Where There’s Blayze

Why this title?

Festive greetings to all! I hope that as you read this addition of my blog that you are filled with the Christmas spirit and not too stressed out by the annual horrors of realising how much you have spent. The question of what the meaning of Christmas is has been on my mind for a few weeks now, mostly because the older I get the more the meaning seems to change, or rather my perception of it changes. When I was a child my family did not go to Church or adhere to the more traditional form of a Christian Christmas, rather we would be rushed to bed with the assurance that Santa would soon be here to give us some presents. Why, well I never really knew. I had no desire to question why once a year we were graced with the presence of a larger than life jolly fellow who blessed our house with presents. Growing up I was mostly told that it was a reward for being a good boy and that it is nice to give people you love presents. That to me was the true meaning of Christmas growing up. It was to be a good boy so that I could receive a mountain of expensive gifts on the 25th of December. This of course changed as I got a little older, I reached an age where I was slightly more inquisitive and eager to know why we do celebrate this strange holiday. I realised the meaning of Christmas was not to receive but rather to give. Receiving presents was a lot of fun, but I found that there was a great deal of joy to be had in buying others presents and seeing their faces light up as they realise you have taken the time to go out and buy them something to show how much you care for them. This was the meaning of Christmas now, this altruistic act of giving to others. It made sense to me, this one day a year people would put aside their disagreements and meet together to share food and give rather than wanting to simply take from one another. If everyone did this then it would be a very happy time, so it stands to reason that this is what the meaning of Christmas must be. I got older still and my understanding of the meaning of Christmas changed yet again. Gifts were no longer of any great importance to me, I had a regular income of money so there was not a great deal of things I wanted for Christmas. Add this to thoughts of my own personal finance and realising that I could not afford to buy everyone a gift. This made me realise that the true meaning of Christmas is not about the gifts at all, but rather it is about spending time with your loved ones. It never occured to me that the daft story we were told in school about a virgin birth was actually anything to do with the festivities, how could it be? On Christmas day me and my family did not go to Church, we did not become more religious the closer we got to the holidays, and I certainly did not see pictures of Jesus everywhere but rather images of Santa and his cherpy elves. So surely that story that was told to me in school was nothing more than a merry fairy tale told to inject an element of the mystical into our holidays. This was very honestly my belief for the first fifteen maybe sixteen years of my life, but once I became a Christian and gave my life to Christ the significance of the Biblical story changed in my understanding. The birth of Jesus both encapsulated all my previous notions of Christmas while at the same time shattering them. The message that comes out of his birth is one of togetherness, giving, love, hope and even reward. I went to Cliff to get my degree in theology and the more I learned about Jesus the more the story of his birth became more and more powerful. Learning of what came before him, the life and ministry he had, his death on the cross and the domino effect that has had on the world since then deepened my appreciation of this, the true meaning of Christmas. Denby Methodist Church has been asked to go into schools recently and also to put on some festive events. I had the privilege of leading an assembly at Kilburn Junior school where the head teacher asked me to talk about the true meaning of Christmas. Is it right for me to go in and talk about this story of the birth of Jesus that I so quickly dismissed at that age? Is it right for me to talk about a story that cannot be fully appreciated without further studying of scripture? Is it even appropriate of me to include things like Santa, rudolph and all these other advertisement tools that so often distract us from the very thing we celebrate? Is my understanding of the true meaning of Christmas going to be theres at that age?

Kilburn junior assembly

As soon as I was asked to do this assembly I must have sat at my desk in front of my tablet for a great many hours just racking my brain and trying to think of what to do and what to say. I did what I think most people do these days when they are struggling for ideas and I googled, ‘Christian Christmas assembly ideas’. I usually don’t do this because I don’t tend to like the suggestions and find them to pander to the kids rather than entertain and teach them something. But I came across an assembly idea on The Salvation army website that seemed to be a very good idea. It was in essence a game of pass the parcel. You wrap up a box or something in loads of layers and put a sweet and a question on each layer. This meant I could ask the kids some of the same questions that were posed in the first paragraph, ‘what was the first Christmas present’, ‘does a present have to be a suprise’, ‘does a gift have to be wrapped’. I found this to be a nice medium in my personal dilemma, as some of them answered with the more traditional story of Christmas and others answered the way I would have done with talks of presents and a jolly fat man. This meant that I did not have to tell them a story that I am sure they have already heard, about a baby in a stable because they were in part telling me that story whilst admitting that there is a different, more modern, view of Christmas in today’s world. Once I had asked them a lot of questions and all the layers from my pass the parcel present had gone, I posed some questions to the gentleman helping me in that assembly, Chris Wood. Chris is a member of Denby Methodist Church and also our youth group Contagious. He has a great heart and desire for God so I asked him to join so that he could do some impressions for the kids and also answer some questions from a Christian’s perspective. I asked him what he felt was the greatest gift he had ever received, and he immediately thought of a gifting he felt he possessed and believed that God had blessed him with that gifting. This threw me off balance a little bit as I had assumed he was going to talk about how Jesus was the greatest gift in his life. Despite my initial shock I was really impressed with his answer and subsequently the entire message of that assembly changed right then half way through it. I told the Children about how Christians don’t just think about Jesus one day a year and that to us every day is a time for us to think about him and think about what gifts he has given us and what gifts we already have that he wants us to use. I told them that I have always been a confident speaker and so I feel that part of my ministry is to speak to people about my God and my own personal faith. I also try and use that gifting to help others in any way I can. The assembly finished with me asserting that each one of them had a gift, and whether they believed that gift was from God or not was up to them. The important thing is that they realise that the generosity and togetherness expressed at Christmas should never be limited to just one day. The gifts that we give to make others feel better should not be restricted to something that can be wrapped, but rather we should realise that we are all blessed with our own giftings and we should work to share that with all those we come into contact with to help better their lives. The head teacher seemed very impressed with this message and thanked me for it at the end, I still even now am not sure whether I gave the best message I could have done, but as always I simply hope and pray that something that was said resonates with some of the kids and hopefully makes a difference.

