Christian Discipleship – a Mothers Union liturgy for us all
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ,
Our church community is spending the next few weeks thinking about how God is calling us to be more intentional about our discipleship, both personally and corporately. At the same time, a number of us are praying specifically about how we can ensure that Holy Cross Hackett can develop as a key priority our ministry to families and children.
While attending our Hackett Mothers Union (AMUA) branch meeting today, Tuesday 16 June, I was therefore especially struck by the liturgy – coincidentally headed “Discipleship” – with which we began our time together, led by Rev Joan Smith. One of the prayers particularly leapt out at me:
Help us to see the responsibilities we have as Christ’s disciples. We ask for your guidance and blessing
MU worship and prayer book
– Upon children as they are introduced to the faith
– Upon teenagers as they doubt and question
– Upon parents as they search for right ways to nurture their children in the faith.
Show us ways of patience and encouragement.
You’ll find the whole of this liturgy below, and I would encourage you all to pray through it, whether or not you are (currently) a MU member.
We are so blessed to have a faithful and active MU branch in our parish. I am sure that the charism of this remarkable organisation, expressed through its Five Objectives, has much more to contribute to the life of our church, especially through upholding and encouraging families – children, parents, and grandchildren, but also cousins, carers, honorary uncles and aunts, and hangers-on! – as together we seek to walk in the steps of Jesus.
God bless, Tim
CHRISTIAN DISCIPLESHIP – a Mothers Union liturgy
Leader
O God, our Father, we come before you to praise you and to offer ourselves as your disciples on earth.
Let us pray:
O God our Father, through your grace and our baptism you have given us a new beginning, a new way of living. We praise you for this opportunity. We worship you.
Leader
Living Lord, conscious of your willingness to forgive, we ask for your mercy.
We call to mind our many sins, times when we have been unkind and unloving, times when we have failed in our attempts to live according to our baptismal promises. Once again we ask for you to strengthen our resolve to do better.
Leader
Through our baptism and our membership of Mothers’ Union we are called to regular Bible reading.
May we read the scriptures regularly and make use of times when we can join with others for discussion and learning.
Leader
Through our baptism and our membership of Mothers’ Union, we are called to regular worship.
Help us to value the faith communities to which we belong and the opportunities we have to grow closer to you by joining with others for public worship and the reception of Holy Communion.
Leader
Through our baptism and our membership of Mothers’ Union we are called to pray regularly.
In prayer we share our lives with God. Help us to develop a practice of prayer to fit our situation, one that is regular and intimate, one that is reassuring and searching, one that grows and changes as we grow older and our circumstances change.
A Bible reading may be used here.
A Member
We pray for Christians in all walks of life, for those who struggle in government, business and education to uphold their Christian ideals.
Dear Lord, strengthen and encourage them.
We pray for doctors and nurses and for all who show your love by the care they give to the sick and the needy.
Dear Lord, strengthen and encourage them.
Help us to see the responsibilities we have as Christ’s disciples. We ask for your guidance and blessing
Upon children as they are introduced to the faith
Upon teenagers as they doubt and question
Upon parents as they search for right ways to nurture their children in the faith.
Show us ways of patience and encouragement.
Uphold and sustain all who are widowed. Give them strength in times of loneliness, joy in friendship with others and the knowledge of your constant presence with them.
Show us ways of expressing love, friendship, and sharing.
May your healing grace and love be with those who are terminally ill,
those whom there are no quality of life
those who feel very alone in the world
Show us ways of love, compassion and understanding.
Help us to reflect on the influence we can have as Christians in community groups
Jesus Christ, our model for this earthly life, help us always to act in such a way that will bring honour to your name, and by our attitudes, our responses and our ways of living help us to be living examples of your love in our local groups and community.
Help us to reflect, as MU members, on the influence we can have in our parish.
Jesus Christ, keep us mindful of the high calling through baptism and Mothers’ Union. May our commitment to family life encourage us to support those who come seeking baptism and marriage, and to nurture parents, children and young adults. Enable us to co-operate with other groups in our parish so that our ministry will reflect the depth of our discipleship. Keep us positive and give us open minds, so that we will be seen as great ambassadors for Christ. AMEN
We pray together the Mothers’ Union Prayer:
Loving Lord, we thank you for your love so freely given to us all. We pray for families around the world. Bless the work of the Mothers’ as we seek to share your love through the encouragement, strengthening and support of marriage and family life. Empowered by your Spirit, may we be united in prayer and worship, and in love and service reach out as your hands across the world. In Jesus’ name. AMEN
Leader
We are privileged to have been introduced to the faith. May we always be recognisable as disciples of Christ in all we do.
