Category: London

An Emergency Call to Prayer For Christian Leaders in the UK
11am – 4pm Saturday 28th February 2009 Emmanuel Christian Centre, Marsham Street, London SW1P 3DW

When a nation is in trouble it is right for leaders to call the people to prayer. Our nation is in trouble – more than most people are aware. In December 2008, 80 leaders from churches, politics and business, who are concerned about the state of our nation met in the House of Lords to seek what God is saying to us today about our nation. Those present agreed that:
* The current financial situation is primarily the result of the pursuit of moral choices and values that do not accord with the word of God
* God is calling all churches in Britain torepentance and a season of prayer and fasting for the nation
* The Christian church should reach out to those who are already suffering as a result of the present financial crisis
The United Kingdom, once a missionary powerhouse of the world, is now morally and spiritually bankrupt and our children are left without security, stability or hope. We believe, however, that it is still possible for this nation to be turned around if we turn to God in repentance trusting in His mercy.
The House of Lords meeting is sending out this call to mobilise Christians across the land for prayer and action. You are invited to join in a special day of prayer to bring the national situation before the Lord for his guidance in these troubled times.

More Maranatha events in London

Professor Philip Booth Catholicism and Capitalism, ‘Faith Matters’ lectures Westminster Cathedral Hall, Ambrosden Avenue, London SW1, 18th March 7.00pm

The Catholic Church has never supported socialism and has often spoken against the excesses of welfare states. However, the Church has never been totally comfortable with capitalism either – and certainly not with the materialism which some argue is encouraged by capitalism. Indeed, individual bishops, priests and laity have often been at the forefront of arguing strongly for government intervention in the economy both in the UK and internationally. At a time when the premises of economic liberalism are being questioned due to the financial and economic crisis, we should ask whether Catholics should feel comfortable with capitalism? Do the economic problems surrounding the financial crisis change the arguments? And can a market economy deal with the grave challenges of environment problems and extreme poverty?

There is plenty of downloadable discussion of Christian economic thought by Philip Booth and others at the Institute for Economic Affairs

Helpers of God’s Precious Infants

The next vigil at Marie Stopes abortion facility, 88 Russell Road, Buckhurst Hill, Essex IG9 5QB, will be held on 24 January 2009 From St Thomas of Canterbury Church, 557/559 High Road, Woodford Green IG8 0RB led by the Franciscan Friars of the Renewal

8.45am – Holy Sacrifice of the Mass at St Thomas of Canterbury Church
9.30am – Prayerful and peaceful procession to Marie Stopes abortion facility, processing with image of Our Lady of Guadalupe, holy rosary and hymns
11.45am – Return procession with prayers and hymns

These “liberals”, as they like to be called, who constitute the hierarchy detest the Christian past and dismiss our forefathers in the faith as “primitive”. Really they are old-fashioned Whigs in new Guardianista clothing – apostles of the discredited doctrine of “progress”. And God help anyone who stands in the way of these ecclesiastical totalitarians as they bully conservative clergymen and steamroller traditional parishes into adopting their puerile new versions of the Bible and their trashy modern liturgies.
The modernisers among the bishops and in the General Synod have dominated the English church these last forty years and all but destroyed it. They have denied or distorted every cardinal doctrine of the faith. The Resurrection of Our Lord has been reduced to a subjective feeling of cheered-upness among the disciples. The Virgin Birth has been dismissed as a mistaken reading of the Book of Isaiah. They have swallowed whole the notion of secularisation
The result of all this iconoclasm is that people have voted with their feet and the congregations have diminished spectacularly. Where they have not diminished but increased and thrived is precisely in those churches so despised by A.N.Wilson: the Bible-based evangelicals and the traditional anglocatholics and high church. I must say that one of the great joys among traditional believers these days is the spectacle we can now enjoy of the liberal hierarchy’s Pyrrhic victory. At last there they sit in full control of the Church of England – except that the only meaningful parts of the church have gone their own ways, leaving the liberal bullies with no one to boss about.
I have been a priest for 35 years and watched the tyranny of apostates in high places and I know that people do not want a pale, euphemistic religion in which the gospel is reduced to a metaphor for the social policies of the soft Left. But they will come to church to be moved and stirred by words that are worth their weight in glory and to hear sound teaching.

