Anglican-Methodist Partnership?

Lesley had to step in at short notice to take our services for Wesley Sunday. She used some of the liturgy prepared to celebrate the national Covenant between Anglicans and Methodists in Auckland later the same day.

But she didn’t use the scriptures as a sort of biblical coathook on which to hang a double-denominational event of the 21st century. She turned a critical focus onto the words “the scandal of separateness” in the liturgy, saying she didn't care for the expression and suggesting that the real scandal was the separation of each of us from God’s Holy Spirit. Later, in pairs we shared the personal temptations that we each identified as part of that separation. With her developing sense of the flow of the whole of the worship it was a moving and creative experience.
Ironically, as I was today reflecting on a Methodist-Anglican conversation that hadn’t even taken place locally, I received a link to Anglican Adele Jones’ Sun day morning reflection in Christ Church, Russell. They weren’t into Anglican-Methodist covenant either, it seems, but her contribution obviously prompted much thought.
Perhaps both congregations experienced what really matters for Wesley day: lay people, without much formal theological education, lifting up the central concepts of the life in Christ with insight and passion.
And, yes, a small group of us did watch the film John Wesley last night and the moment when Thomas Maxfield, who was not ordained, mounted the pulpit to preach, spoke volumes to us all.

So I thank God for Lesley and Adele and all those lay people who speak a word in season every week in our small churches around the North.