The Rev Andy Kelso's decision to leave Redditch will have saddened many people, not least my wife and I. But Redditch's loss will be Pershore's gain, while Worcestershire will not be losing completely an excellent fearless priest who has never shrunk from spelling out unpalatable Christian truths.

The Church as a whole needs such leadership, and the current motley collection of wishy-washy liberals that infest our denominations should reflect on the causes of our decline as a major religion.

Sir John Harvey-Jones, a retired RN Commander, once said: " The art of management is to take people with you." Then Field Marshall Lord Slim of Burma, in a talk on leadership to Sandhurst cadets said: " There are no good battallions, no bad battalions, only good officers and bad officers. See that you are good officers."

Sadly today, the tail wags the dog at all levels in politics. Political parties should reform their selection processes.

Thank you Rev Andy for all you have done, for not only the Matchborough community, but for Redditch too, for your excellent contribution in setting us all a good example.

Tom Wareing                                           July 3rd 2009

Ex-Councillor

The Rev. Andy Kelso is leaving Christ Church, Matchborough, after nearly twenty years. Christ Church is now a thriving community church with all ages represented.

In his time Rev Kelso was a governor at four schools and was especially involved at Arrow Vale High School. Many former pupils of local schools will remember him taking assemblies with his guitar and puppets!

Rev Kelso has always wanted the church to be at the heart of the community and this desire lay behind the pantomime season at Christ Church that lasted six years. Commenting on those years he says: " So many people came to see the shows over the years and scores of people were involved. The last one ran for ten nights and over two hundred people came each night! Thousands of pounds were raised for local charities and the community and people still talk about them. Great memories!"

Rev Kelso is also well-known for his letters to the press and over the years these have created quite a stir! He says: " I cannot keep silent over issues that concern me, especially the erosion of our Christian faith, and I want to bring these matters to people's attention. I have had my share of critics over the years but I truly wish them well."

Rev Andy, as he is known to many, has just finished a book about his life called " A Most Unusual Journey." He says of it: " This book charts my life - one-time hippy, rebel, actor, writer, director, teacher, vicar, and Elvis Presley impressionist! It is searingly honest and I think will make people laugh and cry. There are also contributions from my wife Charm, and our five children. I believe that what makes this book different is in its Reflections at the end of each chapter. These look at issues from my life that touch us all, bringing both encouragement and challenge." The book will be available in July and Rev Andy hopes that local bookshops will stock it.

Rev Andy's final service at Christ Church will be on Sunday July 12th at 6.30p.m. If you've had any contact with him over the years he'd love to see you there. Please let the church know if you can come. Tel: 01527 529098. E-mail: ccmatchborough@blueyonder.co.uk

Rev Andy will now be developing his role as Chaplain to Worcester Warriors Rugby club and of course writing more letters!

A few weeks ago a church near Manchester was visited by five police officers and their Easter literature was examined because someone had complained that it was offensive. The police found no evidence for the complaint. A few days later an officer from the Hate Crimes Unit visited one of the leaders and questioned him.

The complainant believed that the mere advertising of an evangelical church was homophobic even though they were only inviting people to their services.

This is seriously concerning! Coming before parliament soon is the Coroners and Justice Bill where this government wants to scrap the free speech protection clause. This strikes at the heart of our democracy and if passed would make us a police state where anybody could lodge a complaint against someone and police would be at their door.

If you are at all concerned about this then please contact your MP and make your voice heard. If you don't then the freedom we have taken for granted will disappear.

Rev Andy Kelso

Vicar. Christ Church, Redditch.

Whilst so many MP's have been milking the taxpayer to fund their lifestyles and when found out show little or no remorse perhaps we could all ponder the qualities of a leader that Moses' father-in-law suggested to him.

These included people who were able, God-fearing, people of truth and integrity, and people who were honest and not in it for personal gain.

Rev Andy Kelso

Vicar, Christ Church, Redditch.

There's been so much doom and gloom recently what with the recession and its effects and the increasing sleaze of our politicians that it's easy to be negative. However the recent Spring weather has lifted spirits and with Easter approaching we need to realise that there's hope even in the worst of times.

The Easter message is full of hope. It reminds us that God entered our world and in His love paid the price for our sins on a cross outside Jerusalem. That's why it's called Good Friday and not Bad Friday. But that's not the end of the story.Death didn't have the last word because Jesus rose on that first Easter Sunday and He offers His life to all who will receive Him.