Loving Father, we thank you for all your blessings, most especially for our baptism and our membership of Mothers’ Union. Help us to treasure the time we have together today;
A time to offer encouragement,
A time to strengthen the bonds of membership,
A time to heal disagreements of the past, and
A time to enjoy fellowship together.
All-Age Creativity #1
We are very blessed at Holy Cross with some fine young artists and musicians. God loves it when we use our gifts and talents to their full potential – it’s one of the many ways that we can love God with all our “heart, soul, mind and strength” (Luke 10.27).
One of our younger members did this beautiful picture of the work of the Holy Spirit during our Pentecost service last Sunday:
Another of our younger members recorded these piano pieces for use in our worship services. We think she’s got talent!
And don’t forget that you can catch up with the videos made by younger (and older!) church members in our “Holy Cross Master Builders” series on our YouTube Channel, and also on this web site’s Videos and Podcasts page.
We’re very happy to post more artistic creations from our members so everyone can share them. Let me know!
God bless, Tim
Update after an extraordinary week
It’s been an extraordinary week. For my part, I feel a tremendous sense of joy and gratitude for our Holy Cross community at this time, as we seek to be faithful to God’s calling in these changing circumstances.
1. Sunday worship online
Following a successful trial service on 22 March, we will now be running a weekly online Sunday service using Zoom. To join us in worship, simply go to the website on Sunday morning any time after 9am, and click on the Zoom link to join the meeting – the service will start officially at 9.30am.
A few things you might want to bear in mind:
- BE AWARE that you are attending a public service, so please give some thought to how others will see and hear you (for example, is your camera pointing up your nose, or at the ceiling?!?)
- If you don’t want to be seen, then please turn off your own video. You may also wish to set a photograph as a “virtual background” in Zoom Preferences.
- If your home environment is noisy, or if you are going to make some noise yourself (for example: take a phone call, boil a kettle, talk to a family member), then please turn off your own microphone.
2. Church building & grounds
Following the most recent government advice, Holy Cross and St Margaret’s church buildings have been closed to the public as of 23 March. All official church business (worship, small groups, meetings) will be moving online. Following advice from the ACT Government and the Diocese, Tuckerbox will be continuing at present, as it is to be regarded as an “essential service”. Tuckerbox operations will be reviewed on a weekly basis as the situation evolves.
3. Pastoral care
Parish Council has set up a new Pastoral Care Group (currently comprising the Rector, Justin Combs, Trish Stoddart, and Michelle Shepherdson), which met for the first time on Tuesday 24 March. Please feel free to contact any of us with your needs, ideas or suggestions.
4. Gatherings at home
On Tuesday 24 March the Prime Minister gave the following detailed advice about home visits:
“Visits to your premises, to your house, to your residence, should be kept to a minimum and with very small numbers of guests. We don’t want to be overly specific about that. We want Australians to exercise their common sense.” (Full transcript at https://www.pm.gov.au/media/press-conference-australian-parliament-house-5)
Members of the Holy Cross family should follow the most up-to-date Government advice when deciding if it is appropriate to meet in very small numbers, for example to take part in a Zoom service if you have no home internet connection. If you’d like to discuss this, please call the Rector.
5. Prayer at home
At our online service on Sunday, I proposed that Holy Cross adopt the icon of “The Proclamation of the Kingdom” by Kaspars and Ruta Poikans as a focus for our prayers during the COVID-19 epidemic. This icon is a meditation on three Bible stories: Jesus preaching from the boat, Jesus calming the storm, and the miraculous catch of fish. It also evokes the image of the Church as a boat, with Christ in our midst, the Holy Spirit as the wind, and the Cross as the mast.
I also want to encourage you all to set up a permanent prayer corner in your home. You might want to include:
- a comfortable chair
- candles
- Bible
- icon
- prayer diary
- bible notes
- finger labyrinth
- prayer beads
- music player
- anything else that helps you to pray
Finally, don’t forget there is a free Epray app (available for Android and iOS), which allows you to pray Morning and Evening Prayer at home. The Holy Cross parish code is 6806, and you can download the app here.
Please be assured of my prayers and blessings for you all, as we move together into a new season of “doing church differently”.
God bless, Tim
“Doing church differently”
Dear friends of Holy Cross,
The Bishop has announced that all public worship in the Diocese of Canberra & Goulburn will cease as of this Sunday. You can read his announcement here: https://anglicancg.org.au/cessation-of-services/
We are looking at a number of alternative ways in which we can pray and worship together, including:
- online services (using Zoom)
- opening the church for private prayer
- household liturgies (including kid-friendly ones!) for you to use at home
Parish Council is meeting this Saturday to make more plans, and we’ll update you again soon.
