Opening our Christmas 2020 series, we explore the role of dreams in the Christmas story and in our own lives. What does it look like to hold onto a dream when the world around you seems to be falling apart?
01A Season to Dream When Everything Feels on Hold
Christmas 2020 was not the Christmas anyone had planned. Lockdowns, restrictions, cancelled gatherings — for many people, the dreams they had been carrying felt like they had been put on indefinite pause. And yet, right in the middle of all that disruption, Crowd Church held its very first Christmas live stream, built around a theme that felt both bold and necessary: a season to dream.
The choice was deliberate. As Matt Edmundson explained during the service, "there's a lot of things about dreaming around the Christmas story. There's a lot of references in the Bible to dreams around the Christmas story and the birth of Jesus, and also it's relevant for right now in this season that we're going through."
It turns out the Christmas story is packed with dreams — literal ones, not just aspirational ones. And buried in those stories is a message about what happens when ordinary people dare to trust God with the uncertain, the uncomfortable, and the downright terrifying.
02The Man Nobody Talks About
Guest speaker Phil Watson took a slightly unexpected angle. Rather than focusing on Mary or the shepherds or the wise men, he zeroed in on Joseph — a figure who, as Phil pointed out, "gets a little bit of a mention in the Bible, and most people have" largely overlooked him.
Joseph is fascinating precisely because he is so ordinary. He was not a king or a prophet. He was a carpenter from a small town, engaged to a young woman, getting on with life. And then everything changed. His fiancee was pregnant, and the child was not his.
Phil's background gave him a unique lens on this story. As a foster carer for over a decade, he understood something about what it means to step into a parenting role that was not part of the original plan. He and his wife Helena started fostering after she asked him a simple question: "Have you ever thought about fostering?" His honest answer was no.
03When a Tree Changes Everything
Phil shared a story about one of the first children they fostered — a three-and-a-half-year-old boy he called K. The boy arrived with very limited speech and almost no experience of the world outside his home. He did not know about TV characters. He did not know how to eat off a plate with a fork.
One day, Phil took him to Sefton Park in Liverpool. The boy kept pointing and saying, "What that? What that?" Phil looked around, trying to work out what had caught his attention. It was a tree. Not an unusual tree. Just an ordinary tree in an ordinary park.
"I realised he was pointing at a tree. It wasn't an interesting tree. It was a regular tree... and I went, this is a tree." The boy touched the bark for the first time, feeling the texture under his fingers. "Tree, tree," he repeated.
Phil's voice carried the weight of that moment. "This kid has not been out and about much. He's never seen a tree. What else is going to be a shock to him?"
That encounter — a small child discovering bark for the first time — became a picture of something much bigger. So many people move through the world without ever really seeing what is around them, without experiencing the wonder that is available.
04Orphans Are Everywhere
Phil then drew a thread through popular culture that most people would never have noticed. "When I say orphans, I mean kids that can't live with their mum and dad. They're absolutely everywhere."
Harry Potter. Luke Skywalker and Princess Leia. Superman. Spider-Man. Almost every Disney princess. Little Orphan Annie. Anne of Green Gables. Even John Lennon, who grew up just around the corner from where Phil was filming on Penny Lane. Lennon's story, Phil noted, was "absolutely heartbreaking" — raised by Auntie Mimi after both parents proved unable or unwilling to care for him.
The theme of the orphan, the outsider, the one who needs someone to step in, runs through our stories because it runs through our reality. And it runs through the Bible too. Moses in his basket. The repeated instruction to care for "the orphan, the widow, the refugee, the immigrant — anybody marginalised, anybody on the edge of society."
05Joseph's Dream and Ours
This is where Joseph enters the picture. He received a dream — literally, an angelic visitation while he slept — asking him to do something that made no sense by the world's standards. Take Mary as his wife. Raise a child that was not biologically his. Step into a role he had not asked for.
Joseph could have walked away. The cultural norms of his day would have supported that decision entirely. Instead, he chose to trust what he had been told, even though it must have felt terrifying and isolating. He became, in a very real sense, a foster father to Jesus.
Phil made the connection gently but clearly. Every child who cannot live with their birth parents needs someone willing to step in, to say yes to a dream that might feel inconvenient or frightening. Joseph modelled that willingness centuries before the modern foster care system existed.
06When Dreams Come With Disruption
The service itself was a picture of imperfection. Half the pre-recorded videos had no sound. The technical setup kept glitching. Sally's knock-knock jokes fell apart because she and Matt could not get the timing right over a remote connection. Matt ended up wearing a novelty Christmas tie that Sally had magically "transported" to him through the screen.
