Last Sunday’s morning worship was most ably led by a distinguished recent Vice-President of the Methodist Conference, Mrs Carolyn Lawrence, wife of our minister the Rev’d Mark Lawrence. Carolyn was welcomed by our steward Margaret Maxwell. “How we live as Christians” was the theme of the service and Carolyn began with some words from Psalm 66 which is a Song of Praise and Thanksgiving; and to the music of Rod Smith on the organ, we sang our opening hymn written by Bishop Reginald Heber (1783-1826), a former Vicar of St Mary’s, Hodnet. “Holy, Holy Holy, Lord God Almighty, Early in the morning our song shall rise to thee”.
There followed prayers of Praise, Thanksgiving and Adoration and Carolyn gave a short homily on True or False, how can we tell if people are Christians? It was then she introduced her theme for the worship. There were two bible readings, the first from Mark, chapter six, read by Rosalind. Jesus is rejected in his home town of Nazareth even though he began to teach in the synagogue and many were amazed at his wisdom but they remembered he was a carpenter the son of Mary and so they rejected him. The second reading was from the first letter of Peter, chapter three, read by Guy, and here Peter speaks of suffering for doing right.
Our prayers for others was far reaching as we considered the woes of the world and the suffering of many, particularly Christians in Sudan and elsewhere. Prayers were also said for those in need known to us personally.
In her sermon, Carolyn led our thoughts on her theme “how we live as Christians” and difficulties there are in witnessing events let alone witnessing for Jesus, for witnessing can be hard. “Who brought you to church?” asked Carolyn. The likelihood was not a leaflet but another person with whom we had built up a relationship. The bible tells us how we can be witnesses for Jesus, not by our good works alone but by building up a relationship with Jesus. We can share God’s love for us when we live Godly lives. Thus we can invite others to share the joys of being a Christian which comes from our sharing our faith. We can be witnesses for Christ through our prayers and
by showing compassion for others, and we do not need to do this in our own strength as the Holy Spirit empowers us all the way. We concluded an uplifting service as we sang our final hymn “Go forth and tell! O church of God awake!”