Author Archives: Stephen Sizer

Little Town of Bethlehem Premier: Virginia Water Sunday 28th November

Christ Church, Virginia Water is hosting a UK premier of the film Little Town of Bethlehem on Sunday 28th November at 2.00pm. Free admission. For travel details see here

Little Town of Bethlehem, a documentary film, follows the story of three men of three different faiths and their lives in Israel and Palestine. The story explores each man’s choice of nonviolent action amidst a culture of overwhelming violence.

The film examines the struggle to promote equality through nonviolent engagement in the midst of incredible violence that has dehumanized all sides.

Dr Bishara Awad, the Principal of Bethlehem Bible College and the father of Sami Awad is due to speak at the 11.00am and 6.30pm services at Christ Church, Virginia Water on Sunday 28th November, as well as introduce the film at 2.00pm.

Little Town of Bethlehem: The Story

Sami’s story begins as a young boy living in the Israeli-occupied West Bank; Yonatan’s starts on an Israeli military base; and Ahmad’s begins in a Palestinian refugee camp.

Their three stories are interwoven through the major events of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, starting with the 1972 massacre at the Munich Olympics and following through the first Intifada, suicide bombings in Israel, the Oslo Accords, the assassination of Yitzchak Rabin, and the second Intifada. Sami, Yonatan, and Ahmad each describe the events from their unique perspective, interjecting personal reflections and explaining how these events led them to become involved in the nonviolence movement.

In Bethlehem, the city where it is said that God became man, Sami just wants to be seen as human. First learning about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. as a teen, he began lecturing about nonviolence in high school. Later, Sami traveled to India to learn more about Gandhi. As the result of his discoveries, he founded the organization Holy Land Trust to promote nonviolence in the Palestinian community.

Yonatan embraced his father’s legacy as a pilot in the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) and fulfilled his own dream of becoming an IDF helicopter pilot. However, his journey led him to the astonishing decision to join with 26 other IDF pilots who publicly refused to participate in missions that would lead to civilian casualties. Co-founding the organization Combatants for Peace, made up of former Israeli and Palestinian combatants, Yonatan struggles to reconcile his love for his country with his growing opposition to the Israeli occupation.
After studying in Spain, Ahmad returned to Bethlehem to become a nonviolence trainer. Despite the daily challenges of living in a refugee camp, Ahmad remains committed to his community and risks his life and livelihood in nonviolent actions to bring an end to oppression.

For their work, Sami and Ahmad have been labeled as “Israeli collaborators” by some within the Palestinian community, and are seen as a threat to security by the Israeli military. By refusing to participate in offensive military actions against Palestinian civilians, Yonatan has been branded a traitor by some Israelis and can no longer work in his homeland.

All three men have had their lives threatened by members of their own communities as a result of their work. Sami, Yonatan, and Ahmad continue to embrace their common humanity and equality for all, daring to have the hope that peace in the Holy Land can be achieved through nonviolent struggle.

Most films will entertain you. Good films will educate you as well. Brilliant films will engage and move you to action. Once in a while along comes a film that motivates you to become a participant rather than spectator. This is one of those rare films.

Purpose Driven Worship (Nehemiah 12)

Purpose Driven Worship (Nehemiah 12) from Stephen Sizer on Vimeo.

Today is the anniversary of the first ever manned flight in the history of the world. The journey took place on 21st November 1783 when the French physicist Pilatre de Rozier and the Marquis d’Arlandes lifted off in a hot air balloon from the Bois de Boulogne in Paris. They floated free for 25 minutes, crossing the Seine and landing five miles away. For the first time in history people travelled through the air. In the large audience that day was the American ambassador to France, Benjamin Franklin. When asked by a friend what good a balloon flight would do, Franklin replied, “And what good is a new-born baby?” Franklin had the foresight to realise that there might be a useful purpose in flight. On 21st November 1783 most people hadn’t a clue what the purpose of flight might be.  And 227 years on, some people still haven’t worked out what their purpose in life is.

The Westminster Shorter Catechism is considered to be the grandest doctrinal statement to come out of the Reformation. Composed of 107 questions and answers, the most famous of which asks: Q. What is the chief end of man? A. Man’s chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy him forever.

