Episode

Steven Croft

Finding strength from the centre

Finding strength from the centre
Reflections for a Church in Lockdown

We come to Chapter 3 of Philippians and Paul takes us deeper still in this lockdown journey: to the very core of his inner strength and resilience, to the convictions and the revelation which have shaped his life. He is helping us to travel back to the centre, to find strength again and to understand what gives him the power to run.

Questions for discussion from Philippians 3:

  1. What does the autumn season look like for you and how will this impact your energy and discipleship?
  2. Where have you found strength over the last few months? Where are you finding space to regroup and recharge?
  3. Paul’s relationship with Christ is at the very centre of his life and values. How can we help each other to draw such strength from the gospel?
  4. What are the spiritual dangers and temptations facing your own church community at the present time? Are there any similarities to Philippi? How can you counter them?
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Steven Croft

How to face enormous problems

How to face enormous problems
Reflections for a Church in Lockdown

The more I’ve read Philippians over the last few weeks, the more I’m seeing it through the lens of anxiety. The Church in Philippi is a fearful and anxious church: a small community in a hostile and difficult place, worried for their own future, concerned for Paul, who taught them their faith and concerned for their future. Paul does everything he can in his letter to calm this anxiety, but he offers them something much more important than an answer…

Questions for discussion from Philippians 2:

  1. What are the significant choices which face your own parish and benefice around the re-opening of churches for physical worship? How likely is it that there will be conflict?
  2. Read carefully the encouragement to unity and to humility. How best can you take notice of this appeal and this lesson for your local church?
  3. This episode mentions three key questions for humanity in the next decade: the environment; equality and diversity questions and living well with technology. How will an understanding of Christ as God taking human form help to address these issues?
  4. What are the ways in which you have learned humility and seek to live your life after the pattern of Christ?
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Steven Croft

Living is Christ and dying is gain

Living is Christ and dying is gain
Reflections for a Church in Lockdown

Almost two thousand years ago, a man we know as Paul sat down in his prison cell and wrote a short letter to his friends in a place called Philippi. He is writing to say thank you for their love and support. He is writing to encourage them. He is writing most of all because he can’t be there to support them. Paul is in lockdown…

Questions for discussion from Philippians 1:

1. How do you practice the discipline and joy of thanksgiving in your daily life and prayers? How might you grow in this discipline?

2. What have you missed about a regular sharing in the Eucharist during the period of lockdown? What have you learned from this season?

3. How have your values changed and shifted during lockdown? How have you travelled more deeply into Christ?

4. What are the issues facing people in the place where you live? How are the Christians called to be active, engaged citizens for the sake of the kingdom?

 Image: Susanne Jutzeler, suju-foto used under a creative commons licence.

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Steven Croft

The River of Life

The River of Life
Reflections for a Church in Lockdown

Welcome to Episode 10. If you listened last week you might be expecting me to begin a new series of reflections on Philippians. I’ve allowed myself to linger for one more week in the Old Testament as we look forward and begin to rebuild.

“Then he brought me back to the entrance of the temple; there water was flowing from below the threshold of the east and the water was flowing down from below the south end of the threshold of the temple, south of the altar. Then he brought me out by way of the north gate and led me round on the outside of the outer gate that faces towards the east; and the water was coming out on the south side”.
– Ezekiel 47

Bishop Steven refers to this episode in a letter to the Diocese, which is available to read here.

Image: Shutterstock 4273713

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Steven Croft

A More Christ-like Church

A more Christ like Church for the sake of God’s world
A Presidential Address to the Diocesan Synod

Welcome to Episode 9 of this podcast series, Reflections for a Church in Lockdown. Over the last 8 weeks I’ve offered a reflection each week for the Church in the pandemic based on Psalms 1-8. Thanks for listening. If you missed them, they are all available online.

Today’s episode is different. We’ve come to a particular place now in our journey through COVID 19. The lockdown is easing. This week we opened many of our churches for private prayer. I hope it will not be long before we can begin to meet again. So this is a good time to look back but also to begin to look forward.

The journey of recovery will be slower than our journey into lockdown. Life is not going to be a quick return to the old normal, but rather a new living with the virus, certainly for the rest of this year and through next year. Lockdown has been difficult but has also brought new insights, opportunities and priorities to the surface. Part of being a contemplative church will be to reflect carefully on lessons learned and next steps.

We are therefore offering a new tool, loosely framed by the Anglican Five Marks of Mission, to aid reflection, to discern prayerfully, and to plan strategically the shape of the mission of the Church in each of our contexts.

