Commissioning Service for Pastoral Care Ministry
Leaders
6th October 2013
At Thursday’s Church Meeting we agreed our
new structure for Highbury.
At its heart is a vision …
That Highbury should be a place to
Share Christian friendship,
Explore Christian faith and
Enter into Christian Mission
With Christ at the centre
And open to all.
As people feel at home in our church family
and share a faith in God and in Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour we very much
hope they will become fully part of our church as church members and be
involved in one or more areas of church life in what they do and in prayer …
everyone has a part to play including those not able to get out and be active
through prayer.
In all we do as Church members our aim is
to Love the Lord our God with all our soul, with all our mind and with all our
strength and to love our neighbour as ourselves. In all we seek to do we rejoice in the
forgiving love of God, the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ and in the fellowship
of the Holy Spirit, knowing that when we fail we do not give up but go on in
the strength of God.
Church Members, meeting together at our
regular Church meeting shape Church life and set the future direction of Church
life here at Highbury.
In our new way of doing things we are going
to put in place a team of Ministry Leaders who will be Church Members who are
called and gifted to serve the whole Church and to lead a particular area of
Church Life.
It is great that we have people who are
willing to serve the church in all six areas of church life we have
identified. Over the next three weeks
the Deacons will be interviewing people for the post of Worship Ministry
Leader, Youth Ministry Leader, Discipleship Ministry Leader and Mission
Knowing that David and Betty, Phil and
Joyce were going to finish co-ordinating our visiting scheme we followed
through our new process and at our July Church Meeting appointed Lorraine
Gasside and Diana Adams to do a job share and be our Pastoral Ministry leaders.
Today we welcome them and commission them
to that work.
It is good for us to remember that all who
belong to the Church of Jesus Christ are called to serve one another in his
name.
Jesus calls us all to share in a life of
discipleship: it is for us all to respond to that call in faithful obedience.
Jesus said, “If one of you wants to be
great, he must be the servant of the rest.
Lord
Jesus, we hear your call: help us to follow
Jesus said, “If I, your Lord and Teacher,
have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I have set you an example.
Lord
Jesus, we hear your call: help us to follow
Jesus said, “I give you a new commandment,
that you love one another. Just as I
have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my
disciples, if you have love for one another.”
Lord
Jesus, we hear your call: help us to follow
Jesus said: “Go to all peoples everywhere
and make them my disciples and I will be with you always, to the end of the
world.”
Lord
Jesus, we hear your call: help us to follow.
You
have redeemed us and called us to your service:
Give
us grace to hear your word and to obey your commandment
For
your mercy’s sake.
Amen.
As we belong to the fellowship of the
Church, we all have a part to play in the life of the Church.
Together with all who proclaim that Jesus
Christ is Lord we are a royal priesthood, God’s own people. We are all called by God to proclaim the mighty
acts of him who called us out of darkness into h is marvellous light and to
live out in our lives the love of him who first loved us.
We have gifts that differ according to the
grace given to us: prophecy, in proportion to faith; ministry, in ministering;
the teacher, in teaching; the exhorter, in exhortation; the giver in
generosity; the leader, in diligence; the compassionate, in cheerfulness.
We rejoice today that Lorraine
We have called you as a Church to build up
Christian friendship through pastoral care that is open to all and seeks to
meet the needs of each.
We have asked you
to build on our current pastoral care
network of visitors
to develop pastoral care that responds to
specific needs
to identify and respond to those in need of
pastoral support.
to help people in Church to provide
pastoral support, with care and sensitivity, to individuals or groups through
training
to provide prayer support through prayer
network, in Sunday services , prayer meeting and in other ways
to develop links with and involvement in
the hospital chaplaincy team
Diana, I ask you to reaffirm your
profession of faith:
Do you believe in God and in Jesus Christ
as your Lord and Saviour?
I do
Do you promise, as you are able, to fulfil
the responsibilities of Pastoral Care Ministry Leader jointly with Lorraine
With
God’s help, I do so promise.
In the name of Jesus Christ and on the
authority of the Church Meeting I extend to you the right hand of fellowship
recognising that God has called you to serve the fellowship of the Church here
at Highbury as Pastoral Ministry Leader.
…
Do you believe in God and in Jesus Christ
as your Lord and Saviour?
I do
Do you promise, as you are able, to fulfil
the responsibilities of Pastoral Care Ministry Leader jointly with Diana here
at Highbury
With
God’s help, I do so promise.
In the name of Jesus Christ and on the
authority of the Church Meeting I extend to you the right hand of fellowship
recognising that God has called you to serve the fellowship of the Church here
at Highbury as Pastoral Ministry Leader.
…
May God richly bless you in the ministry
which you now share with us all.
In all you do take to heart the words of
Paul in Ephesians 4:1-7 and 11-13
I urge you, then—I who am a prisoner
because I serve the Lord: live a life that measures up to the standard God set
when he called you. Be always humble,
gentle, and patient. Show your love by being tolerant with one another. 3 Do
your best to preserve the unity which the Spirit gives by means of the peace
that binds you together. 4 There is one body and one Spirit, just as there is
one hope to which God has called you. 5 There is one Lord, one faith, one
baptism; 6 there is one God and Father of all people, who is Lord of all, works
through all, and is in all.
7 Each one of us has received a special
gift in proportion to what Christ has given.
It was he who “gave gifts to people”; he
appointed some to be apostles, others to be prophets, others to be evangelists,
others to be pastors and teachers. 12 He did this to prepare all God's people
for the work of Christian service, in order to build up the body of Christ. 13
And so we shall all come together to that oneness in our faith and in our
knowledge of the Son of God; we shall become mature people, reaching to the
very height of Christ's full stature.
