2 Corinthians integrity.

Not peddling the word of God be a valid message of the gospel in our lives.

4:1 no capitulation. There is such a lot of pressure to give in. “Do not lose heart”!

He who has prepared us for this very thing is God. 5:5

Last night, we had some lentils, some mushrooms, and a rapidly ageing squash in the cupboard. And we wanted dinner, and I fancied cooking, and so we decided to make the best of those limited ingredients.

I tried some of those recipe suggestion sites, but they all basically gave up at “lentils”, let alone “butternut squash”, so I decided to throw things together and just hope for the best. Thus, my disclaimer below will be even more relevant than usual…

Lentil and Garlic Bread

This bread is surprisingly tasty, and very filling. Try not to overdo the lentils, or it will be very heavy.

• Small onion
• At least a hundred cloves of garlic (or maybe just 1-2)
• 70g red lentils
• 250mls vegetable stock
• 300g white bread flour
• 1 packet instant dried yeast
• 1 Tbsp sugar
• 1 Tbsp salt
• Beaten egg

1. Fry a bucketload of garlic, with a small onion, very thinly sliced.
2. Add the lentils and the vegetable stock, and cook for 10 minutes, until the lentils are soft and cooked, and the vegetable stock has mostly evaporated.
3. In a big mixing bowl, add the yeast, salt, sugar and flour. Mix ‘em together, then add the lentil-garlic mix, and knead together with hands.
4. Keep kneading until you have one big lumpy ball of dough, no longer sticky. You may need to add more flour.
5. Chuck it on the worktop with plenty of flour, and knead it and fold it into itself for about 5 minutes – this is to get air into the dough.
6. Leave it in the bowl somewhere warm for an hour, with a damp teatowel over the top.
7. Start making the Butternut, below. Then you can have a cup of tea, and come back to 8…
8. Take it out of the bowl – it should have doubled in size – and knead it a little bit more, rolling it into rolls or small loaves. As you can see in the picture, I made some braided rolls. Leave the rolls to rise for half an hour.
9. Whilst this is happening, you can sort out the stuffing for the butternut below…
10. Using a pastry brush, paint egg all over the rolls, to give a nice crispy brown shell, and pop the rolls in the oven with the butternut. When the rolls are brown, everything is ready.

Stuffed Butternut Squash

• A butternut squash, obviously
• Olive oil
• Salt & pepper
• Vegetables for the stuffing
• Roughly 4 tbsp sugar
• Two slices of bread
• Beaten egg
• A small pile of grated cheese

1. Take a butternut (trying not to notice how phallic it is) and cut it in half along its length. Scoop out the seeds and stuff in the hole, then sprinkle it with a little oil, and season like crazy with salt and pepper. Score the top with a big knife in a cross cross pattern – this helps it cook faster, and looks professional too! Chuck it in the oven for about an hour at 190°C (fan oven).
2. Whilst that’s cooking, don’t forget to skip up and roll out the bread. Then you can come back here and do step 3…
3. Take some mushrooms, onions and peppers (or whatever veg you want – no meat, you murderers). I used about 8 mushrooms, 2 small onions and a pepper – but it can be more depending how big the hole in your squash is. Chop them all into small strips, and fry them with some herbs. Once they are cooked through, add the sugar, and mix until the sugar makes everything go nicely brown (caramelised).
4. Gently toast some bread a couple of times, until its rock solid (but not burnt). Crumble the toast up in your hands until its mostly breadcrumbs, and mix it with the egg and grated cheese.
5. Take out the slightly browned butternut halves, gloop all the caramelised vegetables into the holes, and cover them with a thick layer of the eggy, bready, cheesey mix. Pop it in the oven for 15-20 mins and Bob’s your caramelised, stuffed and breadcrumbed uncle.
6. Don’t forget to finish the rolls above now…

I’ve spent many years playing with pizza recipes – my wife and I even created our own “How to make Pizza” recipe poster on our honeymoon. 

