Believing & belonging

This evening saw the start of our Lent series of talks, for which I have prepared talks on various aspects of the Creed. The audience/congregation were very good, they engaged with the material and, I hope, got something from the evening. I was somewhat concerned about the format, ie that I spoke to/at the group then gave them some time to talk about the issues raised amongst themselves, and I am sure that some would have preferred more discussion, but for the purposes of this evening I wanted to throw some ideas out and start a process that may well continue in a different way in weeks to come.

So here is the introduction to this week's thoughts, the theme being the Creed!

I believe

Congratulations on making it to the first of our talks for this Lenten period as we grapple with the Apostle’s Creed. As it was my suggestion that we follow this series over these five weeks it is also my responsibility to say why I think, or even ‘I believe’, this is a good idea, and what I hope will happen over this next few weeks, before I get on with talking about what we are doing when we say ‘I believe…’ particularly when we consider this creed that we will be looking and saying together over the coming weeks…

Motivation…

I’ll come clean and say that the reason we are looking at this document over the coming weeks is because I think that on the whole very few of us really think about what we are doing when we stand up together and say the Creeds. Week by week we reel off either the Apostle’s Creed – our subject of study and the version used in morning and evening prayer; or the Nicene Creed – a longer document used at Holy Communion started with the early Church council of Nicea in 325 a.d. The Creed was formally adopted at the Council of Chalcedon in 451 a.d [more]