That offer gives hope even in the worst of situations which is why the Gospel Story is good news. Happy Easter!

Rev Andy Kelso

Vicar. Christ Church, Matchborough

Jacqui Smith's attempts to justify her second home expenses are appalling. She still insists that her sister's home in London is her main home where she spends the most nights, and yet her neighbours there know that this is not true. They state that when the long parliamentary holidays - oops! I mean recesses - are taken into account then she spends just a third of the year there. The ongoing lies and sleaze from our elected MPs' is as bad as it was in Cromwell's day. He managed to disband Parliament with these words and sadly how apt they still are:

" Ye are a factious crew and enemies to all good government. Ye are a pack of mercenary wretches and would like Esau sell your country for a mess of pottage. Is there a single virtue now remaining among you? Is there one vice you do not possess? Gold is your God! Which of you have not bartered your conscience for bribes? Ye are grown intolerably odious to the whole nation. You who were deputed here by the people to get grievances redressed, are yourselves become the greatest grievance. I command ye therefore, upon the peril of your lives, to depart immediately out of this place. Go, get you out! Make haste ye venal slaves, be gone! In the name of God, go!" 

Rev Andy Kelso

Vicar, Christ Church, Redditch.

Jacqui Smith is claiming thousands of pounds to which she is not entitled. It is not good enough that she says that all MPs' do this. As Home Secretary she should be setting an example. She has told the House of Commons that her sister's home in London where she stays on certain weekdays is her main home. This is a lie as her main home is in Worcestershire. By telling this lie she can claim £24000 a year expenses. Whilst she is doing this without any conscience people in her constituency are losing their jobs and everyone is finding life tougher.

I would suggest that the people of Redditch write to their MP and voice their disgust. Who knows, she might be shamed into addressing this issue? Then again...............fly!

Rev Andy Kelso

Vicar. Christ Church, Redditch.

Now that it is a sackable offence to pray for someone, it is obviously not long before the increasingly persecuted Christian minority here will be thrown into prison or fed to the lions. The case involving Caroline Petrie, a community nurse who offered to say a prayer for an elderly patient, is deeply troubling. Most nurses are caring people who want the best for their patients. Prayer has always been part of the healing ministry of the Church and is usually warmly appreciated.

Supposedly prayer falls foul of the equality and diversity law but this is not true. Mrs Petrie was told, " You must not use your professional status to promote causes that are not related to health." The fact is that offering a prayer to a patient IS related to health.

Most people hearing about this incident will instinctively think it is ridiculous, but unless enough people stand up and speak out, especially our silent Church leaders, then such cases will increase and we will all be at the mercy of laws that strangle our democracy and personal freedoms.

Rev Andy Kelso

Vicar, Christ Church, Redditch.

I was really saddened to hear that Sir David Attenborough has received hate mail from supposed Christians. I don't believe that they can be genuine in their faith to do such a thing and on behalf of the Church I apologise.

However, I totally disagree with him when he dismisses Creationism and states that Evolution is a fact. There are lots of eminent scientists who believe the world was created but they never get their views aired on television. Here are some thoughts to ponder about evolution:

Did the first bird breathe? Did it breathe before it evolved lungs? Why did it evolve lungs if it was happily surviving without them? How did the bird see what there was to eat before its eyes evolved? How did it eat before it had evolved a mouth? Where did the food go before a stomach evolved?

A final thought: Big bangs cause chaos not order. The fact is that people choose to believe in evolution because they do not want to be accountable to God.

Rev Andy Kelso

Vicar. Christ Church,Redditch.

Rowan Atkinson's mockery of Jesus Christ and the Bible at Prince Charles' 60th birthday show on ITV recently underlines a worrying trend in our society.Whatever your religious views there used to be something called decency and good behavior. Atkinson's piece was not political satire. It was insulting,crass and disrespectful.His sketch contravened the Ofcom Broadcasting Code but how many people can be bothered to complain?Until the Daily Mail took up the Ross/Brand episode not many people had complained to the BBC.

It is time to stand up for decency and to voice concern wherever civilised behavior is contravened or else we will be sunk in a mire of moral filth. Too many people like Atkinson think that insulting Christianity is a soft touch because very few people stand against them. It is noticeable that they don't offend Mohammed and the Koran because they know what the backlash will be.