None of it was polished, and that was rather the point. Dreams do not arrive in neat packages. The Christmas story itself was messy — an unplanned pregnancy, a long journey, a birth in a stable because there was no room anywhere else. God seems to specialise in working through imperfect circumstances.
07What This Means for the Rest of Us
Phil's talk was not just about fostering, though that call was genuine and heartfelt. It was about a wider principle: that God's dreams for us often arrive disguised as disruption.
2020 had disrupted everything. Plans were cancelled. Routines were shattered. For many people, the question was whether to simply wait for normal to return or to look for what God might be doing in the middle of the chaos.
Joseph did not wait for perfect conditions. He acted on what he had been given, in the circumstances he found himself in. He said yes to a dream that looked nothing like what he had originally planned for his life, and through that yes, the most significant story in human history unfolded.
08The Invitation
The season to dream is not about having everything figured out. It is not about waiting until conditions are perfect. It is about being willing to respond to what God puts in front of you, even when — especially when — it does not match your expectations.
Phil put it well with his observation about fostering: a young woman who had grown up in care asked a room full of potential foster carers, "Could you be the family, the household, that could look after someone like me, who is invariably scared, lonely, worried, terrified?" That question changed everything for Phil and Helena.
Sometimes the dream that changes your life is not the one you would have chosen. It is the one that chooses you.
What dream have you been putting on hold? And what might happen if you stopped waiting for the right moment and simply said yes?
Topics in this talk
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a day or two ago i thought i'd take a ride and soon this fanny bright was seated by my side the horse was lean alike misfortune seemed as loud oh jingle bells jingle bells jingle all the way oh what fun it is to ride in a one horse open jingle bells jingle bells jingle one horse open sleigh oh what fun it is joyful and trauma come and behold him born the king of angels come let us adore him christ the lord sing choirs of angels sing in exultation sing all your citizens of heaven above glory to god in the highest christ lord oh the oh now in flesh appearing crying still me bye so where hello and welcome hey sally how you doing hey matt i'm good thank you how are you uh yeah we we're getting there a few technical issues but that's okay people can see us and hear most of us that's the main thing uh well hello there yeah hello and welcome merry christmas my name is matt and this is the amazing sour sat right next to me and uh as you can see from the names we are crowd church and welcome to yes our very first christmas service live stream i'm excited so are you excited i'm really excited it's going to be brilliant no pressure it really is matt it's going to be brilliant the technical places have maybe thrown us off a little bit to start with so we're sorry about that but you know it's gonna be absolutely fine it's gonna be fine yeah we've got lots we've got lots of brilliant things for you today so our theme today is a season to dream and we've chosen that because there's a lot of um there's a lot of things about dreaming around the christmas story there's a lot of references in the bible to dreams around the christmas story and the birth of jesus and also it's relevant for right now in this season that we're going through and it feels like dreams have maybe put a little bit on hold um that we can maybe talk about that today so that's going to be brilliant later on with the great phil watson yeah and he's fab isn't he phil you can't you can't get away from the awesomeness of phil that's for sure uh now if this is your first time with us then welcome we are an online church for those looking for the answers on how to live a meaningful life but you know don't really do church so you're welcome uh if this is your first live stream with us or your 40th you are definitely welcome here please do feel at home make sure you say hi in the comments be great to hear from you uh as i see a few people have mark mark has joined us some amazing thank you mark for joining us on this brilliant afternoon it's great to have you yeah yeah yeah absolutely hey mark how you doing now uh let me tell you shall i tell you about the kids activities let's do that early on in the stream what about the downloads yeah yeah so let me show you this right let me bring up the website here you can see the website let me make it bigger on the screen and uh what we've got here is our website if you hit this button at the top here which says christmas you'll get the christmas page load up and you'll see all the different things we've got going on this christmas but you see here under season of dreams you see where it says click here to download the kids activity pack well if you click that link uh you can download the activity pack which is for your kids and uh all for you i mean you know either way we don't you know we're not we're not precious about it but you can you can download that i mean that's what i'm going to be doing so brilliant why not why not get on the christmas. um so yeah so you can download that from the website just go to crowd.church and you will see all of that uh there for you just downloads click the link and the kids can join it um james says hey guys looking and sounding great and then you can hear us that's good that is good now should we let's tell them actually about we're talking about this technical issue let's just tell them what's been going on we have been uh we've got a whole bunch of different things going on today's bit mad um but for some reason half the videos aren't playing sound as we were testing earlier on and we don't know why so um yeah we're going to have to change things around a little bit yes we'll change things around do our best to get it working as we go along but what we've planned and what we hope we're going to have this afternoon is a couple of carols we're going to have a talk as we mentioned earlier from phil