Reflections Summer 2015

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In this Issue

Minister’s Reflections 2

“Missionaries from this

Congregation” 5

John Whitehorn Interviewed 11

Outreach today 14

Reflections on our time at

St Columba’s: Thomas .W. Currie 18

Agona Asafo Revisited 20

Christian Aid’s 70th

Anniversary 23

Prayers from Christian Aid 26

About St Columba’s 28

The guest editors for this issue, Sheila and Robert Porrer, would like to thank all those who contributed to the articles in Reflections and who provided photographs.

Reflections The Rev’d Nigel Uden,

Minister

This edition of Reflections is about mission.

We are very grateful to Sheila and Robert

Porrer as the guest editors who offer some

retrospective articles. These include an

exploration of the board honouring people

who went from St Columba’s into the mission

field. Other articles offer a contemporary

reflection of mission. The editors comment:

‘the world has changed and the call to mission

is experienced in different ways.’ So we read

of Christian Aid, the Group Therapy Centre,

Nightlite and outreach through classical

music. This opening item, therefore, reflects

that transformation, and seeks to draw an

unbroken line between the two.

The 1910 World Missionary Conference in

Edinburgh was a precursor of the World

Council of Churches. The significantly

ecumenical gathering of mission personnel

from across the globe understood the

essential link between unity and fruitful

mission. The conference also recognised how

churches in the west stood at a kairos

moment – what Brian Stanley defines as ‘a

pivotal moment of unique opportunity in

which political, economic and religious factors

had combined providentially to open a whole

series of doors for missionary advance’. (The

World Missionary Conference, 1910, (Wm

Eerdmans, 2009 page 3) How prescient they

were about so many parts of the world, even

if not about our own.

From countless notable features of Edinburgh

1910 I have selected three. I shall use them

partly to give a flavour of what happened

then but also to ask if they might be helpful

for us in an age when mission remains as

urgent an imperative as the kairos of 1910

was seen to be.

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Vendanavagam Samuel Azariah 1874-1945 Bishop of Dornakal 1912-45

First, one of the memorable speakers at

Edinburgh was V. S. Azariah, an Anglican

priest from South India. Not high caste, he

knew exclusion and disadvantage. The Gospel,

however, had persuaded him that in Christ all

are one, and of equal value. Azariah cherished

the missionaries in India, even though he

knew how class ridden and patronising some

of them could be. He was especially familiar

with the over-bearing condescension of his

Bishop’s English wife. In particular, it seems

he felt their aloofness. His speech alluded to I

Corinthians 13 – St Paul’s hymn to love.

Azariah pleaded that those who had opened

up the treasures of the gospel, given goods to

the poor and their bodies to be burned,

should give one thing more. ‘We ask for love.

Give us FRIENDS!’ As Stanley says: ‘Azariah

was insisting that the riches of the glory of

God in Christ will be appropriated by the

church only if all the saints inter-relate in

Christian fellowship.’ (Stanley page 125) Or, in

St Paul’s phrase, ‘If I have no love, I am

nothing’. (I Corinthians 13.2) For the soon-to-

be Bishop of Dornakal, love’s place at the

heart of mission was definitive.

Secondly, as a conference about building up

the church around the world, Edinburgh

discussed how important it was that Christian

theology was expressed differently according

to each context and culture. Delegates

regretted how easily people in Africa and Asia

regurgitated the theological insights of the

West; they wanted to see the gospel of Jesus

Christ variously interpreted and understood

as good news for nations that each had a

different world view and life experience. This

plea was followed throughout the twentieth

century with the emergence of a wide-range

of localised theological interpretations. For

example, the ubuntu theology found in much

of Africa, with its embrace of Africa’s innate

sense that a person is not a person without

other people; or the minjung theology from

Korea, which learns from ordinary people’s

struggle with poverty and oppression that

Christian mission is inextricably involved in

the movement towards social justice for the

minjung, the mass of the people. Theology

and context nourish each other.

Thirdly, Edinburgh 1910 spent time thinking of

how churches that had been given so crucial a

start by foreign mission societies should move

toward independence - what it called the

‘Three Self Principle’: self-government, self-

support, and self-propagation. (Report page

277) Although the conference’s twelve

hundred delegates were predominantly from

the so-called ‘sending’ churches – V. S.

Azariah was one of very few delegates native

to the countries they represented – there was

nevertheless a strong sense that it was not

only the theology that needed indigenising.

There also needed to be a local shape and

energy to the way they were run, resourced,

and grown. If everything they believed, did,

had and achieved was dependent upon the

influence and input of overseas missionaries

they would never gain that authenticity,

credibility and confidence which would make

them permanently viable.

To some degree these three features of 1910

are interesting in their own right, but much

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more so if we allow them to breathe life into

the way we fulfil our mission as the church in

twenty-first century Britain. After all, these

are ‘missionary’ days in our own country; the

offering into our own society of the good

news of Jesus Christ is as imperative today as

it was felt to be when 1910 was identified as a

kairos.

Azariah’s cry for the missionaries to ‘give us

friends’, speaks to our time. I remember being

told of a young woman visitor to Nightlite,

grateful at 2.00am for the lavatory and a

listening ear. She was heard to comment,

‘Fancy the church doing this. It’s what Jesus

would have done.’ It was about mission-

shaped friendship. Azariah longed for

doctrinal sophistication to be crowned with

that simple love which treated him as an

equal in an India still shaped by the British Raj;

perhaps he helps us to realise afresh that the

Church will deserve to gain an ear when it

holds out a hand of compassion and

companionship.

That call at Edinburgh 1910 for Christian

theology to be diversely expressed for each

nation’s context also speaks to us in 2015.

There is an urgent need for us to change for

the times. We don’t have to be or to do

everything that contemporary society is and

does, but we do need to engage with it, and

to discern, under the guidance of the Holy

Spirit, how to communicate with it. The

language we use is an example. Books that

define sin as ‘falling short of the divine glory’

are theologically profound and worth

grappling with, but for our era, books like

Francis Spufford’s Unapologetic, which help

us see sin as ‘the human propensity to [mess]

things up’, stand a chance of being more

direct in their impact. Moreover,

methodology matters, too. If they had been

missionaries in 2015, what would 1910’s

evangelists have made of social media like

Facebook, already passé though I am told it

is? I sense it and its successors beckoning me

to complement my fountain pen with the

tools of this age.

We are also addressed head-on by the 1910

plea that the new churches of Asia and India

re-direct their theology, governance,

resourcing and evangelism away from

nineteenth century western models toward

something tailored for their own place and

era. We cannot be the church for this century

if we rely solely upon ideas, resources and

models from the past. We’re to be as creative,

innovative and faithful as our forebears were.

That’s about understanding a range of things:

how to develop our relationship with

Emmanuel Church; how to minister to a

burgeoning population; how to embody

Christ’s peace in a society so stressed that it

still needs the Group Therapy Centre and a

range of ‘Anonymous’ groups; how to respond

to a scarred world that so demonstrably

needs Amnesty International and Christian

Aid. Our mission-prioritising task is steadfastly

to work away at all the elements of the

equation that sets today’s world and today’s

church alongside each other.

That’s how we will be a sign of the unbroken

line between the mission that absorbed

people in Edwardian Edinburgh and ours in

modern Fenland; a sign that we are learning

from the World Missionary Conference and

from all the missionaries on the board in the

Gibson Hall, not by taking their answers and

trying to fit them to 2015, but by taking their

commitment to Christ, and letting that inspire

our own, so that for each new era it

transforms us into agents of Christ’s gift to

every new generation, life in all its fullness.