A rather more contemporary, simplified and popular version was written by Rick Warren and called The Purpose Driven Life. He writes, “If you want to know the purpose of life, you have to either talk to the creator who made you, or look in the owner’s manual. You were made by God and you were made for God.  And until you understand that, life isn’t going to make sense.” In The Purpose Driven Life, Rick Warren says God has five purposes for your life:

1. Worship – We were planned for God’s pleasure
2. Fellowship – We were formed for God’s family
3. Discipleship – We were created to become like Christ
4. Ministry – We were shaped for serving God
5. Evangelism – We were made for a mission

Today, we’re going to look at the first of God’s purposes and see how God’s people discovered them in Nehemiah’s day.

Our first purpose in life is to glorify God.  It’s our primary objective.  It’s our highest priority.  Our number one purpose in life.  And we have a fantastic team of musicians and singers at Christ Church who assist us in our praise and worship.But when you hear the word “worship,” what do you think of? What does Nehemiah 12 say?  The chapter before us today describes the dedication service for the newly constructed walls. The Levites were brought,

“to celebrate joyfully the dedication with songs of thanksgiving and with the music of cymbals, harps and lyres… I also assigned two large choirs to give thanks.” (Nehemiah 12:27-31).

Three words in verse 27 summarise our primary purposes in worship: Celebration, thanksgiving and dedication take us to the heart of what worship is all about.

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Little Town of Bethlehem at Christ Church 28th November

Christ Church, Virginia Water are hosting a UK premier of the film Little Town of Bethlehem on Sunday 28th November at 2.00pm. Free admission. For travel details see here

Little Town of Bethlehem, a documentary film, follows the story of three men of three different faiths and their lives in Israel and Palestine. The story explores each man’s choice of nonviolent action amidst a culture of overwhelming violence.

The film examines the struggle to promote equality through nonviolent engagement in the midst of incredible violence that has dehumanized all sides.

Dr Bishara Awad denied exit visa

Dr Bishara Awad, the Principal of Bethlehem Bible College and the father of Sami Awad is due to speak at the 11.00am and 6.30pm services at Christ Church, Virginia Water on Sunday 28th November, as well as introduce the film at 2.00pm. However, the Israeli military authorities have so far denied him an exit visa to leave the ghetto prison of Bethlehem.

Little Town of Bethlehem: The Story

Sami’s story begins as a young boy living in the Israeli-occupied West Bank; Yonatan’s starts on an Israeli military base; and Ahmad’s begins in a Palestinian refugee camp.

Their three stories are interwoven through the major events of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, starting with the 1972 massacre at the Munich Olympics and following through the first Intifada, suicide bombings in Israel, the Oslo Accords, the assassination of Yitzchak Rabin, and the second Intifada. Sami, Yonatan, and Ahmad each describe the events from their unique perspective, interjecting personal reflections and explaining how these events led them to become involved in the nonviolence movement.

In Bethlehem, the city where it is said that God became man, Sami just wants to be seen as human. First learning about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. as a teen, he began lecturing about nonviolence in high school. Later, Sami traveled to India to learn more about Gandhi. As the result of his discoveries, he founded the organization Holy Land Trust to promote nonviolence in the Palestinian community.

Yonatan embraced his father’s legacy as a pilot in the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) and fulfilled his own dream of becoming an IDF helicopter pilot. However, his journey led him to the astonishing decision to join with 26 other IDF pilots who publicly refused to participate in missions that would lead to civilian casualties. Co-founding the organization Combatants for Peace, made up of former Israeli and Palestinian combatants, Yonatan struggles to reconcile his love for his country with his growing opposition to the Israeli occupation.
After studying in Spain, Ahmad returned to Bethlehem to become a nonviolence trainer. Despite the daily challenges of living in a refugee camp, Ahmad remains committed to his community and risks his life and livelihood in nonviolent actions to bring an end to oppression.

For their work, Sami and Ahmad have been labeled as “Israeli collaborators” by some within the Palestinian community, and are seen as a threat to security by the Israeli military. By refusing to participate in offensive military actions against Palestinian civilians, Yonatan has been branded a traitor by some Israelis and can no longer work in his homeland.

All three men have had their lives threatened by members of their own communities as a result of their work. Sami, Yonatan, and Ahmad continue to embrace their common humanity and equality for all, daring to have the hope that peace in the Holy Land can be achieved through nonviolent struggle.

Most films will entertain you. Good films will educate you as well. Brilliant films will engage and move you to action. Once in a while along comes a film that motivates you to become a participant rather than spectator. This is one of those rare films.

Dr Bishara Awad at Christ Church on 28th November

Dr Bishara Awad, the Principal of Bethlehem Bible College is due to speak at the 11.00am and 6.30pm services at Christ Church, Virginia Water on Sunday 28th November, as well as introduce the film Little Town of Bethlehem at 2.00pm. However, the Israeli military authorities have so far denied him an exit visa to leave the ghetto prison of Bethlehem.

