Lentweets

Each day in Lent I will post a tweet (a Lentweet) on aspects of public penitence (#PublicPenitence).

Lent is the season of preparation for the revelatory and transformative moment of Jesus' death and Christ's resurrection.

In this transformative process - spiritually, symbolically and in the people we are - Christians are made new. We can become more ourselves as God made us - a little more Christlike, a little closer to realising the godly qualities in each of us.

This is both personal and public, individual and communal. None of us is an isolated atom: we are who we are only in continual engagement with the people around in the circumstances in which we find ourselves. Our potential may be vast, our constraints are legion.

The Lenten disciplines of penitence and denial are intended 

1. to help us determine and focus on what is important (against the background  clamour of so many very persuasive distractions)
2. to re-prioritise our lives - giving spiritual considerations much greater importance in lasting practice
3. to prepare ourselves for the transformation of being caught up in Christ's death and resurrection.

I suggest - and this is what the Lentweets will focus on - that a part of our Lenten observance should also address the world around us. We should repent both of our own failings and of those of the world in which we live.

I suggest we should look at the evils of our ordinary existence - from the biggest (eg. war and poverty), to the near at hand (like addictions and discrimination), to the pervasive (such as the mal-distribution of wealth, income and opportunity).

Those things are all  bigger than us. It can be very hard to get our heads around them. But they are all made and sustained by the decisions people make. None of them are natural or inevitable. 

We are not individually responsible for the way things are. But we are complicit in it. We are responsible for our response to the evils of the world. And we are deeply shaped by so much much that is simply wrong. 

Pray for transformation and work for a little better.

Paul Bagshaw

St Hilda's annual meeting & report

St Hilda's annual meeting will take place on Sunday February 14th in the church hall after a
shortened morning service.

All are welcome.

Annual Report and Accounts (pdf).


Highlights:

• A busy and enjoyable social life
• A mutually supportive and pastorally sensitive community 
• The chapel has been refurbished with excellent new lighting and a new ceiling and has been repainted
• Finances remain strong

However:

• Numbers continue a slow decline
• We are not well engaged with the community around us

The year ahead:

• To celebrate and enjoy St Hilda's 50th anniversary year
• To begin to re-engage with the local community

The beginning of St Hilda's Church

50 years ago building work began.

A stone from Tynemouth Priory was placed in the foundations of the Church and solemnly blessed by the Bishop of Newcastle, Hugh Ashdown.

New Bishop of Newcastle Announced

The Venerable Christine Elizabeth Hardman has been announced as the new Bishop of Newcastle.

Diocesan announcement ~ Wiki page ~ tributes from Southwark Diocese on her retirement as Archdeacon in November 2012 (pdf) ~ Thinking Anglicans ~

The press release says:

No 10 Downing Street has announced this morning that Her Majesty The Queen has approved the nomination of the Venerable Christine Hardman BSc(Econ), M.Th, formerly Archdeacon of Lewisham and Greenwich and now Honorary Assistant Priest in the Cathedral and Collegiate Church of St Saviour and St Mary Overie Southwark, for election as Bishop of Newcastle in succession to the Right Reverend Martin Wharton, BA, on his resignation on 30th November 2014. 

She says,

I don’t really have the words to express my excitement at coming to this vibrant, warm and proud part of the world.” 

From my own faith journey I know the key significance of warm, lively, welcoming church communities with worship that transforms us and sends us out into the world - bringing the depth of Christian hope to places where hope is thin on the ground. 

God cares about the world - not just about the Church. The rule of Christ is over the whole of our lives. That’s why it’s so important for Christians to engage and work with key partners for all that leads to the flourishing of communities. As Bishop of Newcastle I will take every opportunity to engage in the public square and especially to speak on behalf of those whose voices are not heard, 

It will be such a privilege to be your Bishop and to lead you on the next stage of the journey. In all of this I will be relying on God’s grace and your prayers.

The Right Reverend Frank White, Assistant Bishop of Newcastle, said, 

This is such a good moment to welcome Christine Hardman to be our new Bishop and I look forward with eager anticipation to serving alongside her. 

Her wide interests and experience and her desire to encounter and learn from the spirituality of this region offer us all real opportunities for growth. 

Christine's gift for the intelligent engagement of the good news of Jesus Christ with the challenges of our times dovetails wonderfully with the vision of this diocese.

Her CV 

The Venerable Christine Elizabeth Hardman, aged 64, holds a B.Sc (Econ) from the University of London and trained for ordination on the St Albans Ministerial Training Scheme. 

