Happy Methodist New Year

I wonder if you've heard of the church at a place called Laodicea? Its not a new church plant in the Circuit but was a church in Asia Minor and was the subject of a letter or proclamation from Jesus. In his apocryphal vison of the now and yet to be that we call the Book of Revelation. St John the Divine, writes down the words of a resurrected and ascended Jesus, to that Church, in the form of a proclamation or letter. It is one of seven letters to various early New Testament churches to be found in Revelation chapters 2 and 3. It's probably fair to say that with the exception of the church in the city of Philadelphia, these heavenly letters don't show the Body of Christ in a positive light. So what does Jesus say to the Laodiceans?

"I know your works; you are neither cold nor hot. I wish that you were either cold or hot. So because you are lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I am about to spit you out of my mouth." (Revelation 3:15 – 16)

We might not like the way this Jesus speaks and we might long for the Jesus who tells the haemorrhaging woman 'Take heart, daughter; your faith has made you well.' Is this because this the Jesus is for us the onewho only gives and blesses without asking for anything for a response from us. To be clear God's all-encompassing grace is not dependent on anything we do – 'For God so loved the world'. However being in relationship with God should lead us to want to proclaim in words and actions the reality of establishment of the Kingdom of God and God's desire that all people should be part of this Kingdom. Remember too – the Jesus who healed the woman was also the Jesus who told the parables of the salt and the lamp stand in his sermon on the mountain (Matthew 5: 13 – 16).

The first of September marks the start of the Methodist New Year. For many of this means amongst other things attending various meetings over the coming weeks whether they be Church, Circuit or District meeting. At those meetings we'll spend lots of time discussing property and finance. To be clear there's nothing wrong with this as both our faith and wider legal responsibilities under charity law call us to be good stewards of our physical resources. We'll decide dates, who to invite for any special services and we should be discussing and working together with the help of the Holy Spirit to fulfil our calling to be a growing, inclusive, evangelistic and justice-seeking church.

We also need to ask ourselves as individuals and more importantly as the collective people called Methodist in the Wrexham Circuit a question. That question is what temperature are we? Once we've answered that question maybe we also need to ask ourselves, what temperature does God want us to be? From there, our journey of discipleship begins – if we chose to set out on that journey.