So when Now Then magazine put out a call for vegan recipes,  it seemed a good opportunity to provide my Calzone recipe. Here it is, in all its glory: enjoy!

Ingredients

• About 200g of strong bread flour (around 12% protein is best).
• Warm water.
• Few spoons of salt.
• Few spoons of sugar.
• Dried instant yeast (assuming you aren’t a brand of vegan that cares about fungi. If you do, miss out the yeast, it’ll still work, but the bread won’t be as tasty).
• Tomato passata (the own brand stuff from Co-op works fine).
• Veg.
• Herbs/spices.
• Vegan mozzarella style cheese.
• Soya milk.

Recipe

Dough

1. Prewarm the oven to 70°C (If you want to get the dough ready quickly. It’ll be tastier if you leave it to rise over 4 hours without extra warmth, but it’ll take 4 hours.)
2. Mix the salt, sugar and yeast in a bowl.
3. Stir in the flour, so it’s all nicely mixed.
4. Carefully add water, mixing by hand, until you have one non-sticky ball of dough.
5. Knead it on a floured surface for about 5 minutes, until your hands ache.
6. Turn off the oven, chuck the dough back in the bowl, cover the bowl with a teatowel, and put the bowl in the oven.
7. Leave to rise for an hour.
8. Take it out, knead it some more, and roll it into flat round pizza bases.

1. Fry a load of onions, peppers, mushrooms, garlic, chilli, spinach, soya mince – whatever you want in your calzone.
2. Mix in some herbs & spices – I usually use mixed herbs, paprika and mild chilli powder (but loads of it, so you get the taste of the chilli coming through).
3. Put a few dollops of passata in with the veg.
4. Heat the rest of the passata in a pan/microwave.

1. Preheat oven to 230°C – the higher the better.
2. Pop a pizza base on an oven tray.
3. Dollop veg in to the middle.
4. Cover the veg in cheese – you can use soft cheese, or nothing, if you prefer.
5. Using a pastry brush, make the edges of the base wet with milk.
6. Fold it over, and squidge the edges together to seal it.
7. Paint the whole top with milk, to make it go extra brown in the oven.
8. Cook for 10ish minutes, until brown.
9. Serve with hot passata on top

Then eat all yours, then eat what your wife couldn’t manage, then look longingly at the one saved for tomorrow… Man, do I love pizza…

On Sunday, our little family got a little bigger. The beautiful Neriah Grace Lowry came into the world at 7:30pm. Just like Joen, the journey to Neriah was hard work.

Once again, thanks to everyone who followed the blow-by-blow account on twitter – read it here - including at least two people over the age of 80. Who says social media is just for young people? Anyway, enough of that, on with the story…

I’m currently working in Lincoln, around 1-2 hours from our home in Boston, and in the month preceding labour, Katherine seemed to enjoy sending me texts containing phrases like “baby’s coming!”. I would frantically call her, where she would explain that she simply meant “at some point”, so she was tidying the house in preparation. By my estimate, I had at least 4 heart attacks in January because of communication like this.

On Friday, my parents-in-law came up to help look after Joen. I have successfully not thrown milk at either of them, which is a significant improvement over last time! It was brilliant to have them around so Joen could get used to them before we disappeared to the hospital.

Just like last time, we sailed past the due date (15th January), and ended up going into labour a few days before we were booked for induction. On Saturday at 4pm-ish, Katherine started to have her first sporadic contractions. By 7pm, they had become regular and painful.

12 hours later, there was very little progress. Lots of pain, but no progress.

At half 8, they were down to every 2 minutes, and rather intense. We rang the hospital, who advised us to come in. I was a little hesitant to do this, since last time she’d had similar symptoms for 10 hours+, but was only 3cm dilated when we made it in to hospital. However, deciding it was for the best, we threw everything into the car and scurried over to the labour ward.

As the tweet below shows, I was right not to be too keen:

From this point until 10:30am – about 12 hours later, there was very little progress. Lots of pain, but no progress. One midwife thought she was up to 4cm, but on re-examination 5 hours later, a different midwife felt that this couldn’t be the case.

