Kedgeree nights

  

 

 

 

 

      The name is evocative of another place and time. 

      Often thought of as a traditional British brunch dish, it was brought back to Britain by returning colonials from India, having started out as Khichari, a dish of rice and lentils.

      This is an amazingly flavoured food with hints of subtle spice. Too fussy for breakfast (in my opinion), it makes a great dinner for a winter’s evening.  

       Here's the recipe I use (serves 4):

       Ingredients

·         50g butter

·         1 medium onion, finely chopped

·         3 cardamom pods, split open

·         ¼ teaspoon turmeric

·         1 small cinnamon stick

·         2 fresh bay leaves or 1 dried

·         450g basmati rice

·         1 litre/1¾ pints chicken, vegetable or fish stock

·         750g un-dyed smoked haddock fillet

·         3 eggs

·         3 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley

     Method

1.    Melt the butter in a large saucepan, add the onion and cook gently over a medium heat for 5 minutes until the onion is softened but not browned. Stir in the cardamom pods, turmeric, cinnamon stick and bay leaves, then cook for 1 minute.

2.    Tip in the rice and stir until it is all coloured in the spicy butter. Pour in the stock, add half a teaspoon of salt and bring to the boil, stirring once to free any rice from the bottom of the pan. Cover with a close-fitting lid, reduce the heat to low and leave to cook very gently for 12 minutes.

3.    Bring some water to the boil in a large shallow pan. Add the smoked haddock and simmer for 4 minutes until the fish is just cooked. Lift it out on to a plate and leave until cool enough to handle. Hard-boil the eggs for 8 minutes. Flake the fish, discarding any skin and bones. Drain the eggs, then peel and chop.

4.    Uncover the rice and remove the bay leaves, cinnamon stick and cardamom pods if you wish to. Gently fork in the fish and the chopped eggs, cover again and return to the heat for 2-3 minutes, or until the fish has heated through. Gently stir in almost all the parsley, and season with a little salt and black pepper to taste. Serve immediately on warmed plates, scattered with the remaining parsley.

4 WARNING SIGNS FOR CHURCHES IN TROUBLE

Most of us love lists.  The 50 Greatest.... or Your 100 favourite....I am a minister. I also work with churches (Anglican, Baptist, Free and others) and para-church bodies to help them to overcome obstacles and to find new direction for growth. If asked, most of us could come up with a list of pitfalls for churches to avoid. Here are just 4 from my perspective. They are not exhaustive, nor would I claim them to be ‘right’. But if they help you to reflect critically and constructively on your church or charity then maybe they will serve a useful purpose.

1.  Finance is at the top, or near the top, of every agenda

This cleverly masquerades as sound management or good stewardship.

Now, of course, churches should manage their affairs well. But elevating money to the prime position then defines all other matters in relation to it. It is then finance rather than faith and vision that shapes what can or cannot be attempted. In this kind of agency, the treasurer – and quite often the other trustees too – will see themselves as custodians of limited funds rather than those who resource the church's work. They bury their one talent in the ground out of the fear of loss because they do not really believe that God will provide more.
 
There is another insidious outcome of putting money first.  The trustees and the church will come to believe that the church’s assets are those listed on the balance sheet of the charity rather than the total of all Christ’s assets held in trust by the members (income, houses, savings, cars, household goods).  What in our programmes would not be possible if we used that as our gauge rather than the few thousands held in a bank account in the church’s name?

Monitor your finances but make sure the financial report on the agenda comes way below what the church is actually here for: discipleship, mission and community.

2.       The church has more meetings than new disciples of Christ.

Jesus could not have made it any clearer. We exist to love God and to love others as we love ourselves. We are to help others to find and to follow his way. Writer G.K. Chesterton wrote, “The church is the only institution that exists solely for the benefit of non-members.” Jesus connected with those on the outside and those who follow him do the same.  

However, if too much energy is focused on internal gatherings and processes rather than spending time building friendships with people outside the church then how can we truly say that we are following him?
 

3.       There are too many ‘Safe Pairs of Hands’

In a great many churches you will find key voluntary leadership roles filled by people who are thought to be ‘Safe Pairs of Hands.’  They get the work done.  They are dependable and unflappable and the backbone of the church. They keep the machinery of church and para-church agencies well-oiled.  They chair committees and help the church to steer a sensible course. They produce decisions, properly made with proposers and seconders, leading to crisp sets of minutes.  They are usually good people.

The downside of having ‘Safe Pairs of Hands’ in key positions is that their churches will tend to end up serving internal processes rather than living as a counter-cultural guerrilla movement co-operating with the invasion of Jesus in society.  They pursue moderation. No one rocks the boat.  Any new idea is seen as too risky or even dangerous. The main 'opposition' to new direction in churches comes from the comfortable and confident.

