…in their lunch break. Franklin Fortune was explaining how you can tell all the good players in the World CUp because they have been trained by Man. Utd. We had our monthly get together. It was good.

There were a lot of inspiring testimonies from different people that spanned from:

- someone paying Simon Rosselli’s kids £20 to NOT wash their car as they went on a house to house fundraiser

-to a member in North London who couldn’t sleep one night and went out early at 4.30am to put outreach flyers through her neighbours’ doors. One of them had also found it hard to sleep and had been up praying at 5am; when the flyer with True Parents picture came through the door. She went to our site and found out that there was a prayer evening in LG and came along the same day with her husband to take part.

We discussed the arrival of Father’s biography in a week or so and organising a book launch. And a long list of other topics…

After lunch we had a short presentation on a seminar I had attended on practical time management. I think the concept of learning how to delegate well was an attractive one for all of us. Basically we want to skill up our staff more and organise more training, this was a step towards that:

We meet on Wednesdays now because there is always just too much going on in the communities on the weekend these days. It’s a good sign.

Here are some more pictures:

hello familyfireplace community

getting down to business

(he missed the group pic.) Mind Body United chairman: Chigo gave a good update on the team. They got some silver for best sportsmanship.

Captain Michael Dick and the team

After 3 years of entry our team finally won the Interfaith Diversity Cup here in Scotland which is played amongst a diverse group of religious and charity groups. Today 16 teams took part in this annual 5 aside football indoor tournament played in Edinburgh.

Stephan Williamson (currently in Germany on work experience)organized a team of his university friends who came together in a good display of team unity.

We won the final against a Glasgow side,who were the winners last year,on a penalty shoot out after the final match drew at 2 -2

We not only won the cup, but Murray Scott, our goal keeper won also the man of the match trophy!

Once again I would like to thank the players: Michael Dick Captain, James Steel, Ross Baird, Scott Fusco, Murray Scott, Calum Wright, Murray Scott and also our photographer and kit manager Eric Williamson.

Glasgow Seminar

A Divine Principle Seminar was held in the Ramada Hotel in Glasgow on Saturday, 29th of May. This was the second in a series of Divine Principle seminars to be held in Scotland recently. The first was held at a hotel in Livingston where the lecturer Jack Corley was from Ireland. The second was held in the centre of the city of Glasgow and the lecturer was  Edward Stacey from the west country of England. Flora Robertson our MC guided us skillfully through the programme.

 There were  over 20 participants including members, associates and new guests. One of the young members, Vladik Prichina, has just fulfilled a 7-day fast, followed by a week’s hike on the West Highland Way from near Glasgow to Fort William. He brought two  young women students from his university class to attend the seminar. Ed Stacey, as an elder member of much experience, gave deep lectures on the Creation, Fall and the fulfilment of God’s purpose today. Ed joined the Unification Church in 1971 and has over thirty years of  lecturing experience. His lectures are made all the more vivid by his background as a carpenter (Jesus’ trade), his sincere search for the truth which led him to the Messiah and to become a father of a blessed family (118 Couples Blessing in Lancaster Gate, 1978). The seminar was well appreciated by all.

Inspired by the activities of many of the True Family and the recent witnessing initiatives around the world, the Family Church in Scotland has decided the revive a regular Divine Principle Workshop program.

Our first one-day seminar took place on Saturday, 17th April in Livingston.  We were honored to have Jack Corley, with his experience of presenting Divine-Principle programmes all over the world as our lecturer.  Undaunted by the cancellation of all aircraft flights due to the volcanic eruption in Iceland, Jack drove from Dublin to Belfast, took the ferry from Belfast to Stranraer, where he was met by car for the last leg from South-West to Central Scotland. There was a good turnout of members and guests from Edinburgh, Glasgow and Newcastle.

Jack opened with a video from recent activities in China that he has participated in, an eye opener for all participants. Then we covered key sections from the Divine Principle including the Principles of Creation and the Human Fall, using some recently-introduced content.

It seemed that all participants enjoyed the program as they generated a good spirit throughout the day. As a bonus, Jack shared insights from Father Moon at the next day’s Sunday Service in Edinburgh.

Yoshiko Chellew brought her Japanese friend & Joanna de Souza her Chinese friend, so there were  8 of us listening to William Haines teaching about Adam’s & Noah’s Families  at our weekly Monday evening Divine Principle presentation & discussion at Lancaster Gate.
Why is this important? Well, if our identity is socially constructed by our relationships, then surely the most significant relationships for each of us are family relationships.  Our self understanding comes largely from this source, and in an ideal world, we would all essentially feel that we were a sons/daughters of God.  However, because of fallen human lineage, we are on a roller coaster emotionally as far as our identity is concerned. We tend to invest everything in being British, or being a Man Utd. fan etc.
Because of the Fall, Adam was in the midway position between God & Satan, so neither side could clearly deal with him. Therefore Adam was symbolically divided into his two sons, Cain, further from God, & Abel, relatively closer to God.  If Indemnity is to fix what has been broken, then Abel was in a position to restore the Foundation of Faith by believing & following God’s word, and Cain was put in a position similar to the Archangel, and he had to show by his attitude that he had no relationship with Satan.
William made the story of Cain & Abel more interesting by readings from the Talmud & Koran, showing that how we think & feel & behave are such important conditions in coming to God’s or Satan’s side. God loved Cain, but Satan had a claim on him through his attitude in the offering, so what could God do, except warn him to be careful!
Noah made many conditions to establish the Foundation of Faith, however Ham had to inherit his fathers foundation in order to stand as Abel.  We heard from the Talmud that because of bad conditions, his shameful response to his naked father showed that he was from the lineage of Satan, and God could not use his family’s foundation any more. Sometimes, when we react really badly to a situation, almost out of control, it is because of something we have thought or felt or done, and we should reflect on our conditions. Are we showing the lineage of God, or the lineage of the enemy?
Next week we will hear about Abraham’s family.

