Osian jailed as part of the struggle for equal rights for Welsh speakers

Tomorrow, Friday November 6th at 9.30 am my friend, Osian Jones, North Wales organiser for Cymdeithas yr Iaith Gymraeg (Welsh Language Society) will be sentenced to a month in prison by Pwllheli Magistrates. The magistrates have already warned him that he faces imprisonment because of his refusal to pay fines for his part in non-violent direct action on High Street stores as part of a Cymdeithas yr Iaith Gymraeg’s campaign for a comprehensive Welsh Language Measure that would give Welsh speakers equal rights in all spheres of society.

Osian will be the second member of Cymdeithas yr Iaith Gymraeg to go to prison this year. Ffred Ffransis was imprisoned back in June for refusing to pay fines also imposed for his part in the campaign for a comprehensive Welsh Language Measure.

Osian Jones said:

It’s interesting that both Ffred and I faced prison this year for our part in this particular campaign. What is more significant is that Ffred the ‘offences’ for which Ffred was imprisoned go back to January 2001 which proves that this particular campaign has been long and hard. The sad thing is, that the Welsh Language LCO which is now on offer, and which is the product of all this campaigning is utterly inadequate since it does not give the Welsh people their legitimate linguistic rights which enables them to live their lives fully through the medium of Welsh, nor does it’s powers extend to the private sector.”

“Even though we argued our case with conviction before committees in both the National Assembly and at Westminster it became obvious to us that the legislative process in Wales is both wearisome and defective, and that we have no choice but to continue with our direct action campaign. I hope that my imprisonment will give other people the inspiration to campaign for the language and that we will see the responsibility for legislating on the Welsh language transferred in it’s entirety to the National Assembly in the near future. The Welsh people have had to wait a long time to see their linguistic rights realised. They deserve a great deal more than the LCO which is now on offer.

Please pray that God will grant Osian courage as he faces the next month behind bars in the name of a just cause.

My first English sermon

Last Sunday I preached at Penrallt, the English Baptist church in Bangor. I must admit that I was nervous wreck beforehand because my whole spiritual life, except for my regular does of State side MP3’s, is lived entirely through the Welsh language. But I think that the Holy Spirit carried the sermon through in the end. It’s in the reading at the start and the prayer at the end that it’s most obvious that I’m communicating in my second language.

After conquering my nerves the sermon went well. It was nice to preach in-front of a large and young audience and it was great seeing people laughing at my jokes – jokes that just fall flat on their face when I try them out in Welsh churches! But the most encouraging thing was to see people coming to me at the end thanking me and telling me that God spoke to them through the sermon.

Here is the sermon:

I hope I’ll get more opportunity to preach in English in the future but I’m still sure that God has called me to whiteness through the Welsh Churches.

Start Something Tour Video Diary

Back in July my band, Society Profiad, went on the Start Something Tour with The Repercussion, Tom Whitman and Steff Elis. Most of the video is in Welsh but the most interesting part of the video is in English – if you skip to 2.30 you can see what we got up to in Casllwchwr the birthplace of the 1904 Revival.

Mark and Books

One of my main responsibilities in the Church where I’ve started as a Pastor in-training is to lead the weekly Bible Study. I think I’ve settled on the idea of going through Mark – partly because I want to sort of follow Christianity Explored – I think I’ll be using the course as a’n outline but I won’t be running the course as such. Yesterday I went along to my local Christian bookshop which now gives me a whopping 25% off on everything because I’m a full-time Christian worker. Nice. The books I bought yesterday to help me with preparation were Christianity Explored – Leader’s Edition and Mark for Everyone by Tom Wright. I also couldn’t resist the temptation of buying C.J. Mahaney’s Cross Centered Life because apparently I have to read it and I also bought Mark Driscoll’s Religion Saves + Nine other Misconceptions if only for the amazing artwork.

Please pray as I prepare the series of studies from Mark. In the past I have felt leading studies more of a struggle and hard work than just plain preaching so please pray that I may lead people and open up the Gospel.

(I have added a new category to the blog posts, “Penuel Bangor”, I’ll tag any posts which talk about my work at the Church under that, this being the first.)

Visiting Tearfund HQ

Yesterday I travelled with Hywel Meredydd, Tearfund’s manager in Wales, to Tearfunds head office at Teddington, London. Hywel was taking part in a Poverty Prayer DVD they were filming but he took me along with him because he’s keen to get my input on different strategies to get more Welsh speakers and Welsh speaking churches a part of Tearfund’s work. Amongst other things we discussed was the need to develop more of a Welsh online presence.

Tearfund work to inspire the church to transform communities. They mobilise the local church to work with poor communities to bring material and spiritual transformation: to speak out in advocacy, and to prepare and respond to disasters. Tearfund are addressing a wide range of issues including HIV, water and sanitation, reducing the impact of disasters, economic injustice and climate change.