Get the ‘Safe Pairs of Hands’ out of the key seats. They are often a sign of a slow death to a missional church.  Embrace the messy and uncertain. If these ‘Safe’ people really are effective, get them working on the front line of mission rather than a back-office function.

4.       We prize church as it has been over church as it needs to be now

Throughout history the church has been reinvented from time to time, to be able to speak the unchanging truth of the good news about Jesus to a changing society and culture.  However, much of what people prize in our churches and how they gather and act is relatively recent.

A worrying number of people continue to believe that we are just one more prayer meeting away from ‘revival’.  Revival, in their minds, means a wholesale conversion of the nation to being followers of Christ, when our churches will once again be full (they almost never were in the past, by the way), filled with people who end up looking and thinking like us.

Spoiler alerts!  I do not know what God will do, except that I am clear that he will not be compelled to do just what we demand.  And sometimes he chooses to allow his followers to face exile, powerlessness and even extinction (Have a read in the Old Testament before you tell me that I’m wrong.  Or the Methodist Church and the Salvation Army, now just a decade or so away from disappearing from the UK?).

On the wall of a church I visited last year was a poster with a slogan claiming to be a Puritan saying:  “The task of the church in every generation is to discover what the Sovereign Lord is doing and to join in.”   

Anything else, however useful or loved it has been in the past, is baggage. We must be willing to leave it behind.

If this article has raised questions about how your church can avoid some of the more common pitfalls, why not contact me for a conversation about how I can help?   There's a link through here:  www.parsonking.co.uk 

Oceania is at war with Eurasia !

At this moment, in 1984, Oceania was at war with Eurasia and in alliance with Eastasia. In no public or private utterance was it ever admitted that the three powers had at any time been grouped along different lines. Actually, as Winston well knew, it was only four years since Oceania had been at war with Eastasia and in alliance with Eurasia. But that was merely a piece of furtive knowledge which he happened to possess because his memory was not satisfactorily under control. Officially the change of partners had never happened. Oceania was at war with Eurasia: therefore Oceania had always been at war with Eurasia. The enemy of the moment always represented absolute evil, and it followed that any past or future agreement with him was impossible.  (George Orwell, 1984)

It is 2015 and the United Kingdom is at war with the Islamic State.

  

It is plainly right that we do everything in our power to oppose these evil men who ruthlessly lash and even behead people for daring to disagree with them.

In this righteous campaign, our staunch ally is Saudi Arabia. Which, er, ruthlessly gives 1,000 lashes to bloggers and beheads people who hold a different view to the controlling royal household.

We also now soft-pedal our opposition to President al-Assad of Syria because the evil-incarnate that is ISIS is engaged in the genocide of minority groups in Syria.

President Assad’s support is particularly valuable in our righteous crusade because he knows rather a lot about killing townloads of civilian minorities - children, women and men - with the nerve agent Sarin.  So he’s a useful chum to have on the team.

Of course our country’s most steadfast ally in defence of liberty, freedom and humans rights is the United States of America. We stand shoulder-to-shoulder with our Atlantic cousins in our opposition to middle-eastern torturers and the fat fruitcake of North Korea.

Good job the Yanks don’t torture, then, isn’t it?  Or execute people so that they take a long, long time to die – in agony, using untried combinations of chemicals.

But at least the British government’s hands are Persil clean! It’s a shame that the Irish government is raking up all that nonsense about torture of NI suspects and the withholding of key evidence from the European Court of Human Rights. We were at war then! We had always been at war with them. 

Except that now those people are in the government of Northern Ireland. So of course they are our allies. 

Here's my prediction for the end of 2015.  By December, we will be allies of North Korea (and will always have been friends with that progressive state.)  By then, our ISIS friends will look by at the palace from time to time to take tea with the Queen.

It’s enough to make Winston Smith’s head spin.

Waiting for Christmas

There’s a day coming when the mountain of God’s House will be The Mountain— solid, towering over all mountains. All nations will river toward it, people from all over set out for it. They’ll say, “Come, let’s climb God’s Mountain, go to the House of the God of Jacob. He’ll show us the way he works so we can live the way we’re made.” He’ll settle things fairly between nations. He’ll make things right between many peoples. They’ll turn their swords into shovels, their spears into rakes. No more will nation fight nation; they won’t play war anymore.    Isaiah 2: 2-5

Are you looking forward to Christmas?  Let me see if I can guess why.

You'll get some time off school.

You might get to see some family you haven't seen in a long time.

There will probably be a tree in the house and beautiful decorations everywhere.

You look forward to a delicious Christmas dinner. You might look forward to Brussels sprouts (I do, but I may be on my own there!)

And what am I forgetting? Oh, yes, of course, presents! We love to give and receive presents.

Well, the waiting can be tough. There are still 2 days to go until Christmas.  But if you are really hoping and looking forward (especially if you are young) that can seem like 2 years.

