REV ANDY’S NEWS 
NOVEMBER 2018
www.bibleinbrief.com aoroland@gmail.com
Marketing is spelt p-e-o-p-l-e.
I have been doing a lot of thinking about marketing over the last couple of months and have come to an amazing conclusion: Marketing is about people. It might be different if I were a multi-million pound commercial enterprise. But being who I am it is about making connections. And it is not one way. The key marketing tool for me is curiosity. When I find a website which might be a good contact I spend time looking at it and enjoying it. theosthinktank.co.uk and premierchristianity.com have some great blogs and articles such as “5 Christian authors who regret the books they have written.”
My main aim this last month has been to invite more people to sign up for my newsletter, that is you, dear reader! I have phoned people I have not been in touch with for months and the result is catching up with a lot of news. And interesting comments. My cousin’s husband in Nottingham commented on the Brexit supporters there. “Don’t they realise that all the cars being produced at the Toyota factory in Derby are left-hand drive?”
facebook & Twitter
They say practice makes perfect. I am certainly not perfect, but I am getting to feel at home with facebook and Twitter, enjoying other people’s comments, sending my thoughts out on the ether, and getting comments back. The turning point came when I decided to stop trying to post and tweet every day, but to do it on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Trying to do it every day was frying my brain. Now I post/tweet if I have something to say. I am quite pleased with some of my posts, e.g.
Are refugees human? Been to an amazing play “The Jungle” – all about the “Calais Jungle Camp” and how it was forcibly destroyed in October 2016. Very moving.
On seeing the film “First Man” about the first moon landing: censored was the fact that before they walked out, Buzz Aldrin took holy communion. He said: “I would like to request a few moments of silence … and to invite each person listening in, wherever and whomever they may be, to pause for a moment and contemplate the events of the past few hours, and to give thanks in his or her own way.”
Overheard in the Civil Service: “I used to think politics was boring, but it’s not now. It’s more exciting than Coronation Street!”
1968 social revolution in Hackbridge! Fifty years ago the new vicar of All Saints 
Hackbridge suggested the congregation call each other by their Christian names. “Good morning, Iris,” instead of “Good morning, Mrs Smith”. One step to making church a more welcoming place.
(from my forthcoming book “The Church by the Sewage Farm)
My most popular post was this photo of the ice rink outside the Natural History Museum, South Kensington:
Christmas – what’s the evidence?
The photo was part of a post advertising the first of a series of “St Cuthbert’s Talks ” – Christmassy because of the Christmas theme of the first talk. The talks will be on Monday evenings at St Cuthbert’s Church, Earls Court, open to anyone, not preaching but talking sense about the Bible. The sub-title describes them: “Talks for spiritual explorers”.
“Christmas – what’s the evidence?” looks at what evidence there is in the Bible about the birth of Jesus and how reliable it might be.
E.g. What did the angel who visited Mary look like? All the pictures show him with wings. But he did not have wings! How do we know? Because when he said, “Greetings, favoured one! The Lord is with you!” we are told that she was “much
perplexed by his words.” If she had been confronted by the figure we see in all the traditional paintings, she would have been much perplexed by his wings!
Monday evening 10th December with wine and cheese, and Wednesday 12th for tea.
Get free tickets and more info from eventbrite: tinyurl.com/y7ao9f8z (evening) or tinyurl.com/y7nkalmk (afternoon)
More to life than posting
Marketing has rather taken over from writing recently, but it has not affected the four ‘C’s’ of my life: Cooking, Church, Cinema and Campaigning.
Cooking: While Linda works away 12-14 hours per day seven days per week on Brexit legislation, I support her in producing great vegetarian food for her, and doing a carb-free diet for me. Our latest discovery has been cauliflower. We make rice from cauliflower, and mashed potato from cauliflower, and now roast cauliflower – delicious! The result for me is that although twelve months ago I was diagnosed diabetic, the no-carb diet has reversed that and I am now non-diabetic!
Church: I already worship at the Anglo-Catholic shrine of St Cuthbert’s, and at the Evangelical-Catholic church of St Augustine’s (HTB Queens Gate). Now I have started attending a delightful informal Monday lunchtime communion at St Mary Abbott’s Kensington, with discussion and sandwich lunch. There are about 20 of us, and it is growing. Variety is the spice of life, including church life!