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“MISSIONARIES FROM THIS

CONGREGATION”

In the Gibson Hall at St. Columba’s Church there is a board entitled “Missionaries from this Congregation”, which commemorates over eighty men and women who went out from the St. Columba’s congregation between 1885 and 1989 to spread the Christian gospel by preaching, teaching, writing, translating, organising, and inspiring in local communities all over the world.

Among those named is John Whitehorn,

still a member of St. Columba’s, and an

account of his experiences is given in a

separate article. In 1992, John’s late

brother, Michael, a URC Minister, retired

to Cambridge and St. Columba’s and took

up the task of recording what was known

about the missionaries whose names

were on the board. His account makes

inspiring reading – at the same time as

spreading Christianity these men and

women were pioneers in education and

healthcare, undertook language studies,

and became community leaders in times

of war and invasion, often at great

personal cost. The quotations below are

all taken from Michael Whitehorn’s

account, and it is hoped that the full text

will soon be available for consultation on

the St. Columba’s website.

Michael’s introduction places the Roll of

Honour in its context: “....The board in the

Gibson Hall [was] presented by Stanley

Ellis, himself a missionary Elder in China

from 1919-1921, …. At this time [1992] of

the restoration of St. Columba’s buildings

it seems fitting to prepare a record of

those who have shared in “the

evangelisation of the world in this

generation”, which was the great vision at

the end of the 19th century, inspired by

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C.T. Studd and others in the famous

“Cambridge Seven” and furthered by the

Student Volunteer Missionary Union. The

Presbyterian Church of England had

shared in work in China ever since its

pioneer missionary, William Chalmers

Burns, went there in 1847.”

Many of those who went abroad were

distinguished academics and writers, and

also notable sportsmen. John Roberts,

who went out to Chuanchow in 1931, had

been a Cambridge Rugby Blue and Welsh

International, and George Grant, who

served in Africa from 1932, was a soccer

blue, played cricket against Oxford twice

and later captained the West Indies in

Australia. The very first name on the

board, Ion Keith Falconer, was a

champion cyclist.

Ion Keith Falconer is typical of the calibre

of those who offered themselves for

missionary service – and the price they

paid. “ He was a Scot, born in Edinburgh in

1856, who came to Trinity College in

1874, reading mathematics first but later

theology, and with a special interest in

Hebrew and in cycling. He shared in the

Barnwell Mission in Cambridge and

became Secretary of the Mile End Road

Mission in London. In 1884 he went to

Egypt to study Arabic, and then felt called

to go to Aden on behalf of the Church of

Scotland, where he started a school, an

orphanage and a hospital. He was

appointed Professor of Arabic in

Cambridge University, but only gave one

short course of three lectures on ”The

Pilgrimage to Mecca” before going to

Aden. Owing to the conditions there he

died in 1887, within six months of his

arrival. The Keith Memorial Church was

built in Aden in his memory and his

biography was printed in seven editions:

he was a truly remarkable pioneer.”

In the 23 years since Michael Whitehorn

researched the names on the St.

Columba’s Roll of Honour the internet has

opened up huge new possibilities, and Ion

Keith Falconer is just one of those whose

career is illuminated by the information

available there – a look at his Wikipedia

entry, for example, will fill out his life and

legacy in a way not possible in 1992.

Many women are mentioned in this

account, and commemorated on the Roll

of Honour. They figure as wives or

daughters and often teachers, but it is a

reflection of their times that the men

seem to be in the forefront of the picture.

Indeed many of the names on the board

are linked by ties of family or marriage,

but also by shared professional and

missionary life. One of those links is the

school in Chuan-Chow in China, founded

in 1904 by Alan S. Moore Anderson

who“…. was encouraged to go to Chuan-

Chow in 1902. He was one of the most

remarkable to go overseas, and helped to

establish a new boys’ school there in

1904, which was named Westminster

College because the students at

Westminster College, Cambridge, made

that school the object of their missionary

plea that year. He continued as Principal

of the College until he was asked to

succeed the Revd. W. Murray in Malaya in

1931. …………..

In Malaya Alan Anderson followed up the

work of Mr. Murray as the only English

Presbyterian missionary among Swatow-

speaking Chinese ...... He worked also

among Amoy-speaking Chinese in

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Singapore and Malaya and was much

involved in Boys’ Brigade work. On

reaching the normal missionary retiring

age of 65 in 1941, he offered to continue

there, but as he was on leave in South

Africa when the Japanese war began, he

could not return there then. However, he

raised help for a China War Relief Fund

……… He retired officially in 1948 and

visited Manila and Hong Kong in 1949 and

also went briefly to Amoy and

Chuanchow. In 1949 he was awarded the

Order of the Brilliant Star by the President

of China, General Chiang Kai Shek, for his

services to the Chinese people. He stayed

on in Malaya until he died in 1959. having

recorded much of his life in “Random

Reminiscences”. Edward Band wrote of

him as “having given his life-blood in life-

long service overseas”.”

Several other St. Columba’s missionaries

went out to the school Alan Anderson

founded in Chuan-Chow in 1904 and

named Westminster College. George

Mobbs was there between 1921 and

1927, and his brother Reg taught there

from 1929 to 1932. Margaret Roxburgh,

the daughter of the Bursar of

Westminster College, went out in 1922

and stayed until 1934, winning for herself

“a very real place in the hearts of the

senior pupils”. E. L. Allen was there from

1927, and John Roberts served as

Chaplain and English teacher for five years

from 1931.

“The first person to serve in the

missionary work of the Presbyterian

Church of England was Garden Blakie of

Caius College who went to China in 1902.

He was the first recruit for overseas work

from Westminster College which had

been founded in Cambridge in 1899 on its

removal from Queen’s Square in London.

He was appointed as a ministerial

colleague to Dr. Cousland, who was

working in Chao-Chao-Fu where there was

a dispensary for the Swatow Hospital. He

began Church extension work there and

seven new stations were opened in the

area. He had the help of his wife, Dr. Tina

Alexander, whom he married in 1904, in

medical work especially among women.

Sadly, he died in 1908 and his place was

not filled until Douglas James went there

in 1912.”

“T. W. Douglas James studied at

Westminster College and went to Swatow

in 1910. He took the place of Garden

Blakie at Chao-Chao-Fu in 1912 and

stayed there for 15 years, showing a

loving care of all the Churches and a wise

understanding of their highest welfare.

He was concerned for open-air work and

established a book-shop in an area which

was a centre of Confucianism. An old

Chinese temple was converted into a

Church in 1922, with help from the

Westminster students’ plea. He also

helped to arrange an armistice in 1917

between two Chinese forces so that peace

was restored in Swatow, and his efforts

were recognised by the local Chamber of

Commerce erecting a memorial stone on

a local temple. He married Miss Mary

Duffus soon after her appointment to the

Wukingfu Girls’ School. In 1927 he was

transferred to the Hakka area after the

missionaries escaped from Wukingfu, but

he returned to Wukingfu in 1928 and

reported that the Swatow Council had

handed over much responsibility to the

Chinese Church. He continued faithfully

in the difficulties in that area until he was

called in 1935 to fill the post of Foreign

Missions Secretary in London in place of

Dr. MacLagan. His work in the Hakka

Church was invaluable, helping Chinese

Ministers in face of fundamentalist

attitudes. …..His daughter, Beth, trained

as a nurse at Oxford and, after her

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marriage to George Hood, went out to

Swatow in 1945 and later served for many

years in Malaya.”

