The Church of Ireland’s Church and Society Commission has published a short booklet with suggestions for how parishes, and other ministries and similar organisations in their local communities, can help to serve people in need at this time.
Practical Action on the Cost of Living summarises a discussion held last Wednesday morning, when representatives from Church of Ireland dioceses around the island shared stories about how their parishes are proactively responding as the cost of living crisis continues (e.g. through recycling surplus clothing, greater support for food banks, making and sharing meals together, and opening up church property as warm spaces). Several examples were put forward about what more can be done over the coming months, along with ideas for the best overall approaches for responding locally.
Archbishop Michael Jackson, Chair of the Church and Society Commission, who organised the meeting, remarks: “The escalation in the cost of living affects everyone. It affects those on modest incomes, on pensions, and those with no money at all most acutely and most immediately. The time of crisis is now. The booklet in a small but heartfelt way seeks to provide some pointers about how help is being made available through local ministries, and where a range of people is ready to come to your assistance. Please avail of what is there. It is there for you as much as it is there for anyone else. Please also ask for any help you need from others if and when you seek support.”
The Church of Ireland Youth Department (CIYD) is delighted to launch its Climate Justice Toolkit – a resource pack which explores climate change from a global justice perspective. This has been adapted from materials produced in association with the Girls Friendly Society.
Steve Grasham, CIYD’s Youth Ministry Development Officer for the Southern Region, says: “Climate change presents the single biggest threat to sustainable development everywhere. Its widespread and unprecedented effects disproportionately impact the poorest and most vulnerable people in our world. The aim of this toolkit is to build the knowledge, skills and attitudes of young people as they explore the impact of climate change on our planet, the inequality of its consequences on people, and why this is unjust.”
This toolkit uses a ‘development education’ approach – an interactive and creative learning process that seeks to increase awareness and understanding of the world we live in. It challenges perceptions and stereotypes by encouraging optimism, participation and action for a just world. Through a process of exploration, reflection and action, the activities seek to support young people to make connections between their own lives and climate justice issues, and to empower them to make a positive difference in our world.
The resource is available in a PDF document format. Clergy, youth workers and youth leaders can contact their Diocesan Youth Officer or Steve Grasham at [email protected] for a copy. In due course, it will also be downloadable from the CIYD website: www.ciyd.org
Left to right: Simon Henry, National Youth Officer; Emma Lynch; Church and Supporter Relations Co-ordinator, Tearfund Ireland; Steve Grasham, CIYD Youth Ministry Development Officer (Southern Region); Bishop Pat Storey, CIYD President; and Mrs Brigid Barrett, CIYD Chairperson.
Young Leaders in Ministry Fund open for applications
Closing date: Friday, 30th September 2022
As our teenagers and young adults look forward to increasing youth ministry opportunities for 2023, the Church of Ireland Youth Department’s Young Leaders in Ministry Fund is once again open for applications.
The fund is open to young people aged between 15 and 25 years who can demonstrate a current involvement in the Church of Ireland. It seeks to support training and development courses, mission teams, leadership opportunities and placements that can be shown to:
The next closing date is Friday, 30th September 2022, and an application form (in PDF format) can be downloaded at this link.
Please send all completed applications by post to: Young Leaders in Ministry Fund, CIYD, Church of Ireland House, 61–67 Donegall Street, Belfast, BT1 2QH, or by email to [email protected]
For any further information or questions, please email [email protected]
On Sunday 11th September 2022, Revd. Adam Norris who was ordained as a Priest for local ministry by Bishop Ferran Glenfield at a service held in St. John’s Cathedral, Sligo. He will be serving in the Sligo Cathedral Group of Churches.