watson which is going to be amazing and we've also got our kids say the funniest things video and a couple of other little things in there as well so that's what you can expect from today's crowd church now that sounds brilliant let's let's just hope that all works so no that sounds really good we're not sure exactly hopefully you'll get most of that this afternoon we'll make it this is the beauty of doing something live when it goes wrong we just have to roll with it and i think we're seasoned professionals at this cell aren't we yeah well we normally do it in front of an actual actual people at least we can't hear the booze from facebook please don't put booze in the comments that would that would not be good that would not be good yeah don't do that you know let's let's just cheer ourselves up a little bit matt with a christmas joke let's do that because whenever we are on stage uh and we're doing the christmas service you always have some let's just say some christmas jokes amazing people's jokes i love a christmas joke the cheesier the better okay so bring your worst cell okay uh right you ready absolutely yeah let's do it start with a good one okay uh knock knock who's there wayne wayne way home thank you i didn't know what he said wait or whatever get it matt i can't do the jokes that you know i can't do them properly if you're not there i know sorry that was my bad totally ruined that one i don't know if i didn't i don't know if i did ruin it or anyway let's go let's get on to the next one i'll give you another chance it's another knock knock do you know how these work matt i think so okay good okay let's try another one okay um no knock who's there hannah hannah who hannah partridge in a i can see where these are going are they okay are they all songs no those are the two song ones i'm sorry that no more singing from me so one more one more good one okay let's do it let's do it let's go um what's the best christmas present in the world oh i don't know what is the best christmas present in the world a broken drum you just can't beat it okay ladies and gentlemen yeah i prefer the knock-knock ones yeah yeah okay uh that's brilliant and uh obviously sal's professional career as a stand-up comedian is working really well yeah it's kind of currently on hold i would say do you know can i just say look at my wonderful christmas tree you know feeling really festive i've put on my christmas jumper which says gloves actually love actually is my favorite christmas film so okay once actually yeah matt i can't quite say the same about you for the christmas effort there yeah with the technical issues it's kind of i put some lights up does that not count well basic basic but i could help you out let's how can you help me i saw this in the shop and i thought no way oh who has no taste and you immediately sprang to mind matt and i don't know what to say thank you i guess at least you're thinking of me christmas truck ty would you would you like that to jazz up your outfit i would love it but we're not on stage how am i gonna get that you're miles away um well we'll have to do it via the magic of christmas then can you press the magic christmas button i can press this button and bring a little bit of christmas magic there we go okay let's see let's see if we can get it right so i'm gonna i'm gonna this is gonna pass through look at that no way there you go there you go christmas look at that look at that thank you so much i mean that's just brilliant it's just me all over right it is it was really cheap and i thought um cheap matted you see these jokes are better than the knock doctors uh so hang on let me put it on i'm just going to take this off cause i'm a little bit warm i have got a christmas top on this is going to make you even more christmassy yeah yeah i like that i think it's a good job you're not superman clark kent would obviously need to move a little bit quicker do you think he would yeah yeah you just keep everybody entertained while i get dressed there we that's looking good i like it i like it i think the christmas magic is here i think we're going to be okay that we're going to be okay so let's move in to our first thing now um i have asked a few of my friends to send me some videos of their kids answering some questions because you know we want to involve the children especially at this time they always have really brilliant things to say so i asked them a question now we're going to have one of these each week so this is the first first time you're going to see kids say the funniest things we asked them a question and this is what they had to say i dream about me and daddy going on all the fast roadsters and then i fed this dog and then it made a massive troll monster and then i hid in someone else's house in the toilet and then it crushed the house so i ran outside and then all i had to do was just touch it with an axe me stuck on the tv but and i have the remote and i go to channels like so i like on in the channels bye i had a good view but i can't remember it but i did have a good day bye it was like a mag it was like a magical thing about playing for the first team for liver football team and scoring three goals in one minute and um and then he couldn't stop dropping okay now they were funny oh they were good weren't they you've got to love that that was funny yeah yeah totally totally hysterical brilliant now my favorite i liked um i like the troll monster and how to solve the troll monster just yeah of course that means you do everyone knows that everyone knows that i can't believe i didn't know that i mean matt where have you been and playing for liverpool and schooling three goals in a minute i think we could do with a bit of that yes please jasper i'm loving it i love that idea playing for the first team in liverpool that's definitely been one of my dreams yeah brilliant and so we asked that question about dreams because it links so beautifully to our theme for today and our talk that phil is going to do for us now is all about dreams and so phil has been a member of frontline church for oh how many years matt uh as long as me 100 150 at least i think him and noah went to school together a teacher a secondary teacher um and he also works for home for good um and promotes fostering and adoption across the city so