War and civil unrest are a recurring theme

in this record. Alan Macleod and his wife

Margaret served in Rajshahi, some 200

miles north of Calcutta, on the Ganges, in

India (present day Bangladesh) between

1936 and 1955.

“Alan Macleod trained at Westminster

College and was ordained to serve in

Rajshahi in the Bengal area of what was

then India in 1936 …. He was joined in

1938 by his fiancée, Margaret Nicol, and

after their marriage she shared with him

all his service overseas. Alan was

transferred to Naogaon in 1939 to re-

establish the work there, as the buildings

and mission were in a state of collapse.

He continued there during the time of

famine in 1943, through the Japanese

war, and led the Church there in relief

work, in providing a home for destitute

beggars, and in establishing an emergency

hospital, which was later taken over by

the Government of Bengal. However, the

work done in it won the sympathy of

many others, mostly Muslim, for the work

of the Church, and Alan Macleod was

awarded the Kaiser-i-Hind silver medal for

his services in the famine. He continued

to serve there until 1955, and was

Principal of the Darjeeling Language

School for Missionaries in 1951.

On his return to England he was

appointed Professor of Old Testament

Studies at Westminster College in 1955

and continued there until his retirement

in 1979, having become Principal in 1963.

…. He was Moderator of the General

Assembly of the Presbyterian Church of

England in 1967, and again for a short

time in 1972 before the formation of the

United Reformed Church. He retired from

the College in 1979 and remained a

member of St. Columba’s, with his wife

Margaret.”

The continuing unrest in China and the

tension with Japan during the interwar

period affected missionary work in China

and Taiwan. W. Bernard Paton, for

example, “studied at Christ’s and

Westminster College in 1899 and went

out in 1905 to help Stephen Band in

Wukingfu. He married another teacher,

Miss Marion Keith, in 1908. …… Wukingfu

was attacked by Red troops in 1925 and

Paton wrote an account of this: he was

beaten up and seized, but after his release

he told of the support of Chinese friends

and the heroism of the Women’s

Missionary Association ladies there.”

“Edward Band from Queens’ and

Westminster Colleges was appointed in

1912 as the Principal of the Mission

School at Tainan in Formosa (now

Taiwan), and with the hope of establishing

a large secondary school. He first went to

Tokyo to learn Japanese and joined the

school in 1914 and served there until

1935. …….

The Japanese Government imposed some

restrictions on the religious character of

the school, but Band organised hostels for

boarders to receive a Christian influence.

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Because of the anti-British feeling in

Taiwan, only Band and four women

missionaries remained in 1940, and they

also had to go home in that November,

leaving the Church to carry on without

missionaries.

The last entries on the Missionary Board

William Short also had to cope with civil

war. He “came to Westminster College in

1909 after getting a degree at Edinburgh

and also a London B.D. He went out to

Amoy in 1913 and was sent up to

Yungchun …… Because of civil war it was

a time of great difficulty, but he continued

faithfully to visit 19 Churches and 7

schools in his district. He wrote in 1925 of

anti-British agitation, but he remained

hopeful and his last report in 1927 offered

compassion to the Christian community in

Yungchun and hope for the future. He

wrote earlier in 1924 of their loyalty, even

if they were disheartened….

He returned home in 1937 but went out

again in 1941 and, with Ian Latto, made

visits on bicycles to the area near them,

holding retreats and conferences in many

areas and still working from Chuanchow.”

“J. C. Smith …. went out to China in 1914

from Westminster College …. After some

years of pastoral work, he and Tom

Gibson shared in the Swatow Theological

College until 1925 when they moved to

Chuanchow to a less disturbed area. In

1931 he married Marjorie Owen who was

also serving in this area…. In 1937

Swatow was heavily attacked by the

Japanese, but he admired the Chinese

military and police discipline there and

the missionaries stood by their people.”

“R.H. Mobbs went out first as a teacher to

Westminster College, Chuanchow in 1929,

like his brother George: he returned to

Cambridge in 1932 to prepare to be

ordained, and was then appointed to

Changpu in 1935. He continued there

after the outbreak of war between China

and Japan in 1937, and carried out an

extensive visitation there in 1938, working

on his own, caring for the 34 Churches in

his district. However, in 1939 the

Changpu compound was bombed and

badly damaged, and while ten people

were killed he was only slightly injured,

but was sent home on doctor’s orders. ”

A couple who played a key role in Africa in

the face of rather different problems were

George [known as Jack] and Ida Grant.

After teaching in Grenada and Zanzibar

“in 1949 [Jack] was appointed by the

United Church of Christ in the United

States of America as Head of Adams

College in Natal for black students, with

the support of Chief Luthuli and Alan

Paton. When the College was taken over

under the Bantu Education Act they had

to leave in 1956. They went first for a

year on behalf of the International

Missionary Council to prepare for the first

All-African Conference of Churches at

Ibadan in Nigeria. They then returned to

Rhodesia where Jack was the Secretary

for all the Mission’s work there from 1958

to 1972. They were able to buy a farm

there for use as a Church-planting Centre,

until they were again prevented by

Government policy. When Jack was

Treasurer of the Christian Council in

Rhodesia, the Churches’ Help Fund

developed into “Christian Care” in

Rhodesia. They returned to USA for a few

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years, spent in Boston and New York, but

came back to Cambridge in 1976.”

Probably the most celebrated figure

commemorated on the board was J. E.

Lesslie Newbigin. He “was at Queens’

College before going to Westminster

College in 1993, and was ordained to

serve as a Church of Scotland missionary

in India in 1936. After service in Madras

from 1939 to 1946 he became Bishop of

Madura in 1949 and later Bishop of

Madras within the Church of South India,

having been involved in its formation in

1947. He then served in the Selly Oak

Colleges in Birmingham until 1979, and he

became Moderator of the United

Reformed Church in 1978. He was the

Minister of Winson Green in Birmingham

from 1980 to 1988. He continued to write

important books since his earlier “South

India Diary”, and “The Household of God”,

including his own memoirs in “Unfinished

Agenda”. Within a project for

understanding evangelism in our time he

has written “The Other Side of 1984”,

“Foolishness to the Greeks” and “The

Gospel in a Pluralist Society” at the age of

80. He received the award for Evangelism

presented by the Anglican Institute in

1991.”

Lesslie Newbigin died on 30th January

1998, and his funeral oration was given by

his close friend and colleague, Dan Beeby

(who died in 2013 at the age of 92),

whose name is also on the Roll of Honour.

“Dan Beeby left Westminster College and

was also ordained to serve in Amoy in

1946, and later moved to Taiwan in 1950

until 1972. He returned to be a lecturer in

Old Testament at the Selly Oak Colleges

from 1972 to 1986, and he received the

degree of Doctor of Theology from Union

Theological Seminary in New York. He

wrote “Formosa: the Challenge” in 1956

and has shared with Lesslie Newbigin in

“The Gospel and our Culture”

programme.” Fuller accounts of the lives

and achievements of both Dan Beeby and

J. E. Lesslie Newbigin now appear on-line,

and thoroughly repay investigation.

These are not the only names on the

Missionary Roll of Honour, but there is

not space here to deal with them all.

