07/02/2016 Songs of Praise

Tomorrow is Chinese New Year,

and today on Songs Of Praise I'm joining this group of

British-based Chinese Christians who are marking it slightly differently.

'They're on a pilgrimage to an unlikely

'destination on the trail of a man who helped change the course

'of Christianity in China and is a spiritual father to millions.'

I think we'll be very moved.

'We head to a remote Scottish village in Argyll,

'the global headquarters of a project

'to feed the world's hungry children.'

And in the week that we've been mourning

the loss of one of our best-loved broadcasters, Sir Terry Wogan,

I've come here to Enniskillen, home to Father Brian D'Arcy.

'We're going to be sharing memories of the man we both knew

'and loved so much.'

He taught me humility. Don't be pompous,

say what you have to say and get out.

And of course we've a selection of inspiring music

from across the country,

starting with this worship song from Brixton.

DRUMMING

'Tomorrow is Chinese New Year,

'the biggest cultural festival in the Chinese calendar,

'when the world's 1.5 billion Chinese celebrate and prepare for

'the 12 months ahead, the Year Of The Monkey.

'This group of Chinese Christians in Manchester are marking

'the New Year in a novel way, by going on a pilgrimage.'

It's a very important, significant day...or experience.

I think we'll be very moved.

Yeah, I don't know if I can hold my tears.

I'm not sure. We'll see!

'They're not off to the Forbidden City or

'the Great Wall of China or the Terracotta Army.

'Where they're going, they won't even need passports.'

I'm really excited to see this place, you know?

'They're making the 35-mile journey to the South Yorkshire town...

'of Barnsley.'

And we're on the trail of a local lad who made it his life's work

to take Christianity to China.

Well, today there are estimated to be more than 60 million

Christians in China, many of whom consider James Hudson Taylor

to be the founding father of their faith.

'However, he doesn't appear to be widely known in his home town.'

Who is James Hudson Taylor?

I don't know!

Is he the MP?

SHE LAUGHS No, he's not an MP!

-I don't know.

-Does it ring a bell?

-No idea.

-JOSIE GASPS

-Never heard of him.

-Never heard of him?!

-No.

'Surely someone's heard of him.'

Do you know who James Hudson Taylor is?

Well, James Hudson Taylor was a very, very famous missionary.

-I know that he went to China and did lots of missionary work.

-Correct!

'The son of a pharmacist and local Methodist preacher,

'he was born here in Barnsley in 1832.'

You know, it was a period of exploration all over the place,

and his parents brought in books about China,

and by the time he was 17,

he was absolutely sure that God wanted him to go to China.

'Although the Chinese had already encountered Protestant Christianity

'in coastal ports like Shanghai, it had yet to reach inland China.'

There were other British missionaries there before him

and at the same time. What was so different about Hudson Taylor?

He wanted to be as Chinese as possible to reduce

the distance between foreigners and the Chinese.

So, for example, he adopted Chinese dress.

He even had a pigtail!

And his desire from the start was to make it possible for the Church

to be as Chinese as possible and led by Chinese.

'During the 50 years he spent in China, he was responsible

'for establishing hundreds of churches and nearly 200 schools

'and founded the China Inland Mission,

'one of the largest movements in the world.'

-OK, everyone, hello. Ni hao.

-ALL:

-Ni hao!

And welcome to Barnsley.

I feel very, very, like, energetic, very excited.

Yeah, and I can't believe that God has used this little place

to do the amazing work among the Chinese, you know?

Some people get very emotional.

We've even had a number of people,

when they get to Boots the Chemist, his birthplace,

fall on the ground and kiss the ground and declare it holy space.

'It's an incredible spiritual experience that people get

'when they come here.'

-Everyone happy?

-ALL: Yeah!

-Let's go!

'We'll be back with our Chinese Christians later in the programme

'as they see the birthplace of James Hudson Taylor for the first time.

'But next it's to Bristol for this hymn of mission.'

BIRDSONG

All this week, people have been paying tribute to Sir Terry Wogan.

You know, he was so loved as a broadcaster, a fundraiser,

even a singer. I should know, I did a couple of duets with him.

