Our Annual Covenant Service – Sunday 16th January at 10.30 in Blewbury Methodist Chapel
Renewal and recommitting ourselves is quite a powerful and enabling process. It’s not confined to any single religion or even to religion at all. Every New Year has its resolutions – and surely they’re recommitment and renewal. I’m not a Methodist, so I had to learn about the Methodist covenant service when I became the Spring Line Minister. In my URC tradition there are commissioning services – where we acknowledge our call to service in different ways, but the passionate covenant service belongs to the deeply moving preacher that is John Wesley. To read his personal commitment to the covenant he made himself is to be ‘warmed’, to renew the same within oneself.
When the Spring Line Methodist Church (Blewbury and Upton) meets to experience this covenant service on the 16th January – we will find ourselves caught up in a resolve to deepen our understanding, and our intent to locate God each and every day. The words may have been written some time ago, but the renewal is very much in the present. It’s a great service (I may add a little of the Reformed palette to the morning – Luther and Calvin had passion too).
That’s what we’ll be up to – you are welcome to join us. I finish where I began – this is a powerful and enabling process which is not confined to a single tradition.
Richard Bittleston, Minister for the Spring Line Church