What is certain is that together they form

an impressive record of service and

sacrifice, which Westminster College and

St. Columba’s acknowledge with pride.

John Whitehorn in Taiwan in 1970

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John Whitehorn interviewed

The name of John Whitehorn, a current

member of St Columba’s, appears on the

Missionary Board alongside that of his first

wife, Elizabeth. He told Sheila Porrer about his

career.

John Whitehorn was born in 1925 in Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia, where his father was the Minister of the Presbyterian Church, before serving in York and Oxford, and then moving on to Westminster College in Cambridge as Professor of Church History in 1938. His paternal grandfather was Session Clerk in the English Presbyterian Church in St. John’s Wood, and his brother Michael was also a Minister. After leaving school in 1943, John joined the Army and was sent to India, and to Karachi for a year, for instruction in Japanese at the British Army school there. He was then transferred to Hong Kong to serve as liaison officer for Japanese lawyers representing defendants in war crimes trials, accused of mistreating British and other prisoners of war. He was demobbed in 1947, and returned to Cambridge, where he spent three years at Trinity Hall, reading classics and theology. He then moved on to the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London, where he studied phonetics and techniques for learning and recording a language where no written sources exist.

His knowledge of Japanese had prepared him for language and translation work in Taiwan, where the Presbyterian Church of England

sent him in 1951. After he had travelled round the island and met people from the different tribes, it was agreed that he should undertake the study of Paiwan, one of the minority languages spoken by indigenous tribes. Taiwan had been under Japanese rule between 1895 and 1945, and in those years the language of education, Japanese, had become the lingua franca of the island. After 1945 Japanese was replaced by Mandarin Chinese, but a minority – around 2% of the population - still used local dialects from the Polynesian language family, a group stretching from New Zealand in the South to Taiwan in the North, and from Madagascar in the West to Easter Island in the East. Paiwan was spoken by the second largest of around ten indigenous tribes, peoples living in the southern part of the mountainous east of the island. Out of a Taiwan population of more than 7 million at the time, around 70,000 were Paiwan speakers – rather less than 1% of the total population.

By the time John arrived in 1951, just a few Paiwan people had become Christian. The main town of Pingtung, where John would be based, had one Christian Minister from the Taiwanese Presbyterian Church, and he had arranged for a Church Sister to live in the villages and teach the Christian Gospel. Half a

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dozen little Churches had been established, and one or two local men had been to Bible College. One young man was chosen to help John learn the Paiwan language – starting from scratch, with no written sources to help!

They began on the first day by pointing to parts of the body – head, hand, leg – for the young man to name them and John to write them down phonetically. The gradual exploration of the language took a year or so, and after this time it was possible to write out hymns and parts of the Bible in Paiwan, beginning with St. Mark’s Gospel. It was a team effort, eventually involving half a dozen local speakers who translated from the Japanese Bible, or, in the case of the younger ones who had been educated after the Japanese left in 1945, the Chinese Bible. John made any necessary corrections by correlating the Paiwan text with the English Bible, and wrote down the Paiwan version, using English alphabetic characters. The whole of the New Testament was published in 1973, with the Paiwan text in Mandarin Phonetic Adaptation Script, in deference to the wishes of the Chinese Nationalist government. This script had been developed for children to use before they could understand or pronounce the thousands of ideograms of Mandarin Chinese. The Chinese text written in these ideograms appeared at the bottom of the pages. The illustrations look familiar, as they were taken from the Good News Bible!

The first verses of St John’s Gospel in Paiwan

Twenty years later, in 1993, the Paiwan New Testament was again published, this time in romanised abc letters, together with about half of the Old Testament. John continues to work on the Paiwan language, collaborating

with scholars from Canada and Taiwan who are working to finalise the text of the remaining parts of the Old Testament.

Meanwhile John had come back to Cambridge in 1954 to study for two years at Westminster, where he was ordained in 1956. As an ordained Minister, he could carry out baptisms and ordinations of elders in the mountain villages where he travelled. He returned to Taiwan in 1956, having married, in St. Columba’s, his first wife, Elizabeth Haslam, a doctor, whose name also appears on the St. Columba’s Missionary Roll of Honour in the Gibson Hall. He worked in Taiwan until 1970, and two of his four children were born there, the other two travelling out at the age of three months. Elizabeth worked part-time in local Christian clinics and hospitals, and also home-schooled the children for part of the day. They did however also attend local Taiwanese kindergarten schools, being taught in Chinese and learning about Chinese life and culture. The family lived in Pingtung and attended a local Taiwanese Church, while John continued to make journeys in the mountains, looking after the Christian communities and also continuing with his language work. Their nearest European neighbours were the Norwegians who ran a local hospital.

The family moved to the Giok-san school (Yushan in Mandarin Chinese) on the East Coast of Taiwan for two years in 1964 when John was asked to be Acting Principal of that training school for potential Ministers and

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Giok-san School 1965

pastoral workers for the tribal peoples, while the Principal took study leave abroad. In theory the translation work continued, but in practice the demands of the training school took priority.

The Whitehorns in Taiwan in 1969

John’s work on the Paiwan language continued after his return to England in 1970. He was a contributor to a Paiwan-English Dictionary, which appeared in 1982. The originator of the Dictionary, Raleigh Ferrell, an anthropologist from Washington State University, wrote in his introduction that “The Reverend John Whitehorn, Presbyterian Missionary in Pingtung Hsien, was of tremendous help with this Dictionary. ….. he

painstakingly went through the entire document and furnished me with an extensive list of corrections and additions based on his own many years experience with the language. I …. recovered much valuable data with these leads. …his influence will be observed on nearly every page.” Work on the dictionary continues, with John supplying new material to the editor for on-line publication. John also worked with scholars from Australasia to publish “One Hundred Paiwan Texts”, which appeared in 2003.

More recently John was the first contributor

to the World Oral Literature Project, an

archive of “heritage recordings” initiated by

the School of Archaeology and Anthropology

in Cambridge. He was able to provide a series

of audio-tapes in the Paiwan language he had

made in Taiwan, which have been digitised

and are available on-line

(www.oralliterature.org). As for the Paiwan

language, it is still spoken by a substantial

minority of the tribal peoples of Taiwan –

thanks to John’s work it has achieved

recognition and been recorded for future

generations.

14

Outreach

today The last entry on the St. Columba’s Missionary Roll of Honour is 1989. Since

then the world has changed and the call to Mission is experienced in different

ways. Today St. Columba’s still supports Missionary work and numerous other

groups in the UK and abroad, but the Church also maintains its commitment to

outreach within Cambridge. Its city centre premises offer space to a number of

organisations, and up to a thousand people pass through the doors of St.

Columba’s each week. The Church Halls are home to numerous groups, such

as the Red Balloon Learner centre, addiction support groups, and a wide

variety of dance, yoga, music and theatre classes. The Cambridge Chinese

Church worship in St. Columba’s on Sunday afternoons, and the Islamic

Students’ Society hold their Friday prayers there. There is not space to detail all

the activities, but these few examples illustrate the Church’s commitment.

Group Therapy Centre

St. Columba’s offers the use of its premises to

its oldest established partner, the Group

Therapy Centre, established by the former

Minister of St. Columba’s, Ronald Speirs, who

had a special interest in mental health issues

and counselling therapies. It began in 1969 as

a centre offering support to those discharged

from the Fulbourn Mental Hospital. The first

leader of the Centre was Catherine Russell

(whose parents’ names appear on the St.

