MCE Employee Wellbeing News

Over Christmas, Radio 2 broadcast a Christmas message from one of their chaplains. During the course of the broadcast, the chaplain quoted he would like to see people “being church Monday to Saturday and taking Sunday off” rather than as many people do living the other way round.

Although it was made clear that the chaplain wasn’t advocating the idea of taking a day ‘off’ from God, that message does capture a feeling within both Christians and non-Christians in the UK that togetherness, community and searching for a greater meaning is not limited to the weekends.

Especially in the last couple of years, churches across Britain are starting to realise that it is not possible to continue simply waiting for people to come to them, but instead that churches will have to go and meet people where they are. In a post-modern society this is often not on a Sunday morning.

As a result new ideas have sprung up, for example the concept of ‘Messy Church’ where families worship on a weekday through creating art together. There are alternatives such as forming church groups in the workplace not just as support groups, but so that working in an office or on the shopfloor can also become worship and therefore church.

The realisation is that church is no longer just about where we can go, but where we are at.

The new Marketplace Chaplains Europe Newsletter is now ready! You can read it online at http://www.mchap.co.uk/newsletter/jan10 and our team will be emailing out copies before the end of the month.

The newsletter will include stories and updates from the past month as the chaplains continue to serve clients across the UK as well as personal messages from Marketplace Chaplains Europe CEO Jonathan Martin. There will also be a featured client section.

If you’d like to sign up for the monthly Marketplace Chaplains Europe newsletter, simply enter your email into the box at the bottom of our homepage http://www.mchap.co.uk.

MCHAP

Looking forward to a new year, we’ve compiled the three best and the three worst events of 2009.

The best…

1) Barack Obama is inaugurated as the 44th, and first African American, President of the United States.

2) Usain Bolt becomes world’s fastest man running 100m in 9.58 seconds.

3) Andrew Lloyd Webber beats the ‘nil points’ of Eurovision, gaining us 173 points.

And the worst …

1) Michael Jackson, American performer and recording artist (born 1958) dies after suffering a cardiac arrest.

2) Lethal H1N1 flu virus identified in Mexico, the epicentre of the ensuing global swine flu epidemic; Mexico closes all schools, cancels church services, shuts down restaurants.

3) Air France Flight 447, en route from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil to Paris, crashes into the Atlantic Ocean, killing all 228 on board.

MCHAP

As the wintery snow seems to have hit even Poole in the south of the UK, we’ve compiled some of the best tips for keeping warm during the winter…

1) Stick aluminium foil down the back of a radiator close to the wall increases the radiator’s efficiency, reflecting the heat back into the room.

2) Set your radiator to warm your bedroom half an hour before going to bed. You can then turn it down once you are under the covers.

3) The letterbox can let in lots of cold air, especially when newspapers are left in them. Banish the breeze with a brush-type cover for the letterbox.

4) Open keyholes also let in cold air. Room temperature can drop ten degrees in one hour. Buy a little round metal flap to cover the hole.

5) Close your curtains at night to keep the heat in.

6) Wear a hat. Most of your body heat escapes through your head so keeping this warm will help keep the rest of you warm.

7) Wear several light layers of warm clothes (rather than one chunky layer).

Don’t wear cotton next to your skin. Moisture absorbed by cotton will stay next to your skin meaning that when you move, air movement will draw heat away from your body.

MCHAP

On 29th December for the third year running, people in New York gathered in Time Square to shred mementos of bad experiences from 2009. The BBC reported that for items that could not be shredded the organisers, the Times Square Alliance, provided a sledgehammer and a large waste-container.

For many people 2009 will be a year that they will want to forget. Poor economy, large numbers of redundancies, uncertainties over financial futures all summed up by the fact that Rage Against The Machine were this year’s Christmas Number 1.

Perhaps if there is one thing to take from 2009, it’s that the crossover to 2010 can be a symbolic new beginning. 2009 was in many ways a wake up call and the first January of the new decade is providing the opportunity to set things straight that went awry last year.

The recession is now no longer a surprise and certainly the new year provides the chance to focus and to live with poorer economic times. A resurgence may come into our economy this year, but it may also not. However that does not stop people from getting on and moving onwards.

MCHAP