Church Newsletter
What’s happening in Church today? Content of Worship The Rev Jack Holt, Parish Minister, will lead the service Joan Laing will read the Bible passages. Susan Zappertwill provide our musical accompaniment.
It is the Sixth Sunday of Easter. The theme will be: Setting Up Home. The Readings are: Acts 16: 9-15 andJohn 14:23-29. Our service uses audio-visual technology throughout; on the screen will appear the words of hymns, readings, and congregational responses.
In his capacity as Interim Moderator to Mid Deeside Church, Jack needs to be at their church at the close of service to make an important announcement to the congregation. So today’s service here has been shortened to allow this to happen.
What’s happening in Church this week? Ladies Fitness Class On Monday at 7pm in the Church you can join those dedicated ladies who keep fit by following DVD fitness routines.
Presbytery The next meeting to respond to the Consultation Paper of the Special Commission of the General Assembly on Same-Sex Relationships and the Ministry will take place in the Church on Tuesday at 7pm.
Vestry Half-Hour Jack will be in the Vestry this week on Thursday at 7pm for consultation.
Kirk Session The next meeting to respond to the Consultation Paper of the Special Commission of the General Assembly on Same-Sex Relationships and the Ministry will take place in the Meeting Room on Thursday at 7.30pm.
Next Sunday The service at 11am will be led by our minister, Jack. It is the Seventh Sunday of Easter. The theme is: What Jesus Prays For Us.
Intimations
Fireside reflections The LORD be with you…And also with you. Jack writes: Good morning! At the time of writing the General Election is still a day away and so I cannot refer to the outcome as now known to you as you read this reflection. The hope is that whatever has been decided those who have been entrusted with the task of governing the country have a clear vision of what they are trying to achieve and that every sector of society will be its beneficiaries. I wonder if the Church of Scotland has a clear vision of what it needs to be so that it can continue to fulfil its God-given mission in this rapidly evolving 21st century. Presently it is facing a financial problem which impacts upon the traditional model of parish ministry. There is a growing consensus that the body that needs to be completely overhauled in order to handle this crisis are the Presbyteries. These bodies have largely had a supervising role in relation to congregations, and deal mainly with the administration of congregational affairs. But now the Church wants the Presbyteries to become the powerhouse for deploying a nationally-reduced personnel of ministers, raising the required levels of finance, create new forms of ministry teams, relate parishes to one another around clear and agreed goals, initiate new and imaginative ways of being church, hold congregations accountable, ensuring that the local churches are fulfilling their mission. The trouble is most of the members of Presbyteries are ministers and elders steeped in the traditional church and who are caught in that particular mind-set and would admit to finding it exceedingly difficult to think out-of-the-box. So is there anyway for them to make the leap across the chasm of tradition and culture and begin to inform the Church with a new vision that leads to the creation of new structures and processe?. Well, the first thing to realise is this has been done before: many times! It’s just that it has always happened in other periods of history rather than our own. Take the origins of the Church as recorded in the Acts of the Apostles and the Epistles: the first Christians were Jews, with two millennia of tradition and history behind them, yet what these documents demonstrate is the way that that mindset had to change so that the Church could become the global faith it was destined to be. From the moment God’s Spirit fell upon unbidden on the first Gentile household the Church was required to grapple with the implications and formulate ways of being Church that took accounts of the new situation. Take the time of the Reformation whose 450thanniversary we are being asked to commemorate this year with our sister congregations across the country. The Latin-centred Church had held sway over Europe for 1000 years. Yet the theological principles based upon a return to the Scriptures took hold and required that every aspect of being Church be revised in their light. And so when we look at the situation today we must realise we are in similar territory. What has worked in the past needs to be radically overhauled, and brand-new ways of being Church need to replace what is now outmoded. But what we cannot do is try and repeat what has already done. It might seem appropriate to go back to these periods, learn and reapply the lessons, but the world has significantly moved on from these times. New wine still needs new wineskins. But is there nowhere we can look for guidance and inspiration? The Book of Revelation was written during a time of fierce persecution of the Church. Its purpose, through coded and imagery-laden text, was to tell the story of God’s redemption and its final victory over the world. It concludes with a vision which has at its heart a simple statement of purpose: God's home is now with his people. He will live with them, and they will be his own. (Revelation 21:3) In this vision God also explains that to reach this final goal God has been making all things new. Perhaps the Church can take comfort that these periods of large upheaval that require all things to change are God-ordained, and that the Church should take this as the guiding principle for change: what will allow God to live among the people, as they now are? Keeping the focus upon God and society will help restrain the Church from looking at change for its own sake and hopefully encourage the Church to refrain from considering any element of its present life as a sacred cow that cannot be touched. Until next week…The Lord Bless You and Keep You.
and Keep You. |