Prayers released ahead of Friday's minute silence for victims of Tunisia shootings

Prayers released ahead of Friday's minute silence for victims of Tunisia shootings

From the Church of England Website. The Church had previously posted prayers for peace following the attack.

Father,
you know our hearts and share our sorrows.
We are hurt by our parting from those whom we loved:
when we are angry at the loss we have sustained,
when we long for words of comfort,
yet find them hard to hear,
turn our grief to truer living,
our affliction to firmer hope
in Jesus Christ our Lord.
Amen.

***

In the face of violence and fear,
of anxiety and terror
shine as a light, O Lord,
as sign and substance of
peace, hope, trust, assurance and love.
Amen.

Lord, have mercy
on those who mourn
who feel numb and crushed
and are filled with the pain of grief,
whose strength has given up
You know all our sighing and longings:
be near to us and teach us to fix our hope on you
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Amen.

***

Lord, do not abandon us in our desolation.
Keep us safe in the midst of trouble,
and complete your purpose for us
through your steadfast love and faithfulness,
in Jesus Christ our Saviour.
Amen.

***

Our eyes, Lord, are wasted with grief;
you know we are weary with groaning.
As we remember our death
in the dark emptiness of the night,
have mercy on us and heal us;
forgive us and take away our fear
through the dying and rising of Jesus your Son.
Amen

Reform and Renewal

Reform and Renewal
These are the latest buzz words of the Church of England. They summarise what  might be an heroic attempt to rebuild and re-orientate the Church: to create a stronger and more missionary church.

The words might signify the beginning of a new Augustinian proclamation of the gospel in a pagan land - the church responding at last to secularization.

Or they might mean merely 'reduce and retrench'.

In broad terms I am very much in favour of the shake up which I think is entailed by 'Reform and Renewal'. I think the Church of England has come to the tail end of the reforms which shook it up in the nineteenth century. That did a lot of good and re-orientated the Church towards the new urban and industrial Britain. But the church created then is wholly unequipped for today's world, let alone tomorrow's. It's a Spy cartoon compared to Wired.

On the other hand, it's very hard to see that this current, top down, reform programme will be sufficient to re-orientate the Church towards the new, digitised, fluid, transnational, anxious and capitalist world.

And it is also very hard to see that any of the streams will be sufficient to the underlying challenge: that fewer and fewer people in the UK are bothered about religion.

(When I googled 'church of england reform and renewal' looking for illustrative images I was given a page dominated by middle-aged white men's heads, most in funny clothes. This does reflect the church, and the leadership of many other English institutions, but it is scarcely inspiring. I went for seeds and seedlings instead.)

Reform and Renewal strands:

Developing Discipleship
Blog / Video / Full Report / Comment Forum

Simplification Report
Blog / Video / Full Report / Comment Forum / Simplification Consultation document

Resourcing Ministerial EducationBlog / Video / Full Report / Comment Forum

Resourcing the Future
Blog / Video / Full Report / Comment Forum

Church Commissioners' and the Task Groups
Blog / Video / Full Report / Comment Forum

Leadership DevelopmentDean of Liverpool blog / Archbishop of Canterbury blog / Note from Bishop of Ely / Full Report

2015 Evening Worship in St Hilda's

July 19 at 4pm

Café style worship

We will share cake and coffee, prayer and conversation, worshipping around tables set out café style.

This will be informal, cheerful and relaxed, ideal for those who may not normally attend worship.

August 30 at 6pm ~ Evening Prayer

September 27 ~ Harvest Songs of Praise

November 1

A Service of Recollection and remembrance 

for those we have lost

November 29 ~ Taizé music  and prayer

December 6 ~ Carol Service

Terror and love

The Archbishop of York has issued a

Statement of Condolence, Empathy and a Call to Prayer

Archbishop of York
Rt Revd Dr John Sentamu

I want to express my deep condolences to the families of those British holiday makers who were brutally murdered in Sousse, Tunisia. At times such as these, words can seem so limited and futile in the face of brutality and horror. To the bereaved and to those who were wounded in the attack - you are in the thoughts and prayers of many of us.

My thoughts also go to the family of the manager beheaded by his driver in Lyon, France; and to those murdered and injured in Kuwait.

There is a yearning amongst so many people to respond to these acts, to respond  in a way which builds up rather than destroys.

the statement continues here

~~~

In one sense the terrorist seems successful. He not only killed but also deeply damaged tourism in Tunisia, made westerners hundreds of miles away more anxious and afraid, and reinforced everyone's instinct to make ourselves more secure, more insular. He furthered the goals of a particular conception of an Islamic Caliphate.

Against this I wish to affirm that, however improbably, love is greater. It is greater than hatred, violence, anxiety and fear. 

God's love is not an emotion. It does not wobble or flicker in the face of rejection., It may grieve in the face of callousness, ideology, violence, selfishness but it does not give up.

In the words of St Paul:

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails. (1 Corinthians 13:4-8)

Love is the nature of God and, in the end, maybe beyond our experience, love will win out.

Restart

It's been a long time since anything was put on this site and it's high time I got going again.

I'm  going to try a slightly different mix, posting items of more general interest (though probably still largely Church of  England focused) as well as items specific to St Hilda's Church.

There's a wind beginning to blow through the C of E and I for one think it's a good thing. But, as always, it will be the detail that's critical an, at the moment, the detail is missing.

Under the suspicious heading of 'Reform and Renewal' there are two tests we know about:

• is the church able to pay it's ministerial costs?
• is  the church growing?

For any other organization these might seem perfectly reasonable tests. For the C of E they suggest the beginning of a change of culture which 

On the other hand, rhetoric, anxieties and hopes are always greater than reality. We will only know how much has changed, and what it cost (in the broadest sense) long after it's too late to do anything about it.

In the meantime St Hilda's is looking forward to celebrating it's first half century - in the hope and expectation of moving forwards into its second half century with optimistic faith and faithful optimism.