Click here for links to the Online Gathering recording

An online gathering for all involved in lay ministry took place on Saturday 13th November, when Canon Dr Christina Baxter CBE gave the keynote talk.

We also heard from Andrew Graystone, Matthew Frost and Jo Henderson-Merrygold.

There will be a write up of the day in the next issue of Transforming Ministry magazine. We recorded the whole of the event so people who weren’t able to attend can view later.

Here are the links to  the recording and to download the Powerpoint slides:

 

Click to watch the recording of the Gathering

 

 

Click to download the Powerpoint slides

Lay Ministry: the theology of our calling

An online gathering for all involved in lay ministry took place on Saturday 13th November, when Canon Dr Christina Baxter CBE gave the keynote talk.

We also heard from Andrew Graystone, Matthew Frost and Jo Henderson-Merrygold.

There will be a write up of the day in the next issue of Transforming Ministry magazine. We recorded the whole of the event so people who weren’t able to attend can view later. Please watch this space, and our Facebook page, for the link when it becomes available.

Praying for creation

COP 26 has made the headlines frequently over the past two weeks. As Christians we have a duty to tend our God-given environment that has been so badly compromised by human greed and exploitation.

Join us in praying that the pledges made will be honoured, and that many will respond to the call to live more simply for the good of all.

There will be more information about COP 26 in the next issue of our magazine, but until it reaches you don’t forget to keep praying!

To find out more about the Church’s position on Climate Change, what you can do and how you can pray, go to: Environment and climate change | The Church of England

 

Music of Eternity

Music of Eternity

Author Robyn Wrigley-Carr
Publisher SPCK £9.99
Format pbk
ISBN 9780281085507

The idea of using the writings of Evelyn Underhill, a founding member of the modern Retreat Movement, to accompany the reader through Advent to Christmas Day is an inspired one and has been designated the Archbishop of York’s Advent Book for 2021. Readers are encouraged to sign up, either as individuals, or as a Group, to the ‘Big Church Read’ and receive extra materials and videos. However, how to do this on the website was not made very clear, but it might be easier to use the QR code supplied on the book. Divided into four parts each with short chapters on different aspects of the incarnation, readers are encouraged to meditate on the mysterious ways that God comes into their lives every day from Advent Sunday to Christmas Day. Throughout the book the reader is encouraged to make time amid the frenetic busyness of the season in order to, in Underhill’s words, listen attentively ‘for the music of Eternity’. I so much wanted to love this book, especially as one, who like Evelyn Underhill, attended their first retreat at the Chelmsford Diocesan retreat house at Pleshey in Essex. Although there is much to treasure here I have some quibbles about the way in which Evelyn Underhill’s writings have been adapted by Wrigley-Carr, and in distinguishing between them and the editor’s interjections. She claims not to have changed Underhill’s ‘meaning but . . . tried to modernise the language’ to make it ‘more accessible to contemporary readers, particularly young people’. I am not sure she always succeeds in this, especially when she substitutes ‘dizzy’ for ‘muzzy’, or that ‘courage’ quite equates to ‘fortitude’; and what is so difficult about ‘thwarts’? It also denies the younger reader a connection with the past. But to be fair, with the help of Google searches, I have been able to track down some passages that have been quoted verbatim. I realise that this book has a higher purpose than deserving such nit-picking, but it made this reader go searching for Underhill’s thoughts in her own words. I am also not sure that choosing paraphrases from the Message Bible for the psalms always works very well especially when it uses phrases such as ‘Praise-Lofty’ for ‘who is worthy to be praised’ from Psalm 18.3. It would also have been useful to footnote the occasional mentions of people quoted in the extracts, such as De Causade in chapter 3. Despite these reservations this book is a welcome tool for those who want to escape the distractions of the secular celebrations and to ‘cultivate an inner stillness . . . so we may attend to what we usually miss amid the busyness of the Christmas season’.

Reviewed by MARIE PATERSON

Advent

 

An Advent Book of Days

An Advent Book of Days

Author Gregory Cameron
Publisher Canterbury Press £9.99
Format pbk
ISBN 9781786222688

This book of reflections for Advent by the Bishop of St Asaph will be a wonderful companion during the busy days in the run-up to Christmas. Based on the medieval books of hours, there is a chapter for each day of December leading up to the 25th. Drawing on the Bible, history and legend, the author gives us a comprehensive and informative overview of the facts and stories which are associated with the birth of Jesus. Each chapter takes as its theme a character, symbol or place, from the Virgin Mary and the Angel Gabriel to the ox and ass and the little drummer boy. Familiar and less well-known topics are explored in the light of tradition, underpinned with fact and anecdote drawn from a rich variety of sources. The last section of each chapter is a spiritual reflection ending with a prayer. Gregory Cameron is also a skilled artist and iconographer. Each day’s reading is headed with one of his own illustrations adapted from famous works of art: his descriptions of the original paintings add an extra dimension to the narrative. The text also exists as an e-book but to read it online would be to lose the charm of the printed edition which is of high quality. I thoroughly recommend this book for the writer’s ability to inform, entertain and inspire.

Reviewed by LAURA HILLMAN

Advent

 

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