Planning for 2021 - two key life goals to focus on (Part Two)

hmm bye mmm me do uh my well good afternoon and welcome to crowd church welcome to the digital church online it's great to see you great that you are here my name is matt edmondson and beside me uh this way is the enormously talented uh sally birch sally hey how are you doing great to have you back hi matt thank you very much hi everybody it's brilliant to be here again it's lovely to see you all virtually um yeah it's great i hope everyone's doing really well can i still say happy new year i don't know it feels like it's a bit too late to say that and it feels like you know do we want to say happy new year when the events of this week perhaps we're not feeling that happy but basically what i'm trying to say is it's lovely to see you all and i hope you're all okay basically what you're trying to say is happy new year right yeah yeah well yeah it just feels like i don't know i don't know if we can call it a happy new year i mean i hope everyone's okay obviously this week has we've had another kind of blow the announcements this week so i just hope everyone's doing okay off the back of that yeah yes it's it's not been great news in the uk and so we appreciate um people may be struggling with that if you are do get in church let us know let us know if we can help or pray for you we would love to do that now crowd church for those of you who don't know crowd church is an online church where a church uh that's just come out of covet actually we started uh last year because we had to meet online so we started doing stuff online and here we are so we are a digital church and we say that we're a digital church for those that don't see the point of church so if you're new here if you're not sure about the christian faith if you're not sure about this whole church thing well you're in the right place let me tell you that's the relevance yeah perhaps you don't see the relevance of church for you or how you know god can impact your life then that's what crowd church is here for and certainly as matt said before we'd really love to pray for you you can see well it's about to appear oh yeah yeah yeah that's my bad hang on a second matt's going to put the what's that number down in here somewhere there we go there we go um and so please get in touch with that uh get in touch with us via that if we can pray with you or pray for you in any way um over anything at all maybe it's the covert situation um but anything at all then just send us a message via that what's that number yeah absolutely do do that as i would say or you know like you said via the website you can get in touch with us and let us know what's going on uh it's great to see you now if you are here make sure you say hi in the comments be great to see and hear from everybody that's uh watching the live stream it's lovely to see some of the comments already but i'm a little bit worried about matt crew hi matt crew lovely to have you along with us but i think he's got some typo problems going saying something about hunk joining up but i'm not sure i think maybe he's maybe he whatever you want maybe he's missed the sh the the the c off it maybe he meant chunk or chunky oh well you said it matt but yeah that's fine we do love all your comments so thank you very much for commenting do say hi give us a wave we'd love to hear from you absolutely so nicholas say hey uh i don't know if you know this but we call nicola lala so uh hey la la it's great to see you hey this has now gone live nicholas so she's gonna hate me because everyone's not gonna call her that uh so if you do know nicola morris call a la la that's all i'm saying she'll love that she'll love that and we've got absolutely um sharon's joined us we've got susan join us and we've got loads of other people it's great james sloane who's actually doing the talk for us today as said hi in the comments as well so brilliant to have you along with us james too yeah absolutely thanks for being here everyone now without further ado you mentioned james uh shall we jump into james uh that sounds that sounds wrong on so many people what's coming up today matt that might be aware let's tell people what's going on today i've got the one james sloan and matt will be telling you a little bit more about james and his background before he does his talks we've got him having a chat today and later on he's going to come back and answer some questions for us as well what else have we got going on matt yeah so we've also gonna have um a brief time of worship between james talking and then james coming back on uh so we're gonna introduce that a little bit uh in a little bit i am aware in the intro it said that josh is gonna be doing catch up today which is actually not correct so josh if you're watching the live stream don't panic um we're we are changing around a little bit we're going to get james back on to the live stream after the talk because we want to find out more about imagine if which is the charity that he heads up and we're going to introduce that to you today a little bit and we're going to get into that a little bit more with james so do stick around because we've got some great stuff brilliant i'm only only tiny little bit sad about the catch-up and that i can't share yet another picture of my kitchen i was kind of expecting you to have the cat with you you know like yeah well i might go and get him for later on but um uh yeah sorry i've gone like cat mad having been i'm a massive dog lover as well but we just got a kitten just before christmas i've actually gone cat mad i am going to be one of those old cat ladies um so yeah and and facebook and everything obviously can hear me because i'm getting so many adverts for cat products who knew the things that exist out there so um apparently a lot yeah yeah apparently you'll have to wait for next week to see the latest update in the life of percy the kitten yes absolutely uh and i i i mean this with all sincerity i cannot wait okay work on the tone of your voice