there'll be a bit of a flavor of that in there as well so we ready for it then matt uh i'm gonna push the button whenever you tell me we're good to go okay let's go for it here is phil hello my name is phil welcome to our house in the middle of our street now i know what you're thinking you're thinking there's a man of a certain age 50 50 with a hat on men of my age wear hats because we're going bald in my case it's not true i've actually got a pretty good head of hair but i'm not very good at male grooming so i cover it up with a hat we've lived on this street uh a little bit over 20 years when i say we started off with me and my wife helena she's a solicitor for the council and i'm a teacher in a secondary school up the road and by the power of nature we had a couple of kids anna and jamie uh anna's now 18 jamie 16 and to some extent for the first few years of our of our life here everything was as normal as can be our house has pebble dash our house had we had an extension built so we had the kitchen enlarged so we could sit round a table we've got uh the garage which well would have been a garage for a very small car once we turned that into a bedroom or maybe an office for working from home who knew um we got one in plastic bins for composting for a little while we had a couple of guinea pigs until the cats next door killed them really really quite ordinary quite orthodox we got double glazing we got central heating we used to go on holidays we still do um or we will again when this virus business is over um and then i think we've been married maybe 10 years so it's about 10 years ago my wife said to me have you ever thought about fostering and i had to say no i haven't i know what fostering is i know that some kids can't live with their mums and dads because of maybe drugs drinking maybe violence domestically i don't know lots of reasons why kids can't live with my mum and dad but i didn't know much more about that than that and my wife said to me well should we go and find out more and it was kind of like going on a date night only not very romantic but it did end up with us having more kids excuse me while i try and cross the road without being run over we went along to an event run by the local council we live in liverpool i'm just behind penny lane if that gives you a bit of orientation um we had some stories from some social workers that i didn't really understand some stories from a foster carer that were just incredible and then we met a young lady i guess she was about 20. she'd grown up in care and she basically was able to put us in the position of what it's like to be a little kid that isn't with their mom their dad even if that's not a very good environment and how terrifying it is and she basically said could you be the family the household that could look after someone like me who is invariably scared lonely worried terrified and that might look like anger but actually the root of it all is where am i what am i doing here and where am i going to end up so we applied to become foster carers uh take takes about six months to do this and eventually we got approved and we started looking after kids while we were going through the process of becoming foster carers i began to realize how many orphans there are in our sort of popular culture when i say orphans i mean kids that can't live with their mom and dad they're they're absolutely everywhere so you've got maybe the most famous one at the moment is harry potter from the books and films um then we've got people like luke skywalker and princess leia discover in later life that their dad is darth vader then you've got basically pretty much every superhero superman ends up being sort of looked after by those old people on a farm somewhere in the midwest spider-man does he live with his uncle i think he does try and think of a superhero who doesn't live with um you know some sort of foster care or some sort of family member who isn't their mum and dad it's quite difficult you've then got pretty much every princess goodness maybe they end up living with evil stepmothers evil stepsisters their dads inevitably die but don't worry there's a happy ending at the end um yeah a little bit misleading that perhaps then of course we've got little orphan annie uh who is uh that as the title suggests a little orphanage there's anna green gables as well and then in real life there are an enormous number of of young people who can't live with their mum and dad that somehow make it as a success in real life so you don't want to hear this but i'm a chelsea fan roman abramovich the owner of chelsea i think he was orphaned when he was three or four years old some something like that his story is absolutely fascinating and then and i'm walking down penny lane you've got some of the beatles themselves so i mean paul mccartney lost his mum when he was a teen and he still had a dad but john lennon's story is absolutely heartbreaking so he he grew up around here he had a mom and a dad his dad i think those mental health issues his dad couldn't look after him didn't want to look after him his mum was not able to look after him and so he went to live with auntie mimi and she raised him and if you listen to some of lennon's songs you'll realize that he's often singing about the heartbreak and the absolute often called a primal wound of not being able to live with his birth family and i began to realize there's a lot more to this there's something in our culture that just says what about the orphan what how do we treat them and i'm using that term very very loosely um so beca becoming a foster carer wasn't just a sort of practical thing to do it actually became something a little bit deeper something almost spiritual and when we got approved we were approved to foster kids who were under the age of five and exactly uh ten years ago our very first kids started to arrive in our house hey of time that well because look i'm at penny lane sign paul mccartney signed it there let it be it's about his mum who died i think of cancer when he was about 16 17 and he feels that she's always looking out for him now one of the very first kids we ever fostered i'll call him k he arrived about 10 years ago he was three and a half he was a he was a lovely little kid but he was he had very limited speech very limited