Disciple
The Newsletter of the Metropolitan Congregation
Week commencing 3rd January 2016
Welcome to our newsletter and to the ministry of the Metropolitan Congregation of Wilbraham St Ninian's URC - serving and celebrating the LGBT communities of Manchester and the North West.
If this is your first contact with us, we are delighted to see you here.
Sunday Worship
On Sunday the preacher and worship leader at our 4.30pm worship service was Walt Johnson
Walt preached on passages from Genesis and the Gospel of Matthew, reflecting on the signs of God's promise to us, whether we recognise that covenant in the rainbow revealed to Noah, or in the child born in a Bethlehem stable.
You can read the text of the sermon
here and you can listen to an audio recording of the sermon on the Audio and Video page of our website
here - just scroll down to the 'Sermons' section of the page.
Also, a big thank-you:
- to Anna, Sue, Susan, Jenny-Anne and Elen who assisted with various parts of the service;
- to our singers and musicians for their dedicated ministry of music in the church;
- and to the team of helpers who prepare the church for worship and clear things away at the end of the day.
New Year 2016
Thank you to all our members and friends for your support and involvement in the life and mission of our congregation during 2015.
We send our best wishes and every blessing for 2016.
The Bible and sexuality - a 5-session sermon series
On the five Sundays between Epiphany and Lent we will be preaching on some of the bible texts which have frequently been used to condemn and discriminate against LGBT people. We will couple these with texts which can be interpreted in ways which actually affirm the diversity of sexuality in God's creation.
As always, we will publish the texts and audio of these sermons on our website after they have been preached. In the meantime, you may wish to look at some material already on our website
here which considers the issues we will be exploring.
Scaffolding!
From the beginning of this week, the building work in church is due to start. This will involve the erection of scaffolding inside the church which will be in place for some weeks. But we have been assured that we will be able to continue using the church for Sunday worship.
The scaffolding will enable the contractors to rewire the lights, repair some ceiling panels, and repaint the ceiling. While it is in place, the contractors will create a high-level platform from which they can do the work on the lights and ceiling and which will also serve as a 'false ceiling' below which lights will be suspended to provide interim lighting for the church area.
Inevitably we will need to work around the disruption that this amount of building work is bound to create, but we will do our best to minimise the impact of the work on our worship services over the next few weeks.
Around the URC
Intergenerational Worship - A workshop led by Sandra Crawford (Regional Minister, NWBA) and Linda Hopkins (Regional Tutor, Northern Baptist College), on Saturday 23rd January 2016, 10am to 4pm, at Luther King House.
We may have identified the need to bridge the gap, and integrate children and young people into the context of the wider church, but how do we bring the generations together? This workshop will allow for conversation and teaching into creating a ‘community of faith'; asking how adults can best be Christian with children.
Booking is required, and the cost of £20 includes teas and coffees. Full details are
here.
Technology in the pulpit - a course, aimed at ministers and lay preachers, at the
Windermere Centre from
Monday 18th to Wednesday 20th April 2016.
How do we use Powerpoint to enhance effective preaching, rather than to distract from poor sermons? The answer to that question is less obvious than might first appear. It’s not about putting words on a slide: it’s about which words, and what form. And it’s about what not to put on a slide.
Full details are available
here.