Most of the people mentioned in the Bible had to wait. The reading above is from the prophet Isaiah, who described a wonderful future time of peace in the world someday. It's a time that seems far off when we hear about the wars in our world and fighting all over the world. But Isaiah has a message from God that it won't always be that way. This is what he says: in the future God will settle arguments between nations. They will pound their swords and their spears into rakes and shovels; they will never make war or attack one another again. It's a wonderful message. 

In this future, people will want to live the way God intended them to live. God will transform their hearts and teach them how to love. There will be no more war; in fact weapons will be turned into tools to grow food for the hungry.

Some of that has begun to happen for us. Jesus came and showed us that, by trusting in Him, we would live the kind of life that is full of love for other people. The One whose name means ‘God with us’ has come and is already changing some. There are now people who show His love by working to stop wars, to bring peace and to bring together people who have been enemies.

God so wanted this kind of change for us and the people around us that He sent the most precious thing He had – Jesus – to show us what real love is.  Jesus came to clear out all the mistakes and mess ups we have done so that, trusting in Him, we might get ready for this new way of life that God has planned.

We’re waiting for Christmas. It’s still 2 days away but it’s coming closer. We’re waiting for things to happen. Sometimes we have to wait for the school bus. Sometimes you have to sit in the waiting room for your dental appointment. That’s no fun. You don’t mind waiting a long time for that.

Sometimes you have to line up and wait to see a movie. That’s a hard kind of waiting. Waiting for the bell to ring. Waiting for dinner because you’re hungry. Waiting for the Internet – it can still sometimes take a long time before you can finally download something.

At this time of year, those of us who follow Jesus are waiting for something special too. We’re waiting for Jesus once again. We all know how Jesus came the first time: as a baby in a manger. But now we wait for Jesus to make all things whole again. To put this broken world right.

And, while we wait for everything to get sorted, we want to live as if it had already happened, to show others and remind ourselves what this new world will be like. 

Merry Christmas!  

Are there no workhouses?

“At this festive season of the year, Mr. Scrooge,” said the gentleman, taking up a pen, “it is more than usually desirable that we should make some slight provision for the Poor and destitute, who suffer greatly at the present time. Many thousands are in want of common necessaries; hundreds of thousands are in want of common comforts, sir.”

“Are there no prisons?” asked Scrooge.

“Plenty of prisons,” said the gentleman, laying down the pen again.

“And the Union workhouses?” demanded Scrooge. “Are they still in operation?”

“They are. Still,” returned the gentleman, “I wish I could say they were not.”

“The Treadmill and the Poor Law are in full vigour, then?” said Scrooge.

“Both very busy, sir.”

“Oh! I was afraid, from what you said at first, that something had occurred to stop them in their useful course,” said Scrooge. “I’m very glad to hear it.”

“Many can’t go there; and many would rather die.”

“If they would rather die,” said Scrooge, “they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population.”

Well it was the December meeting of our book club last night and, with a nod to the season, we’d read Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol.  We all loved it.  It’s a swift read; humorous in places; moving in its conclusion. One of the great redemption stories, it suggests that practical concern for our neighbours' wellbeing is evidence of redemption taking place. It would do your heart good to read it!

We met on the same day the report “Feeding Britain” was published by the All-Party Parliamentary Inquiry into Hunger in the UK.  It tells of families that are so desperate to avoid being evicted for rent arrears, or the disconnection of their gas or electricity that they go without food, relying on foodbanks to make ends meet.  The report highlights the work of these voluntary foodbanks – run by churches, charities and other people of goodwill.  It calls the attention of politicians from all parties to acknowledge the “simple but devastating fact that hunger stalks this country.”

The poor are made to pay more for basic necessities, e.g. through pre-payment meters, because they cannot make direct debit payments to keep costs down.  If people make a simple mistake in their claims for benefits, they can face sanctions to punish them. And, from the point when you make a claim, some people can wait up to 16 weeks before they see any money.

Over 900,000 adults and children received three days’ emergency food and support from Trussell Trust foodbanks in 2013-14, a 163 percent rise on numbers helped in the previous financial year. 

All this, 171 years after the world first heard of Ebenezer Scrooge, in a country with the 6th largest economy in the world.

We have not begun to imagine the breathtaking scale of prolonged cuts to welfare that will follow next year’s election.  None of the major political parties offers the slightest hope for us as a nation. The Conservatives will dismantle welfare provision with relish, as they roll back the state for ideological reasons. Labour entirely fails to convince that it has any real alternative to offer. The LibDems deserve the political oblivion they may face - and who could trust them in any case?  UKIP trades on fear and hatred and they should be opposed by all people of goodwill.

In this waiting season of Advent, we remind ourselves that the promised Christ was carried by a mother used to a hand-to-mouth economy, in a time of volatile politics. In her fragile voice we hear the hope that God offers, as we await His remaking of this broken world:

"He has brought down rulers from their thrones

but has lifted up the humble.

He has filled the hungry with good things

but has sent the rich away empty."