Please write to your nearest Israeli embassy asking them  politely to grant Bishara an exit visa.

How to Love Your Enemy (Matthew 5:43-48)

How to Love Your Enemies (Matthew 5 43-48) from Stephen Sizer on Vimeo.

You either love him or loathe him. He is one of the most popular, well known, larger than life faces on TV. Usually Jeremy Clarkson is to be seen extolling the virtues of shiny new cars on BBC2’s Top Gear. But a while back he talked with a passion of something far more fundamental – the often forgotten heroism of men who risked their lives for their country.

Clarkson presented a BBC documentary, “The Victoria Cross: For Valour”, examining the stories of some of our VC heroes, focusing on the one he found so personally inspirational, including his father-in-law he never knew but deeply admired.

The scene was Holland, in mid-September 1944. Airborne forces were attempting to capture a key bridge at Arnhem during the ill-fated Operation Market Garden.

Major Robert Cain commanded a company of the South Staffordshire Regiment. These men landed eight miles from the so-called “Bridge Too Far” where the British were fighting desperately to retain their foothold at the north end. Disaster struck. The Germans sprang an ambush and 300 of our men lost their lives, including two of Robert Cain’s closest friends.

With the remnants of his force retreating, Major Cain and the remainder of the company had a stark choice, to fight or surrender. And fight they did, losing another 40 men before being ordered to the last-stand defence of a village surrounded by 6,000 German troops armed with tanks, rocket launchers and 100 heavy guns. Single-handedly, Cain destroyed three Tiger tanks, standing in the open. He was temporarily blinded but after recovering, he turned the defence into a counter attack with such ferocity that the Germans were eventually forced to withdraw, allowing Cain’s men to escape across the Rhine.

For his courage and leadership, Major Robert Cain received the Victoria Cross, the highest, most prestigious award bestowed for gallantry. It is a sobering to remember that nine out of every 10 recipients died in the action which led to their being honoured. In its 149-year history, only 1,354 have ever been awarded, and as Clarkson discovered, the feats of the men who received it were truly remarkable. Major Robert Cain was one of the few who survived to enjoy the honour of being presented with his VC.

Jeremy Clarkson was clearly moved by the stories he told in the programme, not least that of his own father-in-law. And it prompted him to ponder a simple question which, in this period of remembrance for British soldiers lost in battle… I want us to spend a little while reflecting on this morning…  He asked: “How can we call the likes of David Beckham a hero for scoring a goal?  I wonder who your heroes are today?  And what about your children and grandchildren? Who are the heroes pinned to their bedroom walls?  What kind of people do you aspire to be like? What kind of people do we want our children to aspire to be like?

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Making a Covenant with God (Nehemiah 10)

Renewing the Covenant with God (Nehemiah 10) from Stephen Sizer on Vimeo.

Nehemiah 10 is all about the solemn agreement God’s people made.  As we consider it’s significance and relevance, I want us to answer three questions.  1. Why did they make this covenant?  2. Who made the covenant?  3. What did they covenant?

1. Why did they make this covenant?

1.1 Because the Lord had covenanted with their fathers. (9:7-8)

1.2 Because the Lord had protected them. (9:9-15)

1.3 Because the Lord had chastised them. (9:16-37)

1.4 Because they were now determined to change (9:38).

“In view of all this, we are making a binding agreement, putting it in writing, and our leaders, our Levites and our priests are affixing their seals to it.” (Nehemiah 9:38)

They meant business. They wanted to begin again.
They wanted to repent of the past. They wanted to start again in the future. I hope you want to today as well. That is why they made this covenant.

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Robert Murray McCheyne’s Church Hosts Seminar on Christian Zionism

Porter Speakman Jr and I gave presentations today at a seminar on Christian Zionism hosted by Solas: The Centre for Public Christianity based at St Peter’s Free Church of Scotland in Dundee.

One of my spiritual heroes, Robert Murray McCheyne was the pastor of St Peter’s between 1831-1843. One of his particular passions was ministry to Jewish people. In 1839 along with Andrew Bonar, Alexander Black and Alexander Keith, McCheyne made a six month visit to Palestine to examine the condition of the Jewish people in Europe and Palestine. His only published book was a result of that tour – a joint effort with Andrew Bonar – The Narrative of a Mission of Inquiry to the Jews.

