Last night the ‘Churches Together’ meeting was held at Furlong Road Methodist Church and was attended by people from a variety of local churches:

It was good to worship and pray together, as well as to find out all kinds of obscure facts about each other! For example, I discovered that Eileen likes pickled onions, Amy-Jo from the Salvation Army has read all the ‘Harry Potter’ books in English and Dutch, Debbie has been skiing and Andrea is grumpy in the mornings! Not only is it good to get to know each other in this way, Karen (the minister from Furlong Road) used this to remind us of Jesus’s Great Commission (see Matt 28:16-20).

Sometimes we feel daunted by this task and do not feel ourselves to be evangelists. All of us can, however, talk to people and have people we meet on a regular basis in a variety of settings (at school, at work, when we are shopping, when we are at the gym etc.)  These people often need a listening ear and friendship. When we allow people to talk and we listen to them, we create an atmosphere where we can later share the Gospel with them. We have to be intentional, acting as a guest in their environments, consistent, offering pastoral care (which is all about listening and caring.) When we see a need, we can then do something about it, for love in action is evangelism just as much as open-air meetings or large crusades. All of us are called to witness to Christ and this is best done in the context of personal relationships.

The next ‘Churches Together’ meeting will be on Saturday 19th July at 6 p.m.  at the Salvation Army church on Straight Lane.

John was keen that we can distinguish between truth and lies (1 John 2:18-29) and it is clear from 1 John 2:19 that the lies he was talking about (denying the Father and the Son) originated within the church. Heresy (‘belief or opinion contrary to orthodox religious (especially Christian) doctrine’) is not the same as unbelief; it is a ‘form of that faith that is held ultimately to be subversive or destructive, and thus indirectly leads to such unbelief. Unbelief is the outcome, but not the form, of heresy.’ (Alister McGrath, ‘Heresy’ P 33) Heresy is like a Trojan horse, smuggling untruth into the church, and John is keen that we are not led astray. (1 John 2:26)

Over the years, many heresies have been condemned as deviating from orthodoxy (accepted or authorised doctrines or beliefs). These (Gnosticism, Docetism, Arianism, Modalism, Pelagianism etc.) often focussed on trying to explain the nature of God. Heresies often arose because people either accepted Christ’s deity but could not accept His humanity or vice versa; some led to the idea that Christians worship three gods (a view still held by Muslims, for example.) Many of the analogies we use to explain the doctrine of the Trinity are actually heretical in some form or other! We have to be content to accept the limits of our understanding and to remain within the revelation of Scripture. A useful diagram shows us that often we cannot go beyond the obvious:

We may think that heresy is no longer relevant to us, but ‘what has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.’ (Eccl 1:11) We need to understand that we have an enemy who tries to outwit us (2 Cor 2:11). We can be led astray when we want to fit our beliefs into our culture rather than being transformed by God (Rom 12:1-2), when we feel marginalised and try to embrace the broad path which leads to destruction (Matt 7:13-14) or when we try to accommodate other beliefs without standing up for truth. We need to understand that God has given us all we need to live by the truth and seek to allow that truth to define us and our behaviour in every way.

Paul wrote ‘To those not having the law I became like one not having the law (though I am not free from God’s law but am under Christ’s law), so as to win those not having the law.To the weak I became weak, to win the weak. I have become all things to all people so that by all possible means I might save some. I do all this for the sake of the gospel, that I may share in its blessings.‘ (1 Cor 9:21-23) The message of the Gospel never changes, but the methods we use to spread that Gospel may well have to change!

To that end, GPCC has now entered the realm of Facebook! For those of you not familiar with Facebook (which includes me!), this  a social utility that connects people with friends and others who work, study and live around them. It can be accessed wherever there is Internet access (eg on computers,tablets,  mobile phones etc.), so is highly popular with people who clearly have a God-given need to be in communication with others! There are obviously advantages and disadvantages to this social networking site, but the aim as far as our church is concerned is simply to keep as wide an audience as possible informed about what is happening here.

So, if you are already connected to Facebook, you can view information from church via Facebook. Look us up (GPCC Facebook should find us.) You can ‘like’ this page and let your friends know about it. It’s up to you. Have fun!

One of the most fascinating (to me) verses in Revelation is Rev 8:1: ‘When he opened the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven for about half an hour.’ Heaven, that place of constant worship, singing, prayer and praise, is silent.