They decided to break her waters at 11, which really kicked things off - she had 12 very painful contractions in the space of 30 minutes. She soon ran out of relief from the gas and air, and was given her first dose of morphine.

By 3, the morphine was wearing off, and Katherine decided she wanted an epidural. Unfortunately, the anaesthetists were busy in theatre, and I was going a little bit frantic in wanting to sort her pain. Given that I currently work in palliative care, where I am comfortable prescribing piles of opiates every day, it was so frustrating not being able to hurry up her analgesia.

They eventually gave her some more morphine at 5pm, just an hour and a half after I had suggested it, and she was finally able to settle down a little. The contractions had been going steadily for hours now, and she had dilated to 9.5cm!

It was at this point that a light of rage appeared in Katherine’s eyes.

At 5:50, 10cm was reached, and Katherine began to push. I will open myself up for criticism here and say that I don’t think was really pushing that hard at first. We hit an hour of pushing with no baby, and the Registrar doctor came in, and told us that she was going to have to use forceps as the pushing was going on for too long.

It was at this point that a light of rage appeared in Katherine’s eyes. Given a 15 minute reprieve, and spurred on by the midwife, “Come on Katherine, we don’t need forceps!”, Katherine began to push like a successful Sisyphus. After just 3 more contractions, there was a screaming head sticking out of my wife, and just one more later and our beautiful daughter was released into the world.

Although disappointed not to use her shiny tongs, the doctor seemed happy enough getting to play with needles and thread, sorting out the second degree perineal tear, and even found time to quiz me on the theory of Obstetrics – I will be working under this registrar in April!

We were both fairly oblivious to this, since there was a disgusting, blood covered angel dripping on us, and looking into our eyes. Glorious!

This is Neriah.

Full name: Neriah Grace Lowry (or “Nia” for short).
“Neriah” is Hebrew, and means “Light of God“. We pronounce it “Ner-ee-ah”.

She was born at 7:30pm on 20th January 2013. She weighed 7 pounds 9 ounces.

Her hobbies include avoiding accidental injury from her boisterous older brother, submitting to being sniffed suspiciously by dogs, and throughout remaining surprisingly content. We don’t know much else about her.

There has been an awful lot of discussion about the decision not to allow women bishops in the Church of England. I’m going to be nice and controversial here: I think its the right decision.

The problem with this debate is it misses a much deeper argument. It’s not “should women be bishops”, it’s “should there be bishops”, and “who should be leaders”.

A little background

Before I wade into this, let me just state my conflicts of interests and biases.

I grew up in the CofE. It’s traditional ways and general dullness convinced me of the irrelevance of Christianity at an early age. I became an agnostic/atheist around 14, and stopped going, alongside pretty much all my peers.

Thankfully, aged 17, a friend took me to a free church where I was shown how much challenge, excitement and goodness there is at the heart of the Gospel. The process has led me to feel very concerned at how badly the Anglican church misses the point, and misses people in the process: I’ve been fortunate – very few of my peers have returned to the church we grew up in.

Unbiblical and unnecessary

To those of you who have no idea what the whole “ordained” thing is about, or the church thing in general: I apologise for all the jargon. I also apologise for the very religious sounding nonsense that is all over the news at the moment – sadly, it’s basically nothing to do with Christianity.

Basically, a church is a big group of people, who generally meet together regularly. We believe God loves us, and we try to love him and each other.

Like any big group of people, a church needs people leading them. In the old school out-of-touch, irritatingly-religious churches, this is usually an ordained “priest”, who wears a special dress, and is the only one allowed to bless bread and wine, and perform a number of other activities. In the New Testament, its pretty clearly pointed out that “priests” are no longer needed: we are all part of the priesthood, we can all have relationship with God.

But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvellous light.
1 Peter 2:19

I feel the Anglican church is trying to find some solid ground for building change to the church leadership. But the biblical foundation for their current setup, well, isn’t there. Which makes it pretty hard to argue the biblical plus sides either way.

