Anglican Down Under: Spiritual and Sacred Links

Monday, June 8, 2015

Spiritual and Sacred Links - Monday 8th June 2015

This week in the wake of new figures on religious affiliation in Britain, there has been a lot of thought put into the church, its history and what can be done to engage people and some of that is in this collection:

#1 Kendall Harmon on Pentecost and the church and our part in it; #2 Vaughan Roberts on the history of the church in Europe and the part we can play; #3 Martin Robinson shares his experience of church-planting in a modern European context. This theme is taken further in #14 with an article by Bishop Michael Nazir-Ali, and some analysis and suggestions by others. The other side of the coin is the continuing persecution of Christians reflecting not so much the secular hostility to Christianity as the offence other religions appear to take at it and the threat they perceive it to be. Do please pray for them.

Prayers for you for the coming week

SERMONS AND TALKS
1. Pentecost - the birth of the Church - Dr Kendall Harmon - Christ St Pauls Audio [Acts 2]
http://tinyurl.com/ngnwjzr

2. The Evangelism of Europe - Vaughan Roberts - St Ebbes Audio [Acts 16:11-34]
http://tinyurl.com/pwz9o6c

3. Church Planting in a Continent Experiencing Rapid Change - Martin Robinson - FOCL [watch this if nothing else]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=POfa-Sod1LI

4. Preaching Galatians - David Cook - St Helens media
http://tinyurl.com/ogoomqm

Commentary
5. Preaching Ideas and Commentary - Rev Peter Carrell
http://preachingdownunder.blogspot.co.nz/

6. The Sunday Readings - Rev Stephen Trott [hopefully back online soon]
https://laworgospel.wordpress.com/

7. The New Testament in a year with Rev Andrew Goddard
http://www.sjtl.org/category/reading-nt/

WORSHIP
8. The bells of St Lawrence, Jewry in London - BBC Radio 4
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b05z5m42

9. Choral Evensong from Truro Cathedral - BBC Radio 3
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b05x1w65

10. Sunday Hour - BBC Radio 2
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b05x8vjg

11. Choral services from the chapels of King's College Cambridge
http://www.kings.cam.ac.uk/choir/webcasts.html
and St John's College, Cambridge
http://www.sjcchoir.co.uk/webcasts
and Trinity College, Cambridge
http://trinitycollegechoir.com//webcasts/listen-again/
and New College, Oxford
http://www.newcollegechoir.com/webcasts.html

PRAYER
Please pray for the Church of England, Christians and all facing persecution and crime in Syria and Iraq, Sudan, Nigeria and Iran; for those affected by the earthquakes in Nepal; for peace in Burundi, Ukraine, Israel and Gaza; and for the Diocese of South Carolina.

12. Topical Prayers - Church of England
http://tinyurl.com/6wnk2pk
Prayers for the Church of England from Lent and Beyond
http://tinyurl.com/mvux2u3
Sudan: S. Sudan pastors face death penalty on charges of sedition and spying - WWM
http://tinyurl.com/nv4xzms
Christian pastor on trial in Sudan: 'God chose me to suffer' - CT
http://tinyurl.com/q9pcu2m
Iran: Iran sentences 18 Christian converts to prison for creating house churches - CT
http://tinyurl.com/odvwz8x
Iran pastor Fathi's appeal fails, against extra year in prison and 74 lashes - WWM
http://tinyurl.com/ph4lwl6
South Carolina:Prayers from Lent and Beyond
http://tinyurl.com/kssn33y

CURRENT AFFAIRS
13. Sunday Programme - with Caroline Wyatt - BBC Radio 4
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b05xcqs9

Food for thought
14. We need to embrace our history and reach out to the "spiritual" if we want to halt declining Anglican numbers - Bishop Michael Nazir-Ali
http://tinyurl.com/nb62bre
Religious 'nones' aren't as anti-church as we might think - CT
http://tinyurl.com/p5mzm6s
Evangelism: Knowledge and Openness - Darryl Dash
http://tinyurl.com/n9bglzs
Socio-Demographic Groups and Religious Affiliation in Britain - BRIN
http://tinyurl.com/qcx3l5r
2,600-year-old 'tomb of prophet Nahum' is under threat from Islamic State - CT
http://tinyurl.com/nuqoc74
Judge sides with student suspended by his school for sharing Christ with classmates - CT
http://tinyurl.com/otjcmz2
Is this the secret to living longer? - Peter Bowes - BBC Capital
http://tinyurl.com/p6btduc