Revd. Adam says that his call to Ordained Ministry originated as a young boy in a Kenyan boarding school that had a very strong Christian ethos. There, a foundation for his faith was laid and has been built upon in fits and starts over the years as he grew up – at times rebelling and then being called back to God. It is over the past 20 or so years that ad opened doors and given him the opportunities to become first a Parish, then Diocesan Reader serving in his own Parish group in Sligo and in the wider Diocese. Speaking of his ordination Revd. Adam says ‘I know in my heart that God has been leading me on that path to Ordained Ministry, a ministry of worship. Jesus said, “Where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them.” (Mt 18:20) I know that was not said in the context of worship, but it is in my heart that even if there are only two or three who have gathered for worship, I am ready to enable and to lead that worship because Jesus himself will be among us.
Congratulations to Revd. Adam on his ordination. We pray for him and his family as he continues his ministry.
Congratulations to Revd. John Addy who was ordained as a priest for local ministry by Bishop Ferran Glenfield at St. John’s Cathedral, Sligo on 11th September 2022. He will serve principally in the Sligo Cathedral Group of Churches although he also regularly visits churches in the Drumcliffe and Manorhamilton Groups.
John was born in England and worked for many years in the National Health Service and latterly in university management. He took up his current role with The Open University in Belfast in 2003 but spends much of his time in Strandhill, Co. Sligo. His grandfather, William Whittaker, was the Sexton in the former St. John’s Church in Sligo for 33 years and his mother Olive grew up in the adjacent church house until the entire family relocated to England in 1955 and returned in 1985. John has been a frequent holiday visitor since the late 1960s, prior to his coming to live in Ireland nineteen years ago.
John has felt increasing drawn to Christian ministry and over the past nine years has served as a Parish Reader and then as a Diocesan Reader, prior to being ordained Deacon last year. When opportunities arise, John likes nothing better than long hill or coastal walks, city breaks and enjoys a quiz or a game of pétanque.
We pray for Revd. John as he continues his ministry in our Diocese.
On Sunday evening 18th September, Canon Mark Lidwell joined Bishop Martin Hayes, Bishop of Kilmore, in an ecumenical prayer event at the Cathedral of Saint Patrick and Saint Felim to celebrate the Season of Creation. The Season of Creation is a worldwide, ecumenical movement which aims to celebrate the joy of creation as well as raise awareness about what is happening to our common home. The prayer event highlighted the concerns about the harmful effects of global warming on our planet and how the poor in the developing world are most affected.
During the event, crocus bulbs were planted on the front lawn of the Cathedral of St Patrick and St Felim. When the bulbs bloom they will spell out the word HOPE. The bulbs were planted by young parishioners to illustrate the need to address the impact of climate change on the next generations.
A service of thanksgiving and reflection to mark the death of Queen Elizabeth II was held last Sunday, 18th September in St. Fethlimidh’s Cathedral, Kilmore. The congregation who gathered to give thanks for the Queen’s long and devoted life of service to God included clergy and parishioners from across the Diocese of Kilmore, both North and South, as well as representatives of Cavan County Council.
Preaching from Isaiah chapter 6, Bishop Ferran Glenfield said that in times of transition, change and challenge we need to embrace a vision of God high and lifted up, to acknowledge our need of forgiveness and to live lives for Him. A full transcript of his sermon is available below.
The service ended with two minutes of silence to mourn the passing of Queen Elizabeth and to reflect on her life and legacy. We give thanks for the Queen’s wonderful example of faith and witness.
Below is the Sermon preached by Bishop Ferran Glenfield at the service:
Its lovely to see you this evening in the Cathedral. It’s been a long day for many of us but in these moments of reflection and quiet with in this sacred space we come before the living God and pray; ‘Speak Lord in the stillness as we wait upon you. Hush our hearts to listen with expectancy. For Christs’ sake, Amen’.