I am on the flight back to London from Seoul and taking a bit of time to distil the last 4 or 5 days. It is essential for me to do this, in the context of sharing my thoughts with you, because I went on behalf of and to represent our UK church community. To post my conclusions here is important for me because I want to allow us to have a shared experience that articulates the vision for our church community over the next three years.

on the outside of the ground floor shrine for the 4 great saints

The world mission department staff did a great job taking care of all the national leaders. But when they asked for feedback on what to improve we gave them several suggestions. There was a severe case of information overload and by the end they also realised this. As a result of the multiple power points and case studies there was way too much talking at or to us rather than with us; generally there was a need to develop a more effective process of communication.

That was the toughest part for me to cope with and I regret that I was not more constructive in getting over those frustrations in the heat of the moment.

Aside from that I could salvage some interesting information which I will compile and send out over the next week or two.

Now here is what really made it all click into place:

morning devotion in the temple prayer room on Ahn Shi Il

We concluded our assembly this morning by attending the first Ahn Shil Il in the new ‘mega’ Unification Church temple. Hyung Jin and Yeon Ah Moon were there and he gave an almost one hour long message that washed away most of the frustrations from the previous days.

He spoke with a powerful honesty. Through charting for us his personal journey he cast a clear vision for the Unification Church.

He outlined the Unification Movement’s main problem: Insufficient faith in True Parents as the Lord of the Second Advent; a lack of personal daily awareness of how True Parents have saved our lives by dying for us again and again. He pointed to the fact that many members are not able to be openly proud of these truths as evidence of our need for deeper more personal faith. He pointed to the book of Acts as an example of the type of faith we should aspire to. He referred to himself as an apostle.

He outlined the solution to the problem with two elements: For each of us to get into a life of devotion which allows us to first see True Parents with our spiritual eyes, and secondly gives us the heart and conviction to bring people to accept True Parents as their saviour and lord.

But why us, and why now?

Father is 90 years old and is doing his very best to stick around and give us a chance to help him secure the future. It is us because True Parents have blessed us and given their lives for us more than for anyone else. In that way we are the bridge for True Parents to the world. If it is not us now, then who is it and when?

Pastor Hyung Jin Moon says thank you as he leaves

It is clear that pastor Hyung Jin Nim will keep on repeating this vision until is sticks. But what we must do is unpack it and bring it into a practical set of action steps for our community. We have to flesh it out so that we have a workable strategy and process which will empower each family member and give all of us the opportunity to fulfil the vision: Establishing True Parents as the Way, the Truth, and the Life for building the Kingdom.

I know we all have different approaches and styles of doing what we have got to get done. That is inevitable and fine. Nevertheless we need a recognisable rallying point for all of our efforts. The Sunday before I went to Korea I spoke about our HQ church’s main purpose. We need to focus on teaching the Divine Principle and bringing people to True Parents. We will do many things, but our clear and transparent objective and purpose should be to successfully do these two things.

Again this needs to be unpacked and articulated in more detail. But let us keep our eye on these two purposes and patiently, step by step, answer all the other questions that will spring up as we go along.

I had my video camera ready because I felt in that precious moment all of you needed to be there too!  Here is part 1 of Hyun Jin Nim’s talk at Ahn Shi Il:

On the bus to Incheon airport after leaving the temple this morning I realised we have to thank the Japanese church members for Hyung Jin Nim. It is because of his experience with their faith in True Parents that he is able to provide authentic spiritual leadership. That is why sincere, genuine, personal, mature faith counts. We need those adjectives to qualify the noun, but let us nevertheless remember that faith counts and trumps personality, local culture, and any other relative human factors.

UNfortunately my video camera battery died. But God bless my iPhone, just it doesn’t have a zoom yet. Here is part 2 and 3 of Hyung Jin Nim’s very personal morning message, u might need to turn up the volume or use some headphones for volume:

A personal and public vision: Some people know either at 5, 10, or 16 years old what they want to do in their life: doctor, footballer, musician, accountant. I was never one of those. I never really knew where I was heading until I found God, or rather until God found me. But honestly, I am still figuring out what I should be doing with my life, and I am quite happy with that. Not being resolutely single minded allows me to get a lot of input from a variety of sources (my wife, friends, mentors, God, conscience, etc).