She later studied for a Master’s degree in Applied Theology from Westminster College, Oxford. 

She became a Deaconess in 1984 and was ordained Deacon in 1987, serving as Curate at St John the Baptist, Markyate Street in the Diocese of St Albans. 

She took up the role of Tutor and Course Director on the St Albans Ministerial Training Scheme from 1988-1996. During this period the Scheme merged with the Oxford Ministry Course and she became its Director of Mission Studies. 

Christine was ordained Priest in 1994 and became Vicar of Holy Trinity and Christ the King, Stevenage in 1996 and also Rural Dean of Stevenage in 1999. She served as Archdeacon of Lewisham and Greenwich from 2001 to 2012. 

In 2012 Christine became Assistant Priest at Southwark Cathedral and received the Bishop’s Permission to Officiate in the Diocese of St Albans where she has been acting Warden of Readers. She has a special interest in mission studies and the social implications of the Gospel. 

Christine has been a member of the General Synod since 1998, with one brief break, when she moved from St Albans to Southwark Diocese, and has served on many different committees including the Synod's Eucharistic Prayers Revision Committee, the Dioceses and Pastoral Measures Review Group and the Ethical Investment Advisory Group. Her major area of work on General Synod was the legislation to allow women to be bishops. 

She was Prolocutor of the Province of Canterbury in the last Synod 2010-2015 (which came to an end with the July session) and served on the Archbishop’s Council. 

She is married to Roger and they have two daughters and four grandchildren.
Immediately after graduation Christine worked as an articled clerk and with an estate agency. Her interests include making connections between the worlds of economics and Christian faith, being in the mountains, cycling (especially bike tours in other countries and cultures), theatre and cinema. For many years she enjoyed running, completing the London Marathon three times and the Newcastle-based Great North Run.
Dates have yet to be announced for her Consecration as a bishop and the inauguration of her ministry in the Diocese of Newcastle.

She has her own Wiki page

Creeds and reconciliation

Justin Welby tweeted:

It's Written on Your Face

Jeannette Sirois for

 the City of Vancouver, 2014

Genuine reconciliation is not only about agreement, but about how we love one another in deep disagreement. @JustinWelby

Which is undoubtedly true and which also raises certain challenges - even accusations - for Christians.

History relates that Christians have been appalling bad at showing compassion to other Christians - never mind to those outside their own walls.

In fact - for all the committed Christians and Christian groups committed to reconciliation - I think there are structural aspects of Christianity which make it very difficult to find ways to "love one another in deep [or any other] disagreement."

Specifically the credal character of Christianity - self-definition and self-authentification by statements of belief - is in practice a mechanism for building walls and making enemies.

Creeds, even fragments of creeds, become the tests by which Christians tell themselves who's in their camp (and thus righteous, blessed, and Godly) and who is not (and so is polluted, accursed, ungodly). Creeds simultaneously bind together and alienate. A credal culture mediates this public structure into individual Christian attitudes and behaviour.

Locally too, the presupposition that members of a particular church community agree with one another is very powerful. It can be very hard for people to express spiritual and theological doubt, never mind dissent. Those who speak off-key find they cannot be heard. They are out of tune and they must leave the choir. The desire for harmony can make people wilfully deaf to other tunes. Faithful searchers and questioners may (wittingly and unwittingly) be edged out the door.

It's Written on Your Face

Jeannette Sirois for

 the City of Vancouver, 2014

Political parties, by contrast, begin with the presupposition of internal disagreement. Therefore their structures are designed to accommodate difference and disagreement. There are mechanisms by which differing internal groups seek to persuade the majority of their views. In practice multiple minorities are able to co-exist, collaborate and contend in ways which may contribute to the vitality of the party as a whole. Sometimes they break too, but on the whole public disagreement is evidence of strength.

But churches set on a foundation of presumed agreement, have all too often become rigid, breakable, friable. An inability to listen and unwillingness to accept difference all too easily result in individuals leaving unnoticed and conflicts escalating rapidly into division. Christian truth is conceived as credal statements which demand assent. Expressions of faith in ambiguity and ambivalence, fluid spirituality, historical flow - not to mention a divine refusal to be locked into small verbal boxes - are all threats to the established order.

And yet as Christians we preach reconciliation. We have largely been unable to reconcile older churches to one another and new Christian denominations proliferate like weeds. But we all think we can tell other people to love one another.