there yeah yeah i need to work on my my skills you're naturally sarcastic we know maybe work on that a little bit absolutely well listen uh let's get straight into uh james's talk now if this is your first time with us on the live stream uh we have been working through uh mark's gospel and this is part two of a little a little interruption that jesus has uh talking uh with a chap about what's the two best commandments and we've called this talk you know what are the two key life goals to focus on because it's the start of the year and we kind of take this time to think about you know what should be our new year's resolutions i don't know if you've made any sell well one of my things having just sort of said about the cat things that are appearing on my facebook page is not to buy things from facebook and instagram because um yeah i did kind of get a little bit crazy with buying just random stuff uh during the last lockdown so i've had packages have arrived i've had to kind of make this this act with myself to not buy any more things from you more stuff i've seen a brilliant cat toy on there so i'm struggling with that already don't you don't need it the cat doesn't need it the cat will be fine the cat will be free well that's an interesting new year's resolution i'm not going to lie first time i've heard that kind of resolution i know it's not very deep is it sorry oh well no not at all that's fine that's fine that works that totally works but the idea was that actually there should be some more deep spiritual things that we should also think about with our new year's resolution and last week we talked about in fact you were one of the people that talked about loving god um and how we should start the new year doing that and this week james is going to carry on that conversation with loving your neighbor so without further ado let's bring on mr james sloan well hello and good afternoon it's great to be with you here on crowd church my name is james i'm here filming from my office so uh do bear with me if anyone knocks on the door or the phone rings uh that's just the nature of where i'm filming today so just a little bit about me before we um kind of dive into today's topic so my name is james sloan i um have a wife hannah uh we've been married for 10 years we actually celebrated our 10 year anniversary in lockdown in december we plan to go away for a romantic break but end up having a takeaway uh whilst we both suffered with covid uh we've got three small children theo's uh six is about five and charlie our youngest is one so with lockdown having just been announced we're back into the the joys of homeschooling and trying to juggle the three of them and out of the home hence me filming in the office today i moved to liverpool about 15 years ago i came with university studied psychology um and really my desire was going to be a clinical psychologist uh working with um adult mental health uh but god really took me on on a journey and as me and hannah were dating at the time we really felt god lead her into a career path and the doors opened and in 2010 i started working for the trying to develop our social action that was happening at the time and in 2012 i set up the charity imagine if trust and i'll come on to that a little bit later on so i've been running that for the last uh eight years and in that time we've grown to employing about 20 staff we run 12 different projects mostly in liverpool with some work over in the democratic republic of congo as well so that's my day-to-day job running that so today we're going to be looking at the second part of mark 12 this passenger on the greatest commandment last week matt john and a few of us touched on what it means to love god and this we're going to be looking at what it means to love our neighbor so i'm going to read the text and they're going to look a little bit the context and then just unpacking it a little bit and looking at some applications that can really speak to us as we move forward into this crazy crazy year so let's get into the text it's mark uh 12 i'm going to just read it through and it's good to familiarize ourselves with it before we unpack it so it's mark 12 28-34 one of the teachers of the law came and heard them debating noting that jesus had given them a good answer he asked him of all the commandments which is the most important the most important one answer jesus is this hear o lord the lord our god the lord is one love the lord your god with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and your strength the second is this love your neighbor as yourself there is no commandment greater than these well said teacher the man replied you are right in saying that god is one and there is no other but him to love him with all your heart with all your understanding and with all your strength and to love your neighbor as yourself is more important than all burnt offerings and sacrifices when jesus saw that he had answered wisely he said to him you are not far from the kingdom of god and from then on no one dared ask him any more questions so let me ask you something have you ever asked a question maybe when you're younger asking your parents or a teacher asking a fairly clever question and expecting a certain response and yet the response you get has taken you by surprise because i think that's a little bit like what's happening here we have a teacher of the law someone who's academic well-versed in the books of the old testament who would have known all of the laws um and potentially many of the teachers of the law would have ranked these from the greatest to the least and maybe there was some debate going on around which were the most important which were the greatest commandments so this teacher the law comes to jesus maybe looking to settle an old debate between him and some of his pals maybe trying to catch jesus out and see what jesus sees to be the greatest commandments and yet jesus response completely takes him by surprise you see these pharisees they knew the law but they didn't always