The story of Jairus’s Daughter and the Woman on the
Way
Jesus took three with him and the girl’s parents
A Hy-Spirit Song
Offering and Dedication
Fun activities for all over 3
Not alone in all we do
I once read an article by a Social Worker
who worked over in Oxford
He spoke movingly of his job – he felt what
he was doing was representing wider society and acting as it were for the wider
community in helping, in caring, in making a difference.
What he said rang true for me and
particularly for the part of my work that has to do with pastoral care.
I am passionate about the pastoral ministry I share. I am passionate about helping people. I am passionate about making a difference.
In many ways I can see the point of what he
went on to say about ‘representing society’.
It’s much the same in church.
In pastoral care, when I visit I feel that
I am representing the wider Church family here at Highbury and acting as it
were for the wider community of our church family in helping, in caring, in
making a difference.
I feel passionate about what I do.
Everybody who has shared in pastoral care
in the life of the church here at Highbury, I sense, has shared something of
that passion.
As I arrived Olga and Joan co-ordinated our
visiting scheme, and then Phil and Joyce, David and Betty, took on that
work. Through the years as we have met
as Church visitors there’s a very real sense that we are all sharing in that
work.
It was wonderful when Lorraine
And very much part of our church family.
Very easy to go with that article on Social
work and see what our Pastoral Care Ministry Leaders are doing as representing
the wider Church family here at Highbury and acting as it were for the wider
community of our church family in helping, in caring, in making a difference.
That sense of being part of a wider
community gives the kind of framework that anyone involved in any kind of
caring needs. The sense of being part of
a wider organisation, a wider team. Good
to know that the work of caring is shared by that wider community and what you
are doing is helping to make that wider community’s care more effective.
All that applies in any kind of caring will
apply in seeking to carry out pastoral care in a church context too – the
importance of knowing our limits, when we can refer to elsewhere for help,
knowing that there are others who are part of that team in caring in a church
family too.
BUT
And for me it is a very real BUT!!
And I share it with you at the point at
which you are taking on this particular role in the life of the Church family
here.
For me there is an extra dimension in the
pastoral care I feel very much called to, that kind of pastoral ministry that
you are taking on in the life of the church here at Highbury.
It is something very specific to the faith
we share. It is something that everyone
of us who is involved in caring in whatever context that may be would do well
to remember and bring to mind.
It is what I would find would sustain me if
I were in the shoes of that Social Worker and it makes for me the difference
between finding this kind of work ‘do-able’ and finding this kind of work
simply overwhelming.
In pastoral care I am passionate about
helping, I am passionate about caring, I am passionate about making a
difference, I do feel I am part of a wider
church family and so representing that wider caring church family … but there
is something more as well.
I sense that the love and the care I am
seeking to share is the love that God is sharing. There is a presence with me, a strength I can
draw on to sustain what I am doing.
I feel I am in the position of those three
friends of Jesus as they arrived in Jairus’s house.
When Jesus came to the house Peter, James
and John went in with him.
Pastoral care is about going into see
someone knowing that Jesus is present there as well.
All through the conversation, all through
all that I share, I want to hold on to that picture. That Jesus is there – it is his love reaching
out to this person and his love reaching out to me – it is his love reaching
out to us. Through the words and the
care I show it is the love Jesus has that is the care that matters, the help
that counts, and it’s that love of Jesus that can make all the difference.
Sometimes, one of the great privileges of
pastoral care that I have had over the years is that people have asked me in to
share with them as someone is very ill indeed, maybe in hospital. I would love to stay. But I cannot.
As I come away, in my mind’s eye, I sense that I may come away but Jesus
remains. He is still there. In my mind’s eye I can see myself leaving at
the door maybe of the ward – and I say one more fare well, good bye – God be
with you. And there is a sense in my
mind that God in Jesus remains even as I leave.
I find bringing that mental picture to mind
a help.
But it is not just a picture.
There is a very real sense that this is
something real.
And it is where we cannot sustain such a
ministry as this without a strong sense of the reality of the Holy Spirit, what
gives our faith its real three dimensional feel to oit.
John 14:15-19 and 25-27
“If
you love me, you will obey my commandments. 16 I will ask the Father, and he
will give you another Helper, who will stay with you forever. 17 He is the
Spirit, who reveals the truth about God. The world cannot receive him, because
it cannot see him or know him. But you know him, because he remains with you
and is in you.
18
“When I go, you will not be left all alone; I will come back to you. 19 In a
little while the world will see me no more, but you will see me; and because I
live, you also will live.
“I have told you this while I am still with
you. 26 The Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will
teach you everything and make you remember all that I have told you.
27
“Peace is what I leave with you; it is my own peace that I give you. I do not
give it as the world does. Do not be worried and upset; do not be afraid.
I will ask the Father, and he will give you another
Helper, who will stay with you forever … When I go you will not be left all
alone
This is the wonderful promise I hold on to
in the pastoral ministry I share.
This is the wonderful promise to hold on to
as you take up this role of Pastoral Minsitry Leaders here at Highbury.
This is the wonderful promise for each of
us to hold on to whenever we are involved in caring for others.
360
Father, hear the prayer we offer
Two sides of the same coin
One of the ideas we have in setting up the
new framework for the life of our church is to really build up that sense we have
of sharing in a team ministry, and sharing together in the work we do in the
life of the church.
That’s very much at the heart of our
pastoral care.
Diana is going to share an invitation to an
evening in a couple of weeks time when we shall be exploring how we may
together develop the pastoral care we share in church.
Diana
How can we release that sense of the
presence of God with us – we do that through prayer. Lorraine
A team of
pastoral carers and prayer – are two sides of the same coin
Song In
Christ alone - Hy-Spirit
Prayers of Concern
373 What a
friend we have in Jesus
Words of Blessing
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