One of the most memorable opening lines in all of the bible comes from the book of Isaiah chapter 6. It is in your order of service, you may like to turn to remind yourselves of these memorable words; ‘In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting on a throne high and lifted up, the train of his robe filled the temple’. The year in question was 740BC. Uzziah had reigned as the King of God’s people, Judah, a small tribal area in Southern Israel for 52 years. In the estimate of the sacred historian who wrote the 1st and 2nd book of Kings and 1st and 2nd Chronicles in the Old Testament, he was assessed as a good king. Very few of the leaders of God’s people got that accolation. Such continuity and stability in his reign gave the people of God a great hope of stability and reassurance in a very troubled world – the world of the Middle East which is troubled to this very day. Just like the long reign and constancy of Queen Elizabeth. And now, in the words of Isaiah the prophet, Uzziah has gone and his place will know him no more and what will become of his people, the people of God? At this moment of transition, of flux in ancient Judah, Isaiah was given a vision of God. A vision of the King of Kings. The higher power, the one who sits on throne of the universe. What kind of God did Isaiah apprehend? First, a God of splendour. In verses 1-4 we see a God surrounded by angelic beings singing in worship and those voices and the voice of Him on the throne shook the very foundations of the cosmos. The transcendent God is sovereign over all of His creation.
Secondly, Isaiah comprehended a God who saves. In the presence of this transcendent, holy God Isaiah – one of His servants, a spokesperson for God, a royal chaplain for many years to King Uzziah and his successors – was filled with quilt. He was a soiled sinner. A glowing coal was taken from the altar and Isaiah feels on his lips a purging pain and the angel that administers the coal says ‘Your sin is forgiven. Your sin is blocked off. It has been atoned for’. And this guilty sinner stands saved before a holy God, the King of Kings and the Lord of Hosts. Then Isaiah is asked by a God who sends to go to his wayward people with a candid message to turn around and to turn to God lest they come to self-harm and self-destruction.
In this time of change and challenge following the death of the Queen and in our post-pandemic world, we don’t need a reset as people are asking for. We need, above all, a vision of God. Isaiah’s God. The God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. We need to respond in faith to this God by acknowledging that He exists and that we owe him everything. Every breath we take, every step we make comes from Him. And we need to acknowledge that He is King and that I do not rule myself and I do not rule others. He reigns over all. We need to admit that, like Isaiah, we are soiled by sin. We are flawed, fickle, failures who need forgiveness that is beyond us and forgiveness that we don’t deserve. Forgiveness that comes only by the grace God through faith in His son, the King, the Lord Jesus Christ. We need to accept God’s candid message that the road we are travelling on leads to self-destruction and to a breakdown of society in the whole of Western culture, this island served God and so did Queen Elizabeth. Her life was exemplary, exceptional. She acknowledged her calling by a higher power and a greater throne, the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. She admitted her standing before a Holy God, a sinner in need of forgiveness by His grace. And she accepted God’s candid message by living her life according to God given values of responsibility, of modesty and of graciousness over and against the prevailing tide and values of self-promotion and of self-love which is so rampant in our land and in the lands of the West.
And so this evening, at this momentous point in history, we come to pay our respects to this exceptional monarch and world leader and to share our sadness and our condolences to those who are part of her family and those who knew her as a woman of deep faith and integrity. But this moment will pass and fade into history and nothing will bring great change unless, unless we, like Isaiah, embrace a vision of God sitting on a throne high and lifted up. May we be given the grace and the will so to do for Christ’s sake. Amen
The death of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth marks the end of an extraordinary life and era.
The Queen was known the world over for her exceptional sense of duty and selfless service. The well spring for her long reign was her deep Christian faith expressed in love. She loved and was loved in return by so many people.
On behalf of the pastors and people of Kilmore, Elphin and Ardagh, I offer condolences and prayers for the Royal Family and the people of the United Kingdom and Commonwealth.
Church Army are hosting a Discovery Day Event on Saturday the 8th October. If you are interested in exploring mission and ministry within Church Army then why not come along to The Church of Ireland Theological Institute to find out more about training with the Church Army.
For more info please see: https://churcharmy.org/product/discovery-day-saturday-8th-october-2022-ireland/
