As part of this the Community of St Chad (CSC) are holding a quiet day, something which is always valuable (having had one yesterday I can still feel the benefits tonight) and beneficial, the details of which are below:
Showing posts with label rule of life. Show all posts
Showing posts with label rule of life. Show all posts
Tuesday, 4 June 2013
St Chad - A Quiet Day
Because being a discipleship is a lifelong journey, Lichfield Diocese created a rule of life inspired by St Chad (sometime bishop of Lichfield). Within this is an active and spiritually refreshing path that draws us closer into relationship and knowledge of Christ and the word of God and helps us to submit ourselves in obedience and in returns brings increasing depths of peace, wisdom and enabling to each of us.
As part of this the Community of St Chad (CSC) are holding a quiet day, something which is always valuable (having had one yesterday I can still feel the benefits tonight) and beneficial, the details of which are below:
As part of this the Community of St Chad (CSC) are holding a quiet day, something which is always valuable (having had one yesterday I can still feel the benefits tonight) and beneficial, the details of which are below:
Saturday, 21 January 2012
When the going get rough
Regardless of what our calling is, we all have one and the greatest of these is our baptismal calling which having confirmed us as members of the Church calls us to reject rebellion against God and takes us into the world.
In the world we are called to tell, teach and make disciples.
In the home it calls us to be students of the Word and to be diligent (i.e. do it) in prayer. Everywhere we are called to be witnesses to the atoning power of Christ's blood and to live our new life.
Life is a variable and has many peaks and troughs, highs and lows. We all have times of darkness and despair and sunlight and joy; Easy water and wild water which hides rocks and hazards to the soul.
Being Christian is easy when we are living in the pluses but when the minus signs begin to accumulate we tend to cling to that which we know and sadly this is often the opposite of the 'Fruit of the Spirit' in Galatians five. Instead of the 'love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness' we find instead varying degrees of 'division, sadness, despair, impatience, cruelty (in word and deed) and wickedness'.
It seems that when the 'going gets tough' some stop coming,
Some start swearing, kicking and fighting,
Some open a bottle and look to a different spirit,
Some take their eyes off God and look to the world and its distractions,
Some crawl into their caves and refuse to come out.
People often tell me how 'lucky' I am that I am immune from the above options. Would that it was true for when we the going gets tough, we ALL have the potential to select one (or all) of the wrong options. Then I have to tell them that I try not to slip into one (or more) of the wrong choices and that I do this by:
Reading my Bible - Conversing with God (Prayer) - Selecting the right company (Yes, I try to avoid those who will make me worse when I'm wobbling) and keeping my mouth shut (always a tough task, but the potential to say the wrong thing in the wrong way or use the wrong words is something we all have).
And when they ask what I do when things are going well?
Reading my Bible - Conversing with God - Selecting the right company and keeping my mouth shut (still a tough task).
What about you?
In the world we are called to tell, teach and make disciples.
In the home it calls us to be students of the Word and to be diligent (i.e. do it) in prayer. Everywhere we are called to be witnesses to the atoning power of Christ's blood and to live our new life.
Life is a variable and has many peaks and troughs, highs and lows. We all have times of darkness and despair and sunlight and joy; Easy water and wild water which hides rocks and hazards to the soul.
Being Christian is easy when we are living in the pluses but when the minus signs begin to accumulate we tend to cling to that which we know and sadly this is often the opposite of the 'Fruit of the Spirit' in Galatians five. Instead of the 'love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness' we find instead varying degrees of 'division, sadness, despair, impatience, cruelty (in word and deed) and wickedness'.
It seems that when the 'going gets tough' some stop coming,
Some start swearing, kicking and fighting,
Some open a bottle and look to a different spirit,
Some take their eyes off God and look to the world and its distractions,
Some crawl into their caves and refuse to come out.
People often tell me how 'lucky' I am that I am immune from the above options. Would that it was true for when we the going gets tough, we ALL have the potential to select one (or all) of the wrong options. Then I have to tell them that I try not to slip into one (or more) of the wrong choices and that I do this by:
Reading my Bible - Conversing with God (Prayer) - Selecting the right company (Yes, I try to avoid those who will make me worse when I'm wobbling) and keeping my mouth shut (always a tough task, but the potential to say the wrong thing in the wrong way or use the wrong words is something we all have).
And when they ask what I do when things are going well?
Reading my Bible - Conversing with God - Selecting the right company and keeping my mouth shut (still a tough task).
