SMK Confirmation Class 2006-2007

SMK Confirmation Class 2006-2007

Notes for everyone's attention!

Hi everyone! We had a good discussion last Thursday evening about how things are working for you. Many thanks for your input.
So, here's how a schedule now looks.

Thursday Jan 25th at 6:00 pm Class with Elizabeth and the Confirmation Candidates - at St Mary's lounge.
Thursday Feb 1 at 6:00 p.m. Class with Elizabeth and Students and Parents and mentors - at Euper's home.
Thursday Feb 15 at 6:00 p.m. Class with Kevin and students - at St. Mary's lounge.
Thursday March 1 at 6:00 p.m. Class with Kevin and the students and parents and mentors - at Jim's home (? - to be confirmed)
Thursday Mar 15 at 6:00 p.m. Class with Elizabeth and the students - at St. Mary's lounge
Thursday Mar 29 at 6:00 p.m. Class with Elizabeth and the students - at St. Mary's Lounge
Thursday April 12 at 6:00 p.m. Class with Elizabeth, the students and Parents and Mentors - at Elizabeth's home
Thursday April 26 at 6:00 p.m. Class with Maria, the students and Parents and Mentors

I'll e-mail the directions to the homes, and if you need further directions, please feel free to contact the office at 604-261-4228
The class lessons will be posted on the Blog as well as e-mailed to you - what ever medium is comfortable for you, please use.

Again, many thanks for your patience and willingness to participate in this learning (for all of us!)

Take care.
Elizabeth

SMK Confirmation Class 2006-2007

SMK Confirmation Class 2006-2007

Unit 3 Assignment 2

What is Anglicanism?

Before Christmas this year, I was looking for a computer to use at home. There were some features that I wanted included in the package, but like most other computer “newbies” I didn’t really even know how to ask the right questions. When I went to the store – I was blown away by the choices. There were choices in style, size, content and purpose … but they were all computers!

I thought that perhaps there would be maybe 2 or 3 choices to be made, but no – depending on me, my computer requirements and my knowledge base, there were many, many decisions to be made.

So, let me draw this parallel to the question at hand.

The Christian Church is a world wide association of people who believe that “God is One: Father, Son and Holy Spirit”. So in my analogy, that’s the “Computer”.

The kinds of computer, whether lap-top or hard drive or palm-sized or… - well that coordinates to the branches of it – only one branch being the Anglican Church. So the many choices are what we call “denominations” but all belong to the Christian family.

Here’s another visual – think of a tree … the root and trunk of the tree is the Christian Church with it’s teaching of “One God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit” – and the branches all stem from the central trunk and all having the same root.

So, what are the other branches of the Christian Church called? Some of them include: Lutheran, Roman Catholic, Presbyterian, Baptist, Pentecostal, and United, just to name a few. We are all called Christians and all share a faith in Jesus Christ as God’s Son – but the way in which we choose to express our worship or arrange our church structure is what makes us different.

Let me give you a “for example”! On November 30, 2006, the Anglican Church of Canada celebrated an Anniversary – that of the ordination of Women to the Priesthood. Thirty years ago there was a great and heated debate about whether or not to allow women to become ordained. As a young girl, I had never seen a woman at the altar – or near it – and girls were not permitted to serve as “Acolytes” (ie. carry the cross or serve at the altar). I also remember a conversation that we had around the dining room table when my Uncle was there for a visit. Uncle Walter was the Bishop of South Dakota at the time and later became the Bishop of Rupert’s Land and later Archbishop of Rupert’s Land. His comment was that women should not be allowed to be ordained because they were far too fragile and too emotional and would never be able to deal with the “difficult” situations which would arise from ministry from time to time.

The decision was made, much to my Uncle’s dismay, that women would be ordained as Priests in the Anglican Church. Many were angry at this decision and left the church to find another Christian community where they would share more closely an understanding of gender roles. But in the Anglican Church – we have now ordained many women, from all ages and stages of life, and have recently consecrated three women Bishop’s.

Following his work with women, my uncle soon changed his mind radically about woman’s ordination and soon came to realize that it wasn’t a person’s gender that made them a Priest – but whether or not they were called by God for the particular work in the church. The last chapter of this story was that Uncle Walter ordained me in 1991 in Saint John, New Brunswick.

So, in some branches of the Christian church there are women in positions of authority as “priest” or “minister”, while other branches do not allow for women to be priests.

In some branches of the Christian Church the emphasis in worship is on bible study, while in others it is focused on the Communion or “Mass”. In the Anglican Church we are in our worship somewhere in the middle.

As a matter of fact, the Anglican Church has often been given the title “via media” or “middle ground”, because in so many matters we walk the middle ground on many issues of debate. A good example is the current debate about the “Blessing of Same Sex Unions” – at the present time we are in discussion with each other about how to celebrate life-long relationships while recognizing that not all who would enter this debate see any homosexual relationship as being acceptable.

• Being an Anglican is being a Christian.
• Being an Anglican is having an open mind and heart to the debates and discussions of the church.
• Being an Anglican calls us to engage with our faith and learn daily how God moves in and through our lives. A daily prayer discipline is also suggested for all Christians, not just Anglicans. That’s where the Prayer Book comes in to the story of the Anglican Church.

