West Belfast: there and back again

Peanut Gallery: Can any good come out of Belfast? The answer is a resounding YES!

Belfast, Northern Ireland (UK) is Europe’s last best hope. But it is taking a movement of God.

“Some nations boast of their chariots and horses, but we boast in the name of the Lord our God.”
Psalm 20.7 (NLT)

Northern Ireland is struggling… and the communities that make up West Belfast are on the bottom of the pile. Economic stagnation, unemployment, poor health and education, cramped housing, general poverty, teen pregnancy, and crime… all contribute to the highest suicide rate in Northern Ireland. Kids roam the streets at night with nothing to do and nowhere to go. As they congregate, police move them on from one place to the next. It’s not an environment I’d want for my kid.

While some areas of Northern Ireland are prospering, predominantly Nationalist West Belfast is being left behind.

It’s been 15 years since the Belfast Peace accords (Good Friday Agreement) were signed and while everything has changed, nothing has changed. There is no peace… only a fragile truce, or cease fire, which is being strained to its limits by extremes in both the Nationalist and Unionist communities.

One woman said: “The young people involved in the current round of protest and violence never lived through The Troubles. We are reaping the harvest of my generation’s unforgiveness… and passing it on to our children.”

And yet, in the middle of it all, God is pouring out His Spirit… lives are being changed and the Kingdom of God is at hand… accompanied by signs and wonders. Believers from all sides of the divide are sacrificially pouring out their lives in worship and prayer… and in untold acts of kindness and mercy. The invisible Church is rising up… and God is moving among His people.

Robin Mark captures the mood in “Revival in Belfast” while the video background overviews the city. More later….
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Revival in Belfast – Robin Mark (with video of Northern Ireland)

I hear the voice of one calling, prepare ye the way of the Lord. And make His paths straight in the wilderness. And let your light shine in the darkness. And let your rain fall in the desert.

As sure as gold is precious and the honey sweet, So you love this city and you love these streets. Every child out playing by their own front door. Every baby laying on the bedroom floor.

Every dreamer dreaming in her dead-end job. Every driver driving through the rush hour mob. I feel it in my spirit, feel it in my bones. You’re going to send revival, bring them all back home.

I can hear that thunder in the distance. Like a train on the edge of town. I can feel the brooding of Your Spirit. “Lay your burdens down, Lay your burdens down”.

From the Preacher preaching when the well is dry. To the lost soul reaching for a higher high. From the young man working through his hopes and fears. To the widow walking through the veil of tears.

Every man and woman, every old and young. Every fathers daughter, every mothers son. I feel it in my spirit, feel it in my bones. You’re going to send revival, bring them all back home

I can hear that thunder in the distance. Like a train on the edge of town. I can feel the brooding of Your Spirit. “Lay your burdens down, Lay your burdens down”.

Revive us, Revive us, Revive us with your fire!

West Belfast: 24/7 Prayer Team

Peanut Gallery: I’m off to Northern Ireland today to meet up with a small mission team from 24/7 Prayer International.

A prayer community in West Belfast issued the call through 24/7 Prayer International (which I have been following online) and I heard it as the Holy Spirit’s word to me to reconnect with what God is doing in Belfast… and to offer “words of encouragement” as in today’s morning reading.

Four of us, from Scotland, England, Slovakia and USA, responded to the world-wide invitation. We’ll meet each other, and the West Belfast community, for the first time on Sunday in Belfast. Our team’s different backgrounds, experiences and wide age span (23, 33, 43, 73) will provide the West Belfast community with a rich variety of perspectives… and will be a learning experience for us all.

I’ve been to Belfast four times before. The first time was in 1992, on an official Presbyterian (PCUSA) Reconciliation Mission to assess NGO funding possibilities in Northern Ireland and in the Republic of Ireland. Northern Ireland was in the thick of “The Troubles,” and under the direct rule from London… it was an armed camp. We were given access to high level people on all sides of the divide – political, religious and social. It was was truly a once-in-a-lifetime insight into the conflict.

Following up, I participated in two month-long, summer pulpit exchanges with a Presbyterian Pastor in Belfast. My family accompanied me and we were welcomed and received most warmly by the church community. It was a wonderful opportunity to personally connect with good, decent, Christian people who were trying to make a positive Christian witness during difficult times. My last visit to Belfast was on a quick layover from other travel.

But all of that was before 1998, when the Belfast “Good Friday” Agreement was signed. A lot has changed since then, but deep wounds remain and mutual trust is low. And, Northern Ireland is currently going through difficult economic times.

An Eleventh Night bonfire in the loyalist Highfield Estate in west Belfast. Picture by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye.

The Belfast Telegraph is a good read to catch up on what’s going on… particularly during this holiday weekend of “The Twelfth” with its bonfires and parades.

It’s a curious time to be traveling to West Belfast on a mission of encouragement and prayer. But the Holy Spirit has his own way in these things, and that’s good enough for me.

I’ll keep you posted.

President Obama’s Belfast Blarney – American Thinker Re-Blog

President Obama’s Belfast Blarney – American Thinker

By Ken Blackwell and Bob Morrison

The fact is that in Northern Ireland, the religious schools have been leaders in reconciling historic antagonisms.

Reuters/Reuters - U.S. President Barack Obama speaks to guests at the Waterfront Hall in Belfast June 17, 2013. REUTERS/Paul Faith/Pool

President Obama’s recent trip to the G-8 Summit in Belfast, Northern Ireland, included an address at the Waterfront hall. There, he criticized Catholic and Protestant schools and compared them to segregated schools in the U.S. when he was a boy. His remarks were hailed by British atheists. They took his speech for what it was: an attack on faith-based education everywhere.

Mr. Obama told an audience in Belfast’s Waterfront hall:

Because issues like segregated schools and housing, lack of jobs and opportunity — symbols of history that are a source of pride for some and pain for others — these are not tangential to peace; they’re essential to it. If towns remain divided — if Catholics have their schools and buildings, and Protestants have theirs — if we can’t see ourselves in one another, if fear or resentment are allowed to harden, that encourages division. It discourages cooperation.

We cannot hear him liken Catholic and Protestant schools to racial segregation in America without a sense of alarm. Clearly, President Obama dismisses religious freedom as a basis for parents’ choosing different schools for their own children.

Mr. Obama’s own grandparents exercised their choice in sending him to Honolulu’s prestigious Punahou Academy. This pricey ($20,000/year) prep school was founded by Congregationalist missionaries. With roots in the faith-based community, it hardly qualifies as a segregation academy.

Similarly, the president and Mrs. Obama have chosen Washington, D.C.’s very tony Sidwell Friends school for their daughters. They have every right to do so, but no one would credit this Quaker-founded school as part of a segregation system.

Mr. Obama has been zealous in trying to block other parents’ exercise of education choice. His administration has been eager to shut down Washington, D.C.’s Opportunity Scholarships. This program permits low-income parents of area students to choose a private or parochial school for their kids. Most of these scholarships go to minority students and many of them choose Catholic schools where a majority of their classmates are non-Catholic.

It is a shocking thing for the President of the United States to show such open hostility to faith-based schooling. As their motto goes, these are “schools you can believe in.” And the record of religious schools in America is a great one.

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