What about you?
Sunday, 4 September 2011
Alert, Loving and Reconciling Watchmen
All too often we find the Matthew passage used as an almost legalistic procedure for bringing a member of the community that is Church to book and yet it is not condemnation and expulsion (as we also find in 1 Corinthians 5) but reconciliation that is the focus. Why? The Ezekiel passage demonstrates the results of sin on person, community and nation. The call to repentance and the call to act as watchmen for one another, lest we all perish, is clear.
If we were to examine the Ezekiel we see it sandwiched between judgment (1) and restoration (34) calling us to look at our response rather than God’s, as is this whole book and these are to be watchmen for the whole and repentance in the individual 9and also of course, corporately, the whole).
So we are first to be WATCHMEN – a sentry or lookout to warn of approaching danger. For a watchman to miss the enemy was for people to perish – it might be one, it might be all – but their blood were on the sentry’s hands. So to is it if we permit others to act in such ways as they lose their lives through enemy action, and we know who the enemy is and what his weapons are, don’t we?
Of course, when we see it and we warn them, how do we convince them of the danger? Living in Libya and seeing a column of dust approaching makes it easy to warn people of approaching danger. But the app on your phone that calls you to gamble, the magazines on the top shelf that cause your eyes to wander, the many possessions calling out to possess you. Not such an easy task.
But God takes great pleasure in repentance and reconciliation, He’s not about punishing, but will if there is a need for this is justice. So we need to be ALERT – Romans calls us to wake from our slumbers and be alert to the fact that the day of judgement is nearer now than when you got out of bed and put our houses in order. To put aside those things that bring us to destruction and live our lives openly in the light – for it is only those things that are wrong that we choose to do under cover of darkness. But time is ever growing shorter and so the need surely becomes ever greater?
So we must work hard to RECONCILE ourselves to one another, for this is one of the ways that we demonstrate God’s love – see how these Christians LOVE one another – and must cry out our warnings to those who are under threat from the enemy.
We do this by the process in Mathew. Interestingly (well I think so) the passage is stuck between the shepherd who leaves his sheep to recover the lost member of the flock (parallels with Ezekiel and the shepherd prophecy perhaps) and the ‘unforgiving debtor’ (you know, the 70*70 forgiveness bit). Reconciliation is about dialogue, awareness, forgiveness and concern and some comments lead people to think it is OK to condemn ‘sinners’ and exclude them, for Jesus uses the examples ‘Tax Gatherers’ and ‘Gentiles’ but I have to ask how He treated these people? Is this not an example that we need to follow rather than stick with the crowd?
It is too easy to leave the lost ‘lost’ and remain in our holy huddles (in empty buildings). It is too easy to engage in righteous anger and conflict. We seek to bring a peace that is more than an absence of conflict – it is the Shalom of God.
May we, and those with whom we live with, worship with and proclaim Christ as Lord together always experience this shalomyness through the Grace of God and our humble desires to live the life that Christ has won for us through the Cross and lives in us by the power of the Holy Spirit.
Pax
Ezekiel 33: 7 - 11
“Now, son of man, I am making you a watchman for the people of Israel. Therefore, listen to what I say and warn them for me. If I announce that some wicked people are sure to die and you fail to tell them to change their ways, then they will die in their sins, and I will hold you responsible for their deaths. But if you warn them to repent and they don’t repent, they will die in their sins, but you will have saved yourself.
“Son of man, give the people of Israel this message: You are saying, ‘Our sins are heavy upon us; we are wasting away! How can we survive?’ As surely as I live, says the Sovereign Lord, I take no pleasure in the death of wicked people. I only want them to turn from their wicked ways so they can live. Turn! Turn from your wickedness, O people of Israel! Why should you die?
Romans 13: 8 - 14
Owe no one anything, except to love each other, for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. For the commandments, “You shall not commit adultery, You shall not murder, You shall not steal, You shall not covet,” and any other commandment, are summed up in this word: “You shall love your neighbour as yourself.” Love does no wrong to a neighbour; therefore love is the fulfilling of the law.
Besides this you know the time, that the hour has come for you to wake from sleep. For salvation is nearer to us now than when we first believed. The night is far gone; the day is at hand. So then let us cast off the works of darkness and put on the armour of light. Let us walk properly as in the daytime, not in orgies and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and sensuality, not in quarrelling and jealousy. But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires.