Columba’s Missionary Board), and she was

followed by another member of the Church,

Catherine Whitehead. In the early days

volunteers, many of them also members of St.

Columba’s, would support former patients

with everyday activities such as shopping,

gardening, d-i-y, or cinema visits. The

emphasis later changed to group therapy,

offered to all those with mental health issues

who could benefit from it, whatever their age

or background.

In the words of Ruth Wyner, Group Analyst

and Clinical Lead: “In these very difficult and,

for many, desperate times, therapy can be a

lifesaver – especially in the supportive and

challenging modality of group work. …… We

are very fortunate in Cambridge to have this

unique group therapy organisation with

strong links in both the community and within

the statutory sector. ……… we endeavour to

give everyone an experience of working with

people from various walks of life. This offers a

variety of perspectives to consider, and also

the development of growing confidence in

facing the different challenges life presents to

us all, and an enhanced engagement in life as

a whole.”

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NightLite

If the Group Therapy Centre is the oldest

outreach organisation to be based in St.

Columba’s, the most recent is NightLite, which

offers care to the vulnerable on a Saturday

night in Cambridge Centre.

Augur Pearce, a NightLite volunteer, gives a

vivid account of what happens:

‘You do this as volunteers?’ ‘Till four?’ ‘I never

knew this was here.’ ‘It’s really great what

you’re doing.’ ‘Is this a church?’

Questions and comments such as these are all

fairly common in the side chapel of St

Columba’s in the early hours of Sunday

morning. They come, most frequently, from

the friends (or sometimes the Good Samaritan

strangers) accompanying a NightLite

‘casualty’. The ‘casualties’ themselves are

often beyond saying anything except an

occasional incoherent ‘sorry’.

NightLite is a facility, service, café, refuge …

there is sometimes difficulty deciding how to

categorise it – for the casualties of

Cambridge’s night scene. St Columba’s eleven

o’clock congregation may experience nothing

of this save the crash of bottles being recycled

from Revolution, the bar next door, in the

middle of the sermon. But nine hours before,

they could usually have seen streets thronged

with bar-goers, queuing to get into a venue,

staggering out of one, aimlessly wandering, or

sitting in tears on a doorstep after the

promise of the evening has ended in

disappointment. Taxis queue along Downing

Street, sizing up aspirant passengers carefully

for the likelihood that they will spray the seats

with vomit before reaching the destination.

The occasional fight erupts, and the police are

seldom far away. Bottles stand on pavements,

often still half-full of the cider or alcopop for

which somebody earlier paid a small fortune.

Nightlife is a not inconsiderable part of the

city’s economy.

The homeless and their dogs eye the revellers

with a resigned air. They too are a part of the

2 a.m. Cambridge scene, if they have failed to

find a bed in any of the city’s shelters. By this

time their main concern is probably to sleep

without being trodden on by somebody

meandering past in stiletto heels. In very cold

weather, though, there is an additional

priority – to get warm.

Through all this pass the Street Pastors – a

team of four to six in navy blue jackets with

their corporate name stamped fore and aft,

carrying bottled water, plastic flip-flops, a

radio and a first aid kit. Ready to speak when

spoken to, to call police to serious situations,

to offer help when requested (and sometimes

when a person is beyond asking for anything),

and to indicate when asked that they do all

this as an instance of Christian love of

neighbour.

NightLite grew out of the longer-established

Street Pastor movement.

There are Street Pastors in many cities today,

but Cambridge is rarer in having a location to

which the Pastors, or the police can bring

some of their most vulnerable cases.

Launched as ‘the safe refuge’ for special

occasions only, such as New Year’s Eve, the

initiative proved successful enough to become

The Chapel used for NightLite

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a regular fixture in early 2013, from 10 pm

Saturday nights to 4am the next morning.

The personnel of both Street Pastors and

NightLite are furnished by churches in

Cambridge and the district. All are

worshippers, prepared when appropriate to

explain the faith that is in them. There is basic

training for NightLite, a fuller preparation for

those patrolling the streets. St Columba’s

principal contribution is resources – space,

heat and light. Every Saturday the side chapel

is stripped of its pews, which become seating

in the anteroom. Folding tables are

surrounded with chairs and spread with

washable tablecloths and bowls of sweets and

corn snacks. A screen in one corner hides a

foam mattress for somebody to sleep off the

worst of their condition. Cardboard sick

bowls, kitchen paper, kettles, coffee and soup

make their appearance. The church door

stands open with NightLite banners and a sign

advertising this somewhat untypical

nightspot.

Volunteers – of which there are never enough

– ‘set up’ from 9.30 pm, and after a word of

prayer open the doors at 10. The first two

hours are quiet and rather boring. Things liven

up later on, and the bars closing at 3 often

produce a final wave of NightLite casualties.

‘Casualties’ is my own term, but it doesn’t

describe everyone who passes through our

doors.

There is, for a start, a balance between street

life and revellers. The former are quieter

(unless there are mental health issues), come

individually, prefer the anteroom, often make

a large inroad into the snacks, and have little

to do with the latter, who come in groups,

prefer the chapel, can be much more talkative

and not infrequently loud. Students and

Cambridge locals are rare, because these can

usually walk home or back to college if they

need to: more usually, reveller casualties

come from a nearby town or village, but can

neither drive themselves home nor find a taxi

willing to take them. They are young,

employed, intelligent, but perhaps not so

intelligent as to hold back on the vodka.

Then there are the companions. Friends who

are out for a night together may bring one of

their number to us. Even more impressive are

the times when near-total strangers do the

same, and sit with the casualty until he or she

is fit to travel,. The hours for which they may

have paid a sizeable club entrance fee are

spent instead in St Columba’s chapel, with a

mild smell of disinfectant in the air. Despite

the free cup of tea and some conversation, it

probably wasn’t the evening they had

planned. Yet it is the companions, themselves

sober or nearly so, from whom the most

appreciative comments come in the NightLite

visitors’ book.

There are other reasons too for people to visit

the facility. The ancient tilting washbasin in

the church’s original toilet is much admired by

those for whom St Columba’s provides the

only night-time loo save McDonald’s.

Few indeed of either the revellers or the

street life have ever been in a church doing its

‘day job’. Plenty of those who are able to

converse at all express interest in the building.

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‘What sort of church is this?’ But it often goes

no further. The hope is that, days later,

people may remember that they were helped

when they needed it, without being asked for

anything in return, by friendly people who

used a church for this purpose and identified

their motives in terms of Christian faith.

There are always questions in this area. The

more evangelical wonder whether some more

explicit evangelism is called for. The more

liberal wonder whether a churchgoing record

should always be required before willing

helpers are allowed to join the NightLite

roster. But at present – so long as people

continue to volunteer – a happy mean

appears to have been found.

Music

The Church is the base for the internationally

renowned Cambridge Voices Choir, whose

Director Ian de Massini, is also the Director of

Music at St. Columba’s.

One member of Cambridge Voices is Professor

Helen Odell-Miller , the Director of the Music

for Health Research Centre, and Professor of

Music Therapy at Anglia Ruskin University.

ARU’s Music Therapy Centre is a leader in its

field, offering therapy to adults and children

with mental health problems - the Group

Therapy Centre at St. Columba’s will refer its

clients there if they feel music therapy would

be beneficial.