We have had a Christian heritage in this country for hundreds of years and this has defined our laws, our identity and our sense of civilised behavior.It will be lost forever unless people stand up and are counted.

Rev Andy Kelso

Vicar. Christ Church,Redditch.

The British Humanist Association has raised £144,000 in a week to enable them to put the following slogan on buses in our major cities: " There's probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life." Might I suggest that the Church in this country raised enough money to sponsor the buses behind these ones with the slogan:" God's right behind you! Now start worrying again."

Rev Andy Kelso

Vicar. Christ Church,Redditch.

Whilst the political parties have their conferences and try to make promises about the future they need to understand that we are reaping what we have sown.

The Divorce Reform Act 1969 and The Matrimonial Causes Act 1973 were a death knell to the stability of marriage holding up society. Parliament has now decreed that fathers are no longer needed. The result is broken homes and disaffected young people who too easily get into drinking,drug-taking,sex and crime.

The Abolition of the Death Penalty in 1965 and the introduction of The Abortion Act in 1967 meant that politicians made it clear that human life has no value. On the one hand people can commit murder and get away with it whilst unborn babies are just discarded.

Politicians today have no answer to the moral collapse of our nation because they have no understanding of the Biblical principle that what we sow we then reap.A nation that has just decreed that Jesus can be blasphemed will not know His protection and favour. The only answer to our moral,social and economic collapse is for those in authority to repent,to call the nation to repentance, and to turn again to God, His Word and His ways.

Therion Ware (Letters - Daily Mail) accuses me of spreading falsehood about Darwin to which I take great exception. Charles Darwin was concerned about the complexity of the human eye with regard to his theories as Mr Ware's extract from Darwin shows: "the difficulty of believing that a perfect and complex eye could be formed by natural selection THOUGH INSUPERABLE BY OUR IMAGINATION can hardly be considered real." What kind of scientific comment is that?

The fact is that the eye has thousands of co-equal functions that make it work. If you take away just one of those functions the eye is worthless. How then did the eye evolve when all functions had to be present?

Furthermore, no transitional life forms have been found. That is not specious it is fact.

Rev Andy Kelso

Vicar.Christ Church, Redditch

Are your consciences at all disturbed by this so that you offer an apology to Mr Green, waive his costs, and make a public announcement about this?

Rev Andy Kelso

Richard Dawkins' presentation of The Genius of Charles Darwin on Channel Four was not so much the story of Darwin but more the God-hating views of Dawkins.In his opinion Creationism is mythology and Evolution is science and anybody who dares to disagree is bigoted.This is rich coming from someone who won't listen to anyone who doesn't hold his views!

The fact is that Darwin had a lot of problems with his views but these won't be in Channel Four's series. For instance, he confessed that the complexities of  the human eye could not have been formed by natural selection and that his theory was dependent on transitional life forms which have not been found. G.K.Chesterton wrote:" The evolutionists seem to know everything about the missing link except the fact that it is missing."

What is also missing is any kind of programme on TV that gives the alternative view to evolution. If Creationism is such a fairy tale why should producers be so frightened of it?

Rev Andy Kelso

Vicar. Christ Church, Redditch.

In response to the letter last week on Matter of faith and whether it matters what we believe, and in response to I.Kirwan's dismissive letter may I make the following points.Firstly, if you believe as I do that Jesus died for our sins and that noone else did then that makes Jesus unique and we need to tell others about Him as a matter of urgency.If Jesus is the Saviour of the world and a person can only know God and find forgiveness and eternal life through Him then this is not an insignificant argument!

Secondly, the essence of Christianity is a relationship with God. Religion is manmade, full of rules and regulations and terrible things have been and are being done because of people's religion.I did not become a Christian because of where I live or because of what my parents believed.In fact they were atheists! I became a Christian because somebody cared enough to share the Gospel with me and I looked into it and finally asked Jesus to be my Saviour.That was nearly forty years ago and I have grown in my relationship with Him ever since.

Rev Andy Kelso

Vicar. Christ Church.

In response to Mr Kirwan's letter last week where he belittles Scripture, rubbishes Jesus and presumes to tell us that early Christians were a bunch of dimwitted storytellers, may I point out that whether he likes it or not we still live in this country under a Christian Constitution which for hundreds of years has given us democracy and freedom of speech.This is why people can write what they like about Jesus and the Bible without fear of reprisal.