Questions:

Take a copy of the Book of Common Prayer and list the names of the services of worship. For example, in the table of Contents you’ll find the list which includes Morning Prayer, Evening Prayer …

Find the Articles of Faith, how many are there? Check out #32 – so, can Anglican Priest marry?

Check out #22 – have you ever heard of “purgatory” before?

Find the Order of Confirmation in the green “Book of Alternate Services” and read through it, (page 625). What question is asked of you – what are you “confirming”?

SMK Confirmation Class 2006-2007

SMK Confirmation Class 2006-2007

Unit 3, Assignment 1 - "Why the Church?"

Why the Church?

Begin with a time of prayer:

Draw your church together, O God, into one great company of disciples, each following the path of our Savior Jesus Christ into every walk of life, together serving God in mission to the world and witnessing to God’s love on every continent and island. We ask this in Jesus’ name and for his sake.

There is an old story about the man who visits the local “wise woman”. He asks her why it is that he should be a part of the Christian Church, he wants just to go his own way in the world, living a “good life” and being kind to everyone.

I think that this is a good and quite common question that we all ask at some point in our lives. The image that the woman then presents is one that always has stayed with me. The “wise woman” went to her fireplace and with tongs took out one small piece of coal and set it upon the hearth. Soon the ember changed color from a brilliant red glow to an ashen grey. In the stillness of the moment, the young man realized the message – to be a “part of” means that the power and energy is shared and the fire can burn hotter and last longer than being on your own. The “wise woman” nodded her head and then showed the man how quickly the ember began to glow again once it was returned to the fire.

Some one once said that you can never return home again, but at your baptism you became a part of a family that always leaves a light on for you so that you can find you way. We are always stronger together than we are apart.

With that image, the early Christian disciples spoke of the “body of Christ” as being the Church – the Christian church.

After Jesus died and was raised from the dead and appeared to his friends, his followers spread the word of this “new life”. Peter, one of the disciples of Jesus, gave the first recorded Christian sermon on the day of "Pentecost”. As a result, more than 3000 people began to join this new following which in its early days was called “the Way”.

Some Roman emperors saw the early Christians as rebels because they refused to worship Roman gods. The Roman authorities persecuted both Christians and Jews, blaming them for their own political disasters. In 70 CE, the Roman army destroyed Jerusalem, hoping that this would rid the Roman Empire of both Christians and Jews alike.

To avoid arrest, Christians often met in secret. They often used secret signs, such as the fish, to show other Christians that it was safe to talk about their faith.

In 313 CE, the Roman Emperor Constantine became a Christian and soon made Christianity the legal religion. A few years later in 325 CE Constantine called together other church leaders to Nicea to draw up a statement of Christian belief. This statement of belief is called the Nicean Creed. This then, became the accepted statement of Christianity. This creed included the idea of Trinity, which describes God as three persons in one: Father (creator of all), Son (Jesus), and Holy Spirit (God’s continual presence in the world). This is still our central belief in the Christians community.

In the 5th and 6th Centuries the Roman Empire split in two. Constantinople was the capital in the Eastern (or Byzantine) Empire, while Rome became the capitol of the Western Empire. The Christian Church continued to grow and flourish but in 1054 there was a heated dispute between the head of the church in Constantinople (called the Patriarch) and the head of the church in Rome (called the Pope). This caused a great split in the church and even today we speak of the Eastern Orthodox Church and its Patriarch and the Western Church and the Pope. The Church in the west soon became known as the Roman Catholic Church – “catholic” meaning world-wide.

In 1529, King Henry VIII of England challenged the supreme authority of the Pope and declared himself to be the head of the Church in England. Many reforms were made at this time including the changing of the worship from the largely unknown language of Latin to the language of the “common man” – English. One of the great works of this time period was the translation of the bible into English and the writing and publishing of the Book of Common Prayer in 1549. Here, for the first time, there was a compilation of scripture, prayers and the worship of the people in their own native tongue.

Today, branches of the Church of England, also known as Anglican or Episcopalian, are found in many countries of the world. Here in Canada, you can link to the Anglican Church of Canada by visiting the site www.anglican.ca , and to our own “diocese of New Westminster by checking out www.vancouver.anglican.bc.ca


Companion Diocese

Our Diocese, like many in Canada, has a “companion diocese”, a diocese in another part of the Anglican Church with which we have a particular link. People from one diocese often visit one another, share in prayer, and share information and views. In our Diocese of New Westminster, our Companions are the people of the Anglican Diocese of Taiwan.
Every week we pray for each other in our worship and every few years we have a trip planned to visit the Diocese of Taiwan and 3 years ago, there was a group from Taiwan visiting us.

Questions

1. Go to the www.vancouver.anglican.bc.ca site and on the yellow strip click on Resources and scroll to page 9 where you will find a download for “Partnership Sunday Resources” and to the right side of the page, click on the down-facing arrow to see the screen. What you will see here are prayers and “ideas for worship” with a world-wide theme.
Choose one prayer that you like and write it in your blog. Why does it appeal to you? If you would offer prayer for another person or situation, what would it be?

2. St. Mary’s Kerrisdale is our Anglican Church, located on 37th and Larch St. in Vancouver, BC. Check out the web site for the church at www.smkchurch.com and find the Mission statement of the Parish. How does this statement tell others who read it that St. Mary’s Kerrisdale is a Christian church?

3. The Nicene Creed was written long ago as a statement of belief for the Christian community. Do you believe this statement? What parts of it may trouble you? Why?