Denby Methodist Church Christmas fair

In the spirit of sharing the gifts that God has bestowed on us, I was happy to witness Denby Methodist Church using its inherent gifts to spread festive joy to the local community by having a Christmas fair in the Church. Our Church is blessed with a multitude of young members who are always eager to do something and have creativity that leaves me in awe. Two of our members, Hannah Miller and Jenny Lawrence, took it upon themselves to organise a Church Christmas fair. I must admit to being a bit concerned with how this might turn out, I always have memories of seeing Church’s put on really poor events that only ever seem to be attended by its own members and no one else, luckily this fair shattered those concerns. I walked into the Church and was greeted to a very festive looking building with stalls and games all around. I was actually sorry that I had to help out as I would have been more than happy to just wander around as a customer buying all the sweets and products that were on offer. What made this a real success was having a bag of presents that would be given to any children that came through our doors for free, one of our congregation even dressed up as Santa. This was a brilliant way to spark conversations with all the families that had come in to see what we were doing. It was also nice to see the kids unwrapping their presents with such joy and being able to tell the parents that they did not have to pay anything for it. It’s strange but the idea of a Church handing out free gifts was such a difficult concept for some of the families to grasp and they seemed so pleasantly surprised to hear that we did not want anything in return. I would argue that the main attraction in all this was one of the games that you could play, you paid 50p for six balls and you had to try and knock the five elves off this platform. This inspired a great level of competitiveness in the Church. I think pretty much everyone who came in had a crack at it. Some took a few more goes than others to get all five elves down, for me it only took two attempts, not that i’m bragging of course. The thing I enjoyed the most about the entire event was not any of the games or the stalls, but rather being able to stand at the front of the Church and look out and see our humble little building full of Christians trying to spread a bit of festive joy into people’s lives. To see disciples of Christ welcoming families into our Church and showing them that we are very much a Church that is alive!

Caroling

We are now at a point in the year when people reach the peak of their festive spirits, it usually occurs after breaking up from school/work and before Christmas day. The magic and anticipation of Christmas is still in the air and there is a happy security in knowing that you have some time off. So as a Church we went around Denby singing carols in the streets and handing out sweets to all who came out to greet us. It was a fantastic time for us as a Church family to all meet together and to go out into the town to destil in them a little bit of the Christmas spirit and also to sing songs that reflect our praise and happiness about our saviour’s birth. Its strange really, at any other point in the year Church and non-Church goers tend to argue that the Church should have some modern songs and not cling to the old hymns and yet Christmas seems to be the exception. Christmas is the one time of year when people are genuinely filled with joy to hear these old hymns that remind them of when they were younger and to be able to join in with singing something that transcends each generation and is known by all. We eventually got to our last part of the town and we began singing when a delightful couple came out and greeted us with mince pies and bakewell tarts to show their appreciation for what we were doing. One little girl (in anticipation of our arrival that night) even got dressed up as an angel. I can’t imagine that there’s anything else that will make me feel more festive than I did when we were singing carols to those lovely people who had rewarded us with Christmas treats. This is the relationship that a Church should have with its local community. It was also a time of great encouragement, as we went from door to door wishing people a Merry Christmas, numerous households said they had overheard our worship on Sunday mornings and said that they thought we sounded brilliant. We told them that it sounds even better from inside the building and that they would be more than welcome to come and join us whenever they wanted. So who knows, maybe this in itself was a great prompting to remind the local community what the true meaning of Christmas is.

Final thoughts

As I look back over what I have written I realise I have not really answered many of the questions I posed in my first paragraph, this is mostly because I don’t have one. I wrote about how my understanding changes the older I get and I anticipate it will continue to do so through the years. Since getting a theology degree a lot of people seem to look to me for answers to questions they have from the Bible or from things they think about from day to day, but the truth of the matter is that I am just the same as everyone else. I am just another person trying to know God better. I would love for people to send me their thoughts on what they think to some of the questions that have been raised in this blog. I was recently asked that if when I die and I stand before God if I believe that all my beliefs will be correct, of course not, in fact I am quite sure that I will be corrected on a lot of things. In life all I can do is try my best to help others, show God’s love to all and be constantly listening to the Holy Spirit. That is all we can do, it might not be the meaning of Christmas but it is what has given my life meaning.

Merry Christmas.