This page has the latest thought from our Vicar Marcus, followed by the latest Diocesan letter.
Vicar’s Thought for the month of April 2024
I was at a gathering for clergy and other ministers in Craven Arms yesterday. We were being given a presentation by representatives from the Bible Society. One of them gave a talk on St Paul’s Letter to the Romans. He asked the question; ‘How long did you think it would take someone to read through the letter in one read through?’ The options were, one hour, two hours, and three hours. I thought three hours, and that for the average reader, not a slow reader like me. The answer is one hour. I must confess to being slightly sceptical about this so I thought I would try it out. Well, I have just read through the letter of St Paul to the Romans. I did not read it straight through for an hour, because I have other things to do, but I read it for quarter of an hour, did a task, then another quarter of an hour, followed by another quick task. Well, to my surprise, it took me four sets of 15 minutes. So the letter to the Romans can be read in an hour even by a slow reader like me.
This got me thinking about reading the Bible, which I have done every day since I was 11. It’s tempting, at least for the enthusiast, to try and read through as much as possible. There are One Year Bibles which I think are a mistake, it’s a high bar which can leave many with a sense of failure. What the exercise showed me was that by setting a timer on my phone for 15 minutes, I read through quite a lot more than I might’ve expected. Now it doesn’t have to be an hour or even 15 minutes but making a set amount of time to read through a particular book in the Bible on a daily basis means that you can read quite a lot of the Bible in the space of a year. And this is not about an achievement. We’re not reading scripture in order to show how good we are at it, we read scripture in order to be formed and informed by it. We also come to know it better, to find out what sits well with us and what does not. We can begin to think about it more deeply. And we don’t need to start with the letter to the Romans in fact I wouldn’t. The singer Nick Cave was once advised to read the gospel of Mark, when he asked ‘Why?’ he was told; ‘Because it’s short’. Actually according to another reading scheme it takes about an hour and a half. That’s 18 days at five minutes a day for the whole Gospel. And if you have a spare hour and a half why not read the whole Gospel and get the broad sweep of the whole story?
Marcus
Letter for May 2024 from the Bishop of Hereford
Dear Friends
May marks the end of the Easter season and the beginning of what is affectionately known as ‘ordinary time’ in the Church calendar. The pivot happens at the feast of Pentecost on May 19th this year. Every Sunday is always a celebration of the resurrection, so its hard to see what is ordinary about it. The events of the Christ’s death and resurrection are the turning point of history. It is a world-shattering event that means life can never be the same again. The book of Acts tells us how the disciples’ lives were turned upside down by it. In their grief at the loss of Jesus a number were considering returning to their previous occupations. Once they encountered the risen Lord, they decided to change the world instead!
However, it was not just historical events which changed things. It was the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. The Christian faith has always been a supernatural one. In the struggles to fill rotas, find volunteers, maintain buildings and serve our communities we can easily forget this. If the Christian life was just a set of rules to obey, religious acts to observe and an institution to maintain, it would not have lasted very long.
Trusting in the Holy Spirit to empower and lead is less safe than seeking to control events ourselves. Periodically in the history of the Church the Holy Spirit has broken through in ways that have upended our conventional way of doing things. It happened in the Wesleyan revival of the 18th century, numerous mini revivals in the church (of which some happened in our diocese) and in the great outpouring in Azusa Street in 1906 that gave birth to Pentecostalism. This is now the third largest stream in the Church today. In many ways it is hard to see how our current institutional predicament can be served by strategic thinking alone. I am praying for another (likely messy!) outpouring of the Holy Spirit on the Diocese of Hereford. Only the Holy Spirit can give us the courage we need for the evangelistic challenge. Only the Holy Spirit can turn the hearts of those currently indifferent to Christian things to help see their need for the Lord. So, ‘Come Holy Spirit and kindle the hearts of your people with the fire of your love’. Today, we need that more than ever.
+Richard