A Bible Week reunion
It was great to welcome Jasper Rutherford back into the diocese as our host for Tuesday evening at the Bible Week. Jasper, who was formerly the Youth Coordinator at Willowfield Parish, is now training as a Church Army evangelist and will spend his final year of the course in Newcastle Upon Tyne.
It was also something of a reunion for Jasper and our Bible Week speaker, Canon John Hughes. Jasper arrived to study in Birmingham as a young Christian and worshipped at St John’s Harborne. Not only that, he lived with John and his family for 8 months and found it a life–changing experience. He told us a few funny stories about life in the Hughes household but also paid a warm and moving tribute to John:
”John and his wife Annie modelled Christian living to me, I hadn’t experienced much of it in my life,” said Jasper.
”You know we like the razzle dazzle and we like the people with fire and gifts, but the strength of the character of Christ – of humility, of gentleness, of sincerity – that’s the stuff that spoke to me most and there’s power in that. John is a godly man that I loved living with. I didn’t have a father growing up and John became like a father figure to me which was wonderful.”
Bishop Harold took the opportunity to pray for Jasper and also for Revd Craig Cooney who will be introduced as Minister in Charge at CORE Church in the Diocese of Dublin on 4th September. He also publicly thanked Archdeacon John Scott who will retire at the end of September after spending his entire ministry in Down and Dromore.
”Thank you for giving not just your ministry, not just your skills of leadership and preaching to this Diocese of Down and Dromore but, as St Paul so often says, your very self. You shared yourself and your life among the people of God in this diocese,” said Bishop Harold.
John Scott’s formal thank you and presentation is in September and it was announced that, upon his retirement, Canon Roderic West will become the new Archdeacon of Dromore. Read more here.
Our warden of Readers, Revd Willie Nixon, also announced, ‘2030’ an initiative to seek out and train the next generation of diocesan readers.
”One of my priorities in this period of my episcopal ministry,” said Bishop Harold, “is to discover, train, mentor and release young people of faith into ministry in its widest sense. As a ‘plank’ of this, I have asked Willie Nixon to focus initially on discovering and training a band of young ‘preachers’. We need the vigour, vision and passion of young people in the preaching ministry.” More to come soon on this exciting initiative.
John Hughes continued his study in 1 Kings 18, which was read for us by Sir Nigel Hamilton, looking at Elijah’s famous confrontation with the Prophets of Baal. Elijah’s task was to challenge things as they were because he saw things as they could be. He brought a massive reversal because he did what God said and his prophetic prayer released God’s presence and power. John reminded us that transforming a culture will involve conflict and disturbance and he encouraged us to be courageous in following God’s call to confront the storm gods of today.
Do join us for the final two nights of the Bible Week. 8pm in the Jethro Centre, Lurgan.
Have a look at the Gallery here.