outwork it they they knew what loving your neighbour meant but that didn't mean that they were out on the streets loving all those around them if you've seen the the the film scene as the chosen it portrays this particularly well not to cast them in a bad light per se but to show that they knew everything but didn't always act on behalf of the people who needed god's love so here we see jesus replying and it's no surprise to them that he says the greatest commandment is to love the lord your god with all your heart it's a central um theme throughout judaism and as john harding reflected last week it applies to us in christianity it's central to the gospel into our faith to put god first to put him center in our lives and everything else evolves from that core relationship with god the father but the second part of it may have surprised him somewhat you see in the old testament loving your neighbor often apply to those who are like you so it could have meant your people or the sons of your people or your brother those who you were already um attached to related to in close proximity with so many of the jewish people would have understood that loving god and loving your neighbor meant looking after your own and jesus really came to flip that on its head and say your neighbor is not just those that you are already in contact with your neighbor is those who are unlike you now in our context we've seen many divisions starting to appear i'll come on to a little bit later on but but we're very good at saying us and them and jesus tackled that in a parable called the good samaritan you may have become familiar with it it's taught a lot in sunday schools and it still applies to us today you see this jewish man is on it on the on the road traveling somewhere he's attacked by thieves and left for dead by the side of the road and we see two people walk past him and take no action and the only person to take action is a samaritan well samaritans and jews did not see eye to eye they weren't seen to be two people that should be mixing and the jews often look down on the samaritans as being lesser yet this samaritan man not only rescues the jew from his situation but he takes him to a hotel and pays his bill covers his health care costs and goes the extra mile completely uh unably of what would have been seen at the time and yet jesus says which of those three men that walked past uh the jewish men of inside which of those was acting in his neighbor and jesus is attempting to say we need to break down the barriers of us and them if you love your neighbor you're loving everyone that god has created he created us all equal and jesus wanted to to kind of put us on the same playing field he even goes on further in matthew 5 to say don't just love your neighbor but love your enemies those who have persecuted you those who have shown you judgment of condemnation and ultimately through his death on the cross jesus showed us that we can love our enemies he was surrounded by thieves robbers murderers and yet jesus died so that we could all be reconciled to god ultimately so that the greatest commandment could be fulfilled and that all of us could have an open relationship with god and therefore through that could fulfill the second commandment to love our neighbors so what does it mean to have a lifestyle of love if jesus talked about it uh loving your neighbors not just a law but actually a way to live then what does that mean for us today in the in the 21st century to be people who have a lifestyle that is orientated around love and grace i don't know if you saw the queen's speech um last year but she said this loving your neighbor is the most simple and yet most complicated task of all especially in society as beautiful and diverse as ours is what a fantastic quote from the queen and yet it sums up exactly the problem that we have loving your neighbor sounds so simple whether it be the person who lives next door or someone that you bump into at work or even your family or friends just love them and yet somehow it's become so complex because we're divided by our views on football on music on politics more recently on things like brexit do you want to remain or do you want to leave that really split the nation even around covid everyone suddenly has become a public health expert and people disagree massively especially on social media and so we've almost enforced this them and us well i'm happy to love people who have the same views as me i'm happy to my blue fans or my red fans i'm happy to have those people who think the same as but if they're different it's much more difficult and yet jesus created us all to be one and to love each other and if we love god then we must love those who are like us and those who are not like us john harding uses the term reflex quite often if we love god our reflex is to love those around us to the ones that he created we have to love what god created so how do we kind of apply this in our day to day we have multiple opportunities every day to embody the love of jesus for me as a believer i see it as part of my mission to be loving to to be jesus to those around me it's why we certainly imagine this so that we as a church could provide a loving response that says if jesus was here today he would be feeding the hungry housing the homeless supporting street sex workers all of these things are part of who jesus is and who we are to be in light of that however it requires thought it requires cost it requires sacrifice and to me that's been one of the biggest things i've learned over the last 10 years is that actually to have a lifestyle of love is a huge sacrifice for me it meant putting aside a career that would have been well respected well paid a huge chance of promotion to explore something that i felt called into um for my wife it's meant leaving her career in hospital medicine to support people who have had traumatic birth experiences or experienced sexual assault and yet somehow she finds a complete joy in doing that because she's where god wants her