UMC blog


  • Continual Ministerial Formation Feb 10, 2019

    Kym and I attended a ministers’ retreat in Empangeni this week. We have a couple of days like this each year when all the ministers in our synod meet together. It’s good to see each other again and meet colleagues who have just moved into this area in 2019.

    One of the items under discussion this week was a national decision now being implemented across the entire Methodist Church relating to “Continual Ministerial Formation”. The term is similar to “Continual Professional Development” used to ensure that professionals in various fields continue to study and grow in their skills and knowledge o...

  • The Covenant Feb 03, 2019

    The annual Covenant Service has been a part of our Methodist worship since the time of John Wesley. In this service, we recognise that God has reached out to us, and offers us friendship, inviting us to be in relationship with God. The Covenant we make, then, is the way we accept the relationship God offers all of us and also how we look to sustain it. So rather than the Covenant prayer being about trying to acquire a relationship with God, through making our Covenant, we are affirming that we want to live in the relationship God has already offered us. The Covenant Prayer we pray is in resp...

  • Synod is coming! Jan 27, 2019

    Synod is coming.

    Each year in May, Methodists gather in their districts for a weekend to talk about the work God is doing in our local communities and churches. It is always so encouraging to gather with 200 other people and share how God is working as well as dream together about the future. Whenever we go to synod, we are always graciously hosted by a circuit, who sets up a venue, arranges catering and sometimes accommodation, who help with the worship services, serves communion as well as takes care of a whole range of admin that goes with running a three-day meeting for 200 people.

    This ye...

  • Living for today Jan 20, 2019

    Recently, Dominique, my wife, underwent rather serious back surgery. There had been an invisible build up over the years to a slipped disc. No trauma, no injury, no accident, just a slipped disc 2 years later. If you have never been close to someone who is about to go into a possible life-changing surgery (as was the case with me), it is a truly gut-wrenching experience.

    You are essentially handing the fate of the person closest to you over to a group of people you have never met before and are forced to trust in their expertise. Nonetheless, the surgery was a success and Dom is now on the lon...

  • Listening Time Jan 13, 2019

    During the past week, Michael and I crossed out a morning in our diaries and walked down the road to Burnedale Cafe to have what we call a ‘vestry meeting’. At the start of each year, we call a vestry meeting to think and plan for the year ahead, and the question we ask is, ‘when we get to the end of the year, what would we hope to say has happened?’

    This year at our vestry meeting, the theme for both of us was around listening: listening in prayer, listening in scripture, listening to people, listening to the cry of the world. Trevor Hudson says listening is the greatest pastoral skill, and t...

  • New Year's Resolution Jan 06, 2019

    My new year’s resolutions*:

    1. Stop making lists

    B. Be more consistent.

    7. Learn to count.

    (*borrowed from a meme online)

    In my experience, these annual resolutions haven’t usually been terribly helpful. Here’s Mark Twain’s perspective: “New Year’s Day – now is the accepted time to make your regular annual good resolutions. Next week you can begin paving hell with them as usual.” Clever, but cynical :)

    However, we can be so anti New Year’s resolutions that we slip into the opposite extreme – a kind of perpetual apathy that the ancients described as sloth – one of the seven deadly sins. Listen to Dia...

  • It's all about the small things Dec 17, 2018

    I think books are just one of the best tools for expanding our minds. There is something about wrapping an idea in a story that sings to our soul. We are built for stories. I recently read a book by Paulo Coelho called "The Zahir". It is a strange book about how a wife leaves her famous author husband in search of the meaning of love through her work as a war correspondent (I definitely should not write book reviews).

    There have been countless takeaways from this book about how powerful the sharing of our burdens can be; about how we must never let go of adventure in our relationships; about ho...

  • The innkeeper Dec 09, 2018

    This week was our Women’s Auxiliary Christmas Party and we were beautifully led through a series of carols and reflections on the various characters in the Christmas story. We looked at Mary, Joseph, the angels, the shepherds, the Magi and then we were asked, ‘who have we left out?’ and someone called out the right answer, ‘Jesus, the newborn Messiah’.

    ‘Oops!’ said someone sitting near me, ‘I was going to say that we had left out the innkeeper’.

    We laughed, but the comment got us thinking and talking. It is true that the innkeeper who gave the holy family shelter that first Christmas had a small...

  • How good are you at waiting? Dec 02, 2018

    How good are you at waiting for things? Some times we are better at waiting than at other times - waiting for food at a restaurant, waiting in a queue at Home Affairs, waiting for a phone call, a test result. We live in such an instant generation, waiting is not something we have to do very often.

    Often a key feature of shops, or products or services is in their claim that they won’t make you wait. Instant online banking, same day delivery, buy now pay later. Waiting is not really a feature of life these days.

    Today is the first Sunday of Advent, and today begins a season of waiting. This seas...

  • Blessed being a Society Steward Nov 25, 2018

    As I come to the end of my 3 year term as a Society Steward, and look back on my initial reaction, like Moses – “Oh No, Not Me Lord, I’m not worthy, I can’t do that!” I admit, I have certainly been stretched completely out of my comfort zone, but - what a privilege and a blessing it’s been to serve Our Lord in this way.

    I have been amazed at how much more there is to running a Church, and preparing the Sunday Service. Also, how crucial it is and how grateful we are to have reliable and dedicated people serving in the various areas, not only on Sundays, but during the week as well. It’s been fan...

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