But what about the bigger picture: Where will our UK FFWPU community be in 10 years? Where will this country be? I have always felt more interested in that than my own lot. I get the feeling God looks out for me as much as he can, anyhow. But He wants us to look out for our community and our nation.

finding our direction together

I wrote a long while back about making a 5 year plan for our lives towards 2013, and then at our 2009 God’s Day, January 1st Pledge I confessed to not having a strong vision to where we should be in 10 years, and how this was a problem. So, at least we made a purpose statement and some targets and goals for 2009 that we made progress on, and you can see more detail in our annual report.

I thought this is a good time, 3 weeks before we start 2010, to ask all of you. Where will we be, where should we be, as a Unificationist community in 2020? What should we be doing to plan for the future? Or alternatively, where would you like to be as a Unificationist? There are lots of ways to consider this general line of questioning.

If we have a picture of where we want to be we have more chance of getting there. So let’s paint that picture together and get it up on our wall.

I asked one elder yesterday, and he pointed out we will have a lot of young families emerging over the next 5 to 10 years, and that needs planning in itself.

Please leave your comments below or send me an email.

We need a lot of input here in HQs not only through our own prayer but from our community. So if you have a vision, a plan for something that you would like to take responsibility for or offer up to others to join with you in, put it down in an email or in the comment section below:

Everyone is unique, so tell us what you think…

Did anyone ever ask you: ‘are you blessed?’ while meaning: ‘are you married?’

recently with all the talk about sharing the marriage blessing I thought it would be good to do a series of sermons on ‘what is God’s blessing?’ and look more closely at how we perceive it. It might help to empower us to share more about God’s blessing and True Parents.

Here is my power point from part 1: the blessing equation. It’s missing all the notes, but like with the small group materials on my previous post, leave a request or send me an email if you want them.

In part 2 this Sunday, we will look at how we can recognise and practice the behaviours that bring blessing to our family and community, how God has been trying to teach us these things for a loooong time. How we can go beyond being ‘blessed’ in name and move towards feeling blessed in our every day life.

I am sitting at a long dining table with 14 other people. They are all talking about good things, things that are meaningful; it’s not exactly a free for all, so people are taking their turn to share or express something about their experience towards the head of the table, this takes a long time, but as far as I can see there is nothing to fault their sincerity. But I am just not interested and cannot connect to what is of obvious value to them. In fact so much so I feel bored and frustrated and am thinking if I could just leave the table. (Probably how my kids feel when grandma tells them to not get down from the table until they finish their greens.) And now I feel uncomfortable, because if I am bored then I have to ask myself what is my relationship to these people, people that I work ‘with’.

Suddenly I go beyond my boredom. I realise in a moment that if I take these people to be my family, I don’t need to be interested in what they are saying to be at peace, to just be grateful that I can sit with them, to realise that in one way or another I love them.

And then everything seems to have changed. I have to try hard not to cry. (It is a relatively formal setting for goodness sake.) And then someone who I like to listen to but doesn’t normally like to talk in large groups starts talking, and what he shares is candid and personal and I am still able to be in the moment and I can sense the quality of the others around me even more. I catch the atmosphere in the room that I had over looked, that I had been blind to. And I am just grateful to be in the moment and be with these 14 people.

Then someone else starts talking, and speaking in vague spiritual generalisations about the ‘time we live in’, and I let go of the moment and am back in my narrowness. But it was worth it, and there is a residue of that peace swirling around me.

We all get up from the table.

I go and talk to a friend who is a bit down, and try to help them and cautiously offer them some encouragement, we say a prayer together.
Then I meet a doctor on the stair case, one of our German church leaders, I ask him about my bad leg problem, and he measures my legs against each other, sticks some needles in my hand, and looks at me in a way that makes me feel better already.

Meetings: they are what you make of them, and I am learning…..to not take them at face value.

changing my health almost in a moment

After watching last night’s “controversial” Question Time featuring Nick Griffin of the BNP party, I have to say that I was disappointed. Not one person mentioned the root of the problem, the reason why the BNP got elected in the first place.

The issue is not that the BNP are gaining support. The real under-lying issue here is that people are becoming so disillusioned from politics that they are altogether refraining from voting. If the majority of people out there who COULD vote, actually exercised their right as a British citizen and did it, I highly doubt that the BNP would have even come close to landing a seat in the European Parliament.

Doesn’t #2 of the Cheon Il Guk pledge say “…we pledge to perfect the dutiful family way of… patriots in our nation“? It’s our responsibility as Unificationists to become active and contributing members of society. How can we expect to bring up the standards of society if we don’t engage with it? This includes exercising the basic right of voting, as a bare minimum, in order to ensure that nut-cases like Nick Griffin don’t end up leading this country. (Although I have far too much faith in the general British population to believe that something like that would actually happen.)

If you’re not registered on the electoral poll, do your duty and visit this link to find out how: http://local.direct.gov.uk/LDGRedirect/index.jsp?LGSL=364&LGIL=0