Virtual Methodist

This is the first of the Hope and History Advent Candle Liturgies that we will be using in Belfast South Methodist this morning (and I hope elsewhere too). It includes part of my sermon for the morning... But let me include a spiritual health warning. If our commitment to the Kingdom of Peace is only a matter of gathering in a holy huddle around an advent ring and reciting this or another form of words, then we are an irrelevance to the future of this world... For me the key part of this liturgy is the bit that may well be neglected in most settings... the closing exhortation and benediction, and what flows from it. The benediction does not just act as a bookend to the opening candle-lighting ceremony, but is about the incarnation of these words into flesh and blood actions in the coming week... taking the promises of peace and making them a reality in a city and world that really needs to know that peace... VOICE 1:       There’s a day coming     ...

In church we're just coming to the end of a series of studies on Paul's Letter to the Philippians. Philippi, at the time Paul was writing, was a small city which had been refounded as a Roman military colony little more than 60 years before... As such its citizens prized their citizenship of Rome and one of the greatest honours they could receive was a visit from a Roman Emperor, who was known (among many other similarly humble titles) as the “Saviour of Mankind”. We have no records confirming that Philippi ever did receive such a visit, but while he was in prison in Rome awaiting trial before the Emperor, Paul wrote to his friends in Philippi, saying: "our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Saviour from there, the Lord Jesus Christ..." Philippians 3:20 (ANIV) Last week, while the news focussed on the visit of Queen Elizabeth II to Britain's erstwhile colony of Dublin, a substantial number of people in that other former British colony, also known as ...

Just got some good news today meaning that I, my family and my church can start to make provisional plans up to June 2014... However, I no sooner had got that message than I looked at a blog over at Biblical World , and discovered that all such planning may well be in vain. Now, I know that, in the words of Rabbie Burns, The best-laid schemes o' mice an 'men Gang aft agley, No-one knows exactly what the future holds... Well I say that, but apparently someone does... Family Radio Worldwide and their friends on the WeCanKnow website ... and because of what they know, there's not much point in making long term plans (unless of course they are plans for our eternal well-being) because according to billboards they have been erecting around Nashville, and material on their websites, the rapture/armageddon/the second coming is going to happen on May 21st 2011 ... AAAARRRGHHHHH!!!!!! Do these people not read the Bible, including the passage for the lectionary on Sunday (which I sp...