| End the Week with the DTP - September 30, 2011 | 30th Sep 2011 | Download | Email to a Friend |
Welcome to End the Week with the DTP!
This weekly email is sent automatically to clergy and Readers in the diocese (if you don't want to receive it, please send an email to CovEW-unsubscribe@lists.covlec.org) but anyone is welcome to subscribe to the list, and we are especially keen to pass it on to any interested lay people, especially those who may have responsibility for preaching. To subscribe they simply need to email CovEW-subscribe@lists.covlec.org.
Events coming soon
Reminder In Service Study Weeks at St John’s, Nottingham
In Service Study Weeks (ISSWs) offer you the opportunity for in-depth study of a topic of academic interest relevant to the mission and ministry of the church today. They are designed primarily for serving clergy and others in full-time Christian work. Each study week runs from 12noon on Monday to lunchtime on Friday.
ISSWs coming up are:
- Islam and Christianity in Dialogue (5-9 December 2011)
- The Gospels as a Resource for Practical Theology (9-13 January 2012)
- Understanding Church (6-10 February 2012)
- Engaging Culture (30 April-4 May 2012)
Each ISSW costs £295 (tuition and full-board) or £215 (Tuition only). For full details, go to www.stjohns-nottm.ac.uk/study-weeks or email academic@stjohns-nottm.ac.uk.
Reminder Exodus or Revelations: What Have the Celebrations of the Translation of the Bible Achieved This Year?
Monday 10 October 2011, Cumberland Lodge, The Great Park, Windsor
The 400th anniversary of the publication of the King James version of the Bible is being celebrated throughout 2011 on stage, radio and television, in print and at conferences, and notably of course within Christian churches and institutions around the world. Is there anything else to say? More particularly what, if anything, has been achieved by all this attention?
For more information, and to download a registration form, go to www.cumberlandlodge.ac.uk/bible.
Registration is £45 (£35 for concessions and £10 for students).
Reminder LOVE IT, FUND IT, KEEP IT! Managing repairs and maintenance for your church building
Wednesday 12 October 2011, 10am - 3.30pm at Carrs Lane Church Centre, Birmingham B4 7SX
All Places of Worship face challenges. The biggest usually involve finding money to make repairs, but getting the stewardship and maintenance right can significantly reduce costs in the longer term. The day will show you:
- How to be confident stewards of your building
- How to write a maintenance plan
- How to take the mystery out of funding for repairs to Places of Worship
- How to engage with English Heritage and other funders in creative and positive ways
This event is free of charge. Tea/Coffee on arrival and lunch will be provided.
You can download the flyer and booking form http://www.divine-inspiration.org.uk/assets/resources/119/love%20it%20fund%20it%20keep%20it%20flyer.pdf?1311264007.
Reminder Word and Worship
The next Praxis Midlands event will be on 20 October 2011 at Birmingham Cathedral
led by Angela Tilby & Richard Cooke
It will be a day to celebrate the Scriptures and explore the way in which Christians have used the Scripture liturgically through history, and in the modern church.
For full details, including how to book, please go to http://www.praxismidlands.org.uk/next_event.html.
Reminder The Supernatural and the Natural of God
Wednesday 9 November 2011, 9.30am-1pm
at St John the Baptist, Westwood Heath Road, Coventry CV4 8GN
with the Rt Revd Dr David Carr (Senior Pastor at Renewal Christian Centre & The Order of St Leonard)
This is a New Wine South Midlands Network Leaders’ Event, designed for all in positions of leadership within a church and will include, worship, teaching and ministry.
Refreshments will be available from 9am. There is no charge but an offering will be taken to cover the costs and for the ministry of New Wine in this area.
If you are planning to attend, please contact Martin Saxby (New Wine Area Network Leader) on 01788 330447 or at martinpa@m2o.org.uk.
Reminder Handling Conflict and Mediation: Managing Differences without a Fight
Wednesday 23 & Thursday 24 November 2011
at St Michael’s House, 11 Priory Row, Coventry CV1 5EX
On this short introductory course, participants will develop an understanding of their personal approach to conflict and learn practical ways of managing conflict within communities. It will explore the constructive role of conflict in human relationships and how difference can be the basis for strong communities in church and wider society. A major focus will be on the concept of reconciliation as a framework for a Christian approach to conflict.