It was doubly significant therefore that Porter Speakman Jr, the producer of the film With God on our Side, showed a preview and spoke about his ministry in Israel/Palestine, and I gave a short paper on the Bible, Israel and the Church.

We had a fruitful and constructive two hour bible-based discussion with about 25 evangelical church leaders from the Presbyterian, Church of Scotland, Baptist and Free Church of Scotland. While many identified with a Christian Zionist perspective, we were nevertheless unanimous in our desire that Jews and Palestinians hear the good news of Jesus Christ and come to live together in peace and reconciliation.

The seminar was also recorded by Thistle Channel TV for a programme on Christian Zionism. Local Christian leaders also hosted the film With God on our Side at the Hilton International Hotel in Dundee last night.

Frankie Schaeffer Reviews With God on Our Side

Two men shaped my early Christian thinking probably more than all the others combined – John Stott and Francis Schaeffer, to whom I will be eternally grateful. I met Francis Schaeffer’s son Frankie two years ago and we dialogued about our mutual interest in the Middle East and our concern about the destructive influence of Christian Zionism.

Frankie has now written a review of our new film With God on our Side in his own inimitable style.  Here’s a taster:

The so-called Jewish lobby is supposed to be so powerful that no American president can act without their approval. This is an anti-Semitic slur, a kind of Americanized “lite” version of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (a forged anti-Semitic screed purporting to describe a Jewish plan to achieve global domination). For one thing most Jewish-Americans aren’t part of this lobby, but rather are ordinary American citizens who are just as skeptical of right-wing Jewish Zionist fundamentalist Israelis as other Americans are — perhaps more so, because they know more about them.

The truth is that when it comes to pandering to powerful religious/ethnic “blocs” in the US the biggest game in town is the across the board bowing to the white Evangelical “base” of the Republican Party. That’s the bloc of voters that adds up to real numbers, as high as a third of the American voting population.

It’s the Christian Zionists who have driven American foreign policy over a cliff. (I’m speaking here as the proud father of a Marine, who was sent to war in the Middle East, again and again.) Christian Zionists continuously jeopardize our future by putting the promotion of harebrained interpretations of biblical “prophecy” ahead of the well being of both Israel and the US.

To the Christian Zionists “defending Israel” is just a handy pretext for indulging their obsession: egging on, even “helping” the fulfillment of “biblical prophecies” about the “return of Christ.” But their worst sin isn’t just embracing dumb “theology” but that they have enabled a nefarious group of losers to irreparably harm America and contribute to the needless killing of our men and women in uniform worldwide: the neoconservatives.

To the neoconservatives “defending Israel” is just a handy pretext for upholding the myth of “American exceptionalism” for profit and nationalistic “glory,” of the kind that was supposed to have gone out of fashion when hubris and stupidity got half the young male population of Europe killed in World War One.

America needlessly went to war in Iraq because neoconservative war mongers — who laugh at the “those rubes” as they think of earnest Evangelical Christian Zionists, and whose own sons and daughters seem notably absent from our armed services — used the religious passion and dedication of conservative Evangelicals to provide political means and cover for the neoconservatives’ commitment to America’s military dominance of the world. In other words the Evangelicals provided the votes to put foolish war mongers like George W Bush in power.

With “friends” like the Christian Zionists and the neoconservatives Israel, America, our men and women in uniform, the Palestinians and the rest of humanity need no enemies. This is made poignantly clear by a new film, With God On Our Side.

With God On Our Side is the most powerful, humane and compassionate documentary exposé of the Christian Zionist movement, and the impact of their ideology on the lives they have touched (and ruined), ever made. It is well crafted, subtle and fair. And — notable in the “when hell freezes over” department — it was directed and produced by… an American Evangelical.

Read the rest here

Frank Schaeffer is a writer and author of Crazy for God: How I Grew Up as One of the Elect, Helped Found the Religious Right, and Lived to Take All (or Almost All) of It Back

Joshua and the Pile of Stones (Joshua 24)

What is an anniversary? What anniversaries do you celebrate in your family? Why do we celebrate wedding anniversaries, husbands? For a quiet life? No, because we are thankful that our wives put up with us… Remembering our anniversary helps us give thanks for one another. Helps us renew our commitment to one another. Helps us try harder in the future. That’s why we are encouraged when we hear of couples celebrating their 25th, 30th, or 50th wedding anniversary.  Do you remember your parents anniversary? Think about it. If they hadn’t got married you probably would not be here. Anniversaries are important.

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