Cinema: Linda and I continue to see a film a week. We saw three at the London Film Festival “Can you forgive her?” (USA) , about a feisty forger, “Yomeddine” (Egypt) about an elderly leper’s road trip with a young lad as companion; and “That Time of Year” about a Danish family Christmas (Linda loved it!) It’s so great to see films that are outside the mainstream.
Campaigning: I am committed to trying to reverse this historic act of self-harm that England wanted to inflict on itself. I was at the amazing march of 670,000 on October 20th, and at the pop-up demonstration in Parliament Square on 15th November, the day that Mrs May revealed the 585 page draft agreement.
Blogs on Paul
After weeks of agonising I finally produced a blog “Paul and the Spirit”. It’s where we get closest to Paul’s actual experience as a believer in Jesus as Messiah. 1 Corinthians 14 describes the worship that Paul would recognise: “If all prophesy, an unbeliever or outsider who enters is reproved by all 
and called to account by all. After the secrets of the unbeliever’s heart are disclosed, that person will bow down before God and worship him, declaring, ‘God is really among you.’ Clearly Paul was a Pentecostal, rather than an Anglican. (In one debate in General Synod on the Charismatic Movement, one speaker declared , “Anglicanism has always been the most rational splinter of Christendom.”)
But we still may not completely understand him, because of the way writing itself has changed. Lower case letters were only invented for Greek in the 6th century. So when Paul wrote all he used were capital letters. Bible translations which use “spirit” for our spirit and “Spirit ” for God’s Spirit are editorialising. Does it make a difference? Is our spirit different in kind from God’s spirit, or are we part of a continuum? It’s worth thinking about.
Check it out on https://www.bibleinbrief.org/2018/11/06/paul-and-the-spirit/
Write a review!
All my books are on Amazon, but they have not had a review yet. So please, if you have one of my book, could you put a brief review on the Amazon site? I obviously can’t do it myself so please help me avoid temptation!!
Here is a brief summary and small nugget from each of them:
Bible in Brief
A six-month introduction to the Bible with questions and space for your comments, plus summaries, maps, archaeological drawings, writings from the surrounding cultures and two timelines, one of the prophets and kings of Israel and Judah, and one of the New Testament and Roman emperors.
Plus ‘Bonus Features’ like ‘Chapter and Verse’: “It was our own Archbishop of Canterbury, Stephen Langton, famous for making King John sign the Magna Carta, who divided the Bible into chapters. This was in 1205 and his system has been adopted by the church all over the world.”
Ideal for getting yourself seriously informed!
A Week of Prayer in Jerusalem
Every January the churches in Jerusalem celebrating the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity. I recorded my experiences there in 2017, with storied for my six previous visits. Lots of photos, which you can see in a gallery under ‘Resources’ on my website.
For example, I have twice visited the Temple Trust – the Jewish organisation which wants to bulldoze the Dome of the Rock and rebuild Solomon’s temple! I was told that in one respect the new temple will be an improvement on the old one. It will have central heating!!
An ideal Christmas present for anyone who has been to Jerusalem or would like to go or is simply curious.
Discovering Psalms as Prayer
This is my wife’s favourite. I start by asking hard questions about prayer and about the Psalms, then record my visit to a Christian ashram/monastery in South India. There I discovered the Syrian Orthodox liturgy (the oldest Indian liturgy going back at least 1300 years) and it has been my prayer framework ever since. It could be yours! Here is one of their prayers: Creator of the morning, who drives out the darkness and brings light and joy to all creation: create in us habits of virtue, and drive away from us all the darkness of sin. With the light give us joy by the glorious rays of your grace, Lord our God for ever. Amen
‘Discovering Psalms as Prayer’ is just the ticket if you want to try out a different pattern. The book explains it all, and everything you need can be downloaded from the website.
Please help!
1. If you already have an Amazon account, you can place a review. You don’t need to have bought the book from Amazon. Just open up the book on their site and click the review link. So if you have one of my books, do put a review on their system. It can be as simple as marking some stars, 1 to 5. A brief comment would be nice. You don’t have to write an essay!
Share this newsletter with someone you think might be interested.
Email me and tell me what you like/dislike and what you would like to see in the future.
HAVE A RICH ADVENT!