The Lord be with you!
1)Good correct place - Good Morning – delighted to be here with you
Thank you to Revd Michael for his kind invitation and to all involved for a superb breakfast
I’m not really sure why I’m here today – perhaps discover true vocation as an after breakfast speaker, my mother would be so proud!!
I’m in a difficult position I happen to know the previous two speakers – Revd Adrian Wilkinson / Revd John Clarke – hands up who was at previous men’s breakfast – reset your expectations now!
2)Where do we get our identity?Teacher asked kids to bring a religious object Ben – Jewish -Star of David; Mary – RC – Rosary Beads; Graham – Church of Ireland – Tray Bake.
In that story is something of me – Mum & Wife are RC / My Dad and I aare Anglican / Best Friend Jewish – where is my identity?
3)To save the normal Anglican party game of trying to work out who someone is and who their family are – let me save time and tell you who I am.
Trevor Holmes – 51 yrs old – married to Anne from West Clare for almost 24 years - two sons – Lyndon and Elwin
I grew up in Churchtown on Barton Road East – active in Taney parish - school in Wesley
College in DIT – KSCOT
US MNCs most of life –Northern Telecom / Apple / Intel as Corp Affairs Director - into public service in 2007 in time to miss big pensions and pay-offs!!
worked for IDA Ireland and today I’m V.P. for Ext Relations in UCC.
4)Again - Why am I here?
In that wonderfully Church of Ireland way, Canon Horace prepared me for confirmation, Revd Michael’s daughter Jacqui, whom many of you know, married to Adrian, speaker at first of these events; was curate when I was in Cork and Rector while I lived in Maynooth and now my placement supervisor.
I have other links to Whitechurch Parish - Family – Cousin Brian lives in parish, my Aunt Olga worships here and my grandparents are buried in the Churchyard.
Great – is that why I’m here?
5)I see the billing for today could be accused of deceit in advertising – I hold a BSc in Physics & Chemistry but not an MA vs MBA .... That minor print error could be worse... these are supposedly true statements from Church publications
First sign in US church on roadside – morning service sermon theme, ‘Jesus walks on water!’ and the evening service sermon will be on ‘Searching for Jesus!.
- The peacemaking meeting scheduled for today has been cancelled due to a conflict.
- Don't let worry kill you off - let the Church help.
- At the evening service tonight, the sermon topic will be "What Is Hell?" Come early and listen to our choir practice.
- Please place your donation in the envelope along with the deceased person you want remembered.
- Low Self Esteem Support Group will meet Thursday at 7 PM. Please use the back door.
- Weight Watchers will meet at 7 PM. Please use large double door at the side entrance.
- The Minister unveiled the church's new tithing campaign slogan last Sunday: "I Upped My Pledge... Up Yours!"
6)This notice also gave some odd title like “Log on to Life!”
At the danger of sounding like Fr. Trendy I might explore that IT metaphor a little later on
7)Story – Red – Not everything is as it seems.
8)The real reason I guess I’ve been invited is I am a licensed lay readers for over a decade and an ordinand, somebody in training for ordained ministry therefore it seems reasonable to assume my faith is important to me. That is true, it is where I get my identity.
9)To some that in itself must appear strange given what I told you about myself but I’m studying for the priesthood part-time – yes I can see the glazed expression from here......
10)My story is not one of a great conversion experience, not even a really special encounter. I was baptised and confirmed and a practicing member until my early twenties where I walked away from the institutional church, my prayer life or devotional life really didn’t change – I just felt I didn’t need all the palaver and I could do it as well in private as in public. I could do it myself, didn’t need anyone else – WRONG!
11)I worked in Germany for a while and it was a hectic time in my early career setting up a sales distribution network across Europe, it was energising but frenetic. I was enjoying it if somewhat hassled. One weekend while in the Alsace I walked into Strasbourg Cathedral, I had been there many times before and had brought all my visitors there. While walking around one line of scripture just wouldn’t stop running in my head “Be still and know that I am God” (Ps. 46:10).It was a profound lesson for me, it is something I’m regularly reminded of and its one that I cannot say I’ve completely learnt not even now today.
12)I would love to be able to tell you Idropped to my knees in ecstatic praise –more like you couldn’t have seen me for the dust, a decade later having returned to Church life and overlooking my previous experience, I was working in UK when I visited Chester Cathedral and they were running advertisements all over town with a jig-saw with one piece missing under which the tag line “Missing the God shaped piece?” was printed.
