A front page article\u00a0in our State’s major newspaper today\u00a0illustrates some of the challenges of following Jesus in today’s Tasmania.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Newspaper article here, Anger at ‘happy clappers’<\/a>. Some brief notes:<\/p>\n 1. We live in challenging times.<\/span> Making the Good news of Jesus Christ relevant to the diverse people and cultures of our State requires a diversity of worship and relational styles. We need to add new relevant ways of worship and fellowship while retaining the traditional for those who are nurtured by the traditional. Both are needed. One is not more Anglican than another. Change is hard. We pray, love and labour. We labour, love and pray.<\/p>\n 2. We suffer from a lack of healthy relationship between people.<\/span> We live in a faceless world and I note with a heavy heart the varied\u00a0comments, and the unfairness of anonymity both of the unattributed and pejorative definition of ‘happy clappers’\u00a0in the newspaper article and in the online comments on the article that the facelessness of the web can bring. Let us speak ‘face to face’ in love and holding difference in respect and hospitality.<\/p>\n 3. We need some of our best to be ordained.<\/span> Given the demands of the leadership challenge to relate Christ to culture, we need some of our best to be called of God to\u00a0commit to Christian ministry and ordination; to a discipleship that is very public and therefore open to comment both fair and unfair. May God raise up such men and women, young and old, to ordination and such public Christian roles.<\/p>\n 4.\u00a0We must pray for those called to be ‘public Christians’.<\/span> At the recent ordination retreat I spoke with the ordinands of the joys and sorrows, blessings and challenges, of becoming a very ‘public Christian’ as a result of ordination as a deacon, priest or bishop in the\u00a0Church. Please pray, seeking the Holy Spirit’s strengthening and wisdom\u00a0for those who have responded to\u00a0God’s call on their lives to become\u00a0‘public Christians’.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A front page article\u00a0in our State’s major newspaper today\u00a0illustrates some of the challenges of following Jesus in today’s Tasmania.\u00a0 Newspaper article here, Anger at ‘happy clappers’. Some brief notes: 1. We live in challenging times. Making the Good news of … Continue reading