Enough Food for Everyone IF

A dozen of the St John's congregation turned up on Friday 25th January to be part of the launch of a major new campaign to reduce global poverty, along with local MPs and activists from other churches plus a fantastic band from Leighton Park School.

Rev Robert Weston, of Park United Reformed Church explained the reason for the IF campaign:

‘The world produces enough food for everyone, but not everyone has enough food.

Hunger is the greatest scandal of our age.

This year, with the G8 coming to Britain, we can make a real difference if we act together and act now.

The aim of the IF campaign is to tackle the scandal that sees 1 in 8 people in the world go to bed hungry. The food system is broken. There’s enough food, but it’s not going to hungry people who need it to live. We know we can change this. All this suffering and death is preventable IF we persuade our governments to act.

Nearly 100 leading charities have joined together to demand an end to hunger. In June the G8 Summit comes to Britain. This is our chance to end the scandal of hunger. Our leaders will listen IF we act together and act now.’

The Mayor of Reading, Councillor Jenny Rynn gave her support for the IF campaign saying that this could be a major help in achieving the UN’s Millennium Goal to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger.

MP for Reading West, Alok Sharma, gave his full support to the IF campaign emphasising the importance of the government’s commitment to ensure that 0.7% of the United Kingdom’s GDP (Gross Domestic Product) is spent on international development and aid. This contribution helps to alleviate some of the worst poverty and hunger across the globe.

The Bishop of Reading, Bishop Andrew, reflected on his 9 years of ministry in Ethiopia, where he saw first-hand the impact of multinational companies on the lives of poor communities. The displacement of local farmers, to create vast fields of crops to produce biofuels is having a negative effect on the provision of locally grown food for people in Ethiopia, creating food shortages. Bishop Andrew encouraged the crowd outside St Lawrence Church, saying that together we can make a difference and build on the success of the ‘Make Poverty History’ campaign.

MP for Reading East, Rob Wilson, also gave his full backing to the project and drew attention to the scandal of food waste, a contributing factor to the global problem of food shortage. Rob has been involved in an innovative local project to use the fruit grown in local gardens, parks and allotments – which can be used to produce fruit juice, jams and other products.

The crowd of supporters were delighted to enjoy a piece of music written specially for the launch event and performed by students from Leighton Park School. The piece composed by Leighton Park music teacher Chris Mitchell is in a Latin American style, featuring brass and percussion, and the performance is named "Jubilee Shout".

Maranda St John Nicolle, co-ordinator of Christian Concern for One World was delighted with the level of support for the campaign in Reading; saying, ‘It is always encouraging to see such a vibrant community seeking to raise awareness of global issues. I hope others will want to get the message out there: the world produces enough food, but not everyone has enough food. IF we get together, we can make a difference and we can solve this problem.’

At the launch event were:

Mayor of Reading, Councillor Jenny Rynn

Bishop Andrew, Bishop of Reading

Rob Wilson MP

Alok Sharma MP

Rob White, Reading Borough Councillor

Rev Robert Weston, Minister, Park United Reformed Church, East Reading

Rev Neil Warwick, Vicar, St Nicolas Church, Earley

Rev Ali Marshall, Minister, St John and St Stephen Church, Newtown

Maranda St John Nicolle of Christian Concern for One World, Oxford

Hamish Preston of Reading Campaigning Network

There will be Enough Food for Everyone….

• IF we stop poor farmers being forced off their land, and use the available agricultural land to grow food for people, not biofuels for cars.
• IF governments keep their promises on aid, invest to stop children dying from malnutrition and help the poorest people feed themselves through investment in small farmers.
• If governments stop big companies dodging tax in poor countries, so that millions of people can free themselves from hunger.
• IF we force governments and investors to be honest and open about the deals they make in the poorest countries that stop people getting enough food.We want our leaders to act on the four big issues that stop everyone getting enough food.

To sign up to the campaign www.enoughfoodif.org

Advent

The Church's New Year started with a lovely Worship Together service themed on the Jesse Tree. We wrote the names of those in our own spiritual family trees on colourful luggage tags that became the decorations for a very Christmassy looking Jesse Tree.
Over coffee Rosemary told me about the Greenbelt ADVENTurous event she attended yesterday and in particular Ruth Valerio's talk in which she said that it is now generally accepted that there will be a 4C rise in the earth's temperature, (this used to be something we considered the high end of possibilities).Overall it was a bleak picture, although there were some local positive events going on. Later I headed round checking up the thermostats - disappointed to find that every radiator in the refectory was on max.
We did enjoy a lovely church meal with spectacularly good veggie moussaka.

Life in all its fullness

We began the Season of Creation last Sunday with a Worship Together service on the theme of Life in all its Fullness which included some great songs from Greenbelt worship. Afterwards we had a simple but delicious vegetarian meal - it's great when autumn arrives and the puddings start clearly coming from people's gardens (in our case it was the raspberry harvest which has been excellent this year).

Saving Paradise

Bruce Cockburn in the Big Top

 As usual there was a large group of St John's congregation at Greenbelt this year. The theme, Saving Paradise, was inspired by a book of that title (subtitled: How Christianity Traded Love of this World for Crucifixion and Empire)  whose authors were among the speakers (I know Alison made it to a couple of their sessions, I'm planning to download the talks when I get a chance). Both a lovely mini garden at the centre and Soul Space were themed on the four elements (my youngest would happily have spent a lot longer at both) and this theme also flowed through the Sunday Morning Communion - the sunniest part of the festival this year. Indeed we did experience the elements very much with strong wind, lightning,and torrential rain sending rivers along the paths and turning part of the site into a lake of mud (which the children loved even if some of us struggled with it!) There was a venue especially devoted to environmental issues, named Eden - Paul Kerensa opened in there with a genuinely funny take on climate change. Around the side of it were some inspiring small sets including an inspiring piece on SPEAK's Bardic Bike Tour that Fish had set up (maybe others did too, I just happened to see Fish in there).