13)That was powerful and certainly had a profound effect on me. The realisation that we are all searching for an identity and searching for something beyond ourselves without always been able to articulate or even admit it. People out there we don’t yet know, all searching.
14)That in conjunction with my earlier experience helped me recall my school motto – great words of St. Paul to the Thessalonians “Prove all things hold fast that which is good.” It’s a magnificent verbal talisman. It is something as true today as when written or I first experienced in school. It is certainly a truism for our times, a magnificent verbal talisman.
15)Lets return to the theme on that flyer “Log on to life” as I said earlier at the danger of sounding like Fr. Trendy let us just take a look at that metaphor as being a useful lens with which to look at the essence of the authentic Christian life
16)What words spring to mind when we conjure up that IT image – logged in, connected, networked....
Logged in– Computer is a useless tool without the software and the software is useless unless we choose to use it. To do so we need to log on, we made a decision to take an action to bring the inanimate to life.
Connected – The computer is fine it can carry on a limited number of functions by itself, but it we want to maximise its usefulness then it has to be connected to other peripheral devices. Its resourcefulness is enhanced by connecting to a printer, screen, keyboard, mouse, hard drive, scanner etc. Etc.
Networked – While incredibly useful now its utility just increases exponentially when individual computers become networked and can pass and share information and enable collaboration across vast distances. Indeed its the networking of computers which has enabled the WWW and the power of the internet upon which most of us rely.
Friended – Maybe not a word traditionally associated with computers or computing but nonetheless an important one in an era of social media where a whole generation have their online and off line lives and identity. A generation whose popularity and dare I suggest identity is often calibrated again the number of those who are their “friends”.
17)All great IT terms but what of us? yet is that not what we should experience here and now together this morning - logged on – connected – networked - befriended. Health warning here comes the Bible bit, Acts on church..... Acts 2:42 “they devoted themselves to the apostles teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.” There we have the simplest and best definition of church.
18)The great Arch. William Temple once said “The Christian Church is the only organistion that exists for the benefit of its non-members.” Isn’t that a profound thought, we forget this fact at our peril. Its not actually for us, for you and me – it is for those who haven’t yet joined. Our job is just to go out and meet people and bring them into the Church and for them and us to do just that all over again. That how we create community , a community of faith.
19)So, let me ask again, Why are we here this morning? – let me suggest we are experiencing in some small way some if not all of those things that I alluded to in those IT definitions. We’re here because as men we see and react to the world in a particular way – we’ve been conditioned to do. We’re a gender specific community and that’s important.
20)We’ve been told not to show emotion, to be strong, to be competitive. None of which is bad in itself but together can become too narrow an image of who we are. Therefore,if things are emotional, or unusual or indeed religious we tend not to want to talk about them. We seek to laugh things off to make light of them if they could embarrass us, or show any weakness - isn’t that what I’ve done as I stand here this morning.
21)Let me do it again – Story Sick Kid.
22)We build our identity around nebulous things like job titles, I did that too. Just watch over the coming weeks as the Olympics hits our screens how we will all become experts in the most obscure sports....and I don’t just mean women’s beach volleyball.... but recall Eddie the Eagle and our knowledge of ski jump or curling in the last winter Olympics. We create our own sense of identity and community around the safe territory of sport. What if we were to do it around this – How powerful could that be?
23)Ok, if those spectators of the women’s beach volleyball could just return from the court for the last two mins pls. Our modern day livesare extremely busy where trying to balance work and family commitments just takes over and its hard to carve time for community - time for events like this morning - or for service on Sunday morning - or time out for those things that are truly important.
24)We seek, long and strive for authentic community, to try and find out who we really are.We try to create and recreate it in many places but can often choose to avoid it in any religious setting, even something as simple as this, a shared meal. Listen to the words for L.B.J. speaking about American cities as communities of community -“It should be a place where each individual's dignity and self-respect is strengthened by the respect and affection of his neighbors. It should be a place where each of us can find the satisfaction and warmth which comes from being a member of the community of man. This is what man sought at the dawn of civilization. It is what we seek today.”
25)Is that not what we all still seek? Is that not what we have here this morning, that is Church – this is Church , just like the definition from Acts – our identity and community coexist here – this is true Church.
26)Story – Hot Coal
27)My friends let the simple lesson we all take out from here this morning be those words of my old school motto...
“Prove all things hold fast that which is good.”
Post Talk Addition - Meaning of word community comes from com = with munis = burden, community is how we bear each other’s burdens. That is Church.
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