The first day of the Dearne Community Arts’ Festival took place at Dearne ALC today and was an opportunity to champion the multi-faceted creativity of local residents and celebrate our community.

The Mayor, Cllr Steve Green, opened the arts’ festival and gave out prizes to several competition winners, including Herlen Schreuder:

Pat’s amazing craft work was on display again:

J-P’s photos were also stunning:

There were many other examples of creativity:

There was also the opportunity to listen to Natalia Ledger, a fantastic pianist:

People could also take part in different workshops, learning new skills, such as playing the ukelele:

… or learning about creative writing with Ian McMillan:

… or have a go at silk painting:

… or learn circus skills:

All in all, a great day helped by lots of wonderful volunteers, including Janet who managed to escape this photo!

Tomorrow will see the second day of the arts’ festival from 11 a.m. until 4 p.m., with additional workshops (sand art, clay modelling, hot wax painting, felting, card making and paper crafts, along with crafts for under 5s, a full schedule of performances (including Thurnscoe Harmonic Male Voice Choir and The Grumpy Old Men), virtual reality cinema and 3D printers, face painting, circus skills and much more!

A scornful sceptic once asked if anything good could come out of Nazareth. Cynicism and low expectation meant this man almost missed out on meeting the Messiah. Philip was an object lesson in the dangers of judging a book by its cover (or in this case, a person by his home town.)

I was rather like Philip. I was born in Barnsley and loved my home town, but the Dearne Valley, despite being the place of my parents’ birth, was something else. They ‘escaped’ from Bolton-on-Dearne on their marriage to the heady heights of Ardsley and I saw nothing good in these dreary Dearne villages to draw me back. Actually, at eighteen, as I set off to university among the dreaming spires of Oxford, I was quietly confident I would spread my wings and fly away altogether. The world was my oyster and I expected to like shellfish.

Like C. S. Lewis, I was to become a reluctant convert – not to Christianity, which I embraced at seventeen with a sense of purpose and destiny, but to the Dearne Valley. God called me back here to live and work in this area, and I was not best pleased with Him. I’d planned to live abroad, using my linguistic talents in exotic settings. How dare He have other ideas?!

God loves the whole world, and that includes Thurnscoe, Goldthorpe and my parents’ native Bolton-on-Dearne. I don’t remember a specific date when my attitude changed. I came to live in a terraced house in Thurnscoe in 1987, and I’m still here. At first, I was restless, reluctant, grumpy. I felt I had little in common with the majority of people and yearned for beauty, not the ugliness of shuttered shops and littered streets.

But beauty, they say, is in the eye of the beholder. Slowly, I came to realise a community is made up primarily of people. It’s people who make a difference to places, who shape beauty from ashes, who care enough to pick up the litter and instil new values and hope to a place. It’s people who pull together on projects and infuse an area with positive vibes. It’s people who dare to dream who turn villages into places of welcome and acceptance.

I started volunteering in my local community – at the Dearne Enterprise Centre in Goldthorpe (now the Factory), at Houghton Road Centre and at Gooseacre Primary School in Thurnscoe. I discovered other people with passion and commitment; I discovered people who care. And one day, I discovered, to my astonishment and surprise, that I loved where I lived.

That’s why I am determined to celebrate this community, for this area is so much more than it is perceived to be from the outside. Can anything good come out of Thurnscoe, Goldthorpe and Bolton-on-Dearne? Most emphatically, yes! Regeneration can come, new birth that incorporates the physical locations, the economic health, the wellbeing of residents and the spiritual life of the area. Community spirit is alive and well in this place. The arts’ festival is just one way of recognising and celebrating that fact.

BMBC’s ‘Love Where You Live’ campaign is a reminder to us all that love has the potential to change everything. The Dearne Valley is full of people who care, who sow seeds of love into their communities day-in and day-out. Let’s champion creativity in all its glorious guises and celebrate community in all its fabulous forms and be a people who leave cynicism and despondency behind to embrace a positive present and a fearless future with a God who never gives up on us and who is able to bring good from every place as we work with Him in love and hope.

The last of the Summer Fun days took place today at Goldthorpe Parish Church. The theme was ‘Teddy Bears’ picnic’, so there was opportunity to paint teddy bears, create your own sticker teddy bear and listen to teddy bear stories, with Gaby Lees from Barnsley Museums bringing some of the bear costumes from the Cooper Gallery‘s excellent Bear Exhibition (still running till 1st September and well worth a visit!)