The tool invites you to look at each mark of mission and reflect on what has been lost through the pandemic which we need to grieve, what has been reduced that we need to let go of, what has been reduced that we need to build up again, what has emerged that we need to respond to. We recognise that Church will need to change. But that change will emerge in a thousand different ways as locally we pay careful attention to the Spirit and as we hold onto our core values of being contemplative, compassionate and courageous after the pattern of Christ.

You can download and print out the tool here on the Diocesan website:
oxford.anglican.org/emerging-from-coronavirus 

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Steven Croft

What are human beings that you are mindful of them?

What are human beings that you are mindful of them?
Reflections for a Church in Lockdown

“Personally in reflecting on the events of the last several days, a verse from the Psalms comes to mind for me: “When I consider the heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars which thou hast ordained, what is man that thou art mindful of him.”

The person speaking at the start of this episode is the astronaut Buzz Aldrin, part of the Apollo 11 mission in 1969 and the second man to walk on the surface of the moon. His words came towards the end of the Apollo mission, as a reflection back on the journey from earth to the moon, the flight down to the moon’s surface and the safe passage back to the command module. According to Aldrin, Psalm 8 helped inspire his colleague Neil Armstrong’s words as he stepped onto the moon’s surface: one small step for a man, a giant leap for mankind. The two astronauts placed a capsule in the lunar dust. Inside the capsule is the text of Psalm 8: ‘O Lord our governor, how glorious is your name in all the world.’

COVID-19 is terrible: the pandemic has taken lives and robbed people of loved ones and has threatened our way of life for a time. We are still in the middle of it. But if Psalm 8 gives us a perspective on human life, it is that this pandemic is not the greatest challenge of our generation…

 

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Steven Croft

God is a righteous judge

God is a righteous judge
Reflections for a Church in Lockdown

The coronavirus pandemic has led the news bulletins every single day from mid March. But on 31st May, a different – though related – story at last broke through. Six days earlier an African American man named George Floyd was arrested by police. Tragically, George died in police custody. At the heart of the riots that have followed is a cry – a cry for justice. We need to remember as a society our deep instincts of fairness and goodness and justice. Psalm 7 is a very good place to begin and it is a prayer for help.

The music at the start of this episode is taken from a recording of ‘O Lord My God, In Thee Have I Put My Trust’ available on YouTube and also to stream on Spotify.

Photo: Steven Buckley

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Steven Croft

Lord heal me

Abstract image as if looking at a church cross through tears

Lord heal me for my bones are racked
Reflections for a Church in lockdown

Episode 6: In our journey through the Psalms we come now to a psalm which focusses on illness, on anxiety and on healing. The episode begins with the opening lines of Psalm 6, beautifully set to music by Orlando Gibbons.

O Lord in thy wrath rebuke me not
Neither chasten my in thy displeasure
Have mercy upon me, O Lord, for I am weak
O Lord heal me, for my bones are vexed
My soul also is sore troubled

The music at the start of this episode is taken from a recording of ‘O Lord in Thy Wrath Rebuke Me Not’ sung by the Choir of New College, Oxford, available on YouTube.

Abstract image: ‘Through tears’ by Steven Buckley

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Steven Croft

I will come into your house

I will come into your house
Reflections for a Church in Lockdown

Episode 5: Samuel Wesley’s beautiful setting of Psalm 5.8 is my starting place this week. Wesley crafts a peaceful song of trust out of the middle of a Psalm which refuses to hide from life’s difficulties.

The music at the start of this episode is taken from a recording of Lead me Lord by Samuel Wesley by Somerville College Choir (Psalm 5.8 and 4.8). I’m using several commentaries on the Psalms to prepare these podcast episodes, but particularly Professor Sue Gillingham’s commentary: Psalms through the Centuries: A reception history commentary on Psalms 1-72 (Wiley Blackwell, 2018) and John Goldingay, Psalms in the Baker Commentary Series (Baker Academic 2006).

Photo: Shutterstock 205634728

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Steven Croft

Be still

Commune with your own heart and be still…
Reflections for a Church in Lockdown

Episode 4: The lockdown is an invitation and an opportunity to come deeper with God, to address our spiritual poverty, to dare to explore that inner space, to be still and to wait for the winds and the earthquake and the fire within to pass and then to listen for that still, small voice speaking in the silence. Psalm 4 is our guide as we dare to explore this inner space.

Image: Shutterstock 613289762

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