Vicar’s October Blog 2015

The Vicar’s October Blog 2015

John Keats in his Ode to Autumn describes the season as one of mists and mellow fruitfulness, though the 1st and 2nd of October was one of sun and great warmth on the hills of Scotland where I was enjoying my last two days of annual holiday! Enjoy I did - though in great pain. After over a week of excruciating back pain I succumbed to the physio this morning. Apparently my right upper back is fighting my body with intense tight muscles, which has caused a ripped ligament in lower back. So thank you for your prayers, and for the pressure from colleagues and congregation to seek medical attention!

But back to mists and mellow fruitfulness, and the encouragement I want to share with you all following our recent Joint Sunday Service where we introduced our preaching series looking at our God given gifts. We also sent out by email a guide to help discover the spiritual gifts that God has given us, and they were made available also at that service. The encouragement was the coming together as one, the 9 am and 11 am service worshipping together as one Body, and the buzz afterwards as people filled in the forms, and discovered their gifts. Some even rang me the next day to say how good it was to either discover for the first time, or re-affirm, the gifts God has graciously given them, and the conversations have continued. Some have handed their forms in having identified their gifts, and informed the leadership team what ministries they are currently involved in, and that has been great, and much appreciated.

We don’t want this exercise to be lost in the busy-ness of our lives, and so we are coming together over the next 7 weeks on Wednesday evenings to learn how we can be more fruitful on our frontlines (the places we spend significant time through the week in contact with non-Christians); and one way is to bless people with the gifts that God has given us. We had our first session on Wed and it was a wonderful time of worship, teaching, and fellowship. It is not too late to join us on a Wednesday evening because the coming together as one is very much part of the growing together, building the church, and extending God’s Kingdom.

Another blessed encouragement was our Harvest Service, and breakfasting together between the two morning services. A very big thank you to Richard and Kathryn de Beger for their vision for these breakfasts, and to all who helped welcome and serve - again a real sense of coming together as one. Also the Harvest windows are spectacular and thanks again to each group/persons who spent time lovingly creating places of local interest. It was good to be represented so well by the uniformed groups, and for them to contribute to our time of prayer as we thanked God for his loving provision, and the need to put more of our trust in him.

In my blog in June I mentioned that we had just had our first Joshua Group (those leading ministries coming together every other month), and this month we came together for our third Joshua Group focussing on our spiritual gifts, and reflecting where all the different ministries may be in 2018 – a follow on from an exercise we did in June. I want to take this opportunity to thank all those who are part of the Joshua Group for their leadership, vision and oversight of the particular areas of ministry for which they are responsible.

I continue to give thanks to God for all his good gifts, and to be excited for what He has in store for us all at St. Mark’s – so much more than we could ever imagine.

Autumn fruitful blessings - Hennie