Dear Friends…

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I was recently reminded that it is now 4 years since we first went into lockdown because of the COVID 19 pandemic. In one sense it seems hard to believe that’s how we lived but we know we did because we lived through that period. From time to time, we do experience those events which change our lives both personally and together; in family, community, or national life and as the church; after which we are perhaps never the same again. During this month we remember and celebrate events which changed lives.

 

On 19 th May, we celebrate Pentecost, often referred to as the ‘birthday’ of the Church, when the promised Holy Spirit came. It is then that the anxious and frightened disciples were changed into those who were prepared to stand up and be counted as the followers of Jesus and with confidence to spread the good news of all that they had seen and known of Jesus.

 

Then we mark Wesley Day, which is for Methodists worldwide, a reminder of 24 th May 1738, when John Wesley went ‘most unwillingly’ to a meeting in Aldersgate Street, London. There he had an experience of God, feeling his heart to be ‘strangely warmed’, giving him a renewed assurance and a renewed confidence of his faith in Jesus. The rest as they say is history…….it led to the beginnings of the new Methodist movement which is now the church as we know it.

 

These events did lead to numerical growth, but they were not just about that sort of growth. They were also about individuals responding to God through Jesus which led to lives being changed and being transformed day by day. Are we ready and willing to respond and go on being transformed here and now?

 

Every Blessing,

Deacon Jackie Fowler