Blog
You have heard me quote Trevor Hudson's observation that every person we meet stands beside "a pool of tears". Every person you will ever encounter - including people who seem to have it altogether - has known sorrow and has been wounded by their pain.
Our family attended a celebratory service last Sunday at Umhlali Methodist to mark the centenary of their church building (Kym and I served the Umhlali community for ten years before moving here). It was lovely reconnecting with people and a reminder of how important it is to make the effort to mark and celebrate key days like this. Rev Mark Wiemers (who many of you will know from his time here) invited us and several other past ministers to be a part of the service.
I had a meeting this week with the regional representative of a global missionary organisation. Henry works with Operation Mobilisation and his passion for people groups around the world who have had little or no exposure to the gospel of Jesus was a helpful reminder for me that there is more to the Church than just our pressing local concerns.
Margaret Silf tells the story of attending a welcome service for a new vicar in an Anglican church. After the service, everyone was helping themselves to food spread out on tables in the hall. The food was getting polished off at high speed, except for one bowl which remained completely untried. The bowl contained a delicious looking rice salad, but it was being ignored and stood untouched at the end of the feast. Silf wondered why this was (and felt terrible for the person who had brought it!) Then she saw what the problem was - the salad didn't have a serving spoon - there was no way for people to serve themselves a helping.
We are starting a short sermon series this week that will dip into the book of Revelation, specifically the letters written to the seven churches in Asia. As we started preparing for this first week in the series, someone asked the question, "if God were to write a letter to Westville Methodist Church, what would He say?" Brilliant question!
In our men's group recently we had a conversation about men in the church - why it is that joining a church community can be hard for men in particular, and what the church has to offer that is helpful for men. The response was interesting: leaving aside for a moment the 'God-shaped vacuum' in each of us and the opportunity to meet God in community, the deep need that the church can potentially meet for men is relational. Much has been written about the "epidemic of loneliness" in society generally (the US Surgeon General published an 80 page document last year on that subject, subtitled the "Healing Effects of Social Connection and Community") and several commentators note that this epidemic is particularly prevalent among men - we are often "less skilled than women at making friends".
Have you noticed how often you have found yourself having a conversation with a complete stranger and you end up discussing the weather in minute detail? It's not that we're all amateur meteorologists, but rather that we instinctively gravitate towards these kind of conversations, which are non-threatening, but which don't tend to deepen the relationship much!
Elizabeth O'Connor writes that the members of the Church of the Saviour in Washington DC "are committed to being a people on an inward journey and a people on an outward journey". This, she says describes "what the Christian life is all about".
I listened to an interview this week with the current vicar of Holy Trinity Brompton, Archie Coates (HTB is the church in London which launched the Alpha course and it was, until recently, led by Nicky Gumbel). The interviewer reflected on the daunting task of following an international figure like Gumbel and in responding Coates spoke a little about his daily devotional practice.
The apostle Paul often uses athletic or sporting images to make his point. In his first letter to the Corinthian church, he writes about our attitude as followers of Jesus - he says we should run not just as participants, but instead aiming to winning the race; that we should submit to strict discipline, like a boxer training for a title fight (1 Cor 9:24-27).