If you’ve seen Rush Hour, there’s a bit where Carter (seen right) is talking to his cousin, Luke, who is a gangster.

Carter: Why you didn’t come to church sunday?
Luke: I had some things to take care of, but I made the night service, though.

It seems ridiculous to think of a guy who bunked church in the morning, to participate in criminal activities, making sure he attends an evening service, as if such a superficial action can make up for an otherwise wrong lifestyle. To me, it seems similar to have raging arguments about the best way to have a sort of “super ordained” clergy, to reign over the other ordained clergy, when the New Testament blatantly doesn’t condone the whole priest thing anyway!

The damage we fail to mention

When it comes to Bishops, as in those with the special hats and colourful robes and special shiny sticks (see above): its just a load of tosh. Not only is it unbiblical, but it’s ridiculously alienating. Say you had no idea about Christianity, no idea about God, and you went to church to find out more? And you went to church and saw a man who looked like a cross between a Panto Dame and a extra from Star Trek. It’s not exactly going to encourage you to look into the sayings of Jesus more, is it?

So, that’s my conclusion. Women Bishops? Nope. Male Bishops? Also no. Let’s have a few overseers in each area, which is what the Bible told us to do, and lets #BanTheBishop!

Six hours sleep, and the clocks going back, brought us to our final day at the conference. Following a prayer meeting, discussions over breakfast involved a fairly detailed discussion of New Zealand humour, and a discovery of a fellow Black Sheep lover in Pete Saunders!

Seminar - A challenge to care: the Christian doctor as leader in the ever-changing NHS

Nick Land, the Medical Director for Tees Esk and Wear Valleys NHS Foundation Trust, ran this seminar on how we can manage change and take a positive lead in the NHS.

Some of the changes we face in the UK:

• Change in PCTs -> CCOGs
• Increased litigation
• More complicated treatments
• More IT
• Budget cuts
• Change in clinician/patient relationships
• Ethical changes
• Unhappy doctors

Some research has been done, showing that doctors now have slightly lower workload, much higher pay, yet are much more unhappy. The loss of autonomy, greater external scrutiny, working to guidelines all seem to affect clinician happiness.

What difference does our covenant relationship to God make to our practice as medical doctors?

There is a change in secular understanding of work:

1. Classically, Greeks and Romans believed work was a curse.
2. In the middle ages, there was a secular spiritual dichotomy – it was seen as more holy to be doing a spiritual job.
3. In the Reformation, it was understood that all work can be done to the glory of God.
4. In the Enlightenment, a humanist “God helps those who helps themselves” attitude.

Work was created by God in the beginning…

“The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and take care of it.”

Why do doctors go into Leadership?

• Change things
• Ambition
• To help
• Power
• Against their will
• Money
• Buggin’s Turn
• Stop someone else doing it.

Why should Christians get involved with NHS leadership?

• God’s calling
• Esther + Mordecai
• Ethical stance
• Opportunity to protect the vulnerable – both staff and patients

Key points:

1. Management is a means of common grace

“Let everyone be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God.”
Romans 13 

2. We are called to be salt and light in every area.

3. Nehemiah is a great example: he saw the need, heard the call, already had a good job, but took the risk. He dealt with injustice and gave leadership and direction to hopeless people.

4. Jeremiah is another.

“Work for the prosperity of the city where I have placed you”
Jeremiah 29:7

5. Moses father in law gives an example of the benefits of delegating tasks.

What are the dangers of being involved with NHS Leadership?

1. Getting caught up in a powerful and at times ruthless culture.
2. Dishonesty.
3. Anger. Ephesians 4:26
4. Letting Management or the Trust become an idol. Exodus 20:3-4
5. Getting the work/home/worship balance wrong.
6. Cynicism

How should the Christian approach Medical Management?

Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.
Phillipians 2:3-8 

Really putting the patient and other people first is a servant hearted process: its a radical change of view. Personal convenience, professional status and power have to be abandoned.

