A Big Thank You

20 April 2008

A big thank you to everyone who turned out for our Annual Review last Sunday.  It is so good to be able to celebrate together the things that have been achieved over the last year and to look ahead with excitement to the coming year.

There was such a good mix of age at the event, demonstrating our commitment to support each other across the generations.  This is one thing that many visitors to our church comment on.  In the audio visual presentation there were some wonderful pictures from Angela and Jon's wedding of so many members of our church family who turned out to support them at the service.  The beautiful selection of pictures taken as a host of people made their way down the church footpath to the service captured something of the celebration in the service.

One that touched me particularly was the picture of Esther Rowe [11] and Edna Donkin [let's say 50+].  This was not just because it was Esther, but because it was a cameo of our church family walking together smiling and enjoying the day.  It expresses something of our church values recorded in the back of the Annual Review booklet and in the Church Family Directory.  Both are available from the church office and are worth reading again.

Thank you to those who have just stepped down from serving our church family.  Mike Penney, who has served his allotted time as church warden, has dome a fantastic job with Eddie Mason.  We welcome Simon Massarella as church warden in his place.

Thank you too for Eric Perry who has finished his three year stint on the church council [and congratulations to Eric, as head teacher at South Wilford School, for an encouraging Ofsted inspection].  We welcome five new members on to the council this year.  They are Paul Wicks, who has offered to stand as secretary, and Peter Brown, who will take over as treasurer in January.  We also welcome Jo Higham, Melissa Rowe, Clare Wicks and Beki Bowles.

They join the current members who are Eddie Mason, Rob Baxter, Roger Periam, Lindsey Barnes, Margaret Kidger, Bob Stanley, Alison Place, Angela Mills, Megan Smith and me.  Please pray for the wardens and all of those on the church council.  They have a very strategic role as we seek to move forward as a church and help all church members to grow in their walk with God.

This is going to be another exciting year, with more staff joining us [Diane and Jono Tregale] and important issues to tackle with respect to mission, outreach, youth and children, worship, discipleship and property.

Thank you again for all your support and service to the church.

David Rowe, Rector

A Christmas Gift Selection

16 December 2007

I am an avid reader.  Our house is full of all kinds of books - and I have read many this last year, partly due to my period of study leave.  Once in a while I come across a book which I rate in my 'outstanding' section - to be read many times and kept on the 'readily available' shelf.  Among these I would rate C.S. Lewis' "Mere Christianity", G.K. Chesterton's "The Everlasting Man" and St. Augustine's "City of God".

But I have to admit that I have stumbled on what I would consider to be another spiritual classic.  Dallas Willard has been around for some time.  His books include "Hearing God", "The Spirit of the Disciples" and "The Divine Conspiracy" - each of which I have lined up on my bookshelf.  But he has really touched a chord with me in his book "The Renovation of the Heart".  Never have I come across so many pages or paragraphs in a book that resonate with my own spiritual hunger and desire to know God deeper.

Willard's book is very perceptive and very practical.  He is perceptive in that when reading it I find myself thinking that this guy knows me - and he knows how my heart beats.  He is practical in that he offers biblical and pastoral ways to develop spiritual formation.  That is the nourishment and nurturing of my heart at its core - the need to find security in God.  Already I feel the change inside - and I am grateful to God for each moment spent in this book.

Whether this book will do the same for you remains to be seen.  What I can say is that I certainly feel that if every church member took this book with the seriousness it deserves, then we would be a far better church for it.  Our walk with God would be deeper and we would be less influenced negatively by circumstances around us and much more positive in desiring the best for each other, without feeling threatened by theirs or others success.  It also has an innate ability to help you be more open and vulnerable with God.

If you are still considering a Christmas present for someone, Christian or non-Christian, this is a book in the style of a self-help book but that will go so much deeper with internal transformation.  I will let Dallas Willard have the final words in an extract from his book:

"We live from our heart.  The part of us that drives and organizes our life is not physical.  You have a spirit within you and it has been formed.  It has taken on a specific character.  I have a spirit and it has been formed.  The spirit within us takes on whatever character it has from the experiences we have lived through and the choices we have made.  That is what it means for us to be 'formed'.

How we live in the world now and in the future is, almost totally, a result of what we have become in the depths of our being - in our spirit, will or heart.  That is where we understand our world and interpret reality.  From there we make our choices, act and react, try to change the world.  We live from our depths - and we understand little of what is there.....

The greatest need you and I have, the greatest need of humanity in general, is renovation of the heart.  That spiritual place within us from which outlook, choices and actions come has been formed from a world denying God.  It must be transformed.  Indeed, the only hope for humanity lies in the fact that, just as our spirit has been formed, so also it can be transformed."

Why not do your heart a favour!  Give it a chance to flourish - here is wisdom drawn from a deep encounter with God and His Word.

David Rowe, Rector