Matthew 18: 15 – 20
“If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained your brother. But if he does not listen, take one or two others along with you, that every charge may be established by the evidence of two or three witnesses. If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church. And if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector. Truly, I say to you, whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.
Again I say to you:
If two of you agree on earth about anything they ask, it will be done for them by my Father in heaven. For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I among them.”
If we were to examine the Ezekiel we see it sandwiched between judgment (1) and restoration (34) calling us to look at our response rather than God’s, as is this whole book and these are to be watchmen for the whole and repentance in the individual 9and also of course, corporately, the whole).
So we are first to be WATCHMEN – a sentry or lookout to warn of approaching danger. For a watchman to miss the enemy was for people to perish – it might be one, it might be all – but their blood were on the sentry’s hands. So to is it if we permit others to act in such ways as they lose their lives through enemy action, and we know who the enemy is and what his weapons are, don’t we?
Of course, when we see it and we warn them, how do we convince them of the danger? Living in Libya and seeing a column of dust approaching makes it easy to warn people of approaching danger. But the app on your phone that calls you to gamble, the magazines on the top shelf that cause your eyes to wander, the many possessions calling out to possess you. Not such an easy task.
But God takes great pleasure in repentance and reconciliation, He’s not about punishing, but will if there is a need for this is justice. So we need to be ALERT – Romans calls us to wake from our slumbers and be alert to the fact that the day of judgement is nearer now than when you got out of bed and put our houses in order. To put aside those things that bring us to destruction and live our lives openly in the light – for it is only those things that are wrong that we choose to do under cover of darkness. But time is ever growing shorter and so the need surely becomes ever greater?
So we must work hard to RECONCILE ourselves to one another, for this is one of the ways that we demonstrate God’s love – see how these Christians LOVE one another – and must cry out our warnings to those who are under threat from the enemy.
We do this by the process in Mathew. Interestingly (well I think so) the passage is stuck between the shepherd who leaves his sheep to recover the lost member of the flock (parallels with Ezekiel and the shepherd prophecy perhaps) and the ‘unforgiving debtor’ (you know, the 70*70 forgiveness bit). Reconciliation is about dialogue, awareness, forgiveness and concern and some comments lead people to think it is OK to condemn ‘sinners’ and exclude them, for Jesus uses the examples ‘Tax Gatherers’ and ‘Gentiles’ but I have to ask how He treated these people? Is this not an example that we need to follow rather than stick with the crowd?
It is too easy to leave the lost ‘lost’ and remain in our holy huddles (in empty buildings). It is too easy to engage in righteous anger and conflict. We seek to bring a peace that is more than an absence of conflict – it is the Shalom of God.
May we, and those with whom we live with, worship with and proclaim Christ as Lord together always experience this shalomyness through the Grace of God and our humble desires to live the life that Christ has won for us through the Cross and lives in us by the power of the Holy Spirit.
Pax
Ezekiel 33: 7 - 11
“Now, son of man, I am making you a watchman for the people of Israel. Therefore, listen to what I say and warn them for me. If I announce that some wicked people are sure to die and you fail to tell them to change their ways, then they will die in their sins, and I will hold you responsible for their deaths. But if you warn them to repent and they don’t repent, they will die in their sins, but you will have saved yourself.
“Son of man, give the people of Israel this message: You are saying, ‘Our sins are heavy upon us; we are wasting away! How can we survive?’ As surely as I live, says the Sovereign Lord, I take no pleasure in the death of wicked people. I only want them to turn from their wicked ways so they can live. Turn! Turn from your wickedness, O people of Israel! Why should you die?
Romans 13: 8 - 14
Owe no one anything, except to love each other, for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. For the commandments, “You shall not commit adultery, You shall not murder, You shall not steal, You shall not covet,” and any other commandment, are summed up in this word: “You shall love your neighbour as yourself.” Love does no wrong to a neighbour; therefore love is the fulfilling of the law.
Besides this you know the time, that the hour has come for you to wake from sleep. For salvation is nearer to us now than when we first believed. The night is far gone; the day is at hand. So then let us cast off the works of darkness and put on the armour of light. Let us walk properly as in the daytime, not in orgies and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and sensuality, not in quarrelling and jealousy. But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires.
Matthew 18: 15 – 20
“If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained your brother. But if he does not listen, take one or two others along with you, that every charge may be established by the evidence of two or three witnesses. If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church. And if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector. Truly, I say to you, whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.
Again I say to you:
If two of you agree on earth about anything they ask, it will be done for them by my Father in heaven. For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I among them.”