experience of all sorts of things that you might take for granted so he didn't appear to know anything about tv didn't have any tv characters didn't really seem to know very much about um should we say domesticity didn't know about tables chairs spoons forks didn't know about eating off a plate or a bowl but we worked all this out as we went along and it was all good and one of the things he enjoyed doing most was going for a wander basically going for an explore and you'd hold your hand and we'd toddle off he could walk for absolutely miles and mi and i mean miles we could go out for five six hours quite happily and he would just explore he'd touch he'd feel he'd occasionally lick things and you'd go no no maybe not that one and i think he'd been with us maybe two days three days something like that and i took him along penny lane actually down greenbank to a massive park where we live called sefton and um i was trying to talk to him a little bit and he wasn't really engaging very much he wasn't really interested in anything i had to say and we got to sefton park and he he didn't he couldn't really say phil uh so he used to call me bill and he'd go bill bill what'd that what that bill and you look and you go like what that oh he he means what is what is that so what is it where we are that might be of interest to a three and a half year old now we were pretty new to fostering so you know i just assumed that he'd been to a park before just oh yeah he's three and a half he's bound to but it was obvious that he hadn't and when he was going what that what that he was saying what's that and i'm looking around the park going what is of interest what is different what is exciting here what is new and i realized he was pointing at a tree it wasn't an interesting tree it was a regular tree it was a tree that you would have in any park in any street in the world and i went this is a tree this is a tree it's a tree so we went up to it and he he stayed at the tree for a little while and i said to him i'm gonna run across and i said it's a tree you can touch the tree and so he uh he put his little hand out and i put my hand out with it and uh we touched the tree and we touched the bark and you could see him for the very first time feeling the sensation of touching bark and uh here's a tree here it's not the same tree but never mind and he touched it went tree tree and i thought wow this kid has not been out and about much he's never seen a tree he's never seen a tree what else is going to be a shock to him what else is going to be exciting or interesting to him what else is going to be a stimulation for him um tree tree bark we discovered leaves too and then of course we went on a bit further and guess what the park had another tree that's why we were out for five six hours at a time now you've probably worked out that you're watching church online and the people presenting all this stuff are christians and so are we and so inspired by our faith i read the bible regularly and uh i began to see more and more how often the bible encourages us as christians people of faith to look after the orphan the widow the refugee the immigrant anybody marginalize anybody on the edge of society however you define that and the bible is full of this encouragement look after the orphan look after the fatherless and actually the bible is full of stories which are about uh people who are very much on the edge of society they've got nobody to look after them so i remember as a kid i went to sunday school like so many people of my age and i remember coloring in a picture of the baby moses in his bulrush basket his moses basket hey being pushed into the nile and i thought this was just a little story when i was a kid and then i began to think hang on a minute for his family that was the best option if that baby had stayed with them he'd have been killed by the egyptians so they thought right we'll just trust him to the nile it's a really deep scary story um well they're coming up to christmas aren't we now i don't know if you were in a nativity play when you were a kid i read recently a report that said if you were chosen to be mary or joseph your income earning capacity in later life is greater than for all those people that got to be well what should we say donkeys maybe the three wise men are up there you might have been a shepherd you might have been a sheep i was the in keeper no i wasn't the innkeeper i was the in door that's right the indoor my job was to go like that that's my role and look at me now anyway um now nativity uh the nativity story uh the main character is of course jesus which is funny because he hasn't even got a speaking role but the character i want to think about today is joseph so joseph um yeah let's think about him for a second now joseph gets a little bit of a mention in the bible and most people have heard it mary and joseph he comes after mary that sort of thing doesn't he um and what we know about him is he was engaged or married to to mary and then before they knew each other which i think is bible speak for before they had sex she was pregnant now in those days a little bit different from now um that would have meant divorce straight away or actually for mary it would have meant a death penalty because it would have meant she'd have been guilty of adultery so it's pretty pretty grim stuff that doesn't normally get mentioned in the nativity does it a primary school but joseph was a fairly nice fella and he went right i'll divorce you quietly um so that would sort of share certainly i don't know hide her shame i guess i'm hard to get your head around all of that from our perspective in 2020 but he had a dream and the dream was from god and the dream said this baby is mine and i want you to look after it so joseph changed his mind and decided yeah i'm gonna look after a child that isn't mine can you see the link with fostering can you see it okay [Applause] now i don't know what dreams joseph had for himself i don't suppose he wanted to end up living in a semi-detached pebble dash house in liverpool but he was a carpenter he lived in in what we now call israel and i guess he thought he'd get married i guess he thought he'd raise children he'd provide for his family i guess he thought he'd get old and i guess he thought that was the natural