oakleys.org.uk

David Jackman is spot on in his analysis of 1 John 4:13-21. In his commentary in The Bible Speaks Today series, the penultimate paragraph discusses the notion that we can love God, and yet not love our Christian brothers and sisters. He says this:

Is this not one of our greatest sins as Christians today? We may talk a lot about loving God, we may express it in our worship with great emotion, but what does it mean when we are so critical of other Christians, so ready to jump to negative conclusions about people, so slow to bear their burdens, so unwilling to step into their shoes? Such lovelessness totally contradicts what we profess and flagrantly disobeys God's commands. It becomes a major stumbling-block to those who are seeking Christ and renders any attempts at evangelism useless. In many churches and fellowships we need a fresh repentance on this matter, a new humbling before God, an honest confession of our need and a cry to God for mercy and grace to change us. (Pages 131-132)

Having come to the end of the Easter weekend, and having delivered many sermons / talks / meditations during the course of that weekend, it is refreshing to read Peter Leithart's Easter Homily for this year, and be fed and encouraged from the Scriptures for myself.

"Why do you seek the living among the dead?", the angel said to the first witnesses. It's a funny place to look - and yet, in many ways, it's where we often look too. Have a read.

I don't know how long this has been the case. If you know, please leave a comment to educate me about this. However, England is divided up into a number of distinct, non-overlapping, spanning, ecclesiastical parishes. This is a parallel system to the civic parish system (think of your local parish council, that manages footpaths, considers local planning requests and so on). However whilst the concept is the same, it is not the same as the civil parish system. One ecclesiastical parish may span several civil parishes, or the other way around, or anything.

People rarely need to know which church's Parish they live in. One time when you do need to know this, however, is if you want to get married in a church. There are a number of ways you can be eligible to marry in a particular church; the number of ways you can qualify has increased significantly since the 2008 Marriage Measure. But the most straight-forward is to live in the Parish for the church you would like to have your wedding in. Regardless of whether you plan to marry in your local parish church, or another one, you would need (usually) to have your Banns of Marriage published. They need to be published in the Parish the groom lives in, and the Parish in which the bride lives. They also (if this isn't already covered) need to be published in the church where the wedding is to take place, where the phrase "of the Parish of St Michael's Puddleton", or similar, is included.

So, if you were planning a church wedding, you would need to know which Parish you live in.

Or, you need to know someone who can tell you.

Like your local vicar.

Like me.

Oh dear. That means I need to know how to find out.

Well:

It has been announced this morning that Bishop Michael Nazir-Ali, the 106th Bishop of Rochester, will step down as Bishop of Rochester from 1st September 2009. The precise area of work he is moving into has not yet been announced.