Orders have started arriving in SGM Lifewords‘ UK office this week for UCCF’s latest gospel project, FREE. Christian Unions around the country will be giving away hundreds of thousands of copies of Mark’s gospel, and SGM Lifewords is handling the distribution.

For more information, visit the UCCF site. Copies are available in boxes of 100, for student use. Loads of extra resources can be downloaded from the site, including Bible studies, posters and graphics files.

Please note: all orders are handled through UCCF.

Change is afoot in Romania. With European Union membership starting in 2007, the country is seeing good economic growth, and there is a sense of progress and optimism. Unfortunately not everyone is included in that progress, as Romania’s Gypsy community continues to be overlooked. SGM Lifewords supporters Florin and Marianne Oprescu are working to change that.

Florin and Marianne live in Pitesti, Romania, combining Christian mission with social projects aimed at breaking dependency and helping families to provide for themselves. This involves teaching the community how to make better houses or sewage systems, how to grow crops on their often barren land, or rearing goats for milk.

Florin and Marianne are particularly involved with the children, caring for some 600 children between three villages, helping them through school. Often there is real resistance from the parents, as they would prefer their children to be earning money than getting an education. Even if they are in school, teachers say Gypsy children are a challenge. They often have to repeat years, they don’t do homework. They know that as a Gypsy it will always be harder for them to get a job even if they succeed, so they lack the hope for the future that would motivate them to study hard.

Florin and Marianne are committed to speaking and being life words among the Gypsies, and are using SGM Lifewords materials to start conversations. Florin says: “We thought Bible booklets would be helpful, especially because we know each person that we are giving them to. We do Bible study and songs every week with a group of teenagers and we gave them each a booklet. Together with them we studied the booklets, with the Bible next to it, using them as a way to start discussions with the teenagers and explain some things in more depth. We see God at work in the children’s and teenagers’ lives. The progress is slow, but we have started seeing changes in their way of thinking and behaviour.”

Florin gives an example of a Georgiana, a girl of 17 who is orphaned and living with her boyfriend Bebe. She recently became a Christian and has started reading the Bible and praying with Bebe. However, Bebe does not want to commit his life to Jesus, because he makes a living by selling stolen wood, which he knows is wrong. He claims there is no other possibility for him to make money. “We are trying to teach them that God can provide in all things, if you trust in Him” says Florin.

• Join us in praying for Florin and Marianne and their work.
• Find out more about our range of conversation starters.
• Photo by Chrystel Rigaud.

Colin Greene (SGM Lifewords‘ Head of Mission and Theological Development) and Martin Robinson have just written a new book looking at the future for the Bible, Church, and Mission in “post-postmodernity” … Definitely worth a read. The chapters on Cultural Engagement and Biblical Theology are particularly thought-provoking. You can get the book from Amazon or Paternoster … or check out the Metavista website to find out more about the book, and the wider conversation around the issues.

Supporters in Klagenfurt, Austria are sharing the Bible’s life words with football fans this week, as the country is invaded by thousands of visitors for the Euro 2008 tournament.

Operating from a roadside bus parked between the centre of town and the stadium, the team are inviting passing fans in for tea and coffee and a chat, as a simple way of serving the visitors and sharing the faith. Take-up is, needless to say, very good on match days, and SGM Lifewords has been able to help with a supply of literature in a variety of European languages.

A recent report from the University of Warwick suggests cathedrals may serve Christian visitors better than non-Christian visitors. In a survey at St David’s Cathedral in Wales, the research team found that visitor experiences were quite different between those who professes Christian beliefs, and those who did not.

Visitor satisfaction was very high among regular church attenders - 97% said they found the cathedral inviting, 95% said it was uplifting, 87% ‘awe-inspiring’ and 77% said they felt a sense of God’s presence. Among those who did not attend church regularly, 88% found it inviting, 77% ‘inviting’, 68% ‘awe-inspiring’. Just 18% felt a sense of God’s presence.

This may not be particularly surprising, considering visitors pre-dispositions. For Christians, cathedrals can be a place of deep spiritual significance, whereas casual visitors may consider them buildings of primarily historic or architectural interest. However, the survey also covered the cathedral shop. Christian visitors were much more likely to purchase something, and to approve of the overall range. 74% appreciated the range on offer, and 55% made a purchase. Only 41% of non-Christian visitors thought the shop offered a good range, and just 31% bought something.

This is perhaps more telling, the researchers suggest, as it shows the cathedrals’ target market is skewed towards Christians, and positions the cathedral as serving Christian needs first. “This strategy,” says author Emyr Williams, “misses the great challenge held out by the Archbishops’ Commission on Cathedrals of engaging in their mission of teaching, evangelising and welcome among secular tourists. More problematic still is the implication of the finding that the focus of the cathedral shop is symptomatic of the positioning of the whole cathedral which seems to understand the secular visitor so much less adequately than it understands the pilgrim.”

As we have discovered in our own research for our Historic Churches programme, each cathedral has its own approach for reaching out to visitors. Some have produced audio tours, invested in multimedia elements, or commissioned new artworks. Others run regular, easily accessible services at various points in the day. Some have experimented with special events, from late night opening at the weekends to spirituality fairs or Narnia theme days. Whatever the individual response has been, most cathedrals recognise that the needs of pilgrims and tourists need to be held in balance. This was notable at the Mission Shaped Cathedral event, which saw dozens of cathedrals represented at a consultation in Coventry to discuss the unique role of their buildings in mission.

This is a conversation we are engaged in ourselves at SGM Lifewords. Our Historic Churches programme aims to help churches to think through the welcome offered to visitors, at whatever stage of faith they may be. Our prayer cards are designed to facilitate prayer for those who are perhaps unfamiliar with praying. The Look Around You card is a fold-out tour of any church building, that leads visitors around the building, using the architectural features as cues for reflection. Each title was developed in consultation with practitioners, and several cathedrals are using these materials already, including Manchester, Oxford and Coventry. We are also developing interactive prayer stations, offering visitors a point of response to what they see, hear and feel while in the ’sacred space’ of a church building. We are still exploring the many ways to use church buildings in mission, but we would hope that wherever the conversation takes us, secular tourists as well as pilgrims would encounter God in our historic churches.

• The full report is entitled Visitor experiences of St David’s Cathedral: the two worlds of pilgrims and secular tourists. It was first published in the Rural Theology journal.