’s existence thoughtlessly is a matter of serious moment. And such a heritage may well be extinguished by the nation’s own citizens as well as by a foreign oppressor.

The Political Bible

It will not do to argue that the Bible provides us with no guidance in political matters. Let us remind ourselves of our starting-point. Man is to serve the glory of God in every aspect of his life as a creature in creation. His religious obedience to his God is expressed in his work as a maker of culture. Politics is very definitely a part of man’s appointed sphere of religious labour. It would be astounding if the volume which is to serve as man’s guide in glorifying God refrained from saying anything about politics. And in fact, the Bible is a surprisingly political book. Is is rather interesting, in the view of the attention being paid at the present time to both the ‘Theology of Politics’ and the ‘Theology of Liberation’ that some of their leading principles were being promulgated in Wales well over a century ago. Gwilym Hiraethog knew his Bible. Worship and politics are not the same thing; but they cannot be divorced from each other without denying that God is God and that this world is his by right of creation and redemption.

Not my words but the words of R. Tudur Jones. Very interesting.

And I will sing forever while I live…

Back in February I wrote about the use of contemporary music in Welsh language worship and the lack of it in Welsh churches. In Wales we have an enormously rich poetic heritage and because Wales has been, until recently anyway, a ‘Christian Nation’ from it’s beginning that poetic heritage is one of praise. One of the main arguments I hear against contemporary worship is that “the new songs” (what exactly is the difference between a ‘hymn’ and a ’song’ I’m not sure?) are poetically and theologically shallow compared to the great works of the Welsh tradition. On the whole I agree with that notion and It’s seen even more acute in Welsh because all contemporary hymns are translations from the English. Some, like say ‘In Christ Alone’, have translated well but others just don’t work in Welsh. We desperately need new contemporary hymns written originally in Welsh, in the mean time my personal preference is to re-arrange the old classics to guitar.

In the recent Llanw festival I lead the worship in one of the meetings and i chose to set and old rich Welsh hymn to a new arrangement. We kept the same tune and I think we even kept the same chord structures but yet again it sounds fresh. Here is the video, words with a rough translation into English underneath:

Caned nef a daear lawr,
fe gaed ffynnon
i olchi pechaduriaid mawr
yn glaer wynion;
yn y ffynnon gyda hwy
minnau ‘molcha’,
ac mi ganaf fyth tra bwy’:
Halelwia!

Dyma’r dŵr a dyma’r gwaed
redodd allan,
ac o’i ystlys sanctaidd gaed
i olchi’r aflan;
hon yw’r ffynnon sy’n glanhau
yr aflana’;
yn dragywydd mae’n parhau:
Halelwia!

Let heaven and earth below sing,
There is a well
To wash great sinners
Shining white;
In the well they have
I will wash myself too,
And I will sing forever while I live:
Hallelujah!

Behold the water and behold the blood
which ran out,
And from his holy side flowed
To wash the unclean;
This is the well which cleanses
The foulest;
Eternally it endures:
Hallelujah!

Blog Dyfed Wyn Roberts

Dyfed, lost somewhere on Ynys Môn, he's honestly not as far out as this picture suggests!

I first met Dyfed when I got my interview to be Warden of John Morris Jones two years ago. John Morris Jones is the Welsh speaking hall of residence at Bangor University. At the time Dyfed was Head Warden of Rathbone, the “English Hall” next door, and he also administrated the whole warden system of the University. During the interview I remember him taking a keen interest in two things. First of all he took a keen interest in my research field and secondly he took a keen interest in my faith – I think I must have said in the application letter that I was a committed Christian. All this baffled me as he hardly asked anything directly about the job and role I was being interviewed for!

When I got home to Aberystwyth that night I was intrigued so I turned to that post-modern god for answers, Google. I found out that Dyfed, in addition to his warden and student support services role, was also a part-time lecturer in the Theology Department and he had been in full time ministry and was planning to return to it at the end of the year. It would be an exaggeration to say that we are now best friends but as brothers in Christ I like to think anyway that I knew I had a fellow Christian I could turn to if the whole Warden thing got to me! He perhaps doesn’t know it, but he did have a sort of role in advising me what Church to go to when i arrived in Bangor. I very much enjoyed our short but frequent chats on the way to the laundry, at the Christmas dinner, and when he took his dog for a walk.