Fees: costs will be covered by participating dioceses, but will be in the region of £120 per person.
Overnight accommodation will be available at around £40 per night.
You can download further details and a booking form from http://www.coventry.anglican.org/ministry/learning/resources/opt/-/item/707.
Reminder Local Ministry Network National Conference - Living out Collaborative Ministry
20-22 January 2012 at High Leigh Conference Centre, Hoddesden, Hertfordshire
The Conference will focus on putting Collaborative Ministry into practice through three themes:
- Preparation - what are colleges and ministry courses doing in their training?
- Strategy - what are/should dioceses be working out as policy for more collaborative ministry?
- Practice - sharing good practice with “grassroots” Parish input.
Clergy and lay people involved in Group / Team Ministries are particularly invited to attend.
The cost will be £160. Programme details and booking forms can be found at www.localministry.net.
NEW Caution? Older People! Overcoming stereotypes and celebrating a gift to the church
Multi-parish benefice day conference on Saturday 28 January 2012
at the King’s Centre, Osney Mead, Oxford OX2 0ES, 10am - 4pm
Congregations in rural communities can be made up predominantly of older people, often, but not primarily, because that reflects the changing make up of the local population. This day conference will look at how we value older people as the local body of Christ and how we celebrate and use the giftedness of older people. What is their role as holders of stories? How can we utilise the wisdom of age?
This topic contains both celebration and challenge and we invite you to join us to meet with others, learn and share experiences.
There will also be a number of exhibitors from organisations which something to offer in this area.
You can download a flyer and booking form for this event at http://www.coventry.anglican.org/ministry/learning/resources/opt/-/item/706.
You can find details of all the events coming up, which have been advertised in recent editions of End the Week, here.
Resources Available
NEW St John’s Advent Book 2011 now available!
These Words of Mine… Readings & Prayers through Advent
These Words of Mine… contains a series of readings covering the Advent period. The meditations and prayers have been written by staff and students at St John’s College. As you are well aware, the season of Advent is a busy time in the life of the church. Clergy and Readers often find themselves right at the centre of this whirlwind of activity. Our prayer is that the Advent book we produce will bless those who read it by providing a framework for them to stop, think & pray.
The cost is £4.99 per copy and all profit from the sale of the books will be used for the student bursary fund and the College development fund.
To order online, go to http://www.stjohns-nottm.ac.uk/advent-book-201/.
Notes on the Reading for Sunday 9 October
Philippians 4 • 16th Sunday after Trinity
At the beginning of Philippians 3, Paul told his audience to rejoice (Phil. 3.1, see also 1.18; 2.17-18, 28), but interrupted himself before he could go into detail. In Philippians 4 he is able to expand, and the command to rejoice comes again – and again (Phil. 4.4, 10)! More than that, Paul describes the Philippians themselves as ‘my joy’ (Phil. 4.1, see also 1.4, 25; 2.2, 29).
This joy has not been an easily-won thing for Paul. As he points out, he’s had his share, and perhaps more than his share, of hardship (Phil. 4.12). Yet out of this he has learned to rejoice in all circumstances and to be content with what he has (Phil. 4.11). This latter verse always intrigues me, perhaps more memorably rendered in the AV as ‘for I have learned, in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be content’. It’s something I find it hard to imagine the activist Paul portrayed in Acts 9-22 saying. Yet the fruit of years of imprisonment is perhaps a sense not so much of resignation as of satisfaction and contentment which amounts to a willingness to accept what God gives rather than fighting the circumstances. Strikingly, the thought echoes what Paul says in Phil. 4.4-9, a beautiful passage which commends ‘gentleness’ – surely not a quality many would associate with Paul himself! Paul says that the ‘gentleness’ of the Philippians should be known to all (Phil. 4.5), marking once again the emphasis that we have found earlier in the letter on the public responsibility of Christians to act in a recognisably different way so that others see their faith in their actions and conduct. Markus Bockmuehl nicely sums up the significance of gentleness, when he writes that ‘This is how other people are to experience the Christian’s joy in the Lord’ (The Epistle to the Philippians A&C Black 1997, p.244). It explains why Paul is so eager to resolve differences within the Christian community (Phil.4.2-3) – the rest of society will see the joy that Christians have by the way they live together and their gentleness to each other.
Yet ‘gentleness’ itself is a hard word to translate, and in English may sound a little ineffectual (or dare we say, Anglican?!). In the Greek which Paul wrote, it is epieikes, which means fairness, kindness or moderation. Liddell and Scott’s Greek Lexicon intriguingly notes that in classical Greek it is often used in opposition to dikaios, justice, a word which has an enormous significance for Paul especially in Romans, where he uses it and related words for the righteousness of God and the way in which human beings are made righteous (justified) through Jesus Christ. Liddell and Scott comment that epieikes used in opposition to dikaios has the sense of ‘not insisting on strict justice’, and this may be a very helpful clue to grasping what Paul means here. For the gentleness he speaks of is exactly the non-insistence on strict justice which he has already in this letter explained can be seen in the life of Jesus, who ‘did not grasp at equality with God, but made himself nothing…’ (Phil. 2.6-7). God’s willingness not to insist on exacting the full penalty for human sin, but providing Jesus to bear it and thus deflect the demands of strict justice is summed up in short-hand by Paul as ‘gentleness’. As God is revealed in Jesus as ‘gentle’, ‘not insisting on strict justice’, so the Philippians should reflect the same kind of gentleness in their own lives (see Phil. 2.5), not demanding strict justice of others, but handing their anxieties to God and trusting in his peace (Phil. 4.6-7), as Paul himself says he has learned to do (Phil. 4.11-13).
‘And finally…’(again! – see Phil. 3.1) Paul gives a list of things ‘to consider’ (Phil. 4.8). This sounds at first like a characteristically Greek list of virtues, the true, honourable, just (that word dikaios again), pure, pleasing, commendable, excellent and praiseworthy, and some have suggested in the past that Paul has simply cribbed from a list of moral qualities here. This does not seem to be quite true, though clearly he is listing virtues to which many non-Christians would willingly assent, then as now. Nevertheless, Paul’s list does seem to be a specially-compiled one, without direct parallel as far as we know. ‘Paul’s message here, then, is that the “mind of Christ” does not stand aloof from an accessible vision of beauty, truth and goodness’ says Bockmuehl (p.250). The Christian vision of the good, in other words, is not less than the non-Christian one, but it is also more than it. The Philippians should not scorn the good where it is to be found, but the implication of the letter as a whole is that it is only to be seen and known in its fullness in Jesus; yet there are splinters and shards of light to be found in the world around which reflect the glory of Christ.
Paul ends his letter with some personal correspondence regarding the gifts which the Philippians had sent him with Epaphroditus (Phil. 4.15-18). His gratitude to a church which had stood by him when all others were indifferent is heartfelt and accounts for their special place in his heart. They are his ‘joy and crown’ (Phil. 4.1), and this letter carries across the centuries the affection which Paul, now the old pastor, feels for those who shared his ministry and from whom he has perhaps gained as much as he has given. As so often with Paul, grace is almost the last word (Phil. 4.23). And there’s some word play here, for grace in Greek is charis, while joy, the key word for so much of what Paul has written to the Philippians, is chara. Grace gives birth to joy, and the grace of God which Paul and the Philippians have experienced mutually lies at the heart of the joy with which they rejoice now and in time to come.
And Finally...
The best of the worst:
Tim Vine – “Uncle Ben has died. No more Mr Rice Guy.”
Card Ninja – “I went to see this show and the guy said ‘Hey kid do you like magic?’ And I said ‘Yeah!’ So he asked if I wanted to see a trick and I said ‘Yeah!’ So he said ‘think of a number, times it by 2 and if it’s odd ...’ Oh no, he's a MATHmagician! “
Tom Webb – “Due to the state of the economy, profiteroles will now be called deficiteroles.”
That's all, folks!
Richard
Richard Cooke
Principal, Coventry Diocesan Training Partnership
Richard.Cooke@CovCofE.org