For those of you who haven’t met me, I’m Jonathan, the parish priest responsible for St Mary Magdalene’s Outwood, and an associate priest in the benefice of Outwood, Stanley and Wrenthorpe.  Over the next few months, the three churches in the team and St Paul’s Alverthorpe will be working more closely together as we look forward to appointing a new lead vicar in the future. Ministers across the team have begun meeting together, and over the next few months, you’ll see more of me, my wife Jo, and the readers from St Anne’s, while your ministers will be preaching in Outwood and Wrenthorpe on different Sundays running up to Christmas.

Change can be difficult. As we go through the next few months, work more closely and welcome a new lead vicar, there will be changes.  But we have confidence in the fact that the God we worship does not change. That might sound like a Sunday school saying that you’ve heard many times before.  But for the early Christians, it was a new idea: the Greek and Roman gods were worshipped because they corresponded to Greek ideas of perfection, which meant following the limits of nature   perfectly.  God in the Old Testament is the creator of all things, and guides the destinies of nations, but it also never actually says he doesn’t change.

But for Christians, especially as they reflected on what it meant to worship God “who is immortal and dwells in unapproachable light” (1 Tim 6.16), God was not just superior kind of being, which was perfect, unlike us.  He was different – a creator, rather than a creature, so not subject to the limits of time, or any other limit. This vision of God still inspires us today: a God who holds everything, even time and space in his hands, and who is himself unlimited, is a God who is above every situation we might face, and also a God we will always want to know more about. Gregory of Nyssa, one of the early Christian mystics, wrote that a god like this would always satisfy us:

This is truly the vision of God: never to be satisfied in our desire to see him. But by looking at what we do see, we must always rekindle our desire to see more. So there can be no limit interrupting our growth in  ascending to God, because there is no limit to the Good, and our desire  for the Good is not ended by being satisfied.

So as the changes ring around us, take confidence: God stays the same, and he always calls us towards him.  Every blessing,

Father Jonathan Bish, Priest at St Mary Magdalene, Outwood

We hear a lot about “community”.  We talk a lot about “community”.  Family, church, village, school are all examples of community.  Apparently there are five different types of communities and every one can be classified by the purpose that brings them together, for example: interest, action, place, practice and circumstance.  So why is community important?  What does the Bible say about community?

Having a community around us means that we are not in the world alone.  We have people around us that we can turn to for help and support, for friendship and care.  In return, we have others we can share our lives with, to care for and help in their time of need.

There are many references to community in the Bible.  The general theme of most of these references is probably summed up in verses from 1 Peter.  Chapter 3 verse 8 says: “Finally, all of you have unity of mind, sympathy, brotherly love, a tender heart and a humble mind”.  Chapter 4 verse 10 says: “As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another, as good stewards of God’s varied grace”.

We have many opportunities this summer to reach out as a Church community to the wider community.  We host the Community choir every Monday and look forward to their concerts.  We held our Summer Fair on 30th June and reached out to the community of Stanley and beyond.  We have the opportunity as a church to reach out to the young people in our community as we welcome all the year 6 pupils in two of our village schools to an end of year service on    Thursday 5th July.  For these children it is the end of the school community they have known since they were 5 years old, as they head towards a new school community in September at their new schools.  Scout Fest was another wonderful example of community.

We have another opportunity to show the strength of our Church community as we hold a “Peace and Hope picnic” on 14th July to celebrate the end of the first world war (click here for more details).  Come along and join us for a real community celebration of peace because as Psalm 133 says “Behold how good and pleasant it is when brothers dwell in unity”.

 Vicky Wilson,   Reader