order of things but this dream changed his life entirely and he became got to be careful about what word i guess he gave he became what the adopted dad the surrogate dad for jesus the son of god his men he's only really mentioned one more time and that's when he has another dream and in the next stream he is warned by an angel that uh herod is gonna try and get hold of jesus and kill him it's a yeah it's a really violent story you know don't be fooled by don't be fooled by the nativity being all lovely and sweet there's a lot of stuff going on there that isn't very pleasant so inspired by this dream joseph takes mary and his and their son jesus and they escape to egypt and as far as we know joseph then like any dad perhaps or many dads brought jesus up as his own probably taught him about how to be a carpenter he does get a side mention later on when jesus is about 12 when the family go to jerusalem and jesus gets lost so uh nowaday nowadays that would be quite serious uh in those days jesus just found his mum and dad and there's a reference to his father's house which i wonder how joseph took on board it's something you can explore if you want to we don't really hear of joseph again but he stood in he looked after joseph as if he was his own son i find that quite inspiring so how does this all fit together well joseph was a really fascinating fellow i mean i think he just anticipated being an ordinary man having an ordinary life and instead whether you're a christian or not you have to admit that christianity is a thing it does exist it's had a major impact on the world and joseph plays a part in that and it was these dreams that changed his role he he could have just gone no i don't have anything to do with this and the dreams changed his mind those sort of uh divine inspirational moments now i don't know whether you've got a dream for your life you want to say dream i mean plan i mean aspirations some of you might be very proactive and you go by this age i want to have my own house my own car by this age i want to i've met my lifelong partner and i've started my own family um by this age i want to retire um good luck with that uh and it might just be that you're reactive and you just go just let life hit me let it let it let it wash over me whatever happens whatever will be you will be um i don't know and i guess to segue back to what i was saying the beginning of our of our journey together um i was chugging along doing okay i was really really pretty happy with my wife and my children we were doing some good things as well you know we were involved in all sorts of local good works but starting to foster really was a thing that changed my life and by reading uh the stories in the bible i began to identify with joseph um quite a lot and i began to think yeah actually i'm not the first person to to live the life that we've decided to leave lead i'm not the first certainly not the first man to look after somebody else's children and then we we kept on fostering for a little while longer and things got a lot more exciting when you foster you're basically looking after a child temporarily on behalf of of the government for one of a better word things changed about five years ago and i'm gonna go inside my house to tell you more welcome to our house i'm inside now this is what we call the posh lounge it's the room that kids aren't meant to trash anyway a few years ago one of the kids we fostered was being ominously quiet super little lad very quiet at a very very difficult time i'm not going to give you all the details but you know when a kid's being quiet and you think that's not necessarily good what he got hold of a sharpie other indelible markers are available he'd smash the frame out of this family photo you can see there's me as a younger man with very good hair there's my there's anna and jamie as little kids and there's my wife on this kid he'd smash the glass he'd rip the frame off and with the sharpie pen he'd added a picture of himself now this is one way that kids and care sometimes communicate not by smashing things up and drawing on them but they normally want the same as everybody else but they don't know how to ask for it and i had a little chat with this boy and i went oh you've added yourself to our family photo and he went yeah and i went do you think you want to be in our family and he went yeah i mean what you what do you think that means because you know you don't want to put words into a kid's mouth and you went i want you to be my dad i want helena to be my mum and then he went through other family members knew and i want them to be my granddad them to be my grandmother them to be my cousins and i thought he wants to be he wants to be adopted so that's what we did we adopted him i've moved upstairs to my ikea armchair where i do some reading some thinking listening to music and just basically sit around um it's time to draw this to a conclusion many years ago when my wife said you want a foster i had not given it much thought at all it wasn't that i was a no it was that uh i don't know i've never i've never thought about it and i don't know what the future holds for you uh i know that i had a little bit of a plan and fostering wasn't part of it but man we have made a difference to the eight kids i think it is eight that we have fostered it we've made an enormous difference to the little man we've adopted and if he has children and they have children so on so forth we've made a an incredible difference to them but we've also changed our own lives now going from two to three kids it brings its own challenges if that third kid has been through a degree of trauma and had a tough life it will bring extra shenanigans and mischief into your life do not regret it it's very difficult at times but i do not regret it and it says in the bible that god brings and there's this great phrase god wants us to have abundant life um it's a tough word to define abundance it kind of means exciting interesting engaging certainly not without challenges not without problems but that's been my experience and i you know i'm not joseph from the bible i'm not him but i wonder whether he had a bit of a plan for his life and god yeah your plan's fine what about this are you willing to come on this journey this exciting abundant plan with me