Latest / Eurasia Region Podcast / S2-E25 | Everyday Eurasia |  Dr. Steve Wright

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S2-E25 | Everyday Eurasia |  Dr. Steve Wright · Eurasia Region Podcast

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  This week on the podcast, we're welcoming Doctor Steve Wright.
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  In 2015, he moved from Australia and joins the faculty at Naswin
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  Theological College in Manchester to teach theology.
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  Originally from the Wesleyan Methodist Church tradition, he
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  teaches and supervises across a wide range of subjects.
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  He will take us on a journey through time, exploring the rich
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  themes and deeper reflections of the Christian liturgical
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  calendar. The church year dramatizes a lot
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  of the stories of Scripture. It's not as though Scripture
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  itself says, hey, here is the way that you need to structure
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  your Christian worship. Follow a year and a calendar
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  that works this way. Instead.
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  The church calendar is something that arises from the church's
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  reading of Scripture and the church's desire to inhabit this
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  world of Scripture. Just as we find our own lives
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  enfolded within the life of Christ, we want to find out
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  identities disclosed to us within the world of Scripture.
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  This pattern of worship allows us to be kind of encased within
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  the story that Scripture tells. One of the other ways that we
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  can use the Bible is to just pick and choose to, to say, I'm
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  I'm going to set my own themes and my own structures for
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  worship. And, and this can work fine
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  sometimes, but one of the temptations is just to always
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  return to the comfortable and common themes.
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  One of the things that the church calendar does for us is
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  it can break us out of these cycles of sticking to our
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  favorite parts of the Bible. One of the ways that some
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  churches engage with the church year is not just to follow a
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  couple of the major celebrations like Chris Christmas and Easter,
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  but to follow a set of readings called the Lectionary.
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  The common form of this that's used today is called the Revised
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  Common Lectionary. If you just do an Internet
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  search for that phrase, you'll find it immediately.
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  And this is a set of readings which is which runs on a three
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  yearly cycle and it sets out readings each week for the
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  church that follow the structure of the church year.
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  Each week you'll be given an Old Testament reading, a Psalm
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  reading, a gospel reading, and a New Testament reading, which is
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  normally from one of the epistles.
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  And so if you follow the lectionary, you have at least 4
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  passages of Scripture that you read each week.
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  And over the course of three years, the church as a community
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  will have read most of the Bible.
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  So one of the temptations of just setting your own themes and
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  topics is that you are drawn towards the parts of the Bible
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  that feel most comfortable and familiar.
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  Whereas the lectionary can force you out of this a little bit and
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  get you to attend to parts of Scripture that might be a bit
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  less well known to you, or a bit less familiar, or a bit less
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  comfortable for you. So you're exposed to a broader
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  breadth of what the Bible teaches, and in this way you
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  inhabit that world of Scripture. The lectionary itself isn't
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  perfect, and a lot of us who preach from it still have to
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  expand beyond the set lectionary readings in order to really
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  engage properly and meaningfully with the biblical text.
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  But it can be a useful guide for people to experience more of the
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  biblical world in their preaching and their worship.
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  Why else would someone want to make use of the church year or
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  the church calendar? Well, one of the things that
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  some people find quite meaningful about the church
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  calendar is the way that it unites you to other Christians.
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  You as you gather to worship on a Sunday morning, you can know
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  that it's not only your little congregation, but actually the
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  church down the road, the church across the other side of the
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  world is is also gathering together to to work through this
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  same set of texts, these same themes, ask these same questions
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  of the faith worship God in this same particular way on this same
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  day that that experience of communal worship can be very
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  meaningful for for people so that we're not just making our
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  own Christianity. We're participating in a
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  worldwide church and that can really ground the faith for many
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  of us. And so the church year can serve
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  in both of these functions. A way to draw us into deeper
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  aspects of the faith, connect us to the worship life of others,
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  and break us out of these patterns of seeking after our
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  own desires and and having our own objectives for what we want
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  worship to be about. And instead set us back on that
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  path of finding ourselves within the world of the gospel, within
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  the world of Scripture. And that year, which is
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  structured according to the life and ministry of Christ and the
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  birth of the church, helps us to see what is important and what
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  matters. We are in worship, called to
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  worship God and not to serve ourselves.
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  So I hope that this has been a helpful reflection for you on
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  the nature of the church year and some of what we learn from
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  following the church calendar. There's a lot more that could be
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  said about it, but this alone I think is true.
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  The church year is designed to place the resurrection of Jesus
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  Christ front and center in all the activities of the church.
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  And if the resurrection of Christ is being proclaimed week
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  on week, if the year itself centres around that and orients
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  itself around that, then we know that the gospel is being
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  proclaimed, because it's only the gospel if it's about the
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  resurrection of Christ, Let's pray.
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  Holy God, we thank you that we can worship you.
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  We thank you for the many ways in which you make yourself
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  available to us. We pray that You would help us
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  to be true and faithful worshippers, seeking after Your
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  truth, engaging faithfully and deeply with Your scriptures.
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  Guide us in Your ways. Help us to be a faithful
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  community who can in all places and in all times, praise out in
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  song, Speak out in confidence the Word that is, that has been
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  given to us, that Christ has been raised from the dead, and
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  that His Spirit is with us. Amen.
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  Thank you for listening to the Everyday Eurasia podcast,
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  region, visit our website, eurasiaregion.org.