I love pottering in my garden when the weather permits. I find it quite relaxing, an opportunity to have time and space for myself. Also, as I weed my flower beds I appreciate the beauty and diversity of God’s creation.

We all tend to be so busy that we don’t stop and really look at what is around us. If we did, we would see many magnificent wonders of nature such as the changing colours of the leaves.

The Bible tells us about how God created our world and saw that it was good.

This month we will celebrate harvest in church when we have the opportunity to thank God for our wonderful world and for the food it provides for us.

We probably have a favourite food, but we usually take our food for granted. We might know what it feels like to be hungry as we wait for our next meal. However many people know hunger, and don’t know when or if there will be a next meal.

Unfortunately, there are millions of people in our world who through no fault of their own, know the real meaning of hunger.

Thankfully we can help people in Liverpool by supporting the local food banks. In doing so we are putting into practice Jesus’ command ‘to love each other and care for the needy’.

As we consider the harvest we must ask ourselves how we can look after our world and in doing so help the hungry and the poor.

As Christians we believe God loves everyone whatever their colour, gender, creed or age and we must love them also. One way we can show this love is to be environmentally aware. The Bible describes the world as if it is a garden and we are all gardeners.

If we are to show care for the world we must use only what is really necessary. If people didn’t take more than their fair share we wouldn’t have so many starving. The world produces enough food for everyone.

We must try to conserve the world’s natural resources. No doubt you will have seen the advert on television about saving water. We may laugh now that we have rain, but I recently read that by 2025, yes in 7 years’ time, two thirds of the world won’t have enough water, already 1 billion don’t have clean water to drink.

In the Bible Jesus told many stories about the harvest to help explain how we can spread the good news of his love.

The harvest also gives us a glimpse of what heaven will be like when there will be true life in God’s love.

Blessings, Sheila

(This article was originally published as part of St David’s Messenger in October 2018)

“You shall love the Lord your God, with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength. The second is this,
You shall love your neighbour as yourself. There is no other commandments greater than these“.
Mark 12:30-31

I love our God, and I have put my trust in him as he has in me.

Two years ago God called me into reader ministry. I am not some academic person, and I often doubt my abilities, but who was I to argue with God. The path he had chosen for me filled me with dread, but I was not about to go against his wishes.

Mission Impossible or so I thought. I started my reader ministry course not really knowing what to expect, and then I learnt the requirements. Well where to start, there were numerous books to read, assignments to complete and on top of that I had to work with a group of people I had never met before. Everything I had to do was taking me out of my comfort zone, from standing up to deliver presentations or to discuss various topics in large groups. To my surprise I scraped through the assignments and achieved my initial goal.

Two years ago I set out on a journey, a journey which I thought would be impossible and yet here I am looking forward to the 29th September 2018 when I will be licenced as a reader, the impossible task that I thought lay ahead was challenging but totally fulfilling. The people I worked with where in the same position as me and yet we worked together growing as individuals and a group.

Life puts so many challenges in front of us, the small things to you maybe major to someone else. With a little faith and determination we can conquer these challenges and with the help and love of the people around us we can strive to reach our goals.

To love your neighbour as yourself is one of the greatest commandments. I have had so much support from friends and family. People I hardly know have shown encouragement and I have seen the love and goodness within these people. They have all helped me fulfil this calling into this ministry, just as there are people you hardly know waiting to help you.

Just look at yourselves and the people around you and see what they have achieved. Yes lots of it is through hard work and determination, however there is also faith on your side and a God full of love for God loves all his people.

What I am trying to say is no Mission is Impossible if you have people around you sharing in your goals and beliefs. If you just spend a couple of minutes each day praying to God, he will listen and guide you. Let God into your lives, open your hearts so you can see the goodness in people, and help others. There is always a light at the end of a tunnel.

I have always had faith, and over the years that has grown. Although I knew God was guiding me and answering my prayers I never expected him to call me into ministry. Never did I believe that I would be able to stand up in Church and preach a sermon, or that I would be able to help make decisions on the future of our ministry or be able to help other people see their faith develop and shine. We meet all kinds of people in our life and God is waiting for them to open their, hearts, soul and minds.

It doesn’t matter how old or young you are what gender, disability or sexual orientation. Everyone is welcome in to a life with Christ. St David’s is striving to be an Inclusive Church and part of my ministry is to welcome you all into this life. There is so much on offer, and we would love to see you and join in with this beautiful life, a life with Christ.

This Impossible Mission that God called me to do; is not impossible but a life changing experience which is just the beginning of my ministry. Put your trust in God, and you will achieve your ultimate goals with God showing you the way.

When I get licenced in September in the Cathedral I will be with many of my friends who have been on this journey with me. It would be amazing to see lots of new people wanting to join in with our faith, or to join us at St David’s whether that is in one of our services, Friday Café or Messy Church or other events we hold.

Blessings, Wendy

(This article by Wendy was originally published as part of St David’s Messenger in September 2018)

So here I am sat at the kitchen table at the vicarage on a beautifully warm & sunny Tuesday Morning and I have been scratching my head wondering what may be the right thing to put into our mid-summer messenger; then inspiration hit me, why not ‘Inclusive Church’?

I wonder if you have ever speculated about how inclusive church really is in our society today, furthermore who is ‘included’ and who isn’t. The reasonable folk among us may assume that church is inclusive of all people, whatever age, gender, background, sexual orientation, ability or disability, faith or none faith, this assumption is a very natural one to make, and yet it is not always correct.