Thanks to a successful long-running appeal

ARU have been able to convert a former

Victorian school building into a centre in the

University with specially designed music

therapy rooms, enabling them to provide

clinical therapy as well as teaching students

on the Masters course. The appeal continues,

now for funding to enable music therapy to be

provided free of charge in the new Centre,

and St. Columba’s has been glad to support

this appeal which links Cambridge Voices, the

Group Therapy Centre and the social outreach

to which St. Columba’s is committed.

Ian De Massini and members of Cambridge Voices

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Reflections on Our (all too brief) Time at St. Columba’s URC

Thomas W. Currie God moves, William Cowper reminds us, in a mysterious way. For some time, my wife, Peggy, and I had been planning a trip to Cambridge as part of the sabbatical granted to me by the seminary (i.e., Union Presbyterian Seminary, with campuses in Richmond, Virginia, and Charlotte, N. Carolina) where I had been serving as dean and teaching theology. I had been in touch with Westminster College, where we were granted the use of a lovely cottage behind the main building. Since we had never spent any time in Cambridge, we were not sure what to expect for the next 3 months. Strangely, however, we did know where we would worship. Let me explain. My son, Chris, is pastor of First Presbyterian Church, Shreveport, Louisiana. Before coming to Cambridge, we had decided to spend a few months with him and his family in Shreveport. One day at church, the librarian came up to us and asked if we had read the book, Sisters of Sinai by Janet Soskice. She had read a review of the book and thought it should be in the church library. Although she knew little about Westminster, and even less about St. Columba’s, she knew we were going to Cambridge and thought we might be interested in the book. My wife read the book first and then gave it to me to read, suggesting that I do so right away. I took it from her, somewhat reluctantly, thinking I had more important things to do at the moment. But that night I started reading the

book and could not put it down. Shortly after, I ordered a copy for my sister to read, and she too was amazed and delighted by the courage and accomplishments of the sisters, Lewis and Gibson. From reading the book, I knew that the sisters worshipped at St. Columba’s, and I determined that when we were in Cambridge,

that was where we would worship as well. So, we knew a little about the church before we arrived. But we did not know where the church was located or how to get there. About the second day we were in Cambridge, Peggy and I were having lunch in the dining hall at Westminster, and I

asked one of the faculty for help in locating St. Columba’s. “Well,” she said, “the pastor of that congregation is here right now. Let me introduce you.” She brought Nigel over to meet us and he introduced himself to us and welcomed us to Cambridge. He then told us to walk up past the Round Church, past Sainsbury’s, until we came to John Lewis. “Turn right there,” he said, “and you can’t miss it.” His instructions were so clear that we felt confident of finding the church, and his welcome was so inviting, we felt confident that this church would be our “church home” while in Cambridge. The next several Sundays found us in worship, where we were welcomed with smiles and hymnbooks, where we heard the Word proclaimed in music, song, sermon and sacrament, where we were invited for fellowship and tea after worship, where we

19

were given bouquets of flowers on two occasions, and where we were made to feel quite at home. If part of the church’s mission is to welcome the stranger, we felt that St. Columba’s excelled in this area and that we were the beneficiaries. But hospitality, as important as it is in witnessing to the welcome we have all received in Jesus Christ, is not the only gift that St. Columba’s shared with us. When we were drinking tea in the Gibson Hall, I noticed on the wall a list of all the saints this congregation had sent to the mission field somewhere in the world. It was a long and impressive list of names, most of whom I did not know, but one of whom I recognized, because he remains one of my own heroes. Lesslie Newbigin, missionary to both the East and the West, bishop of the Church of South India, church statesman, theologian, teacher, writer, pastor, was on that list as being one whom this congregation had nourished in the faith and sent out. Since his books have deeply influenced me, and both stimulated and encouraged my understanding of the faith, I stood there in Gibson Hall as one already in debt to this congregation. The fruitfulness of a church’s life, Newbigin tells us, is not measured in the numbers who congregate in worship or who consume religion, but in those it sends out into the world as witnesses to the gospel. That list of names was an indication of how fruitful the life of this congregation has been and continues to be. Another of the gifts St. Columba’s so lavishly shared with us was the gift of music. In addition to the anthems and songs and organ offertories that enlivened Sunday worship, we enjoyed a concert of the Cambridge Voices led by Ian de Massini. Worship at St. Columba’s was never boring. And the music that worship inspired seemed to overflow into other areas of the church’s life, providing a kind of happy cantus firmus for the whole of the church’s witness. St. Columba’s witness in Cambridge extended far beyond its own location. One Sunday,

Nigel invited the congregation to participate in a service of Christian unity to be held at Michaelhouse that evening. Along with several others, we made our way to Michaelhouse and shared in the worship there with members of other congregations in Cambridge. Here was a vivid illustration if not embodiment of Christian unity, which St. Columba’s was happily supporting. In a time of so much division and disunity, especially in our denominations in the states, this witness of St. Columba’s meant a great deal to us. Since we were in Cambridge during the “Lenten Term,” we found ourselves at St. Columba’s for the Ash Wednesday service, and there we received the imposition of ashes and the gift of beginning this season of repentance and hope with this congregation. One evening early on in Lent, members of St. Columba’s came to the chapel at Westminster College to hear the Gospel of Mark read in its entirety. This was one of the most moving gifts that this congregation shared with us. One might think it strange to comment on the reading of a gospel which is largely familiar to us, but to hear it read as a whole and with such clarity and simplicity, was to hear it anew and afresh. What a marvelous gift this was! Unfortunately, we missed out on Nigel’s “Desert Island Discs” and later on the “Auction of Promises,” but we were there on the Sunday when Nigel preached a powerful sermon on discerning the future of the church’s witness. I know that sermon was addressed to the saints gathered there in Cambridge, but it also spoke deeply to me about the nature of the church’s witness in our own country. Living in “exile” is not something confined to Christians in England or Europe. More importantly, embracing the gift of God’s calling in this time and place, even being glad that we are living at such an hour, and not bemoaning our fate or looking backward with nostalgic longing, all of that made us grateful that we were in worship that Sunday to hear Nigel’s sermon. Sometimes on this side of the pond we hear about how dead the church is in Europe and

20

Great Britain. This may just be another way Americans exercise their propensity toward self-justification. But what we found at St. Columba’s was a very lively gathering of saints, not without their own struggles, not without the need for a repaired roof over their heads, not without the many challenges Christians in the West face on a daily basis, but a church that happily sang the faith, received 10 new members while we were there, engages in mission in near and distant places, prays for and seeks to discover the unity that is ours in Jesus Christ, is deeply involved in the life of the community which it serves, and seems, despite all the “facts” that might otherwise be dispiriting or discouraging, confident that Jesus is Lord and that nothing can thwart his purpose or separate us from him. One might think that there is nothing special about the ordinary life of worship and

work of a local congregation. The gift of St. Columba’s to us was to share that ordinary life with us with extraordinary generosity, and so give us room to breathe and sing and serve and rejoice and hope while we were in Cambridge. For which we will be forever grateful. Indeed, we like to think that in our worship and work here in the states, we are still united in the Spirit to the saints at St. Columba’s and we hope that God will grant us the gift of crossing paths again in the future. To return to Cowper’s hymn, these lyrics sum up our experience in Cambridge: Ye fearful saints fresh courage take; The clouds ye so much dread Are big with mercies and shall break In blessings on your head.

