Tag: recommendations

Marc Lloyd warmly invites you to:

The Rural Ministry Seminar

This is intended primarily for ministers of rural churches of any denomination, but space permitting, others are welcome.
Tuesday 1st March 2011

9:30am Coffee available

10am - 4pm

Venue: Warbleton area, between Hailsham and Heathfield in the lovely Sussex Countryside (Warbleton Church Rooms, Church Hill, Warbleton, East Sussex, TN21 9BD - subject to numbers).

Cost: £5 including coffee, biscuits, soft drinks etc. & materials. Please pay on the door. Please bring a packed lunch or head to a near by pub.

Speakers / facilitators:

Rev'd David Hall is the Vicar of Danehill with Chelwood Gate nr Haywards Heath in East Sussex where he has ministered for over seven years. During this time the churches have seen significant growth, including in the music ministry and amongst children, young people and families. David is also a training incumbent supervising a curate.  David's first degree was in Business Studies with Marketing Honours.  After graduation, he joined the graduate training scheme of a top-ten public relations consultancy, before moving into a management role advising major companies on everything from consumer PR to crisis management.  He has met with and learned from Christians all over the world from Africa to North America and firmly believes that small rural churches can have the ministries of large ones!

Rev'd Dick Farr was the senior minister of 3 growing evangelical churches in rural East Anglia for 19 years (Henham and Elsenham with Ugley in the Diocese of Chelmsford on the north Essex Hertfordshire border from 1990 - 2009) working with an ordained and lay team.  He is currently the Associate Vicar at St John's, Tunbridge Wells.

Practical and theological issues will be discussed. Sessions will include material on Understanding The Rural Context Today and Ministering in a Rural Context Today as well as considering the particular challenges and opportunities of life and work in the countryside and of being responsible for more than one church building / congregation etc.

There will be some substantial plenary input but also lots of time for comments, questions, discussion and real interaction etc.

Go to Marc's blog for more.

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Cathy and Gary Deddo have some wonderful resources at the Trinity Study Center.  Their central theme is participation in the triune God through our gracious union with Christ.  They've also got running commentaries on James, 1 John, Hebrews and the Sermon on the Mount.

I've listened to Cathy's talks many times and never failed to be refreshed:

Christian life - burden or blessing

Our identity in Christ

Jesus our only Intercessor

Jesus, mediating our relationships

And as a taster of some of Gary's stuff, here's an excerpt from his recent paper: Sharing in Christ’s Life and Ministry: Moving Beyond Burnout or Bitterness

But not only does Christ's humanity abide, his active ministry to humanity also continues. Christ’s gracious service did not end at the cross. Yes, the reconciling work was finished, but that reconciling work was for the sake of our living out and bearing witness to that recreated relationship, now securely reestablished. The word we are given by Jesus we are to pass on to others that they may believe as well. As we see throughout the book of Hebrews, we serve a living Lord who continually intercedes for us. He remains the one true apostle, the one true leader of our worship, the one true pioneer and perfecter of our faith. Our Lord Jesus Christ remains ever vigilant, ever active. He is no retired Savior who is now unemployed. We share in his continuing ministry of reconciliation.

So all our responses to Christ are nothing more than following Christ in his present activity and engaging in the ministry that he is actively doing now through the Holy Spirit. There is only one ministry and it is Christ’s. We do not have our own ministries. When we preach the gospel, we participate in the apostolic ministry of Jesus by the Holy Spirit. For the Spirit continues to bear witness to Christ and to our need for Christ. When we love a neighbor, or love an enemy for the sake of Christ and his kingdom, we are merely catching up with God. We're merely going to work with God who already loves my neighbor and my enemies. When we pray, we're joining Christ in his faithful prayers of intercessions for us and for the world. When we
worship we are joining in with all the faithful, including those who have gone before us, who are continually worshiping, following the leadership of Jesus Christ, our great leiturgos, or worship leader. Even when we confess our sins we’re joining with Jesus himself who really is the only one who truly knows the depth of sin, who is truly and perfectly repentant and so for us received the baptism of John the Baptist. But as our great mediator who knows our weaknesses, he takes our weak faith and meager repentance and graciously makes it his own, perfects it and passes it on to the Father. The work of Christ was to save us, rescue us from sin. But more than that, we are saved for participation in an ongoing relationship of wonderful exchange to the Father, through he Son and in the Spirit.

When we see our whole lives this way we join with the Apostle Paul who proclaimed, “I live yet not I but Christ lives in me.” But that is not just a general platitude that sounds nice. The whole of the Christian life is actually a participation in the life and ministry of Christ. So that we can say, I pray, yet not I but Christ prays in me. I obey, yet not I but Christ in me. I have faith, yet not I but Christ in me. I hunger and thirst for righteousness and reconciliation, yet not I but Christ in me. The joy, peace and love that Christ wants for us is not a joy, peace and love that is like Christ's, that we somehow achieve with God's help. No, by his Spirit, Christ intends to share with us his joy, his peace, his love, his righteousness. And, from the foundations of the earth, he never thought otherwise! Never view yourself apart from Christ for that is not who you are. We are one with him in his glorified humanity!

Have a wander around and be refreshed.

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Mount Pleasant Baptist Church in Swansea are running another theology day - this time on the atonement.

Paul Blackham will speak on The Atonement through the Former Prophets then The Atonement in the Gospels.

Paul Mallard will address 'The Atonement and the Church.'

Martin Downes is speaking on 'The Atonement in Church History.'

Looks like a brilliant day!

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When:  23 October 2010; 10am - 3(ish)pm

Where:  Mount Pleasant Baptist Church

Cost: £10

Contact: administrator@mountpleasantchurch.org.uk for more info.

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