If Tearfund would just be a humanist charity it would still be an amazing organization; but what excites me about Tearfund is the fact that it’s not just any humanist charity it’s a radical movement of committed (or if you wish ‘evangelical’) Christians. That spiritual dimension to Tearfund means that the zeal and Koinoniaesq feel around the work is very special indeed. What this means in practice is that prayer is central to Tearfund’s work. At Tearfund they believe in doing everything they can. It’s a way of working that they call integral mission. It means that while they know people need material things to survive, they choose to work through church-based partners who won’t stop at just the material basics when it comes to helping their neighbours in need. They’ll do everything they can. Churches know and care about the people they live with. They see them as more than just mouths to feed – they know what they’ve been through and the kind of help they need.

Tearfund see people as more than just physical entities, we all have emotional and spiritual needs as well. The local church, operating at its best, has the power to change people’s lives, to give them a new perspective, to help heal emotional scars and offer the hope they need – to bring people together. Taking this approach has proved, in Tearfund’s experience, the best way to help people make lasting changes in their lives that free them from poverty. This is why working through local churches at the place of need is such a powerful way to help people.

Another great thing about Tearfund is the fact that 91% of money raised reaches the front line. Only 9% of the budget is spent on administration, staff, advocacy, education, further fund raising etc… This is significantly less than most major charities with Christian Aid coming in with 30% on administration! This is achieved by Tearfund through very careful spending reviews and a big emphasis on volunteers and action through local churches rather than an over emphasis on paid staff. Despite Tearfund only having two part time workers in Wales the money raised here is as much as other charities who have eight and more full time workers – that speaks volumes.

I don’t think you must be a Christian to be involved in charity work proper and I believe humanist charities like Oxfam and the more humanist elements withing Christian Aid do very important and brilliant work. But for me as a committed Christian and a young church leader in Wales I do feel that Tearfund shares’s the vision closest to mine – basically, believing and living the Gospel of Christ!

But what was great yesterday was meeting young Christians who were fired up to fight injustice and work to end poverty. Here in Welsh Wales we have hardly any young Christians full stop; and I can count those I know of which have a passion to fight injustice on one hand!

How to get involved with Tearfund?

• You can visit the website to find out about the latest news so you can get praying about the work and give some money if you can.
• And if your a Facebook user you can sing up to the Tearfund SuperBadger app through which you can lobby politicians about various issues Tearfund feel strongly about.

Please pray especially for Hywel and Miriam and all the volunteers Tearfund have in Wales and pray for Janet and the other brilliant people who I met at the head office. Pray that the Spirit will lead them in their work and that through them more and more Christians will live a more responding life to the Gospel and though that integral mission will happen and people all over the world through Tearfund’s work will see material and spiritual transformation in their life.

August madness

Last week I was busy at the Eisteddfod doing this and that (yes, I know, I need to renew the domain), the week before that I was busy on the Start Something Tour; this week I moved house from Bangor to Deiniolen. I’m now back in Aberystwyth prepering my sermon for Souled Out which starts this Friday. After that I hope to have a few days breathing befroe settling down in my new house in Deiniolen and get back cracking on the PhD after the August “rest” – hope to get another chapter in by the end of first week of September.

That is all.

God and his door opening…

I’ve been worrying too much and praying not enough over the past few weeks about what I’m going to do next year. Feeling a call to the ministry is one thing but seeing clearly what door God is opening to you is another matter! A good friend of mine, Derek Rees, is heading up a Welsh language church plant in Swansea this coming autumn and I’ve been praying for God to open a door if he want’s me to be part of that work. This week it has become clear that God is opening a different door so I won’t be joining Derek down in Swansea. It’s a hard decision, I have mixed feelings. Being part of the new work in Swansea would have been very exiting and pulling out now makes me feel as if I have let Derek down slightly. But the door just didn’t open for me to move down there, Derek understands this and both of us will still support each other in whatever way we can.

The door that God has opened to me this week was an offer from the Baptist Association of Arfon to a pastor in training post. They have offered me generous financial support so I can finish off my PhD then move on to do some courses in the Baptist College in Bangor and whilst I do my training I’ll be based working part of the week in my local church in Bangor and perhaps other shorter placements with other churches within the Association. I suspect it will be very much a different set-up to that if I were to have gone to Swansea – but I look forward to seeing the vision God will give me to work in the Arfon area.

I guess that the main worry I have about the calling to stay and work in the Arfon area is that I will be sucked in to keeping things going as they are. Please pray that the brothers and sisters I will be working with will be willing to listen to God’s guidance with me and not just use me as a “young man” who will keep the show going as it is for another 10 years! But most important of all please pray that Christ and his Gospel rather than tradition and chapel culture will be central to my ministry.

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…

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….