I spoke to Bishop Mark today and he informed me that welfare services such as Tuckerbox should continue at present, as they have a crucial role in meeting the needs of some of the most vulnerable people in our society. Tuckerbox will therefore be taking place this Saturday, and we will be putting in place some strict hygiene protocols to ensure that this is done safely.
One final thing: Sunday 22 March is Mothering Sunday, the middle Sunday in Lent, and Iris usually makes us a simnel cake for morning tea. This year, I suggest that those of us who are able to do so take part in a Holy Cross Simnel Cake Competition – if you’d like to have a go, why not bake one this week and email me the photo so we can post the results on the web site? We’ll ask Iris to judge the entries and award an appropriate prize! Recipes can be found here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/food/simnel_cake
Keep well, keep in touch, and remember: Christ is still risen!
God bless, Tim Watson (Rector)
The language of worship #2
This week I am exploring the second in an occasional series entitled “The Language of Worship”. At Holy Cross we are blessed with a Christian heritage of words and music written over more than 1000 years. Learning more about the songs we sing helps us to appreciate the diversity of God’s abundant creativity, in which we all share.
“All Creatures Of Our God and King“, based on the 13th century hymn Laudato sia Dio mio Signore by Francis of Assisi (written in Italian at a time when most church worship was in Latin), was written by English Anglican priest William Henry Draper for a children’s Pentecost service in about 1910. The chorale tune was published by German Jesuit Friedrich Spee in 1623, and re-harmonised for the English Hymnal in 1906 by Ralph Vaughan Williams.
“O Thou Who Camest From Above“, a hymn to the Holy Spirit, is one of 6,500(!) hymns written by Charles Wesley (1707-1788), Anglican priest and co-founder of Methodism with his brother John Wesley. The tune “Hereford” was written many years later by his grandson Samuel Sebastian Wesley, an Anglican organist and composer. Charles Wesley had a remarkable gift of putting deep theological truths into memorable poetry, at a time when many Christians were illiterate: Methodists learned theology by singing it.
Geoff Bullock, an ABC cameraman from Sydney, experienced a powerful conversion in 1978 and co-founded Hills Christian Life Centre (later Hillsong) in 1983, where he wrote “The Power of Your Love (I)“. Bullock left Hillsong after burnout and marriage breakdown in the 1990s. He subsequently published “The Power of Your Love (II)“, changing the lyrics to emphasise God’s gracious and unmerited forgiveness, and this is the version we’re singing today.
Melbourne vicar Elizabeth J. Smith (b.1956) is known for her modern hymns with inclusive language. She says she wrote “God gives us a future” as a curate, partly out of frustration at congregation members who were reluctant to learn new songs! The jaunty tune “Camberwell” is by English Anglican priest John Brierley, a member of the “20th Century Church Light Music Group” in the 1950s (along with Patrick Appleford, the author of “Living Lord”).
The Language of Worship
Today I’m beginning an occasional series: “The Language of Worship”. At Holy Cross, we come from diverse backgrounds – and often have strong views about words and music! So the hymns and songs we use in worship reflect not just our diversity, but the diversity of the Kingdom of Heaven with its “treasures old and new” (Matthew 13.52). By finding out more about who actually wrote the songs we sing, and why, we learn more about the wonderful variety of the body of Christ – and more about the God we worship. “I will sing with the Spirit, but I will also sing with my understanding.” (1 Cor 14.15)
“All my hope on God is founded” was written by the great German Calvinist hymnwriter Joachim Leander in 1680, and translated into English in 1899 by Robert Bridges, an Anglican choirmaster and future Poet Laureate. Today we’re using the modernised version from the Australian hymn book Together in Song. The tune Michael was written (over breakfast!) by Herbert Howells in 1930, and named for his son who died tragically young.
“I heard the voice of Jesus say” is a 19th century hymn by Scottish Free Church minister Horatius Bonar, set to an old English folk song, Dives and Lazarus, which Ralph Vaughan Williams heard in a pub in the village of Kingsfold in Sussex, and published as a hymn tune in the 1906 English Hymnal.
“Give thanks” is the only published song by Henry Smith, written for a church in Williamsburg, Virginia in 1978 as a response to having become blind: “let the weak say I am strong, let the poor say I am rich …”.