I have just read a very sad story about a young lady in Manchester who took her own life, and why? Well because she could not reconcile her Deep Christian Faith with being gay, Lizzie Lowe was just 14 years old when she decided that she could not live with the dilemma. Her vicar later spoke of a ‘conspiracy of silence’ which existed at the time at Lizzie’s church around the specific issue of human sexuality wherein this young girl felt she could not engage in any meaningful way with her faith family regarding her own sexuality, she could not believe that the God who created her through love could love her and her sexuality; this belief was purely because of the attitude and conservative views of some Christians she had encountered in her journey of faith.

This awful, painful situation triggered something in this church congregation which although painful for some has led to a much healthier environment where most people were willing to engage in a process of listening and growth toward becoming a much more interactive, inclusive and welcoming community for everybody. It is still a work in progress, yet it is at least in progress.

As a caring human being, also a committed ‘professional’ Christian I never, ever want this situation to happen here, nor anywhere else for that matter. Our diocese takes LGBT+ issues very seriously indeed, in fact our diocesan Bishop has instigated a LGBT+ advisory committee of which I am very proud to be part. I am also very proud to be your vicar, wherever you stand with faith, if you are receiving this monthly Messenger I am your vicar and I want you to be quite aware that St David’s is your church, we are here for you or for anyone you know who may be thinking about faith, who may be exploring what God may be calling you to, for anyone of any background, gender, ability, orientation, faith or none, we/ I am here for you! Part of my job is to ensure you are being listened to both by God, hence I pray for you and with you, and also by the community in which we live & work. Even though at times some of us may feel isolation surrounding us we are never really alone.

St David’s PCC will be doing some work over the coming months to look at how inclusive we already are and how we can improve on this: at my last parish we went through a similar process, a process which led to us registering as an ‘Inclusive Church’ …yes there really is such an organisation and here is their mission statement; “We believe in inclusive Church – church which does not discriminate, on any level, on grounds of economic power, gender, mental health, physical ability, race or sexuality. We believe in Church which welcomes and serves all people in the name of Jesus Christ; which is scripturally faithful; which seeks to proclaim the Gospel afresh for each generation; and which, in the power of the Holy Spirit, allows all people to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Jesus Christ.”

This is what I, your vicar also believe in, I also believe in having frank and open discussions about anything that we may feel comes between us and God and indeed us and our community; the good news of Jesus is, I believe, that there are no divisions, in fact St Paul tells us in his letter to the people of Galatia; “There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Jesus.” My message for you this summer, and throughout the years is that we are all one and all loved & wanted by Jesus and by His church, come & talk to me about anything, you will find me to be a good listener. A Happy & Blessed summer to us all.

(This article by Rev Peter F Smyth, Vicar @ St David’s was originally published as part of St David’s Messenger in July 2018)

Mr Wrigley was a no-nonsense Lancastrian. He was a sidesman in our church when I was young and gave out the hymn books with a face that rarely smiled. He didn’t say much, and he didn’t stay around for coffee, but once a year he came into his own. On Easter Day he would walk from the back of our large church all the way to the vicar’s vestry, he would stand in the doorway and say to the vicar ‘Christ is risen, vicar’, and the vicar would reply ‘He is risen indeed, Mr Wrigley’. Mr Wrigley would nod, satisfied with the answer, and then walk all the way to the back of the church for the rest of the year.

I used to love that exchange: here was this undemonstrative Christian man bearing witness to the core belief that kept him going in life. He would continue giving out hymn books, and doing his job, and loving his wife, and paying his taxes, because Christ was risen and so everything else would be alright.

However, whilst Christ’s Resurrection is a joy – not only for Mr Wrigley and the whole Church around the world – it is, I believe, also a challenge to us: a challenge to our understanding of the Laws of Nature, the very cycle of life as we live and experience it.

We are born: we live life as best we can: and then we die, and remain so. But Christ’s Resurrection is an event that shatters that understanding of ‘Life’, confronts us, and turns our oh-so-comfortable world upside-down. It can turn us into doubters, where everything concerning The Resurrection is put on the dissecting table to be analysed, scrutinised, and debated in order to arrive at a provable scientific fact.

God, however, isn’t about “provable scientific facts”: rather he is about all the things that make life worth living. When people say to me – as they often do – “How can you prove that Jesus did the things that He did, and said the things that He said?”, my reply is always “How can you prove love, how can you prove forgiveness, or tenderness, or joy?” These are not provable scientific facts: we have to experience them; accept them; and live them in faith every day.

Faith is a real, living, experience and one that surrounds us all the time. We have faith that timetables are correct, and that buses and trains will arrive on time: faith that the shops will open when they say they will: faith that our children will come home at a certain time. I think that a life that is lived only by scientific fact is, indeed, a poor one.

On the other hand, if we are prepared to have faith – even if it is only as small as a seed – we will find that God is a great and wonderful mystery to be entered into, one that we will enter in joy. I recently took a service in a small church that I know quite well on Easter Sunday morning. There was normally a small congregation: some older people, a few Mums, and about five children – I had persuaded one of the Mums beforehand to take the children out of the church to do some activities during the service – but I didn’t know what happened after that.

I arrived from home and found the church filling up: in the end there were about 20 children, with their parents, brothers, sisters, and grandparents, and the church was full. One of the Mums organising the Sunday School had become so excited by the project that she had spread the word – end result, we had a wonderful Service. The children (or, at least, the girls) wore their Easter bonnets, and they ate their Easter eggs, and we sang and prayed with everyone, all caught up in the joy of Christ’s Resurrection at Easter. It is one of my most-cherished memories.

We will soon be moving to another season of the Church year, but Easter – with its message of joy and hope – will remain in my heart. It gives us hope that the bad times in life – which will inevitably happen – can be overcome and that our fragile, broken, world will one day be renewed, re-imagined, and resurrected.
 
(This article was originally published as part of St David’s Messenger in June 2018)