to be but it has been a sacrifice it's been a cost i often think about a um excuse a term but like i love balance imagine if like you get your gas energy um statements and they save your debit or credit how full is your love balance your love account because i would imagine that jesus was just giving out all the time always in debit giving out every opportunity and then being filled up by the father for being filled up in these kind of quiet times on the mountainside with god and i often think if i was to kind of put a number on my my love balance would i be continually emptying it out with um with god filling me up refresh every day it's why often many of us look to have morning quiet times devotional times and frontline post a lot of this every morning that we can uh tune into so how full is your love balance because i think once you are being filled up by god and giving that out that really does make a difference in the world and in the lives of those around you i was looking for some stories to kind of pad this out and to give some examples and i saw um a couple of different stories that really kind of spoke to me one of which was the um the story of the salvation army i don't even familiar with their kind of history but there's a incredible story of a shipwreck and there were some um workers from the salvation army on the boat and uh there weren't enough life rafts to go around so many of the salvation army guys who were wearing life jackets in the cold water would swim around and find others who weren't wearing life jackets and saying do you know god do you know where you're going uh if you don't survive here and those who said no the salvation army guys would take off their life jackets and give them to the others and say go and live a life that is loving of god and loving of those around you essentially repent and find jesus find christian faith because they sacrificed essentially their lives for others the most loving thing that you could do another example with a an author called tony campolo who was in a bar one night and he heard a lady um who was a street sex worker saying it's her birthday and she had no way to celebrate it um now he's a pastor he's an author he's a well-known christian um kind of figure and he took these two ladies and basically threw a huge birthday party for them um essentially keeping them off the streets and showing them his love here imagine if we've seen loads of stories of transformed lives it's one of the things that we measure we are not so keen on how many people we've seen but how many people's lives have we transformed and one of those is a lady called glyan the videos on our website she was a street sex worker we met her through our outreach a couple of years ago we moved here into our accommodation we moved her partner at the time into our men's house and we it wasn't easy but we looked after them and supported them and eventually she kind of found a stable life we helped to engage in volunteering and some training i'm really just worked through all the stuff that had come up from her past and eventually we moved her and her partner out into shared accommodation last year we got a call from them to say that they had had a baby and she was now two and last year before all lockdown this was we had the privilege of moving that two-year-old into our nursery supporting the family as they moved together from the place of chaos to a place of stability and it's an absolute privilege for us to do that but it did require some it did require us to have difficult conversations um and to put up with some challenging conversations and scenarios but if we simply said yes to all of our service users it wouldn't be the loving thing to do we have to be able to um confront behavior we have to be able to bring challenge and bring support and that is what we found across many of our projects is actually the most loving thing to do is actually to be firm and to be fair but to let them know that we love them but we don't um accept some of the behaviors or even the tone that they're speaking to us and really to in many ways repairing people um we might call it discipleship into a different way of living and understanding who they are and who they are in god so love isn't always the easiest choice it's often a challenging conversation a confrontation or even a refusal for me loving my kids doesn't always mean giving them what they want often it means doing those things those different conversations because they need boundaries they need discipline and they need sometimes some some consequences so as we look to love our neighbours we have to look at what the sacrifices might be we might need to count the cost and we need to appreciate that sometimes that could mean a difficult conversation so just to uh to land let's look at some applications and see what we can do and how we can love those around us so what can we do to apply uh this scripture this principle of loving our neighbors as we move into 2021 how can we put it into practice in our lives i've got three very practical um things that we can we can look at but i put as matt suggested last week i put this on twitter to see what kind of response i got i asked a question have you found it easier or harder to love your neighbor during 2020 and the responses were very mixed but very interesting people said it's been it's been both it's been really easy to love those who needed support maybe they were a shielding neighbor or someone that needed some extra support and and we saw that ourselves we had 60 plus volunteers who mobilized to support those who were shielding people who are willing and and keen to show their love for others and those around them and as a city we saw that on a huge scale it's fantastic but people have said it's been really hard um especially on on social media to see friend friends and family posting um their thoughts or opinions on on the covered response and how we should be dealing with it and people found it quite hard to love them in light of what they were saying