Chester-le-Street Methodist Circuit

‘The Spirit of the Lord is on me,
    because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners
    and recovery of sight for the blind,
to set the oppressed free,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.’

Luke 4 v18-...

On day 21 Robert Shnase tells a story of a large church who had tried several times to start a meeting for teaching and fellowship among some of the young adults in the church. Up to this point it hadn’t really worked very well, and they were not sure what to do differently, but were committed to giving thing...

Writing about personal spiritual habits and disciplines, Professor Craig Dykstra of Duke Divinity School says this:

“Christian practices are not activities we do to make something spiritual happen in our lives. Nor are they duties we undertake to be obedient to God. Rather, they are patterns of communal action...

If we are going to help our churches to grow and to point more people to Jesus, the way in which we welcome people is very important, and something that many churches have spent time thinking about. However, a good welcome is only the first step to helping people feel at home in our churches.

After the initial...

One of the great strengths of Methodism in its early days was the class meeting. The deed of union states ‘“The weekly class meeting has from the beginning proved to be the most effective means of maintaining among Methodists true fellowship in Christian experience..”

This focus on learning through small group...

As a teacher, one of the things I enjoyed most was what I called the ‘light bulb moments’ when a child discovered or understood something for the first time. Their face would light up as the penny dropped and often that excitement would be the start of a love of learning and a passion for that particular subj...

Intentional faith development expresses the idea that growing in faith is not something that happens by accident. Instead, we need to be purposeful about growing our faith and we need to give it a high priority, developing some of the habits and practices that will help us on the path to Christian maturity.

On...