Agona Asafo

Revisited Kathleen McBrearty reports on

her recent visit to Ghana

Where exactly in Ghana is Professor Dr

George K T Oduro’s “hard to find on a world

map village” – as he calls it - and how is the

Community Library which St Columba’s has

been so generously supporting since

September 2007 getting on? Agona Asafo is,

in fact, an “impossible to find on a world map

village” but Agona Swedru, the nearest town

five miles away, can be found in the south of

Ghana, west of Accra, above Winneba (on the

coast) about 50 miles from the capital.

By way of background, before George’s return

to Ghana in 2005 he started worshipping at St

Columba’s from his arrival in Cambridge in

1997 for an MPhil in the Department of

Education which was then followed by a PhD

and post-doc. He is now Provost of the

College of Distance Education within the

University of Cape Coast. During his time in

Cambridge, mindful of his own potential

having been recognised some time after his

schooling ended at aged 16, he had pondered

21

on how best to improve the education

specifically of the children, but also of the

adults, of his village and decided upon a

community library. Keith Riglin, our Minister’s

immediate predecessor, and I decided to form

Friends of Agona Asafo in order to achieve

funding for this project. Keith and family had

visited the village in 2003 and the first of my,

now four, visits began in 2006. The World

Church and World Mission Group provided

seed funding of £2,500 in 2007 and to date

their donations amount to £6,950. The

monthly Bookstall has, from 2008 to date,

donated £1,521.40 – fifty pence pieces and £1

and £2 mount up!

In September 2013, Keith Riglin and I went

out to attend the Commissioning Ceremony

for the library. It was a splendid event

attended by some 300 people and held in the

open air alongside the newly completed

library building. The Guest of Honour, and

“cutter of the tape” across the front doors,

was an old University of Cape Coast student

friend of George’s, the now Hon., Rashid

Pelpuo, Minister of State in charge of Private

and Public Sector Partnership. Amongst

others present were the Vice-Chancellors of

two universities – book donations from both

universities were piled on the floor of the

library – and the Regional Librarian, a member

of the Ghana Library Board. The

Commissioning Ceremony was presided over

by the Chief (the Nana) Nana Yamfo Asuako

XI, a former primary and secondary school

teacher and formerly one of the Chief

Examiners for the English examinations of the

West African Schools Examinations Council.

In his speech, Nana Asuako said “. . . The need

for a library in our community, or any

institution of learning, cannot be over-

emphasized. It is our ardent desire to equip

our schoolchildren, and those who love to

acquire knowledge, to have a conducive

atmosphere and the needed materials to

complement the efforts of teachers and also

to occupy our pupils and students during their

leisure times to take them from societal

temptations that would not auger well for

their future. The library is meant also to serve

as a computer centre . . . In the light of this,

even though our sponsors will give us some

books and computers, like Oliver Twist, and

looking at the size of our library, we shall need

some more books and computers . . . We

sincerely thank the following churches in

Cambridge for their generous support even

though they do not know Agona Asafo. They

are St Columba’s United Reformed Church

and Emmanuel United Reformed Church”.

Included in the Commissioning Ceremony was

the inauguration of the Library Management

Committee, comprising two University

Lecturers (one was Dr Georgina Yaa Oduro,

who also worshipped at St Columba’s during

her PhD and is also from Agona Asafo), two

Head Teachers, a secondary school teacher, a

primary school teacher and two parents. The

membership was increased in 2014 to include

a member of the clergy, a representative from

the local Traditional Council of Chiefs and two

youth representatives.

The library became fully operational in July

2014. Since the Commissioning Ceremony

some 2,000 more books had been acquired,

catalogued and classified, bookshelves

donated and installed, furniture acquired, and

voluntary, graduate, library staff trained. Two

local companies have been particularly

Chief Yamfo Asuako arriving for the commissioning ceremony

22

generous in their support. Kingdom Books Ltd

donated shelves and furniture. Kofi Essuman

Company Ltd donated 4,000 GHC

(approximately £700). The most recent

addition to the library was in April of this year

when Zenith Bank donated a multi-purpose

photocopier and more books. The

Community itself is exploring ways of raising

money to support the maintenance of library

staff through a levy of 1% on the cocoa sales

of local farmers and annual fund-raising

activities by local churches.

The library from the road

The library is at the start of realizing George’s

vision of more than ten years ago. In his

words, the library “will help children not only

to improve their reading skills but also their

writing. By these means they will be able to

read mathematics, read science, read social

studies and understand issues better and it is

anticipated that the library will help to

increase or improve children’s performance in

the country’s primary school education

examinations which has, in the past, been

very poor. The local schools do not have

equipped libraries. Of those that have

libraries, the books are kept in boxes mostly in

the head teacher’s office. So children’s access

to library books is very limited. The library

will provide access for children in terms of

reading books and text books. The e-

component of the library will help the

children to develop skills in ICT which will also

help to widen the scope of materials that they

read. The library will provide a reference

source for schools. Teachers can easily visit

the library for additional knowledge to

facilitate their teaching. The library is

strategically positioned in the midst of six

primary and six junior secondary schools. It is

also between two nearby senior high schools

which do have libraries but they are not well-

equipped and the number of books is

inadequate to satisfy the large number of

students. The Community Library will serve as

a hub for this cluster.”

Donated books from Universities

The Community Library will continue to need

financial support in order to establish the

computer centre and pursue other avenues to

increase the education of children and adults

in Agona Asafo and the surrounding area. I

am looking forward to visiting Agona Asafo

again in September.

Kathleen McBrearty is the Treasurer and

SSecretary, Friends of Agona Asafo (UK)

23

Christian Aid’s

70th

Anniversary

Christian Aid: How it all began

In May 1945 the leaders of all the main churches in these islands asked that on the Sunday after VE Day, Christians should resist celebrating a victory and instead donate what they could to help reconstruct Europe. More than £3 million in today’s money was raised that weekend. It was used to buy bicycles and boats so that pastors could minister to their people, to provide food and medical supplies so that refugees could rebuild their lives and to find teachers and equip schools so that lives could begin to return to normal.

That was the beginning of Christian Aid. Its origins lay in the determination of British church leaders during World War 2 to build a different kind of world. Throughout the War, and especially after 1942 when the British Council of Churches was formed, they felt that the churches, acting together, must save succeeding generations from the scourge of war which had killed, maimed, destroyed,

uprooted, bereaved and impoverished their own. And this work would be best achieved, they believed, through the churches being united by their common calling to love our neighbour as ourselves. Christian Aid’s founders had a vision of a world where each person was respected because they were a human being; of a world where women and men and large nations and small would have equal rights; and of a world where there would better standards of living and opportunities for all with everyone’s needs met. They had a vision where everyone would live in peace and harmony with others as good neighbours; and of a world without poverty. And they decided to create an agency to help build this vision. In the first instance it was called Christian Reconstruction in Europe. It then became Inter-Church Aid and Refugee Service and now it is known as Christian Aid.

