Here come the beach huts!....

So here we are again heading at an alarming rate towards Christmas..... or are we?  First we have Advent that lost season of reflection and mystery as we head into the darkness to find the light that is the message of Christmas!

 

 

We Started the project 2 years ago and it has been a great success, the concept is we take a beach at on the Southside in Bridlington and every night from the first to 24 December between 6 PM and 7 PM we create a giant life-size Advent calendar using the gifts and talents of local people and organisations to retell the famous story in a new, fun and fresh way.

 

The details of this year's events can be found below, we want to allow people to celebrate Advent and to hear and interact with the story in a way that they have never done before,  during last year's events it was amazing to see a real community spirit emerge and evolve during the darkest coldest nights of the year.

 

 

 

So here is the 1st nights extravaganza for the beach huts

 

We are going to have a local rapper and MC to announce the start of this great story, we will be recalling the fun we have had in the past as we begin to turn to look towards our new journey to a spectacular Christmas eve

 

With some added free and fun stuff as well!

 

 

Thanks,

Ben

 

Here are the rest of the events

 

Friday the second-

The Romans are coming! The chaps from Electric angel studio in Scarborough are leading the theme of thinking about oppression and peace with a huge interactive art display 

 

Saturday the third-

It's all about Mary, making a giant mosaic of Mary and thinking about who Mary might have been if she was alive today. thinking about issues of teen pregnancies and responciblities of young people today.

 

Sunday the fourth-

Mary and Joseph get engaged, a local joiner and carpenter, will be turning the beach hut into his own workshop.  helping us think about the role the Joseph a normal working man had to play in this awesome story

 

Monday the fifth-

The angel appears to Mary.  Ever seen an angel?  well tonight is your chance ! you will also have the chance to become one yourself with a little twist on some cameras and a few lights!

 

 

Tuesday  the sixth-

Joseph's dream, angels and dreams theme, if you could dream a dream this Advent what would it be? Come and add to our dream cloud with your creations.

 

Wednesday the seventh-

The journey begins, a time to reflect on our own journeys and how they intertwine with other, come and join in on the dusty road !

 

Thursday the eighth-

The journey to Bethlehem, Emmanuel church invite us to look for Bethlehem.

 

Friday the ninth-

They travelled on a donkey, Big Me, a local band will be treating us to a festive feast of music and singing.

 

Saturday the 10th-

A star appeared in the sky, Local professional photographer Ben Walker will be taking portrait photos in our beach hut / photo booth... with some fun props and a chance to be snapped in our competition for best nativity character!

 

Sunday the 11th-

Some wise men appeared in the East, come and eat like a King taste some exotic food from the ancient near East. with our resident chef Rich Hines, an amazing feast on a cold night !

 

Monday the 12th-

They brought gold frankincense and myrrh, the young people form Beverley Minster will be showing and raising the themes of commercialism and Christmas

 

Tuesday the 13th-

The wise men met cruel King Herod, A puppet show allowing us time to think about the dark times and lots of singing and dancing, with a chance for little ones to take part in the show!

 

Wednesday the 14th-

Herod sent the Kings to Bethlehem, Bridlington Boys brigade lead drama, singing interactive arts and crafts on the theme with hot chocolate and mince pies.

 

Thursday the 15th-

Finding somewhere to stay, local teacher Andrea Jones tell us the story of 'Little robin red vest.  on the theme of thinking about others with arts and crafts...

 

Firday the 16th-

Mary and Joseph found a stable, our world famous KNITIVITY!!!!! with the whole crib scene having being knitted for this night! including a life-sized knitted donkey !

 

Saturday the 17th-

They slept rough in a stable,with only a manger that would become a crib.  Mary Fawsett leads a craft night making manger cribs from bits of paper.

 

Sunday the 18th-

In a dream the kings were told not to go back to Herod, a digital visual presentation on the theme of freedom and peace.

 

Monday the 19th-

The wise men spread the good news, face painting and art work from local artist Val Norton!

 

Tuesday the 20th-

In the hills nearby were some shepherds who were shocked at the sight and sound of the Angels, Emmanuel Play group fill our beach hut with real life shepherds and angels

 

Wednesday the 21st-

The Angels Sung! local singer song writer Laura Bancroft, sings like an angel, as she treats us to an amazing performance!