very scary taken up take another man's child flee to egypt i mean goodness me i haven't been asked to do that i just have to take a kid to the park but um if if you're unsure about whether to become a christian my advice you know what it's never boring it's always been exciting our whole christian journey our whole christian walk um if you want to know more about fostering getting contact with me if you want to know more about adoption get in contact with me if you want to know more about christianity ask whichever christian linked you to this talk i know they'd love to chat with you about it a little bit more have a very merry christmas whatever we're allowed to do thanks very much well there you go what a great talk isn't phil yeah absolutely brilliant thank you so much phil that's really inspiring really really good it is a fantastic story but i can't escape the ikea armchair at the end with the uh with the pattern on the seat i don't i'm like i've never seen that in ikea that chair that must have been a unique one-of-a-kind fulfillment i've seen that chair many times think we've had various versions of that chair as we've had most pieces of ikea furniture in our house i've never seen that pattern before very unique loving it so apart from the ikea chair matt what was your what was your takeaway from that talk what did you find really interesting challenges i i loved how phil was talking about here was joseph he was an ordinary man living an ordinary life and he has these dreams and somehow he relates this back to pebble dash which i think is a remarkable talent and skill to have um but he he has these dreams that fundamentally alters his life and the life actually of you know of humankind in history um and it all comes from these dreams it's like and then at the end fielder sort of says you know are you prepared you kind of have your dreams you know are you prepared to have them interrupted a little bit because it's not what joseph planned or thought was it and i love how how he bought that out i don't know what do you think yeah i i totally agree i mean i was thinking about the whole you know not it not being the dream that you necessarily thought you had and the dreams that can be around the corner and you don't even know that they're there waiting for you um but it's being open to it to sort of say yes you know phil just said yes to going along to that meeting and that was sort of the start the start of everything really and so it's about that's the challenge to me is about kind of being open when things when things do kind of come up i was also thinking about you know we've had this really difficult time over 2020 this lock down time and and maybe people have had a bit more space to think about what their dreams could be or what their their future could be um but also if you're not sure or you think well i've got any dreams i don't know and you're just one of those kind of reactive people maybe you could give yourself a bit more space to be open to what what those dreams could be um yeah they just you know there's so many things that could be there for you that that could just change your life um which yeah which would be amazing it's kind of being open to it isn't it that's what i was thinking it is i have to be honest with you we i get emails every day every week right from people who watch the stream or who contact us and one of the questions that we get asked the biggest question i get asked more than anything uh over recent weeks is what is the purpose of life right because kovid seems to have quashed that for a lot of people they had a thought and idea or a dream and it seems it's all gone belly up i think the one thing that i would say uh the lesson that we can learn from joseph is when life is not going how you want it to go actually if you put your faith and trust in the plans that god has for you which you may sound a bit strange or weird but you know if god is real he definitely has plans for us and if we trust those and put our faith in those then actually ultimately that leads to the betterment of the world there's there's always a bigger cause i think with god and um i think i think that's that's very true and this is what we say to people all the time when they email what's the purpose of life how do i and it's like god has a plan he always has a plan he has not been kicked off the phone because of covid still still in charge still knows what he's doing and still loves each one of us carefully so um but yeah i i think it's just really good and ponder that isn't it because i don't know about you i thought by christmas the whole thing would be over yeah well i remember kind of at the beginning of march or end of february i was booking thinking about booking a holiday for my daughter who was going to be turning 18 in november um and thinking oh something seems to be happening in the world perhaps i'll just walk a little bit um and i could never ever have imagined that this is where we would be all these months later um it's been a bit surreal really looking back at it it's it's been a very strange year and there's been i mean i know it's been very difficult for lots of people and it has for us too and they've been highs and there's been lows um but it's trying to sort of take the positives out of it wherever possible and if anything you know there has been for some people a little bit more space i mean i'm a key worker so i've been kind of working through the whole thing as well and that's had its own challenges but um yeah i think that definitely i'm trying to take away some of the positives from it and and really hope that this time next year we're talking very differently about things but still here online still crowd church because this is this is a new way forward and it just it just it's brilliant that we can do this so absolutely very good very good segway i didn't have one question to ask you matt about that phil made a good point about you know who you are in the nativity could potentially always say it's really an interesting one i have to think about that when i'm doing my nativities at school i've never actually cast an indoor before um but i'm just wondering you know were you in a nativity mat and if you were what role did you have uh i was the donkey i was the angel or i was you know the passerby or