The world has a proverb ‘Silence is golden’, and it is certainly exceedingly rare these days on earth, let alone in heaven! Noise seems to be everywhere: even in the gym or when shopping, there is noise around as though we are somehow afraid of silence. Lamentations 3:28 recommends sitting alone in silence, however, and there are times when we need to be silent in order to listen to God. Sometimes our hearts are as noisy as our surroundings and we need to still and quieten our hearts (Ps 131:2) in order to be able to hear God’s gentle whisper. (1 Kings 19:11-13)

One of the things I love most about invigilating exams is the silence. No one is allowed to speak during an examination and the hall, normally buzzing with chatter and noise, is silent. I am privileged to invigilate in a room which has a stained glass window bearing the words from John 14:6 and I often sit and look at this text whilst I am also looking at the pupils. In the silence of that room, God often speaks.

Job is a book of questions and complaint. As Job suffers, he and his friends talk incessantly: surmising, wondering, questioning, thinking about God and suffering, large questions which loom frequently in our conversations. At the end of the book, God speaks and Job is silenced: “I am unworthy—how can I reply to you?I put my hand over my mouth. ⁵ I spoke once, but I have no answer—twice, but I will say no more.” (Job 40:4-5) Chris Tomlin takes this idea in his song ‘God Almighty’ and says ‘And I hide my eyes with my face to the ground in the presence of Your majesty.‘ Michael Card’s ‘Job Suite’ (a magnificent exposition of the book of Job in song, lasting 9m 44) ends:

‘I am unworthy, how can I reply?
There’s nothing that you cannot do
You are the storm that calmed my soul
I place my hand over my mouth
I place my hand over my mouth.’

Let’s make room for silence in our clamouring, noisy world and remember that when silence falls and God seems strangely absent, He is still the song in our hearts. (‘When The Tears Fall’, Tim Hughes)

As a linguist, I’ve long had a fascination with words in general, and have spent a good part of my life learning what words mean (especially in other languages.) Whilst it’s satisfying to be able to find the equivalent word in another language, it’s even more fascinating to dig deep into the etymology of words and how these have changed their meanings over time. For example, not only did it help to learn that ‘disciple’ came from the Latin ‘discipulus’ when I was learning to spell (since the -c in this word is silent in English), it was interesting to learn this originally meant ‘learner’ and only later came to mean a ‘follower of Jesus.’

A definition is a formal statement of the meaning or significance of a word or phrase. It becomes definitive in the sense that it makes a meaning definite or outlined. Knowing my name or my title or my job or being able to define what I look like are all useful ways to outline who I am. Sometimes, however, a definition can become limiting. If I am only known as ‘Garry’s wife’ or ‘Stephen’s mother‘, this does not fully describe me. All too often we can be labelled by other people, and even by ourselves, in ways that only tell half the story. Sometimes, even more worryingly, the definitions we use are not even that accurate. They may be out of date, based on erroneous information or wrong views of ourselves.

Rend Collective sing ‘The pain will not define us.’ (‘Joy’) Anyone who has suffered even toothache know how debilitating pain can be and how difficult it can be to think of anything else when it is raging. It is not, however, the sum total of who we are. Similarly, we have to be careful that we define ourselves in God rather than simply seeing ourselves with natural eyes. Eugene Peterson writes “The times in which we live are not definitive for our lives. Technology does not define our existence. Postmodern does not determine how we live. Psychologism does not account for who we are. Secularism is a slovenly, makeshift attempt to make sense of us and the world around us.” (‘Subversive Spirituality,’ P 72)

He goes on to say, when writing of Isaiah’s life-changing experience with the Holy One in Isaiah 6, “in unholy times, in an unholy place, Isaiah was plunged into the holy. He was given a holy vision, the Lord ruling in holiness, the song of holy angels filling the air with holy sounds.” The temple was not defined by what the king Uzziah had done in defiling it. Isaiah was not defined by the times in which he lived (which seemed far from promising!) Nor are we. We can only be fully defined – and understood – by God. Life is not to be defined by our possessions. (Luke 12:15) We are not to be defined by the world. (John 17:12-14, The Message) God defines our life. (1 Cor 7:17, The Message) He is the One who gives shape, meaning and form to our existence. He is our definition, for ‘Christ is all and is in all.’ (Col 3:11)

The family service tonight looked at the (potentially disastrous!) topic of D.I.Y with a quiz:

People did very well, winning all kinds of useful prizes!

Mark continued to look at the subject of D.I.Y.

He talked about the different tools used in D.I.Y.

He then asked us if we were a D.I.Y. tool, which tool would we be and why? Garry won that round with his statement ‘I’d be a spanner because I work with nuts.’

However, the Bible is adamant that D.I.Y. is not the best way forward. D. I. T. is required instead:

Eph 3:14-15 reminds us that we are God’s children and part of His family. 1 Cor 12:12-28 reminds us that the church is also a body, with Christ as the head. Each part is individual but necessary. Ps 68:4-6 reminds us that God sets the lonely in families. No one needs to be alone because God wants us to work together. We all have different talents and can be likened to different tools, but can achieve more together than we can do on our own: