Monday, September 13, 2010
Sunday, September 5, 2010
Friday, September 3, 2010
St. David's News & Notes, September 3, 2010
As any of you are praying about a friend with no church home that you plan to invite to worship some Sunday, you might want to email a link to the our blog as part of your invitation to join us for worship.
Those who are our newest friends and may not know about Trinity Parish (which actually has its own blog), I'll explain. Trinity Parish of NE Texas is the name of the Church which is a shared work of St. David's, Gilmer, and St. Mark's, Mt. Pleasant. Sharing resources across the communities allows more stability and impact as we seek to be the Church.
Please allow a brief digression: In the New Testament, when St. Paul writes to the Church in a given city or region--the Church in the cities of Ephesus, Rome, Colossae, or the Churches of Galatia--he isn't writing to buildings. He's writing to people. And we can assume that these people didn't cease to be Church once the worship service had concluded. They are the Church, a untied body of all kinds of people whose "head" or King, is Jesus. And that's who we are. The Church.
One of gifts of being Church together between two cities is that we can learn, in some very tangible ways, that we need each other. We need each other to give and share our money to support the ministry in NE Texas. Even more, we need the various spiritual gifts that God has given each of us (see, for example, Rom 12:3-8ff) and our souls need the immediate and frequent opportunities to "love one another in brotherly love" and "outdo one another in showing honor" (Rom 12:10).
Our Almighty God: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, is gracious and good to give us himself and one another as he makes of us what we could never make of ourselves without his help: his Church. May we be his Church together each Sunday at Mass, and everywhere else we go through the week.
Our lessons for Sunday are:
Deuteronomy 30:15-20
Psalm 1
Philemon 1-20
Luke 14:25-33
All three lesson & the collect of the week are also available here.
Announcements
St. Mark's - Adult Bible Fellowship, studying the Sunday readings, begins Sunday, September 10. Children's Sunday School also begins Sunday, September 10. Both begin at 9:45am. Adults will meet in the parish hall, and children in the classrooms.
St. David's - Our Wednesday evening Bible study on Colossians will begin this coming Wednesday, September 8, following the 6pm Mass. Please read Colossians chapter 1 at least two time. Come prepared to discuss verses 1-14. And if possible, read the whole book (it's only four chapters, you can do it!)
Blessings to you all in Christ,
Please allow a brief digression: In the New Testament, when St. Paul writes to the Church in a given city or region--the Church in the cities of Ephesus, Rome, Colossae, or the Churches of Galatia--he isn't writing to buildings. He's writing to people. And we can assume that these people didn't cease to be Church once the worship service had concluded. They are the Church, a untied body of all kinds of people whose "head" or King, is Jesus. And that's who we are. The Church.
One of gifts of being Church together between two cities is that we can learn, in some very tangible ways, that we need each other. We need each other to give and share our money to support the ministry in NE Texas. Even more, we need the various spiritual gifts that God has given each of us (see, for example, Rom 12:3-8ff) and our souls need the immediate and frequent opportunities to "love one another in brotherly love" and "outdo one another in showing honor" (Rom 12:10).
Our Almighty God: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, is gracious and good to give us himself and one another as he makes of us what we could never make of ourselves without his help: his Church. May we be his Church together each Sunday at Mass, and everywhere else we go through the week.
Our lessons for Sunday are:
Deuteronomy 30:15-20
Psalm 1
Philemon 1-20
Luke 14:25-33
All three lesson & the collect of the week are also available here.
Announcements
St. Mark's - Adult Bible Fellowship, studying the Sunday readings, begins Sunday, September 10. Children's Sunday School also begins Sunday, September 10. Both begin at 9:45am. Adults will meet in the parish hall, and children in the classrooms.
St. David's - Our Wednesday evening Bible study on Colossians will begin this coming Wednesday, September 8, following the 6pm Mass. Please read Colossians chapter 1 at least two time. Come prepared to discuss verses 1-14. And if possible, read the whole book (it's only four chapters, you can do it!)
Blessings to you all in Christ,
Sunday, August 29, 2010
Monday, August 23, 2010
Friday, August 20, 2010
St. David's News & Notes, August 20, 2010
Blessings to you all this week. My family and I are back from a wonderful week of camp. We are looking forward to launching into a wonderful season of school and, God willing, cooler temperatures.
I trust we will notice the upcoming temperature changes, and suspect that we will welcome the cooler weather (come on October!). I want to let you all know about another upcoming change that may or may not be noticeable to some of you. And, as to whether or not it's a welcomed change, I'd be happy to hear your responses, positive and negative.
The change will be two-fold, (1) a new lectionary (schedule of Sunday Bible readings), and (2) a different Bible translation (the New Revised Standard Version).
The lectionary we have been using is found in the back of our Book of Common Prayer 1979. It's a three-year lectionary that has been in use since the Prayer Book was revised. As of coming Advent we will be required to use the Revised Common Lectionary.
The Revised Common Lectionary is very similar to that of the BCP 1979. Most of the changes bring it more closely into line with the lectionary used by the Roman Catholic Church. The main difference is that it includes various options in selecting Old Testament lessons which, oddly enough, make it less "common." The option I'm choosing is the one that keeps us closest to what we've been doing. For those of you who would like some additional information about the Revised Common Lectionary, click here.
The other change will involve a change in translations from the RSV (Revised Standard Version) to the NRSV (New Revised Standard Version).
When I arrived, both churches were using the NRSV for most of the readings and the RSV for the gospels. The bulletin inserts were also in the NRSV. Since our Gospel books were RSV, I standardized all the readings in the RSV translation and ordered different inserts as well. That change went quite smoothly. I trust the change back will be just a smooth.
A few more notes on Bible translations:
I preach out of the ESV (English Standard Version) and you may have noticed that the link I use for our upcoming readings is to the ESV website. By the way, you may click this link for daily readings from the Prayer Book Daily Office lectionary from the ESV translation.
I think the best translation is whatever translation you will actually read.
In my sermon preparation I usually translate the passage from the Greek New Testament (with many helps) and reference the RSV, ESV, NRSV, NASB (New American Standard Bible), NAB (New American Bible), and NET Bible (New English Translation, click here for more info) as I work through the text.
For study I recommend using multiple translations: at least one word-for-word (i.e. ESV, NASB) and one thought-for-thought (i.e. NIV, NLT).
Click here to read a short, informative article about Bible translations. The article also contains a helpful graph comparing the various translations. Click here for a graph comparing Bible translations.
Here endeth this particular lesson (because this Bible nerd could go on and on!).
Readings for Sunday, August 22 are:
Isaiah 28:14-22
Psalm 46
Hebrews 12:18-29
Luke 13:22-30
Our regular weekly Wednesday evening Bible study is on break until after Labor Day.
Our regular weekly Wednesday evening 6pm Mass has resumed following my week of vacation.
Blessings,
Fr Greg+
I trust we will notice the upcoming temperature changes, and suspect that we will welcome the cooler weather (come on October!). I want to let you all know about another upcoming change that may or may not be noticeable to some of you. And, as to whether or not it's a welcomed change, I'd be happy to hear your responses, positive and negative.
The change will be two-fold, (1) a new lectionary (schedule of Sunday Bible readings), and (2) a different Bible translation (the New Revised Standard Version).
The lectionary we have been using is found in the back of our Book of Common Prayer 1979. It's a three-year lectionary that has been in use since the Prayer Book was revised. As of coming Advent we will be required to use the Revised Common Lectionary.
The Revised Common Lectionary is very similar to that of the BCP 1979. Most of the changes bring it more closely into line with the lectionary used by the Roman Catholic Church. The main difference is that it includes various options in selecting Old Testament lessons which, oddly enough, make it less "common." The option I'm choosing is the one that keeps us closest to what we've been doing. For those of you who would like some additional information about the Revised Common Lectionary, click here.
The other change will involve a change in translations from the RSV (Revised Standard Version) to the NRSV (New Revised Standard Version).
When I arrived, both churches were using the NRSV for most of the readings and the RSV for the gospels. The bulletin inserts were also in the NRSV. Since our Gospel books were RSV, I standardized all the readings in the RSV translation and ordered different inserts as well. That change went quite smoothly. I trust the change back will be just a smooth.
A few more notes on Bible translations:
I preach out of the ESV (English Standard Version) and you may have noticed that the link I use for our upcoming readings is to the ESV website. By the way, you may click this link for daily readings from the Prayer Book Daily Office lectionary from the ESV translation.
I think the best translation is whatever translation you will actually read.
In my sermon preparation I usually translate the passage from the Greek New Testament (with many helps) and reference the RSV, ESV, NRSV, NASB (New American Standard Bible), NAB (New American Bible), and NET Bible (New English Translation, click here for more info) as I work through the text.
For study I recommend using multiple translations: at least one word-for-word (i.e. ESV, NASB) and one thought-for-thought (i.e. NIV, NLT).
Click here to read a short, informative article about Bible translations. The article also contains a helpful graph comparing the various translations. Click here for a graph comparing Bible translations.
Here endeth this particular lesson (because this Bible nerd could go on and on!).
Readings for Sunday, August 22 are:
Isaiah 28:14-22
Psalm 46
Hebrews 12:18-29
Luke 13:22-30
Our regular weekly Wednesday evening Bible study is on break until after Labor Day.
Our regular weekly Wednesday evening 6pm Mass has resumed following my week of vacation.
Blessings,
Fr Greg+
Sunday, August 15, 2010
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