Sunday, 26 June 2011
Living (and working) to rule
No, I'm not trying to organise industrial action, I'm trying to get people to realise that they need a rule of life and once they have one, to live by it!
When one is ordained there are a number of facets on the gem that is Christian ministry, namely:
We accept the Holy Scriptures as being the source of everything we need to know about eternal salvation through faith in Jesus Christ.
This means that the Bible is not a second thought and puts paid to all the universalist tosh that gets peddled. We preach Christ, and Him crucified, risen and alive and teach obedience to the word of God (written and living, logos and Logos!).
We will be active and consistent regarding prayer and in reading, and studying, the Bible and other stuff that will deepen our faith and help us to be witnesses to the truth of the gospel.
If we can't, won't or don't do this then we should never have taken the shilling. Without this we are not 'fit for role' and should remove ourselves from ministry. We are all called 'to stir up' the gift of God that makes us the living witnesses spoken of later - living in holiness and grace.
Believing the doctrine of the Christian faith as received (and practised) by the Church of England and teaching it.
Amazing how many people (many with dog-collars and some in purple) struggle with this.
Being a living witness, a type of Christ in the place you find yourself, living through teaching and example to make Christ's love and life known.
Amazingly, there are many who fall down on this one too!
Caring and serving those 'in the household of God' in the same way Christ came, as a servant, not the dog-collar whom must be served and have status.
Caring and serving, living in and running our own families as an example and as a discipline.
An old Vicar once told me that if you couldn't run your own life and the life of your family, you had no chance with a church!
Working together for the building of the whole Church, making disciples and displaying the unity of the Church across denominations and groupings.
We need to seek where we can share and be united rather than look for the things that separate us for being Church. Too many people taken up with their piddling little gatherings at the sake of a wider, and more effective, Church unity (which if present builds ALL the churches by making disciples and setting the conditions for growth).
Submit to those in authority.
This is a key point and makes sense of the fact that we need to be careful whom we entrust leadership (at all levels) to. Some of those who disregard all the above elements make themselves extremely difficult to obey or respect, for some are (sadly) barely Christian! Yet, there is still the question of rightly placed authority to be considered then!
There we are - everything that the ordinal (the ordaining rule book) requires from Christians not just for ordination but for those who truly wish to live their baptismal calling too!
Pax
When one is ordained there are a number of facets on the gem that is Christian ministry, namely:
We accept the Holy Scriptures as being the source of everything we need to know about eternal salvation through faith in Jesus Christ.
This means that the Bible is not a second thought and puts paid to all the universalist tosh that gets peddled. We preach Christ, and Him crucified, risen and alive and teach obedience to the word of God (written and living, logos and Logos!).
We will be active and consistent regarding prayer and in reading, and studying, the Bible and other stuff that will deepen our faith and help us to be witnesses to the truth of the gospel.
If we can't, won't or don't do this then we should never have taken the shilling. Without this we are not 'fit for role' and should remove ourselves from ministry. We are all called 'to stir up' the gift of God that makes us the living witnesses spoken of later - living in holiness and grace.
Believing the doctrine of the Christian faith as received (and practised) by the Church of England and teaching it.
Amazing how many people (many with dog-collars and some in purple) struggle with this.
Being a living witness, a type of Christ in the place you find yourself, living through teaching and example to make Christ's love and life known.
Amazingly, there are many who fall down on this one too!
Caring and serving those 'in the household of God' in the same way Christ came, as a servant, not the dog-collar whom must be served and have status.
Caring and serving, living in and running our own families as an example and as a discipline.
An old Vicar once told me that if you couldn't run your own life and the life of your family, you had no chance with a church!
Working together for the building of the whole Church, making disciples and displaying the unity of the Church across denominations and groupings.
We need to seek where we can share and be united rather than look for the things that separate us for being Church. Too many people taken up with their piddling little gatherings at the sake of a wider, and more effective, Church unity (which if present builds ALL the churches by making disciples and setting the conditions for growth).
Submit to those in authority.
This is a key point and makes sense of the fact that we need to be careful whom we entrust leadership (at all levels) to. Some of those who disregard all the above elements make themselves extremely difficult to obey or respect, for some are (sadly) barely Christian! Yet, there is still the question of rightly placed authority to be considered then!
There we are - everything that the ordinal (the ordaining rule book) requires from Christians not just for ordination but for those who truly wish to live their baptismal calling too!
Pax
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