In addition, we also had dominoes, 4-in-a-row and table tennis to entertain us (though the younger children had more fun hunting out spare ping pong balls than playing, it seemed!)

A lovely day with a wide range of ages present – and a whole range of teddy bears to enjoy!

Our thanks to all who have helped so generously with these Summer Fun days: Dearne Area Team, Dearne Churches Together, Berneslai Homes, Tesco (Wath-on-Dearne), the local Co-op, FareShare, Feeding Britain… and countless more people who have worked tirelessly behind the scenes to feed local families and to provide a day of fun entertainment for all.

Our last birthday in August was celebrated today…

Dave spoke tonight from John 1:1-14, a familiar passage which reminds us nonetheless of God’s ongoing desire to communicate with us through words (and the Word). Words are the means by which thoughts are communicated and the Bible reminds us that God is forever speaking. In creation, God spoke and it came to be (see Ps 33:6,9, Heb 11:3) — the ‘said’ produced the ‘so’. When God speaks, things happen; as Jesus commented, His words were spirit and life (John 6:63).

The fact that God speaks is amazing, but so often, we are unwilling to listen. The true light has come into the world through Jesus, but we often prefer darkness (see Jn 1:9). God’s invisible qualities are made known to us (Rom 1:20), but we don’t always hear Him speaking clearly. When God spoke at Jesus’s baptism, many heard this as ‘thunder’; we often hide from God’s voice because it challenges and changes us.

Not only does God speak, however, but He also listens. He turns His ear towards us (Ps 116:1-2); He listens to our prayers. (Ps 34:6, Ps 66:19). It is astonishing to think that the Holy One, the Creator of the universe, the Supreme Being actually listens not only to the world and the church but to each one of us as individuals.  He is a loving Father who will never abandon or forsake us. He has spoken in the past (Heb 1:1-3), continues to speak in the present and will also speak in the future. Our problem if we cannot hear God talking to us is that we are not really listening. We need to make the time and space to listen to God; nothing is more important.

Garry spoke this morning from Isaiah 28:11-20. Isaiah prophesied at a time when things may have seemed outwardly prosperous, but God was pointing out problems and issues to His people which they largely ignored. It is not always easy to see beyond the surface of situations, but half-truths can be very deceptive. God had provided His people with a resting-place, a refuge (Is 28;12), but it was all too easy for rulers to make their own agreements with neighbouring countries and to rely on their leaders for peace and prosperity. This refuge would ultimately not prove reliable (Is 28:15b). God’s provision of a cornerstone was enough to keep them safe, but their false refuges would not last. (Is 28:17-18)

Ultimately, our lives need to be built on truth, not half-truths. The truth can be uncomfortable; it can be painful and can jar us, but it is real and we need to build our lives on reality.

We need truth in us. So often, we accumulate wrong beliefs gradually, adding our own definitions and ideas to God’s word (see Matt 15:1-2). We can have wrong perspectives, majoring on minor issues (see Matt 23:23-24) until we have lost sight of God’s heart. Half-truths act as a prison, locking us in, but the truth has the power to liberate us (John 8:31-32). As we accept God’s truth and live by it, it has the power to free us.

We then need to share the truth. People generally are either materialistic (believing that there is no God and that life can be reduced to what we can experience with our senses, often swayed by evolutionary teaching) or spiritually sensitive (but still perhaps having little idea what they actually believe.) Both groups of people need to know the liberating truth of the gospel.

God’s truth in us has the power to change how we live and how others live. If we are satisfied with cosy half-truths, it’s like being in a bed that’s too short for us or covered by blankets that are not big enough (Is 28:20). Half-truths don’t really help. What is needed are zeal and fervour based on truth (see Rom 12:11-12). Heb 3:7-8 reminds us that when we hear the Holy Spirit speaking to us, we need to respond and not delay. God wants us to ‘keep on the boil’, to respond to Him, to embrace the truth, to live the truth and to face the truth. This happens as we read God’s word daily, being washed in it, and as we meditate on it so that it flavours us and colours all our responses, as we seek God in prayer and listen to what He says. We may not be able to do everything, but we are responsible for what God puts into our hands to do. Truth working in and through us will have an effect on our world.