Revd Peter Mullen at the Social Affairs Unit

Northern Europe’s suicidal infatuation with secularisation is not typical. And even in Northern Europe, in England, where the full faith is taught the church is growing…

What we have seen these last forty years is la trahison des clercs: the people appointed to be the guardians of our spiritual welfare have betrayed us….

The church authorities have caved in. The Church has resigned. We have been penetrated by the ideas that are working against us…

How long before I am carted from the pulpit and thrown into jail for preaching that Christian marriage is not the moral equivalent of sodomy? Don’t laugh – not when you read of how the Bishop of Hereford was fined £47,000 and sent on a re-education course because he refused to employ a practising homosexual in work with children in his diocese. Politicians and clergy who were appointed to defend what is of value in our common life deny and denigrate these things….

The antidote to the results of the nihilistic iconoclasm which began a generation ago and which now engulf us is the re-Christianisation of the West. This is what the Cardinal told us in his Corbishley lecture. It is what the Holy Father tells us every day and it is what is being preached by a few clear heads and devout spirits in the other Christian churches – such as the Bishops of Rochester and London. Brethren, pray.

Peter Mullen St Michael’s Cornhill – Sermons 2008

Christian Concern for our Nation
The final stages of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill (HFE Bill) will take place on 22nd October, subject to final confirmation still to be given by the Public Bill Office.
This Bill is one of the most destructive pieces of legislation that we will see in our lifetime. It is anti-life, anti-family and anti-God. It will liberalise abortion law, create animal-human hybrids and create fatherless families unless we pray and act to stop it.

The March for Life is on Saturday 18th October. CCFON provide informationabout the ramifications of the Bill to help in letter-writing to MPs.

Monday 13th October St Edward the Confessor

O God, who didst call thy servant Edward to an an earthly Throne that he might advance thy heavenly kingdom, and didst give him zeal for thy Church and love for thy people: Mercifully grant that we who commemorate him this day may be fruitful in good works, and attain to the glorious crown of thy saints; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

Saturday 18 October – National Pilgrimage to the Shrine of St Edward the Confessor

9.00am Matins, said with hymns
11.00am Lecture: The Reverend Dr Nicholas Sagovsky, Canon Theologian
12.00pm Sung Eucharist
3pm Choral Evensong
All day – visits to the Shrine of St Edward the Confessor

And also on Saturday 18th October

Prayer Procession – 1000 Crosses for Life
Starting at 1pm from Westminster Cathedral, over Westminster and Lambeth bridges, ending with a mourning ceremony at Westminster Abbey
More at Family Life International.

You know what we need now? Large public acts of reparation (that’s repentance, and penitence, which is repentance over the long-term).

Annual Rosary Crusade of Reparation – Saturday 11th October

Procession from Westminster Cathedral to Brompton Oratory with the statue of Our Lady of Fatima and the 15 decades of the Rosary. Starting 1.45pm in the Cathedral piazza and ending at the Oratory with the solemn crowning of the statue and solemn Benediction.

This procession is offered for downfall of the Human Fertilisation and Embyrology (HFE) Bill.

These people are not afraid to use the word ‘crusade’, so why should you be afraid to pray with these others with their rosary? If you are still a bit iffy about Mary, just sing ‘Lord have mercy upon us’, and think of it as another Prayer-Walk/March-for-Jesus. As it re-learns how to repent the Church in London is rediscovering the pavement. Maybe we will soon find out how to cry too. Here’s a report of the procession from the year before last.

Coming up is the Pentecost festival in the West End from Friday-Sunday 9th-11th May.

Also on Pentecost weekend we have 24-7 Prayer and Global Day of Prayer events.

There is the New Dynamic Prayer Conference from Holy Trinity Brompton with Jesus House in June and and Worship Central’s day conference in July.

All this prayer and worship will be

right in the heart of London, within earshot of the Houses of Parliament…putting worship back at the heart of this nation!’

Then there is the London School of Theology Deep calls to Deep Worship Symposium 11-13 September

Mark Earey
Jeremy Begbie
Peter Moger
and others

Least fortunate workshop title ?

‘How would Jesus lead worship?’

Who do they think has been leading our worship all this time?

All these events seem a little light on the theology, perhaps, but then all these lovely people are future purchasers of my forthcoming little book on worship. The future of the Church is processional (that means we are going to be back out on the pavement). Now to learn our psalms off by heart, and then we’ll have something to sing.

Facebook seems a good place to list London events, by the way