'He was great fun to work with.'

APPLAUSE

'We first met on his chat show when I was a 13-year-old chorister.'

-Do you get a lot of teasing in school?

-Yes, frequently.

They call me names, from Jesus to Ave Maria. But just last week, one

person called me Terry Wogan. It was just...!

A foul slur! What a terrible thing to say to a little boy!

He was as encouraging to me back then as he was to me

when I joined Radio 2 as an adult.

He referred to me as his "radio son",

and he was very much my "radio dad".

'One man who remembers him

'just as fondly is his close friend of over 40 years,

'Father Brian D'Arcy, who lives here in Enniskillen, Northern Ireland.

'For years, he was a regular contributor

'on Sir Terry's Radio 2 breakfast show with Pause For Thought.'

-Father Brian, lovely to see you.

-And you, Aled.

I wish it was in happier circumstances.

Oh, yes. I don't know about you, but I'm just cried out at this stage.

It was a massive shock.

A massive shock to everybody, because he was both a friend

and a hero, and that's hard to do,

and it's hard to find yourself without a friend or a hero.

Absolutely. Same to me. He was a broadcasting legend and a hero.

You were one of the last to see him. You saw him last week.

Well, one of the last outside the family.

I'm so privileged about that, and I said goodbye to Terry.

How tough was that for you?

Very tough. Very, very tough.

And I'll cry bitter tears, because I think Terry would probably say,

"Listen, boy, I'm not worth crying about."

That's exactly what he would say, isn't it?

'Father Brian broadcast his reflections on life

'and faith from his home at St Gabriel's Retreat,

'and Terry came to see it for himself.'

-I always assumed you'd have a cell.

-Well, here's a cell.

Is this going to disappoint me now? Is there a bed of rushes and things?

-Well, it's a plank. This is my room.

-Your simple bedroom.

I sat down here, put on my headphones and spoke to the nation,

to eight million people, from this little desk.

I got up at twenty past five every morning,

traipsed into London, into Broadcasting House.

-You...

-Got out of the bed.

-In the pyjamas.

Into the pyjamas and said, "Good morning, Terry."

'A very good morning to you, Brian.'

It's interesting, isn't it, because Terry Wogan brought faith

to the masses in such an accessible way

by millions of people listening to your Pause For Thought.

And I know that.

I had a lovely letter from the man who wrote You Raise Me Up

the other day, Brendan Graham,

and he wrote me this beautiful thing, and he said,

"Terry brought community to religion.

He said, "Every morning, you had the communion of the word to millions."

Yeah.

Here we go, the final total of this very night for Children in Need...

'For many television viewers,

'he was best remembered for hosting Children in Need for 30 years.

'During that time, he helped raise £800 million for the charity.'

You mention the name Sir Terry Wogan,

-you think about Children in Need.

-Yes.

-Terry would never do anything like that for himself.

-No.

We would cajole him into doing anything for a good cause,

and Children in Need was his way of being

good and religious in life

without being good and religious.

Sir Terry made no secret of the fact that he wasn't a religious man,

even though he was brought up a Catholic

and educated at a school run by Jesuits.

He would always say the Jesuits taught him healthy guilt,

-be guilty enough to make you be better than you are...

-Yeah.

..which is healthy guilt, not guilt that paralyses you

but guilt that encourages you to be something else.

Terry was a wonderful Catholic man in his tastes. He was universal.

He could see the good in everybody.

And any man that built his life on love, how can you say that they

weren't an absolute perfection of what God wants in people?

Now, whether churches or society or rubbishy papers or anything else

do want it, who cares?

He knew he was himself as God made him.

Do you think he was closer to God than he let on?

It's difficult to answer that question, because I'm not God.

-But in my judgment, he was closer to God than he realised.

-Mm-hm.

And God of the Bible, Jesus of the Bible

would have loved Terry Wogan.

Do you think that he is in Heaven, then?

If he's not, I don't want to be there,

because I'd like to be where he is, because that's where goodness is.