online so it's both easy and hard to be loving and i think we're going to see more of we want to be loving and yet we find it hard to do that in light of what we often read or see or hear so let's look at three things that can help us as we move into this year to be open and to be loving to those around us the first thing that we need to do is really look out for those around us um i know it sounds simple but actually just to observe and to notice those who are struggling again whether that be a neighbor or a work colleague or a family or a friend is to look out for them recognize what's going on what's changed has their has their behavior changed has their language changed um are they less in contact now than they were maybe they're really struggling they just can't reach out to those around you so being very active and engaging knocking on a door sending a text sending an email to just ask how are you doing um i think we've all recognized how difficult it can be and the effect that can have on our mental health so the first thing is to look out for those around you be observant and pick up on the little signs the second thing for those of us who who believe in prayer is to pray for them even that through gritted teeth for those that you don't necessarily enjoy spending time with or want to support there's something amazing in the power of prayer that if we do it god not only changes our heart but god worked through a situation and often things were difficult certainly become a lot easier to manage so if we seek time in prayer and we call it interceding on their behalf praying that their situation would resolve would get better and that we could be part of that and so praying for those around us praying for opportunities and speaking to their lives and to provide support in any way we can and the third way which is really the most challenging is to to learn to be teachable uh i think we've all got blind spots we've all got things that we need to be aware of and that's why as a church we believe in mission communities having a group of people that we can walk together with the christian faith is not meant to be walked in isolation we're meant to journey with those around us it's how jesus um set up his his group of disciples who were essentially learners the word disciple means to to be a learner and that's true of us today is that we're journeying with jesus as a group together and that's allowing people to speak into our lives allowing um people to be accountable to us and us to them so that we can we can grow to be more christ-like and therefore we can be more like jesus to around us as we reflect on his word and we live it out and we breathe it out and that we can be the body of christ we can be the church in these weeks and months where we cannot be gathering um in person the church is scattered just how it was in acts so as we learn and we are teachable maybe we can be that amazing vibrant scattered church and that we see in the book of acts and new testament so look out for others pray for them and be teachable be moldable as we close i want to just uh quickly recommend three books that you might want to explore as we um look onto this topic the first is love does by bob goff fantastic exciting creative stories of using um the love of god to change situations and to impact people's lives he talks about throwing street parties for a neighbor um suffering from turbulent cancer he talks about taking balloons to people's houses just to tell them he loves him he talks about going to uganda and meeting the the high commissioner and giving them a key to his house as an offer of friendship um and really it just challenges the nature of we would see as being acceptable and he just blows out the water and talks about stories of extravagant and reckless love which is the love of god that we know the second is a book called when helping hurts by steve corbett probably much more of a textbook much more based around mission and how to do mission well it's really benefited me in terms of um the journey of imagine if and looking to support um service users and not to be paternalistic or to be um patronizing trying to fix them but actually looking at what's right what's working well what is god already doing and partnering with that and it's really um aimed at developing worlds mission and how we can support those communities without being the the white savior who turns up to fix everything for people and it's really really spoken to me i really highly recommend it and the third book is a bit closer to home um written by my parents john and myra sloan called five loans and two fishes it's stories and stories from their 20 years of working overseas providing medical missions in uganda guyana the philippines uh the congo i've had the privilege of being on some of those mission trips and seeing some of those stories it's healings miracles god's provision for and it really is just a kind of biography of all these stories of what god's done in their lives that they have put themselves out and walked in faith and trusted him so i'd highly recommend it i think you can get it on on amazon so as we finish let's let's pray that as we navigate these challenging uncertain times that as we um put god first in our lives if we look to him to provide for all that we need even in lockdown that he would use us both individually as the the wider body of church to respond to and to provide practical emotional spiritual support to those around us who might be struggling and in that we can truly love our neighbor wow there you go wow what a brilliant brilliant talk james thank you and so challenging did you find that challenging matt yeah i did i did and you know what i l i loved i always loved to get challenged but the other thing that i loved about this talk was it was deeply practical did you notice that he he everything was deeply practical it wasn't like so spiritual it was no earthly good children yeah yeah really practical i love that such a challenge as well just thinking about um loving