 

Thursday the 22nd-

Glory to God in the highest and peace to all men on earth, we think about our Armed Forces who will not be home for Christmas with full Scottish bagpipe band, and the making of our digital Christmas card which we will post on-line to our service men and woman who will not be home this Christmas.

 

Friday the 23rd-

The shepherds went to see the baby, making the star! as the star settles above the stable we create the light the tells a much bigger story!

 

Saturday the 24th-Christmas Eve-the last night!

We celebrate Christmas, with an amazing extravaganza of a finale with local classic Christmas pop singers leading the celebrations, as well as  hot food and drink, magicians, artists, the full cast of the Nativity and much more still to be confirmed, there's no better way to head into Christmas night!

 

 

Grace and Peace, and see you down there! 

 

Ben x

 

 

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Amazing local singer song writer ! Ben Parcell - "Stay in Touch" By the Sea Music

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Amazing local singer song writer Ben Parcell's new music vid check it out!

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My dissertation Wordie, Can you guess the theme?

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My dissertation wordie, can you guess the theme?

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Time management and parenting.....

"Parents in the UK want to be good parents, but aren't sure how," the research suggests. "They feel they don't have the time, and often try to compensate for this by buying their children gadgets and clothes."

Last night we discussed the recent findings by Unicef stating that children in the UK are the unhappiest in Europe because parents today don’t have the time to spend with their kids so compensate by buying gifts and giving in to materialism to make up for not being there...

Here are the discussion questions we talked about...
1. We all lead busy pressured lives, what are the biggest priorities in your life?
2. Did your parents have enough time for you? Is this a modern problem?
3. Why do you think God is called Father? What does this say about him to you?
4. On the 7th day God rested, do we make time in our lives to rest? Do you work from a place of rest or rest from a place of work?

As a father of 3 young children i can see where this report is coming from.  Both Bex and I work full time and so the time that we do have to spend with the kids is usually time we need to unwind and de-stress from work and sometimes that is hard to do when the kids are demanding.  I guess as well that if you have the resources to be able to spend on your kids it is an easy option to show affection.  Not that it is right but i can understand why this might be the case.

But i think the issue is not necessarily about bad parenting more more about the fact that our society is now geared up to the fact that parents are not left with much choice..... The economics that we live by today mean that in most cases both parents have to go out to work in order for the family to survive.  Which in turn brings more pressure on the family unit and then leads to an unhappy balance within the family unit.

As we talked last night we discussed the concept as God being a Father, for most of us this was a positive way of thinking about God, one or two said that they had never really thought about the fact, where as others it was a great way to understand God.

As men our fathers play a huge role in who we are, (good or bad) Personally my father was never around, but i have been very blessed to have a man who brought me up as his own and of whom i am proud to call dad.  In many ways my understanding of God as my father is someone who is totally dependable and who always has time for me no matter what i have done....! Which in this day and age seem to be qualities that can be hard to find.....

What are your thoughts about hectic lifestyles, parenting and knowing God as a father?

Ben

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Last night our discussion centred around the 10 year anniversary of the terrorist attacks in America which have become known as 9/11.  Our questions aimed to raise issues such as why should we remember? And should remembrance have ties to faith and religion?

Here is the list of questions we started with...
1. Where were you when you heard the story break? Is there any point in remembering 9/11?
2. Are remembrance services worthwhile / a good thing ? Should they be conducted as a “religious”  ceremony?
3. How long should we go on remembering? Shouldn’t we just forgive and forget / move on.
4. Has the retaliative violence left the world a safer or more unstable place? What can we learn about this for our own lives?
5. Can acts like this be forgiven?

After talking about these questions we got on to the statistics about the loss of life in Afghanistan and Iraq since (Iraq war: 118,000 dead Afghanistan war : 37,455 dead
plus 38,000 Taliban dead or captured.)

Personally  I cannot help feeling that the retaliation of the USA has caused more harm than good.  I believe in the short term that what they have done has made America safer, but in the long term it has unstabilised many nations for many, many years to come.

So is it ever right to retaliate with violence?  I don’t think so, but that is not to say that something should not be done. I believe that there are times when action must be taken, but that action can be one that bring peace and reconciliation.  That action also means that the person who has been wronged needs to have imagination and creativity in sometimes very hostile situations.