24

Over 70 years the organisation has tried to expose the scandal of poverty so that no-one here can plead ignorance of the poverty that afflicts more than a billion of God’s children in developing countries, and the reasons for that. It has worked with partners in more than 80 countries to take practical action with local partners to help people pull themselves out of poverty. And it has sought to challenge and change the systems and structures that make and keep people poor. It has done this because the churches that created it and those that now ‘sponsor’ it believed that there could be no healthy ecumenical fellowship without practical solidarity. Taking practical action has been a hallmark of Christian Aid throughout its history. It has acted – and continues to act – in the spirit of the four friends in Mark 2 who brought their disabled companion to Jesus. They risked the wrath of the congregation who were determined to hear a sermon in peace without the intervention of gate-crashers by making a hole in the roof to lower their friend to Jesus. They were determined to challenge the status quo. And when Jesus saw their faith, he acted and healed their friend. In the same way, Christian Aid has seen need and injustice throughout the world and taken action. The agency’s archive tells an amazing story of what God has enabled to happen over 70 years. In the 1950s we helped found Voluntary Service Overseas. We also decided to hold each year a week of awareness-raising and fundraising to enable the public to meet human need through Christian Aid. (This is now celebrated each year as Christian Aid Week, the biggest act of Christian witness in Britain and Ireland which in 2014, thanks to the active support of an incredible 20,000 churches across the UK and Ireland, and tens of thousands of supporters, raised some £11m. This year we hope to do even better.) In the 1960s, Christian Aid took the lead in setting up the Disasters Emergency Committee to ensure different relief agencies cooperated rather than competed during a crisis. In the

1970s, it enabled 500,000 slum dwellers in Calcutta to have clean water, sanitation and primary education. In the 1980s, it issued an emergency appeal for Ethiopia raising £1.35 million and campaigned to end apartheid in South Africa. In the 1990s, it helped to establish the Fairtrade Foundation and successfully called for western governments to drop $130bn of debt owed by poor countries. In the 2000s, it reached more than half a million people in need after the Indian Ocean tsunami, and in the 2010s, it has helped 953,500 Africans to adopt preventive health practices and get the medical treatment they need. All of this has been done through the dedication and generosity of Christian Aid supporters. Yet we at Christian Aid know that there is still much to be done. Today, grinding poverty continues to blight

the lives of 1.4 billion people. But we believe

that with your support, we can end it for

good. And we’ll use everything we’ve learned

in the last 70 years to help us reach our goal.

As we turn 70, we’re reaffirming our

commitment to the hundreds of thousands of

women, men and children struggling to

survive around the globe.

This year, we’ll help the poor and

marginalised to come out of the shadows and

have a say in decisions that affect them. We’ll

support them to demand the basic services

that all of us need to enjoy a healthy, secure

life. We’ll work to ensure that all people

receive a fair, sustainable share of our world’s

resources.

We won’t rest until everyone has equal

treatment and opportunities, breaking down

the barriers that hold so many back. And we’ll

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do everything we can to protect all

communities from the scourge of violence so

they can live in peace.

Seventy years after we first took up arms

against poverty, we’re proving our

commitment to end it for good in our

‘contract’ with the poor.

In this, we’re calling on our politicians to

secure global agreements to fight poverty and

to strengthen our ability to help those in

need, worldwide.

We’re urging them to end the tax avoidance

that’s draining poor countries of the funds

that could pay for education, healthcare and

other vital services. We’re pressing them to

tackle the climate change that’s destroying

our world and affecting poor communities

above all.

We’re insisting that they strengthen poor

people’s ability to cope with the crisis and

disaster that can wipe out their future. We’re

demanding that they tackle the deep

imbalance of power that leaves women

undervalued, ignored and subject to

discrimination, violence and abuse.

Please keep supporting our vital work – we

can’t do it without you.

Taken with grateful acknowledgement from articles by Jack Arthey, Christian Aid’s 70th Anniversary Project Manager.

A Christian Aid poster from the 1960s highlights the poverty gap

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Prayers from

Christian Aid

Pray for an end to poverty

Creator God, You loved the world into life. Forgive us when our dreams of the future are shaped by anything other than glimpses of a kingdom of justice, peace and an end to poverty.

Incarnate God, you taught us to speak out for what is right. Make us content with nothing less than a world that is transformed into the shape of love, where poverty shall be no more.

Breath of God,

let there be abundant life.

Inspire us with the vision of poverty over,

and give us the faith, courage and will to make it happen. Amen

Pray about just economies, tax and trade

Lord Jesus, bringer of hope,

In you is life, and the life is the light of all

people.

Your light shines in the darkness.

We give thanks for all through whom your

light shines

And pray for an end to all secrecy that is life-

denying.

Sift out our laws and our lives with the light of

your presence

So that our aim is honesty

And our measure is love. Amen

As I enter the street market Wheel my trolley at the superstore Leaf through a catalogue, or log on to the internet: Be with me and help me When I spend money Be with me and help me To see the market place as you see it As wide as the world you love so much. Be with us and help us To share the markets we share For all people. As we live under your steady gaze, So we can change, by your gracious love. Amen

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Pray for climate justice

Creator God, who sustains all, loves all, and has given the resources of the Earth to all and not just a few, we give thanks for persistent people everywhere; small farmers feeding most of the world, people setting up seed banks, maintaining biodiversity and never giving up in the struggle for climate justice. We are connected with seven billion people, in a global community of trade, food, habitat. Give us courage and faith to put ourselves on the line for climate justice. For we are each of us one in a million; Together we stand strong. Brother Christ who came to share our lives, to encourage and liberate us, you live among us all. We give thanks for dedicated people everywhere, challenging abuses of power, exposing corrupt practices and never giving up in the struggle for climate justice. May we play our part in challenging greed and wastefulness, creating more sustainable communities, and treading more lightly on the Earth. For we are each of us one in a million; Together we stand strong. Amen

Spirit of God, who works among people, who moves our hearts and lives with love, we give thanks for the people and places we care about. And we pray for all who suffer anguish for the people and places they love, for all whose livelihoods are threatened by a changing climate, for all who work to improve the future for all our children. May we join our voices in tears of protest and songs of hope, and never give up in the struggle for climate justice. For we are each of us one in a million; Together we stand strong. O Holy Trinity, whose promise is of a life where all will flourish and be respected, we pray that, as we live by your grace and sharing, we may be led to use less energy, share resources more wisely and compel our politicians to speak out for climate justice. For we are each of us one in a million; Together we stand strong. Amen

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About St Columba’s

Worship at St Columba’s St Columba’s worships with words and music, combining quietness and dignity

with warmth and relevance

Sunday at 11.00am

with Holy Communion on the 1st Sunday of the month.

Junior Church and Creche every week

Thursday at 11.00am

On the 2nd and 4th Thursdays of the month

Contacts Minister: The Rev’d Nigel Uden

minister@urc.candf.org 01223 514389

Director of Music: Ian de Massini

iandemassini@gmail.com 01223 242644

Church Administrator: Elaine Barker

elaine@stcolumbaschurch.org 01223 312814

St Columba’s was founded in 1879 by the Presbyterian Church of England. In 1972 it became part of

the United Reformed Church – a union of Congregationalists and Presbyterians – which united with

the Churches of Christ in 1981. In 2000 the URC and the Scottish Congregational Church also united.

As a Reformed church we are part of the world’s largest Protestant communion and delight in

welcoming people from across the globe, either as visitors or as members of the fellowship.

With the United Reformed Church, St Columba’s strives to take its place within the body of Christ as

God’s people, transformed by the Gospel, making a difference. In all things we strive to be open and

inclusive, showing kindness, respect and the love of God for all.

St Columba’s is the Church of Scotland Chaplaincy for the University of Cambridge and is delighted to

welcome students and staff in the city however long or short their stay.

Downing Street, Cambridge CB2 3EL www.stcolumbaschurch.org