FINALLY
15. Why do I care? - Release International
http://tinyurl.com/q9ex8x5

16. Corpus Christi Carol - Britten - Voces 8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qcjRh0BB1So

17. Behold the Lamb - Stuart Townend
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=alvX9Fa53-o

18. Reflections from Uyuni, Bolivia - Enrique Pacheco Vimeo
https://vimeo.com/126061288

God bless you

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Anglican Down Under

Welcome to this blog on Anglican, theological, biblical and other matters, mostly missional or liturgical (but I reserve the right to write about cricket and politics). It is grounded in some islands at the bottom of the world which, together with a large island to our west, constitute fabulous Down Under.

I have two related blogs which I post on less frequently:

Hermeneutics and Human Dignity

Resourcing Preaching and Worship Down Under

I am Bishop of the Diocese of Christchurch in the Anglican Church in Aotearoa, New Zealand and Polynesia (ACANZP). I am trying to write in ways which contribute to the flourishing of the church of God - a church represented in the Anglican Communion, in the Anglican churches of these islands and, of course, in my Diocese. You will judge whether I am succeeding or not!

Pearls

Show us anything clearly set forth in Holy Scripture that we do not teach and we will teach it. Show us anything in our teaching or practice is clearly contrary to Holy Scripture, and we will abandon it.

Stephen Neill

For the glory of God is a human being fully alive, and the glory of humanity is the vision of God.

St Irenaeus

Fundamentally the Gospel is obsessed with the idea of the unity of human society.

Masure

We have returned to the Apostles and the old Catholic Fathers. We have planted no new religion, but only preserved the old that was undoubtedly founded and used by the Apostles of Christ and other holy Fathers of the Primitive Church.

Bishop Jewel

Preachers shall behave themselves modestly and soberly in every department of their life. But especially shall they see to it that they teach nothing in the way of a sermon, which they would have religiously held and believed by the people, save what is agreeable to the teaching of the Old or New Testament, and what the Catholic fathers and ancient bishops have collected from this selfsame doctrine.

Canon 6 from the 1571 Bishop’s Convocation

Kent: "See better, Lear, and let me still remain."

William Shakespeare

For the clarity that we are aiming at is indeed complete clarity. But this simply means that the philosophical problems should completely disappear.

Wittgenstein

Justice is eternal, and doesn't depend at all on human conventions.

Montesquieu

The real challenge of Islam to Western intellectual discourse is for us to ask ourselves whether our unprecedented modern experiment of conducting political life with no transcendent values is really working out as well as we once hoped.

Harvey Cox

The long-term happiness of a society depends on how individuals behave towards each other, how families hold together, and how leaders keep the trust of people.

William Hague

Where orthodoxy is optional, orthodoxy will sooner or later be proscribed.

John Neuhaus

To be an evangelical is not, first and foremost, about doctrinal correctness, but about a passion for the gospel of salvation from sin through Christ for eternity.

John Richardson

Neither may we ... lightly esteem what hath been allowed as fit in the judgement of antiquity, and by the long continued practice of the whole church; from which unnecessarily to swerve, experience hath never as yet found it safe.

Richard Hooker (Lawes, V.7.1)

The function of the Christian canon was to separate the apostolic witness from the ongoing tradition of the church, whose truth was continually in need of being tested by the apostolic faith.

Brevard S. Childs

Every word of God proves true. (Proverbs 30:5)

If the people of this religion are asked about the proof for the soundness of their religion, they flare up, get angry and spill the blood of whoever confronts them with this question. They forbid rational speculation, and strive to kill their adversaries. This is why truth became thoroughly silenced and concealed.

Muhammad ibn Zakariya Razi

Change comes through ordinary working people organising themselves to struggle for a better world day in, day out.

Morning Star newspaper editorial Tuesday 5 May 2015

"In the soft grey silence he could hear the bump of the balls: and from here and from there through the quiet air the sound of the cricket bats: pick, pack, pock, puck: like drops of water in a fountain falling softly in the brimming bowl."

James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

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Monday, June 8, 2015

Spiritual and Sacred Links - Monday 8th June 2015

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