your enemies you know it is easy isn't it to show those around us that we love to show love to them but those people that we find difficult at work or you know difficult relationships that really does have a cost that goes with it um so really challenging thank you james yeah it's very hard to love people you don't like i think and uh it's it is very it was yeah spot on and i'm gonna enjoy talking to james in a little bit uh it's is it's gonna be good we're gonna get him on and we're gonna have a conversation about all this sort of yeah questions if anybody's got any questions they want to put in the comments for james um or what's up us on the number which is that is the number around matt uh yeah hang on there it is but there's the number uh what's that ask the question if you don't want to put it on the comments pop it on there and then we can ask james some of your questions later on uh not relating to the quiff uh as came up before but can we relate to imagine if um but yeah brilliant really brilliant and can't wait to um have a bit more of a chat with james in a minute so we're going to go into a little time of worship now we've got the brilliant greg and martha schofield and they've actually written a song it's called only in you jesus um so you can sing along if you know it or if you want to just let the words kind of wash over you or meditate on them you might find that really helpful matt and i were talking about some of the lines in it before and he was saying about the line of you know god is a god of goodness and it's that goodness isn't it it's his goodness in us that overflows and helps us with that love that when we perhaps need a bit more love for those people that we find a bit difficult to love it's that goodness that that helps us with that yeah absolutely so here we go without further ado let's get uh this this on screen i just need to press this button here we go god of goodness all of you anything less than your life giving true could never satisfy my heart can never satisfy only in you do i have it all only in you jesus anything less have it all how great you are how how great how great and beyond measure how great you are how great you are i okay what a fantastic song by greg and martha and has matt pointed out in the comments it worked this week because it didn't work that well last week but it did work that did work well this week and i i think it is such a beautiful song uh by greg and martha there and you can get that actually on youtube you can buy the song if you like no that i'm giving it a plug but it is a song you should definitely have on your worship playlist uh whether you're a christian or not it's just a beautiful song so uh plug there what did you think to it so was that the first time you've heard i loved it that was the first time i've heard that in full yeah and i've really really loved it and i think it's just got such a beautiful message to it as well haven't it and you know whether you know if you don't know jesus then and it says about only in you do i have it all maybe maybe that's the thing that's missing not to say that life is easy or we don't all have the same issues and problems but you know we've got that goodness of god and jesus going through it with us which is amazing very well said very well said thank you so much martha one talented bunch very talented husband and wife going on there very very good and speaking of talented wives my wife uh messaged me um during the live stream uh and just said that actually you know one of the things that she was really intrigued with um when james was talking about uh loving your enemies is how that works if you're not a christian right how does how does that make sense and so this is a really interesting question so i'm going to ask this to james and we're going to try using the power of technology you understand it's the first time we've done this and it's all worked so well so far let's see if we can bring james uh into the live stream here we go james can you hear us i can hear you and we can hear you too which is a beautiful thing fantastic and you can see the quick live line it's not quite as magnificent as it was uh during the talk but it's pretty pretty good i think that might have been down to camera angles i'm not sure i don't know so yeah james i listen um what i want to talk about with you and the reason i really appreciate you coming i really appreciate you doing the talk is we obviously want to talk about imagine if and we want to talk about that charity and trust but before we get into that i'm intrigued what you think about this idea that um you know this question that sharon asked how does loving your enemies work if you don't actually have a christian yeah faith a great question i mean as i talked about i feel that loving both your neighbors and your enemy flows out of your relationship with god if you love god there is no them and us there are no barriers he calls us to love everyone equally and if you don't have a christian faith then you might look at love through a different lens um but i think equally we're still called to be good citizens you know we want to be uh morally ethically and doing all we can to look after each other and especially in a a pandemic i think we're better when we're connected when we're together when we work as one so loving your enemies might just be not responding to something that rather on facebook or social media can i say that happened to me this week yeah yeah daily challenge yes absolutely good answer i like that very good answer very i think the other thing that i i love about this is when you think about it from the other side of it right and why do we love our enemies well because god first loved us and actually god and you mentioned this about when jesus was on the cross wasn't he was surrounded by his enemies and that's actually a moral guide isn't it that's who we can look to and go well you know what he did it god did it god's a god who is good and loved his enemies and it's mind-blowing yeah and that's the