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Good Faith Book Club

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Formed in 2012, we now meet on the fourth Saturday in alternate months from 2pm to 4pm in The new Welcome Space which is through the glass doors at the front of the church in Buckingham Street. Our meeting months are January, March, May, July, September and November.

So 2019 dates are: January 26th, March 23rd May 25th, July 22nd, September 24th, November 26th.

The aim is to provide a forum for people to explore and discuss matters of faith and what they believe through the discussion of a book in a relaxed, convivial, non-threatening atmosphere.

Everyone is welcome to come along and express their views or just listen over a cup of tea or coffee. The group decides which book to read next. Various members have written the following summaries of our discussions.

Contact Peter Green the Club Secretary:
Tel. 01296 424653
Email: peterb.green@ntlworld.com.

The Badly Behaved Bible

The book we had read this time, in the Good Faith Book Club, was 'The Badly Behaved Bible' by Nick Page. In his book he provides a modern perspective of the Bible, emphasising that it is not one book but a collection of 66 books written by different people at very different times. Many were not written as 'Scripture' as such but were collected much later. Many were written centuries after the events they report. They had often been handed down orally as stories of the peoples' experience of God and the Hebrew people in the Old Testament and of the emerging Christian Church, with the story of Jesus in the Gospels as the most important part.We all thought it was a good book and we agreed with it! That could have been the end of the discussion but there were interesting themes that we wanted to discuss.One of the most difficult is the portrayal of God in many parts of the Old Testament as a jealous God urging his people on to destroy their enemies including the wome

Miracle Children

Miracle Children, The Toybox Story by Duncan Dyason is an uplifting story but also one which the group found challenging. As Anne Prendergast wrote Duncan was well placed to take on the daunting task of helping the street children of Guatemala. As a child he was neglected, beaten, hungry, thrown out of home & was in trouble with the law resulting in a criminal record. From this troubled beginning, his life had been turned round when he had discovered his faith in God, and in due course, he heard God calling him to work with the street children of Guatemala.We found ourselves into a lively discussion both how we 'hear' God speaking, and whether we had the faith that would trust in God to the extent that Duncan did. Did we also pray with the clear purpose and belief that he did had? Some of us found this level of conviction quite disturbing, but clearly things happened for Duncan when he placed his faith in God. We all had had experiences of prayers that were repetitive and dir

Crazy Christians

Crazy Christians — A radical way of life by Bishop Michael B. Curry was well-received by those present; most of us remembered Michael from his sermon at Prince Harry's wedding. It contained 13 chapters each one a sermon he had preached at his Episcopalian Church in the U.S. so there was no continuity between them.Marilyn Dore suggested it was a book to dip into rather than read straight off . There was a lot of repetition, with the same messages differently expressed. David Neville had not been looking forward to reading it, but found it fascinating and up-lifting. Michael was obviously an inspiring and joyful person. In her report, Ann Prendergast gave several examples of stand-out phrases and texts and she found he expressed a discipleship focussed on Jesus and the need to welcome all. He took this idea of welcoming people to Church and expanded it to encompass everything we do as church.I was impressed by his engaging personality and his willingness to turn his whole Episc

Set Free

Due to the Covid-19 restrictions, we couldn't meet, so posted these individual reviews:Frankie FisherI much preferred this book to the Timmy Mallett book. Both were about pilgrimages, but it seemed to me that the first was almost totally self-centred; (I know he loved his brother, but!) There was very little of the places he went through except how they affected him. Judge not and all that, but he did not seem spiritually further on at the end and I thought that was what a pilgrimage was all about, when done properly?Emma on the other hand, though her road was long and slow, achieved spiritual growth by the end and I found that profoundly impressive. There were long bits where I willed her to get on with it, but overall, I found it engaging. This was probably all the more so with reading it after Timmy's which I found so unsatisfactory. It was good to read something that showed there are many other paths to God.Annelies VarseyEmma Slade was a successful Banker who

