Monday, October 1, 2007

An Exciting Sunday

Well, this weekend was very enjoyable as I went on a retreat with most of my classmates into the mountains and got to enjoy a great sermon poreached by a South African brother from the Reformed Episcopal Church at Inland Anglican Fellowship. The retreat was relaxing and was a great time of fellowship with my classmates. We had an intense game of ultimate frisbee, did some hiking, had a couple of worship services and got to see a very entertaining talent show. The highlight of the talent show for me was getting to hear the wife of one of our professors expertly play a Chinese instrument called the zither.

Church was great also. Our guest pastor preached on the story of the rich man and Lazarus. He went so far as to say that by not caring for the poor we are earning ourselves a place in hell. It might sound harsh but I think it is a message that Christians in a rich country need to hear over and over again. I know that I need to hear it... and act on it. To me what made the sermon so exciting though was that he shared about the Common Cause Partnership and the strong possibility that a united orthodox Anglican presence will arise in North America. He also warned that as this comes to together, fulfilling the hopes and dreams of many Anglicans, that we must guard against becoming prideful about it. I think any newfound unity between Christians can only come from the Holy Spirit as it seems that human effort only leads to more divisions or to the sickly kind of ecumenism we have seen in the past century that seems only to lead away from Christianity and toward liberalism.

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