great thing about the power of the good samaritan for any jew they've been questioning what what jesus was saying he blows out the water by saying this samaritan guy in this story is able to turn this situation around and rescue a jewish man surely we can break down those barriers in society today uh with the same level of understanding and context that we can apply from the bible yeah brilliant yeah we definitely want to do a bit more of a feature of imagine if we want people to sort of know a little bit more about what it is that you do could you give us like a brief overview of imagine if trust and just the different charities that are part of that please james yeah so i mean imagine if it's a little bit different than many charities and we don't just do one thing we're essentially um a charity that encompasses multiple projects all running under the same banner i really would do that because it came out of the church and the church in a inner city liverpool was there to respond to the needs around us we couldn't turn a blind eye to what's happening on our doorstep and really people have been passionate about that they've really felt god puts in the heart another charity we want to equip those people release them um take care of all the back office admin so that they can be released to do that face-to-face personal contact um and every time that's grown so in the last eight years we've grown from um being fairly small to we're fairly substantial charity now i'll say about 20 staff 12 projects and that ranges from feeding the hungry housing the homeless and providing volunteer befrienders for families who are in crisis or at risk of falling into care um befriending elderly people um all these things that just stand out of recognizing a need and saying we as the church surely can mobilize our people and make a real difference in liverpool yeah and that's that's fantastic and i have in terms of you've been doing this a little while now right the whole imagine if thing and and again just to emphasize imagine if has come out of the church hasn't it and people from the church having a heart for people in the city of liverpool going you know we can do something here we should be you know a bit more practical in in and living uh what are some of the stories um i mean you told us a little bit about leanne in the talk but what's your favorite story there's um there's a couple for me one is um from our work in the congo um that's the only thing we do that is not in liverpool um we've had a ratio with a pastor in the congo for about 10 10 years um and we send teams out there on a regular basis and about two years ago i took chris kent um and you go to these really hopeless situations and the passage says to us would you pray for this family and they've lost everything husbands have been killed sons have been attacked women have been raped and you're left speechless um and chris kind of mustered a prayer together as best he could and prayed a blessing over the home as we left and walked away we both had tears in our eyes um and chris just turned away and went back to the house and just hugged the mother of the family and it's just one of those moments and sticks with you forever you think two completely different lives and yet somehow through the grace of god they're connected you know she has lost more than i will ever lose in my life and more than chris has lost but they were able to connect somehow um and just as beautiful i would i wanted to take a picture of it but i wouldn't dare myself to get the camera out i just sat and enjoyed it so those moments of just connection between um yeah and then was fantastic um but more recently um probably hannah's story is is a great one we've shared a few times but she was referred to us about three years ago she was homeless um was in a hostel they referred to our genesis housing project and um a couple of us gems on the feed did a lot of work with hannah um and really kind of got us a place of understanding what happened uh reconciling the rashi with her mum which was kind of falling apart and she moved back home after about a year and a half to live with her mum took on some volunteering sticky fingers and eventually came on staff about a year and a half ago and about two weeks ago i signed the document for her to get her own flat wow she's living her own so you know in that short time she's moved from complete chaos to complete stability and not only that she's a beautiful person to have around and yeah she's lovely yeah i love it and she's she's great she is great yeah i love that i really loved what you said as well about you know it's not about the numbers you're not interested in the numbers you're interested in the impact that you're having i think that's really important um and you're getting the numbers as well by the impact that that's having you know and passing on to everybody else but yeah that's a fabulous story i just like to ask you james how um how covid has impacted imagineef yeah it's been tough if i'm honest uh i think i i cried when we closed frontline in march uh just hit me really hard just knowing that people would be struggling and we had to shut our doors but we quickly got a plan and you know reopened everything we could as best we could so we're delivering food parcels we mobilized about 60 volunteers to provide shopping for those who are isolated or shielding we started calling all the elderly people to make sure they're okay and dropping food to them the nursery went online and we did circle time and singing time with parents and resume supported our tenants remotely as best we could and obviously that's stabilized a little bit now but we're back in lockdown and back to kind of skeleton bare bones operation um but financially we've been incredibly um grateful to have support from individuals and companies from funding and we're actually about to buy our own property to move people into as a response and just because we're recognizing the amount of homelessness and what that's doing people so um moving