I have been reading about the work of a guy named Shane Claiborne (@ShaneClaiborne) he set up a conference called ‘Jesus, bombs and Ice Cream’ you can read more about it here.

The idea came from a guy who was working in  a hospital in Iraq during the allied bombing campaign ‘shock and awe’.  As the casualties where being brought in one doctor cried out loud, “When did our world loose it’s imagination!” 

Imagination costs.... It is something that we all have, that we all need, and to which we all must pursue if we are ever going to see peace.... and when i say peace i mean in our own lives and relationships as well as international connections.

Grace and Peace

Ben

12.9.11

 

 

 

 

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9/11 - 10 years on and what have we achieved?....

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creeping...

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One of my latest photos, taken whilst out and about in the fields near Bridlington. I came across two dead crows lying next to each other and thought that this shot looked quite Jurassic Park!

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Ben Norton (bennorton) on about.me

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My new integrated social media site, check it out...

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Good news has never sounded so good! Not long now!

If you want to hear some good news today listen to this!

Follow the links and then click on the play button under "10/03/11 Revd Ben Norton"

http://www.emmanuelchurchbridlington.co.uk/?page_id=31

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Good news has never sounded so good! Not long now!

If you want to hear some good news today listen to this!

http://www.emmanuelchurchbridlington.co.uk/?page_id=31

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Fasting and Lent...

So this year for lent, I decided that I would fast from sunrise to sunset every day.... this was for a number of reasons

1) to pray to pray for both persecuted Christians and Muslims in the world.
2) to get a better understanding of what is Muslims go through during Ramadan.3) to focus my prayers on people who don't have the choice about whether they can eat or not.

The idea behind doing this I thought would be to keep a diary as I went, recording my difference experiences, but alas that hasn't been the case and this week we quickly head to the halfway point of lent, this is my first blog post!

So how has the experience been? In a word, difficult....

I'm also doing this fast with another friend of mine who I'm sure if I wasn't doing it with him I probably would have caved in by now, but bring a bit of competition into the agenda has had me focused. I have really enjoyed the experience so far, it's taught me how much I take food granted, how much I use it for comfort and actually how much I use it to entertain myself when I'm bored, “I'm bored, i wonder what we have in to eat?"

It has also highlighted a lot of things about my own personality that I didn't really knew existed, it has certainly made me aware of my own limitations, of knowing that when I'm tired and hungry and low on energy I need to keep a check on my feelings and emotions, and be aware of how I'm treating others.

I've also found the space left that would usually be taken by mealtimes is a great opportunity to pray, and I found myself praying for people that I wouldn't usually pray for.

I think if I am right Friday is halfway, and I'm looking forward to knowing that the second half of lent the end is closer than the start. I have fasted in the past before for 24 hours at a time but I've never undertaken anything like this.

So please, if you could help me fill the spaces that I now find I have by not eating, I would love to pray for you or a situation or somebody you know. I believe to be able to pray for somebody else is one of the most truly humbling and amazing privileges that God has given us....

Peace

Ben

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Evangelism and me as the unbeliever....

Studying away at the moment and thinking and reflecting about projects such as the beach huts and what is actually going on, and honestly thinking about what i am trying to achieve. It has got me thinking about what my role is as a priest.

I no longer think that as it has been in the past, my job (if it ever has been! Maybe it just n my head!) is to convince people of God and therefore bring them into church to become Christians but rather it is much more ambiguous than that.

It would be more something like this.....

You don't need me to tell you about God as you will already have made up your mind in one way or another, but rather if you would allow me to tilt your spiritual axis to allow you to think about faith in a new way. I am not going to tell you what is right or wrong you will know that yourself.

But hopefully by talking and journeying together for a while you might be able to show me the faith that i have not yet got.

mmm ..... ponderings.

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Lent 2011...

So as lens fast approaches again this year starting on Wednesday as a community we have been thinking and discussing what we are doing individually during Lent. A few people are giving up their shoes and socks and going barefoot for the whole of lent, others have given up drinking everything other than water, whilst others are decided to take things up such as helping strangers every single day during Lent giving up eating takeaway food and just eating food cooked in their own home.

 

 Personally for me this year I have recently been really struck by the horrific atrocities that men women and children have been suffering in the Middle East because of their beliefs, both Christians and Muslims have been attacked and killed, even just today I read in the iPaper report from reverend Andrew White  the Vicar of Baghdad that he is working incredibly hard with the chief Muslim clerics to stop the hatred and murders of minorities in that part of the world.