# May the Lord rise to meet you

# May the wind be ever at your back

# May the sun shine warm upon your face

# And the rain fall soft upon your fields

# And until we meet again

# May God hold you

-BOTH:

-# May God hold you

# Ever in the palm of his hand

-ALL:

-# May the road rise to meet you

# May the wind be ever at your back

# May the sun shine warm upon your face

# And the rain fall soft upon your fields

# And until we meet again

# May God hold you

# May God hold you

# Ever in the palm of his hand

# Ever in the palm of his hand. #

We'll be continuing our tribute to Sir Terry Wogan at the end

of the programme,

with a musical performance recorded for Children in Need.

-# ..To lay before the king

-To see the day

-# Pa-ra-pa-pum-pum, ra-pa-pum-pum

-When men of good will

-# Live in peace

-Ra-pa-pum-pum... #

But now, some music from the Salvation Army.

It's north to Scotland for the story of a worldwide charity which

feeds a million of the world's poorest children every day.

Here in the remote village of Dalmally in the west of Scotland,

Calum and Mary Anne Macfarlane-Barrow

established a Catholic retreat centre in 1990,

complete with an outdoor Stations of the Cross.

In 2002, their son Magnus took over a shed round the back

and established Mary's Meals.

We found ourselves in Malawi working in these villages where

people were literally starving.

People were eating the roots of trees

and the leaves of trees to survive.

And I met this family, and the father of the family had died

just before I met them, and the mother was now dying, also.

She was called Emma. And she had her six children around her.

And I began talking to her oldest child. He was called Edward.

He was about 14 years of age.

And at one point in the conversation, I said,

"Edward, what are your hopes, what are your ambitions?"

And he said to me, "I'd like to have enough food to eat,

"and I would like to be able to go to school one day."

'Mary's meals is just this very simple thing.

'We provide one good meal every day in a place of

'education for the world's poorest children.

'We're serving those meals in a way that enables those

'children to come into school for the first time,

'where they can gain that education that sets them free.'

How many of you feel that if there'll be no food in school,

you will go to the street?

One of the keys to this model of Mary's Meals and why it works

so well is that first and foremost it's owned by the local community.

All of the daily work of cooking

and serving the meals is carried out by local volunteers.

PHONE RINGS

Good morning. Mary's Meals.

Mary's Meals has a small staff, some in Glasgow

and some in another shed right next door to the global HQ.

CHILDREN SING

But its strength is the army of highly motivated volunteers,

those who work with the raw materials the charity

supplies to serve the food throughout the world...

..and those who work in charity shops all over Scotland,

such as this one in nearby Oban.

One of the reasons why I've chosen to stay rooted here is

because I think it's really important to stay grounded.

It's the reason why we've kept our global HQ in this little shed

that I borrowed off my father all these years ago.

More than anything, we feel we've really just begun.

You know, there are another 59 million children

who are out of school because of hunger.

So I kind of feel at this stage what we've done is we've developed

this very simple model that works.

But we believe that every child in the world can receive a meal

every day in their place of education.

And that's possible in this world of plenty.

# When your father made the world

# Before that world was old

# In his eye, what he had made

# Was lovely to behold

# Help your people to care for your world

-ALL:

-# And the world that he had made

# The sea, the rocks, the air

# All the creatures and the plants

# He gave into our care

# Help your people to care for your world

# When you walked in Galilee

# You said your father knows

# When each tiny sparrow dies

# Each fragile lily grows

# Help your people to care for your world

# And the children of the earth

# Like sheep within your fold

# Should have food enough to eat

# And shelter from the cold

# Help your people to care for your world

# The world is a garden you made

# And you are the one who planted the seed

# The world is a garden you made

# A life for our food, life for our joy

# Life we could kill with our selfish greed

# When your spirit sees the world

# His soul must be dismayed

# We have spoilt your father's work

# His trust has been betrayed

# Help your people to care for your world

-ALL:

-# The world is a garden you made

# The world

# And you are the one who planted the seed

# The world is a garden you made

# The world

# A life for our food, life for our joy

# Life we could kill with our selfish greed. #

'Earlier in the programme, we saw how a group of British-based

'Chinese Christians are making a pilgrimage to Barnsley.'

