Among the many who joined us yesterday for Choral Evensong, thanks go to George who took some photos of the choir for us. We hope to use some in our publicity to attract new members and we’d thought you’d like to see them.
Click here for the pewsheet for the week beginning Sunday 12th June 2016.
In the Home Group that meets at Saxon Road, we have started looking at the Ten Commandments this week. One of the questions that we were asked to think about was, ‘What kind of legacy in life would you like to be remembered for?’ There was a variety of answers, but our reading from Acts today offers one of the best legacies, attributed to St Barnabas; he was ‘a good man, full of the Holy Spirit and of faith’. Not bad!
As we prepare, Anthony and I, to move on to pastures new, there is an inevitable moment when we both pause and think about what we will leave behind. One of my mentors wisely said these words to me as I began ministry – ‘Steve, show me a middle-aged vicar and I will show you a building project’. For we all want to leave a legacy behind and when the middle-aged vicar has stopped hoping to change the people by bringing them closer to God, he reverts to wanting to alter the building – much easier to control and change!
So as I sit in my study at St Barnabas’ and think of Worth Parish, I think about the Vision Day and the writing of a plan – and I believe that we are in a position to develop and grow, while loving each other. The Church is much more than a building, but all of you. Yes, we are sad on one hand, that as the Burstons’, we won’t be hands-on in the mix with you, but at the same time we are excited about what God has been doing, is doing and will do in Worth Parish – we have all been given gifts and how we use them will determine our legacy.
Steve
My first reading of today’s passage from Galatians left me a little uneasy about the model of church leadership it presented. Where would we be as a community if everyone – or even just the leaders – decided what needed to be done and then simply went ahead and did it without any consideration of or consultation with others in the leadership team? Or, as St Paul claims, waiting three years before checking- in that it was O.K.? Great, you might think. No committees, no negative comments, just action. But, to be banal, imagine the seating in church being constantly rearranged to the personal taste of whoever feels like moving it! In reality, a balance is needed between the freedom to get on with things and the value of ensuring that activity is directed towards a common purpose. That purpose is giving glory to God and enabling lives to be transformed by an encounter with Jesus Christ. When Paul’s letter is read in context and with an understanding of his life and ministry we quickly see this is the purpose on which he focuses. When he says (as in today’s reading) God has set him apart before he was born, he is expressing his profound sense that in meeting Jesus he is ‘coming home’. He responds with a life of service in which he experiences all manner of hardships, disappointments and persecutions – as did his Saviour – but always directed towards the building up of individuals and communities in faith and witness to the gospel “received … through a revelation of Jesus Christ”. As you offer yourself in response to God’s call, please pray for, and help, the leadership team (clergy and wardens) as they seek to encourage and co-ordinate all those responses and keep them focused on God.
Click here for this week’s pewsheet.
Click here for the pewsheet for the week beginning Sunday 29th May 2016.
Several times this week I have had cause to reflect on the glue that binds us together as a parish community. Also on what difference the Holy Spirit, whose coming we celebrated last Sunday, makes in our lives (individually and collectively). Looking forward to Trinity Sunday has proved a powerful backdrop to those reflections – reinforcing the experience of God as (or in) relationship. One of the classic images of the Trinity sees the Holy Spirit as the love the flows between the Father and the Son with such intensity that the three are one.
It has been a real joy to see the enthusiasm with which all those who volunteered to take forward particular aspects of ‘future development’ in our common life that emerged at the recent Vision Day. A tremendous release of people’s gifts that blesses us all – the effects of which are already being felt. Yet in the excitement we need to remember that it is a common life – we are all part of a community, in relationship with each other, and that what each does affects the whole. We have a responsibility to consider how our ideas and actions will impact on others – by tidying away this or changing that, we may inadvertently create difficulties for another group or person. By the same token those affected have a responsibility for encouraging (offering solutions not just criticism!) those who are volunteering. How we manage accountability and co-ordination as these ideas (the Spirit?) flow and find expression is one of the things the PCC will be considering in the light of discussion about the Parish Plan on Tuesday. But we can be sure that if we ground our relationships in God’s love, that has been poured into our hearts, we will promote mutual flourishing – reflecting and being bound into the divine relationship.
Click here for the pewsheet for the week beginning Sunday 22nd May 2016.
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Worth Parish 