It is interesting though that it is always Jesus and the Bible that is attacked. If it is all such a myth why bother ?!The truth is that Christianity is based on solid facts, rooted in history, which anyone with an open mind can explore.They will find out that there are over twenty four thousand copies of New Testament manuscripts about Jesus' life,death and teachings going back to within thirty to forty years of the writer's death, backed up by secular historians of the day.By contrast we only have a very few manuscripts of the life of Julius Caesar, the earliest of which is from nine hundred years after his death, but we all believe he existed!The French philospher Voltaire boasted that within one hundred years of his death in 1728 the Bible would disappear completely. In 1778 the Geneva Bible Society took over his house and used his printing presses to print thousands of Bibles! It is still the world's best seller.

The Cross and the Empty Tomb stand in history as facts. The only important issue is how we will respond to Jesus.

Like so many people in this country I am horrified about what is happening. The list is endless and grows daily. We are finding ourselves to be living in  an increasingly fascist state where the government wants to control your life. But we need to face up to the truth as to why we are in this situation and how we can overcome it.

Believe it or not our constitution is still Christian. Every monarch since Edgar has been anointed by God to rule in the Name of Christ. At her coronation service in June 1953 the Queen was asked to make solemn promises. She promised to " maintain the Laws of God and the true profession of the Gospel." To reinforce that promise she was given the Bible as " the rule for the whole life and government of Christian princes." The Queen was presented with the Orb with the words " Receive this Orb set under the Cross and remember that the whole world is subject to the power and Empire of Christ our Redeemer."

Her Majesty's promise to maintain the Laws of God with the knowledge that Holy Scipture is the rule for Her Majesty's Government has been broken time and again.

To the nation that keeps God's Law He promises social stability, economic well-being in manufacture, trade and agriculture, a strong family base, an absence of crime, the presence of justice and strength in foreign affairs. By contrast, the nation which rebels against God's Law will find those areas of life cursed. And this is what we see in our nation.

Our politicians have failed us as have our Church leaders, especially the Archbishop of Canterbury with his recent idiotic commments on the need for Muslims to have some aspects of their Sharia law here. But the responsibility for the state of our nation rests with each one of us and the only answer to find God's favour again lies in true repentance. Each one of us needs to ask God's forgiveness that as individuals and as a nation we have disobeyed His Laws and turned our backs on Him.

If  we would do this then we would know God's blessing again as a nation.

Rev Andy Kelso

Vicar. Christ Church, Redditch.

The hypocrisy and incompetence of this government is staggering! The courageous widow of a man kicked to death by thugs in Warrington spoke of the growing violence on our streets and people's despair at what is happening.

Yet our Home Secretary says there is no breakdown in society only tragic events and then admits she wouldn't want to walk on the streets of London at night. Most people in her constituency don't want to walk alone at night but some have to.Then we have Labour's deputy leader stating that we all need to learn the lessons of the terrible crime of Garry Newlove's death. How long will this take?

What hypocrisy! Every cause of Britain's youth violence is the result of this government's failure-24 hour drinking, downgrading of cannabis, lack of police on our streets, an obsession with the human rights of criminals over the rights of victims, and an undermining of the family and family values.

Only when enough ministers and MP's are mugged or kicked to death will we really see any radical legislation.

Rev Andy Kelso

Vicar. Christ Church, Redditch.

At last a Bishop in the Church of England is willing to speak out!  Dr Nazir-Ali voices what many know to be true that Islamic extremists are taking advantage of our politically correct government's policy on muticulturalism.

There ARE no-go areas in England for non-Muslims and militant Muslims will not be satisfied until their flag flies over Downing Street and public calls for prayer are broadcast from every mosque in every town and city in the land.By the way, the Islamic call to prayer is an extolling of Islam, Allah and Muhammad above all else which is hardly on a par with the ringing of church bells!

To say such things is not racism or whipping up hatred against Muslims, which is the constant response from the Muslim Council of Britain, but pure fact. Militant Islam has a strategy for world domination and we are a soft touch. Unless more leaders like Dr Nazir-Ali speak out and the government acts we will find our democracy and our heritage taken over.

Rev Andy Kelso

Vicar. Christ Church, Redditch.