[[posterous-content:pid___0]]

 

So this year along with a Muslem friend of mine I'm going to fasting during daylight hours,  to pray for both Christians and Muslims who are persecuted and lived in fear. I was also told today that apparently this is an ancient Celtic way of approaching lens to fast between sunrise and sunset I personally feel that if there was much more spiritual practices that we could share and understand one another's faith by doing so we would be able to teach much more tolerance love and understanding to those who either don't have faith or harbour hatred because of faith.

During the recent uprisings in Egypt as the crowds were gathered in Tarrir Square  as the Muslims gathered to say their Friday prayers the Christian surrounded them protecting them against any violence or persecution, on the Sunday morning is the Christians then gather to pray the Muslims return the favour to allow the Christians to worship.

 

I hope this time of chosen hunger and poverty will allow me to pray more specifically into these issues keep a diary on here Twitter and Facebook as we go through the month and on into Easter. I'm looking forward to breaking the fast each day and hope the experience of doing so will be a spiritual one in which I may in some way bring God's blessing on the person I'm breaking it with.

 

So the journey continues

 I pray your loan may be a blessed one, and that the hardship will give birth to the joy of Easter!

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Failure and success in Fresh expressions.....

 I have recently been reading, talking and thinking about how we can view the success (if that's the right word) of the fresh expressions movement as a whole and also individual fresh expressions of church. The difficulty I find is that the only measuring stick I have two gauge how well something is doing is against inherited models of thinking about what makes something successful.

But I am more and more convinced that the conclusions of what I'm thinking are that may be the things that we are doing at the moment  are actually creating the measuring stick by which to judge things by in the future. For example one of our groups that meet on a Sunday night in a pub for men has been going for three years, we now regularly have 10 lads who come and engage with us,  but still over the past couple of weeks even after some amazing journeys  and conversations no one turned up.

In many ways this can feel very deflating and can very easily breed a defeatist attitude, but actually in reality it was just circumstance of what was going on in everyone's life over them couple of weeks and actually I don't believe that this has been in any way any sort of failure, but measuring this against a yardstick of inherited church  if after three years of being the vicar suddenly nobody turned up to church on a Sunday morning I am sure many questions would be asked.

I'm not sure I have any more answers to these questions but rather more questions that don't ever seem to get answered.  I wonder what your thoughts might be?

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Jeremy Kyle: Priest or predator

Last night  at God shape questions we talked about the phenomenon that is the Jeremy Kyle show.   the questions we asked were

 

Do you watch Jeremy Kyle if so why?
Do you think that this has replaced the idea of confession in a church?
There are 259,000 websites for anonymous confessions why do you think we need to confess?
If we feel as though we have done wrong how can we change it?
Do you think Jesus and JK are similar? Why or why not?

 

We had a really good conversation about why people might watch this show and what is they get out of it. We then looked   at a story about a woman who had been caught having sex and therefore committing adultery in a country where the law stated she should then lose her life. We asked the questions what would happen if this woman had been brought on to the Jeremy Kyle show what would be a response from Jeremy Kyle, the audience and those watching at home be?

 

As we then listened to how the story actually unfolded we saw that she was brought by some very religious man and thrown in front of an another religious teacher, the first religious men wanting to catch the latter out explain the situation and told him he had to make a decision about what to do with her. The story can be found here.   what amazes me more than anything else about this story is not a genius of the man’s answer, but rather the dignity he affords the woman by not looking at her as she stood naked in front of him but rather the way he ends up telling her she’s not condemned by God or by anyone else and if she really didn’t want to be in this position again than the ball was in her court.

 

Quite a large contrast to what we see going on on the Jeremy Kyle show, but then we see his mother speaking to those who are in trouble is very strong and harsh and as one person said maybe they’ve never been told  what right or wrong is?

I know how I would like to be told and that by not been shouted at, then the gods love more often than not sort out the stuff that I don’t  do right, rather than him screaming and shouting and telling me I am going to hell.

 

What are your thoughts?

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January 20, 2011

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So what's your views on Jeremy Kyle, are his shows is helpful or just as one judge called them modern day bear baiting?

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BBC News - Homeless man with 'golden voice' given second chance

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Talk about a good news story, just listen to this man's voice its incredible !

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