Utterly Brilliant

Due to the Covid-19 restrictions, we couldn't meet, so posted these individual reviews:Angela Smith: I was delighted at the beginning of Lock Down, to receive this Timmy Mallett's book. It looked very interesting and long. I hoped it would last me until the next Book Club meeting, so I determined to read it slowly. I read it so slowly that I have only just reached the end of it. I think Timmy Mallett would be a very entertaining man to know and I was impressed by the great love he had for his brother, who made the most of his potential and inspired him to do the same.. At the start, the book reminded me of one of my favourite books, Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome, with its anecdotes and historical references, but it was not as humorous and as I had never watched children's morning television, many of the allusions to "Wacaday were lost on me. He seemed to enjoy being a celebrity, whom I had never heard of. His tour of France and Spain, I thought,

Inner City Testament

Inner City TestamentJohn and Grace VincentThis was a fascinating book and made much richer by having chapters by both authors independently. I did however find it rather self-congratulatory with many references to the important people he met and worked with. I think a better-balanced account of the splendid work they undoubtedly did could have come from a biographer and not themselves. It was interesting that John acknowledges, that in spite of his very left wing view of everything, he would not be a suitable politician. There were many admirable projects he started, some in very unlikely circumstances. At the end however I felt they had taken a rather 'scatter gun' approach and wondered if they would have done more good by concentrating on fewer but longer lasting efforts. This is easy to say but of course he had to do what he could in real time in the church he was in at the time, although Grace could be more independent and wide ranging.Enjoyable but somewhat disjoint

Another Christ

Another Christ, by Andrew D. Mayes, which was quite well-received by the group, took eleven different traits of the character of Jesus, the man ,explored them and pointed out what they could mean for people exercising ministry today.We felt that the list was too long, but everyone enjoyed and valued the first two chapters: Jesus the Builder and Jesus,the hermit.Mayes established to our satisfaction, that Jesus was more likely to have been a "tecton", a builder, than a carpenter. The new grand city of Sefforis, was being constructed near his home and would have offered opportunities for work. The Gospel accounts of his teaching are littered with building metaphors and stories and not with images of wood or carpentry; Nazareth was a small settlement with not much prospect of regular work for a carpenter. Jesus would have seen the exploitation of workers he portrays in his parables at first hand This was the chapter that most of the group found most. enlighteningIn the second

The Shed That Fed A Million Children

For this book, individuals were asked for their personal brief, overall impressions...1. I was struck by the way that the author did not set out with a plan to feed a million children, but started with a vision of the Virgin Mary, something very strange to our Methodist ears — and then step-by-step found himself drawn into a huge international project. But it worked partly because of the approach he took in involving other people.2. When passing through Dalmally on my recent holiday in Scotland, I was inspired to find how isolated the village was, although there was a railway station. How had Magnus been able to found a world charity from such a small place? It demonstrated how God can use most unlikely individuals in such an amazing way. His faith shone through on every page and it makes me think that there are more things in the world that we cannot account for. The visions that triggered the initial work had an effect which cannot be disputed.3. The spirit is moving all the time

Laudato Si

This month the book club had read Pope Francis' encyclical entitled Laudato Si. (Praise be to you) taken from a prayer of St Francis of Assisi, whose love and care for all creation was an inspiration for the Pope. The encyclical was the Pope's analysis of the ecological crisis facing the world, including climate change, and his proposals for ameliorating and perhaps reversing the current trends.Some of the group found the language hard going as some was fairly scholarly, but generally it was an interesting and thought provoking read. A first question asked was who it was written for? As an encyclical it was obviously to the whole Catholic Church community, but it was felt it should be read by all governments and politicians and NGOs who needed to be reminded of the seriousness of our worldwide ecological situation. But as it had some chapters which were very specifically doctrinally Catholic in content, it might put off some organisations that would see it as Catholic propag

Face To Face

All the members present at a meeting of the Good Faith Book Club, agreed that this short book was easy to read and several of them had read it through thoughtfully for a second time. Samuel Wells had written it primarily to encourage fellow Anglican priests, but since Methodists believe in the priesthood of all believers, we felt that it was relevant to our own lives. In the introduction, which made up the first 26 pages of the 97 page book, Samuel described the power of silence, touch, words and prayer. The therapeutic benefit of singing was also acknowledged. The rest of the book consists of brief accounts of the ways Samuel has learned important lessons from contact with a wide variety of people. We discussed a few of these narratives. There was the fireman, who stitched the 3 nails he had been given at a Good Friday service, to his uniform and touched them, as he prayed for faith, courage and hope, whenever the Brigade was called out. Then there was the woman, who was able to forg

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