Dyfed has now left the University and returned, with his lovely wife Helen, to full time ministry on his native Ynys Môn. He has a very very interesting blog where he shares some of his vision for the work of the Kingdom on Ynys Môn. What is great is that Dyfed and Helen are really doing it, for example Helen has taken over the running of the Post Office in Brynsiencyn, the village they have moved to. The previous postmaster retired a few months ago and no one was willing to take on the service. Fortunately the office has been kept open by someone on a temporary basis, but now Helen’s time has come to take it over. Dyfed tells that ‘there is a lot of life in it for her and she is excited at the prospect of being at the heart of village life.’ It is a great opportunity to serve the local community. Brynsiencyn is a relatively poor village, with many elderly people depending on the post office to receive their state pension. Not having this service locally would have meant a bus journey to Llanfairpwll. This whole rooting in to the community for the Kingdom really excites me and is a huge encouragement.

So, keep a look out for Dyfed’s blog if you want to be encouraged and inspired.

Welsh medium education at university level

Back in 2004 a few hundred of us camped out over night in-front of the Welsh Government building in Cardiff to show our protest about the lack of Welsh medium education in our universities. It's a blessing now to see all that campaigning over the years bearing some fruit.

A post today about one of the Welsh language campaigns I have been involved in over the past few years. One of the main hurdles that still faces the Welsh language today is the lack of Welsh medium education in the higher education sector, university level. Welsh universities over the years have been institutionally anti-Welsh; things are much better now but developing education through the Welsh language is still far down on the agenda of all institutions and some universities such as Cardiff University have no plans at all to move towards providing the education in Welsh. It is believed therefore that to increase the Welsh language provision in the sector we need to see a new institution established to oversee, maintain and develop the Welsh language provision in the sector. This new institution is needed because current institutions have failed to deliver over the decades.

The model written by Menna and myself, first put forward in November 2007, was conceived with the demise of the University of Wales taken into account. In formulating the model we had examined comparable situations such as Welsh language broadcasting where S4C had been established as a separate channel to provide focus and momentum.

The model’s four core principles can be summarized as follows:

i.) The Welsh Federal College should constitute a new independent academic institution that will bear the responsibility of overseeing, maintaining and developing the Welsh language provision in the sector. The independence of this new institution will bring a new and much needed impetus to Welsh language provision within the sector.

ii.) The Welsh Federal College should have ‘ring fenced’ funding. This funding would be used to implement a step change in the provision, development and marketing of Welsh medium eduction in the sector. Also, the ownership of it’s own ‘ring fenced’ budget will command respect towards the institution from the rest of the sector so that it’s not seen subordinate to other institutions but rather as an equal partner and provider. It should stand shoulder to shoulder and not under current sector institutions in a sector wide hierarchical sense.

iii.) The Welsh Federal College should work under it’s own charter, or other similar legal document, stating clearly its mission, aims and objectives; this will ensure the founding vision is kept central as the institution develops and expands over the coming years.

iv.) Finally, the Welsh Federal College should keep a register of students and academic staff. New appointments under future schemes and current sector personnel who are involved in Welsh language provision should be able to publicly show their membership to the College. This idea of ‘ownership’ from the student and teaching staff perspective is central to the ethos of the new institution – without this membership idea the institution will not be an academic institution but rather nothing more than a Welsh education funding council – this would not be fruitful in terms of creating a Welsh language academic sphere.

The provision itself would be catered through current sector institutions – the Welsh Federal College would work the provision through them. To implement and administrate this it is proposed that the Welsh Federal College would have a ‘branch’ in each sector institution. The size and workload of each ‘branch’ would differ from institution to institution but the long term aim is to have Welsh Federal College co-ordinated Welsh medium provision spread across the whole of Wales in all institutions. The paper makes it clear that this will not be achieved overnight but the model provides a clear framework, given appropriate Government funding, how to move towards this goal. The model can be read in full (in Welsh and English) on the website: www.colegcymraeg.org

The idea of establishing a Welsh Federal College have been adopted as Government policy and currently the Government is considering how best to implement the policy. I hope and pray that the Welsh government will see fit to establish a proper institution with proper funding, as we have argued for, so that the injustice suffered by Welsh speaking students over the decades can be bought to and end.