to new areas and trying to react adapt innovate in this crazy season it is crazy and that's what jennison genesis housing is all about isn't it it's about um the the church looks after houses brings people who are homeless into them and helps uh read what's the right word rehabilitate them to society yeah i mean they they you can't say what a typical genesis housing tenant looks and some require much more support than others um but really we're there to do all we can whether that's some volunteering opportunities or training or um trying to do job searches for them um just to kind of provide a bit more of a family to help support them into whatever they want and but largely the the aim is to get them into their own preferred tenancy whether that be back with the family or into independent living and we just walk that day with them and that's quite intensive you know we've got seven tenants at a time and that can feel overwhelming to work with certain people at once um but yeah it's a joy yeah so how can people get involved people are hearing about imagining for the first time and they want to get involved what can they do so so broadly there are three things really one is is to pray now that sounds some people quite passive but actually we think that makes a real difference we started prayer walking on a wednesday morning just trying to pray into the local area and asking god to give us words for for the people that live there so especially now in lockdown that's one thing you can really do is just to pray into what we're doing praying for those that we're serving we can make a real difference in their lives when lockdown ends um we do need volunteers for all the things we're doing so there are opportunities to serve and some of those on our website um you want to check that out which is www.imagineeftrust.org and the third thing is you can give and you can either sign up to be a regular donor um or you can um give through the website loads of opportunities to do that as well so we've got companies that give we've got individuals who give and as i said we've got some incredible uh kind of grant funding as well that supports what we do so they're the three main strands to get behind the work what we're doing fantastic and um well it makes sense that people should be in liverpool to help because it's a local charity um but do people need to be a christian or a person of faith to get involved not at all no um we're a christian charity we're very clear about that we are underpinned by christian valleys and we are based in a church building it's not like a church building but it is a church business um but we've got volunteers of all faiths and no faith um but as long as they respect what we believe and how we are work that then there's no requirement uh to be a christian to get involved fantastic well james listen thanks for coming back on you guys do such a fantastic job and it's you know it's such a privilege to be involved in a church that has this social outreach going on and um shout out to james and gemma and everybody else that works imagine if and just thank you for everything you do is it is amazing yeah it's a great stream you guys are legends thank you so much and listen james we're going to have you back on soon we're going to also uh hopefully meet the beautiful gemma if we can convince her to come on camera uh and uh give us regular updates yeah thanks so yeah that's going to be your job i just went yeah um so yeah so we just wanna smack i can't work miracles but you know i'll see what i can do no so you can work miracles come on that's that's what i've been led to believe [Laughter] but listen james it's been brilliant we're looking forward to hearing the stories and having a regular catch up with imagine if we're going to be featuring imagine if a lot more on the crowd stream so uh it feels like it's been too short we've got loads more questions but we are definitely gonna get more from you i have no doubt but james thanks again thanks for coming on the show and thanks for doing the live stream appreciate it guys see you soon bye bye okay wasn't james fantastic there so yeah it was brilliant i love that really really practical really good and what a fabulous charity that you can get behind whatever your beliefs are you know you can see that that charity is doing doing good across liverpool and in the congo as well amazing yeah absolutely absolutely legends well i think uh that's it's probably time to wrap it up now and just to say a big thank you to everybody that's joined us and watched us big thanks again to james for taking the time to do that fab talk and for also coming on and telling us about imagine if that was amazing yeah really really good don't forget that if you'd like any prayer or if you want to get in contact with us at all we've got the whatsapp number or you can go to our website and get in contact with us we'd love to support you if you need any prayer or anything else so please get in touch yeah absolutely we would definitely love to pray for you definitely love to connect with you uh make sure you go to the website fill out the form and we'll email you whenever we are live but we'll be back again here next sunday at 4 p.m where we are going to look at the bigger picture though yes is it time to look at the bigger picture that's what we're getting into next week so make sure you do come back and join us we are going to close out today's service by replaying uh the worship song only in you jesus by gregor martha feel free to sing along feel free to worship uh that's all from sally and i uh sal is there anything left for you to say jess thank you very much for joining and look forward to some more pictures of percy the kitten next week absolutely uh that's that we we genuinely can't wait so uh sal thanks for being me with me this week uh it's been fun have a great week all right bless you guys have a great week we'll see you next week bye for now anything less than all of you only how great am beyond great you are how great you you oh