Karen Lafferty was a nightclub entertainer who wrote “Seek ye first” in 1971 after attending a church bible study on Matthew 6.33, and now runs Musicians for Mission, an international ministry of Youth With A Mission based in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Synod “together on the way”
I have been away in Goulburn this weekend, along with our parish representatives Caity Cameron, Kirsty Baker, and Richard Stoddart, for the annual Synod of the Diocese of Canberra and Goulburn. Synods (from the Greek sun-hodos: “together on the way”) are a really important time in the life of an Anglican Diocese, providing an opportunity for representatives of all the different ministry units – parishes, chaplaincies, schools, and diocesan services – to gather for three days of prayer and fellowship.
No doubt at this Synod there were discussions and debates, sometimes even fiery ones. Because one of the glories of the Anglican Church is its polyphonic – sometimes even dissonant! – synodal character. And this is a good thing: God did not make us uniform, but gloriously diverse, and there is plenty of Biblical precedent for passionate conversations between brothers and sisters in Christ (Acts 15, Galatians 2 …).
But the heart of any Synod is our unity in Christ, whose Body we are. And the really special thing about a Diocesan Synod is that it provides an opportunity to come together across our local parish boundaries, to give thanks for God’s faithfulness to God’s church, and listen together to the Holy Spirit as we discern the future into which God is leading us: “together on the way”.
So please pray for our bishops as they lead us in carrying out the deliberations of Synod, and for all Synod members, that they may be faithful to Christ who is the Way, the Truth and the Life.
Seeing how God sees
I’m writing this blog post from the beach at Narooma, where I’m staying with all the clergy of the Anglican Diocese of Canberra & Goulburn for our annual conference. It’s been a fascinating time getting to know brothers and sisters from a wide diversity of churches across our region, including our new bishop Mark.
I’ve been encouraged to hear Bishop Mark say that God’s vision for the future of the Diocese is something that we will all discern together over time, as we seek to see how God sees and feel how God feels. For Christians, authentic vision-setting does not begin with planning and strategy (though this is also important!), but with drawing close to God through spiritual disciplines leading to wise and patient discernment.
And this is a lesson that the psalms (which we’ve been studying all this month on Sunday mornings) can teach us too. They are a school of spiritual practice and a repository of wisdom, firmly based in the reality both of our messy lives and of God’s unchanging character. “The unfolding of your words gives light; it gives understanding to the simple.” (Ps 119:130).
So let’s pray that our church life will be a school of wisdom, and that our vision – for ourselves, our parish, and the whole church – will be God’s vision for us, as we get to know God better.
May is Psalm Month at Holy Cross
During the month of May, all of us at Holy Cross (adults and kids) are turning our attention to a book of the Bible which has had more of an impact on the church’s life of prayer and worship than any other: the book of Psalms.
The Psalms are a vital witness to the joys and challenges of the people of God, full of extraordinary poetry, great wisdom, and an extreme range of feelings. (Incidentally anyone who thinks that contemporary worship songs are too me-focused and too emotional to be good theology should take a look at a psalm or two!)
And crucially for us as Christians, the Psalms give us access to the worshipping life of Jesus himself. Born and raised as a pious Jew in a Jewish family, Jesus “grew in wisdom and divine favour” (Luke 2:52) by memorising these ancient texts. Indeed, some of the most ancient psalm chants (such as the Tonus Peregrinus) which are still sung today have their roots in 1st century synagogue worship. They are, literally, the words and music that Jesus would have sung.
So let’s take time this month to explore this mysterious, passionate, surprising book, and to let it form our hearts as we turn to God in worship. “If the psalm prays, you pray. If the psalm laments, you lament. If the psalm exalts, you rejoice. If it hopes, you hope. If it fears, you fear. Everything written here is a mirror for us.” (Augustine of Hippo)
Christos anesti! Christ is Risen!
The Resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead is the cornerstone of the Christian faith. Without it, there would be no church today, and Jesus would be remembered (if at all) simply as a moral teacher who was unjustly killed. With it, the life and death of Jesus becomes bathed in a new light: it becomes a source of joy and hope in the midst of suffering, and not just for Jesus and his contemporaries – it becomes Good News for all of us.
But the Resurrection is such an unexpected event (literally a one-off!) that it’s not surprising even Jesus’s closest friends took a long time to come to terms with what it meant. And God is always gracious – God knows we also need time to adapt to this new, improbable reality which has opened up for us.
So today, now the season of Lent is over, we begin the season of Easter: fifty days for us to come to terms with this miraculous news, before we celebrate the coming of the Spirit on the Day of Pentecost. Let’s take the time we need to welcome the Resurrection, and let’s ask the Holy Spirit to reveal the places in our hearts where God is longing to give us new life and hope.