..and if you wish, you can go and preach from those very steps.

'They're following in the footsteps of Barnsley's foremost missionary,

'James Hudson Taylor,

'credited with taking Protestant Christianity to inland China.

'A popular stop is the bank where he worked as a young man.'

But his mother did not like him working in the bank,

because she said that it filled his mind with worldly things,

and she didn't really trust bankers.

As we probably know now, Mum always knows best!

'The tour has 14 sites in total,

'and it's the next stop that everyone's been waiting to see.'

We're now at the birthplace of Hudson Taylor.

Maybe not what you expect as the destination of a pilgrimage!

He was born above his father's chemist's shop,

and it was a chemist then and it was a chemist now.

If you really want to stand exactly on the site,

go to where the indigestion tablets are, stand looking at them,

and you are on exactly the right place.

LAUGHTER

That's a very lovely top you're wearing, I notice.

-Yes, it's crosses.

-Ooh! Did you make it?

Oh, you didn't notice today?

At this point, Hudson Taylor, to me,

remains a legacy that cannot be ignored.

It's so important to come

and see the history about Hudson Taylor, to be inspired by him

so that we can do more encouraging work in Christ, you know, like him.

It's amazing to see how much it means to everyone.

It's very moving to see it.

'The trail ends at Salem Wesleyan Reform Church, where

'James Hudson Taylor preached to recruit missionaries to his cause.

'It remains largely unchanged.

'For the pilgrims, it's a spiritual moment.'

THEY SING AMAZING GRACE IN OWN LANGUAGE

SINGING CONTINUES IN BACKGROUND

-People speak different language, but we sing with the same heart...

-Yeah.

..to our lord.

Hudson Taylor took the gospel from his home town of Barnsley

and took it to China, and today that gospel in Chinese came back

to the very place that he was born, and that is such a special thing.

Earlier in the programme, we paid tribute to Sir Terry Wogan,

and we'd like to end with a special piece that holds very dear memories.

Terry and I recorded it back in 2008 at the world-famous

Abbey Road Studios. It was to raise money for Children in Need.

Now, I'm used to spending days - weeks, even -

in the studio perfecting the sound.

Terry, true to fashion, turns up and says,

"This won't take very long, will it?"

Guess what? He was a one-take wonder.

Like everything he did, he made it all look so easy.

I suppose that's why he was a one in a million.

BOTH: # Come, they told me, pa-ra-pa-pum-pum

# A newborn king to see, pa-ra-pa-pum-pum

# Our finest gifts we bring, pa-ra-pa-pum-pum

# Ra-pa-pum-pum, ra-pa-pum-pum

-# Come, they told me

-Peace on earth

-# Pa-ra-pa-pum-pum

-Can it be?

-# A newborn king to see

-Years from now

-# Pa-ra-pa-pum-pum

-Perhaps we'll see

-# Our finest gifts we bring

-See that day

-# Of glory

-Pa-ra-pa-pum-pum

-# To lay before the king

-See that day

-# Ra-pa-pum-pum, ra-pa-pum-pum

-When men of good will

-# Live in peace

-Ra-pa-pum-pum

# Live in peace again

-# So to honour him

-Peace on earth

# Pa-ra-pa-pum-pum

-# When we come

-Can it be?

# Every child must be made aware

# Every child must be made to care

# Care enough for his fellow man

# To give all the love that he can

-# Little baby

-I pray my wish

-# Will come true

-Pa-ra-pa-pum-pum

-# I stood beside him there

-For my child

-# And your child, too

-Pa-ra-pa-pum-pum

-# I played my drum for him

-We'll see that day

-# Pa-ra-pa-pum-pum

-Of glory

-# I played my best for him

-See that day

-# Pa-ra-pa-pum-pum, ra-pa-pum-pum

-When men of good will

-# Live in peace

-Ra-pa-pum-pum

# Live in peace again

-# And he smiled at me

-Peace on earth

# Pa-ra-pa-pum-pum

-# Can it be?

-Me and my drum

# Can it be? #