Bible Teaching – Faith at Work in our Attitudes

After a final coffee/tea/squash blitz, and the discovery that Vicky Lavy bruised her hand during the slapping game last night (hardcore!), it was time for our last teaching session with Steve Burmester.

“Who is wise and understanding among you? Let them show it by their good life, by deeds done in the humility that comes from wisdom. But if you harbor bitter envy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not boast about it or deny the truth. Such “wisdom” does not come down from heaven but is earthly, unspiritual, demonic. For where you have envy and selfish ambition, there you find disorder and every evil practice.

But the wisdom that comes from heaven is first of all pure; then peace-loving, considerate, submissive, full of mercyand good fruit, impartial and sincere. Peacemakers who sow in peace reap a harvest of righteousness.”

James 3:13-18

James talks about how our community shapes us. The TV series “UP” followed some 7 year olds, then reviewed them every 10 years. The children have grown into adults so very shaped by the social situation they were in at that tender age.

In his time as a pastor, Steve has seen many people growing up. But it is those who surround themselves with a like minded, gracious and loving community who grow and mature to match that setting. Our primary witness as Christians should be through the community we share together.

The guiding principle of Hell is “I am my own”.
CS Lewis

Steve takes a lot of funerals, mostly for non believers. About 5-10% of them choose to have the song “I did it my way” – an attitude that is counter to the servant hearted, subservient way of the Kingdom.

Saying “I am free to be myself, and owe nothing to anyone else” is the natural desire to please oneself. But Christian living is about the righteous rubbing together of lives. In the aftermath of the Welsh revival, pubs were empty, and prisons had to shut, because lives were changed. The end of revival is caused by spiritual pride.

Spiritual pride is knowing others faults better than your own. Its an air of disdain or contempt towards others.
Pride quickly leads you to separate from those you criticise, or who criticise you.
A proud person is dogmatic, and sure about every point of belief, and cannot distinguish between a major and minor point of belief, because everything is major. Pride loves to confront to win, or doesn’t confront at all because they can’t be bothered.
A proud person is often unhappy with themselves, or self pitying.
Timothy Keller

Humility is not thinking less of yourself, but thinking of yourself less.
CS Lewis 

The opposite of pride is humility. As James 4:6 says - “God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble”. In Numbers 12, we see two people acting out of pride, against Moses, who is humble.

James refers to us as “adulteresses”, referring to the image of the Church being the metaphorical bride of Christ. In being selfish and self centred, we violate our relationship with God. When Jesus, who acted only to remain close to God, God chose to cut him off, and its that sacrifice, the ultimate in giving oneself, we can access the grace.

There was a man in the First World War. he was wealthy, and an art collector. He had one son, who was drafted and sent to the front line. Sadly he was killed. Another man, who had been in the trenches with the son, came to visit the old man. He said, I’m no artist alike the painting you buy and sell, but I want to give you this picture which I drew, of your son. The old man was touched, and kept the picture.

When the old man died, they decided to auction all the art in the home. They got everyone together at an auction house. They announced that they had to sell the drawing of the man’s son. We cannot move on until we sell this piece. No one wanted to buy it. Eventually, hesitantly, one old man bought the painting for £10. The crowd breathed a sigh of relief, now they could move on with the auction.

The auctioneer closed his book. I am afraid that the will states, that whoever bought the painting of the son, gets all the fabulous masterpieces.

We must accept the Son, in order to receive all the riches of heaven. Do we have the humility to take up his yoke?

Communion

We closed with communion, reflecting on 1 Corinthians 11:

Let a person examine himself, then, and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup. For anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgement on himself.

And that was it. A final pile of food was shovelled in at lunch, and many sad goodbyes. Then, once I had finally accepted that Beth probably won the chocomilk drinking competition, Beth gave me a lift home.

It was a wonderful weekend, full of passionate, loving and exciting individuals, filled with a desire to help others, make the NHS awesome and share a crazy amount of love to the UK. Hopefully, it’ll encourage me to be more like them.