Making time, making ends meet, making love, making every effort, making sense, making history, making music, make my day………..How many phrases can you think of that include “make” or “making”. In his book, “Leaders Make the Future”, Bob Johansen talks about the “maker instinct”. We are all able to be creative, to create, build and make things. Often though, this maker instinct gets stifled, or we don’t see ourselves as makers.

Whether it is baking a cake, growing a garden, writing a blog, creating a safe space where a friend can tell you their problems, we make things in a variety of different ways. Often people channel their maker instinct into hobbies or pastimes. Sometimes, if our job is difficult or tedious, these hobbies are where we release our creative talents and feel more fulfilled.

It is this maker instinct that can help us, and the groups or organisations that we belong to, to grow and flourish. Just think for a moment of all the makers who are at work within our faith community, people who pour out their maker instinct in a way that enriches our experience of the Divine and each other. This isn’t about being “arty”, it is about creating or growing a new thing – whatever that is. When we are makers in community, our creativity blends together, so that, like in an orchestra, all the different elements of our making weave into one another and create a fabulous and beautiful whole.

Our worship theme in October is “Back to the Future”. We will celebrate all that we have achieved together through being generous with our time, talents and finances. We will also be looking forward to the future and what God is calling us to be and to do in the years ahead. In November, our theme is “Dreams and Visions”, as we listen for God’s vision for MCC Newcastle. During this process, we need to use our maker instincts to describe and capture the different elements of the vision that God is offering us. We then need to work together to grow and build this new thing, on the faithful foundations of all that MCC Newcastle has developed so far.

All of us are needed in this listening process. No-one has all the answers. Everyone has the maker instinct and can contribute. Perhaps this week, we could all notice where we use our maker instinct and what we make.

God bless

Cecilia

Happy Easter! We made it – through 40 days of Lent, wrestling with our doubts, temptations and wilderness places, through the poignancy of the Last Supper, the agony of Jesus’ loneliness and despair in the garden of Gethsemane, the horror of the crucifixion, the desolation of Holy Saturday and arrived finally at the immensity of the Resurrection.

It certainly has been a rollercoaster of a journey. And now what do we do? The next great event in the church calendar is Pentecost – traditionally the birth of the Christian church. What do we do between now and then?

On Easter Sunday, MCC Newcastle launched its Twitter account with our Easter message:

“Jesus came out of the tomb, so you could come out of the closet”

Twitter is a way of sending short messages using the internet to potentially hundreds or even thousands of people. Our Twitter account is @mccnewcastle If you see a twitter message (called a “tweet”) that you like, you pass it on. We want to use modern technology to let people know the ancient and everlasting Good News – Jesus lived amongst us, died and rose again so that we could have life in ALL its fullness. This is what the disciples did between the resurrection and Pentecost. Little by little, they spread the Good News. Jesus kept appearing to them to reassure and comfort them, to let them know he was still around.

This Easter, we want the Good News to “go viral” – that is, to spread around the world. “Life in its fullness” will mean different things to each of us. “Coming out of the closet” might be about our sexuality, it might be about anything that is keeping us from being our true selves. Wouldn’t the world be an amazing place if everyone came out of their “self doubt” or “not good enough” closet and lived as the fabulous and beautiful people God created us to be?

Some of us will never quite get to grips with all the 21st century ways of communicating, but we can still just promise ourselves that we will pass on the Good News of God’s unconditional love to at least one other person this month.

Who do you know that needs to hear the Good News?

God bless,

Cecilia

This week will be the last of our The Gospel According to Hollywood worship series (click here to catch up if you have missed it!). This Sunday’s film will be Some Like it Hot starring Tony Curtis, Jack Lemmon and Marilyn Monroe.
 
It is 50 years since Marilyn Monroe died and yet people are
still fascinated by her.

What is it about some people that we are captivated by them? Beauty, charm, mystique, charisma – all these words spring to mind, before we even perhaps start on talent or virtues such as kindness or generosity. Think about the famous people that you admire  – what is about them
that you value?

One of the Bible stories that always intrigues me is the
story of Zacchaeus. Zacchaeus was a tax collector and was also rather short in stature. When Jesus came through his area of Jericho, the crowds gathered around him. Zacchaeus was too short to see Jesus amidst all the people, so he climbed a tree to get a better view. Jesus spotted him up the tree and invited himself to Zacchaeus’ house for the day. The crowd was very disapproving of Jesus’ choice of company. As a tax collector, Zacchaeus would have been viewed as siding with the enemy, the Romans, and had probably made himself quite rich by pocketing some of the taxes that he collected!

What was it about Jesus that made Zacchaeus want to climb the tree that day? What had Zacchaeus heard? Was he hoping to see a miracle happen or see someone be healed? Was he just curious? It must have been quite some motivation to get him to climb high up into a tree.

Perhaps the answer comes in the dialogue between Jesus and Zacchaeus once he is down from the tree. Zacchaeus says Look, Lord! Here and now I give half of my possessions to the poor, and if I have cheated anybody out of anything, I will pay back four times the amount.  (Luke 19:8)

We might still be talking about Marilyn 50 years on, but we are still following Jesus over 2000 years after his death. Zacchaeus was certainly onto something! Being recognised,
accepted and forgiven are all great gifts.

Who would you climb up a tree to see and why?

God bless,

Cecilia