so i was never mary or joseph i don't know if i've missed out in life let's go with the donkey because that fits perfectly let's go with the rear end of the donkey too shall we i love it i love it okay brilliant i bet you played mary though right um no i think i was an angel of course yeah i totally believe that yeah yeah brilliant now what we're going to do now is we're going to have the most christmasy of christmasy things which is a carol um but before we get into that so one of the things that phil mentioned right uh was he reads the bible regularly and he talked about the story of joseph so do we have that from the bible can can you find that in the bible and just read that to us so we know what he was talking about yeah sure that's in um it's in the new testament in the bible in the book of matthew and it's in chapter 1 um verse 18 so i'll just read that for us now um and this is entitled jesus except sorry joseph accepts jesus as his son verse 18 this is how the birth of jesus the messiah came about his mother mary was pledged to be married to joseph but before they came together she she was found to be pregnant through the holy spirit because joseph her husband was faithful to the law and yet did not want to expose her to public disgrace he had in mind to divorce her quietly but after he had considered this an angel of the lord appeared to him in a dream and said joseph son of david do not be afraid to take mary home as your wife because that is conceived in her is from the holy spirit she will give birth to a son and you are to give him the name jesus because he will save his people from their sins all this took place to fulfill what the lord had said through the prophet the virgin will conceive and give birth to a son and they will call him emmanuel which means god with us when joseph woke up he did what the angel of the lord had commanded him and took mary home as his wife that's awesome very well read sal very well read very well read now what we're going to do is we're going to do the hymn okamori faithful which john farrington kindly recorded for us now because of our technical issues the video that we had prepared with said carroll uh is not working well you can watch it you just can't hear it for some reason so uh what i'm gonna do is play uh i'm gonna hack this a little bit because in the outro they're sort of the clips we play at the end we've also put the carol so i'm going to put that video on fast forward to the carol it will say in the corner of the screen live stream is ending in three minutes it's not ending in three minutes that'll be true when we play the outro uh so just ignore that little countdown timer in the corner uh and um i will bring that on now and uh fast forward into it so just bear me one second get your singing voice ready yep i'm just relieved that you haven't said that you need me to sing it because it's not working so i think everybody else should just be very relieved that well let's go with that option because that sounds much better all right i'll play this video i'll be we'll be back in just a few minutes holy faithful joyful and triumphant oh come ye o come ye to come and behold him born the king of angels oh come let us adore him oh come let us adore him oh come let us adore singing glory in the highest oh come let us adore him o come let us adore him oh come let us adore him this happy morning jesus to thee be your glory gift word of the father now in in christ the lord oh there we go brilliant thank you john for doing that and uh thank you for my uh for bearing with us on my little my little him hack or carol hack not at him carol uh yeah yeah next week we'll have all these technical issues resolved i guarantee you that oh yes we are going to be having conversations with technical support um i think we've made it through sal we have it's been brilliant thank you so much everyone for staying with us and we do apologize for the slight technical difficulties the christmas magic worked though so you know bring it back there we go oh there we go look at that um next week you can join us again at the same time and our theme will be a season of joy so please join us for that and again we will have kids say the funniest things some more of my amazing jokes yeah so there's lots to look forward to for next week so we'd love it if you could join us again for that yeah absolutely so do come along same time 4 p.m and you can watch us on facebook and you can watch us on youtube uh we in fact have malcolm trish morgan next week uh our friends from greece who uh who are gonna be sharing with us which is they're brilliant when they're together malcolm trish they are fantastic you're definitely going to want to make sure come and join us for that so do watch out for that if you connect to the youtube channel make sure you hit the subscribe button and sign up for the notification so whenever we go live it just pops up on your screen that we're going live so you don't miss it the same with facebook if you like to watch on facebook live uh thanks for watching with us uh let me just go through the comments here um uh matt crewman blessed everyone uh sorry to hear you not well matt i pray you get well soon but uh thanks for watching james john thanks for your comments mark too uh sally i see you've been commenting and everything on there well done well you know multitasking it's what we do i can't do it i genuinely struggle with that but you know every now and again i can i can have a go uh so i think that comment so please you know do comment away comment tell us about your dreams and things that's all good and then next week we hopefully see you again then absolutely so thanks for being with us this week thank you for watching we are now going to play the outro again it's going to run for about five minutes you're more than welcome to stay and seeing uh the christmas carol that is played in there which we've already sang uh be more than welcome to stay with that but the stream will end in about five minutes time from now thanks for watching we will see you next week have a fantastic week and god bless thanks everyone bye bye oh oh come holy faithful joyful and triumphant so come born the king of angels let us adore him sing quiet us adore him cry yay lord we greet thee born this happy morning oh come let
