Becoming places of deep exchange

The churches of the Seven Kings Fellowship of Churches (SKFC) signed a new covenant tonight during our Unity Service for the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity. The new covenant was discussed and agreed by the church committees of Seven Kings Methodist Church, Seven Kings United Free Church, St John's Seven Kings, St Peter's Aldborough Hatch and St Teresa's Newbury Park during 2010. The covenant, which was originally the idea of Methodist minister Rev. Ken Nicholls, was signed by clergy and lay members of the five churches.

The Unity Service was hosted by St John's Seven Kings and attended by members of each of the five SKFC churches. The service was led by Revd. Geoff Eze and used materials prepared for this year's Week of Prayer for Christian Unity on the theme of All Things In Common. I preached using an excellent sermon prepared by Revd. Bob Fyffe, General Secretary of Churches Together in Britain and Ireland, in which he said:

"The starting point for our Christian witness is for the Church to become that expression of unity, that model of acceptance and welcome and hospitality that is rooted in God. Where these hopes and dreams are bound together, communities become places of deep exchange, where together we become all that God intends for us. To BE the whole people of God."

It is our hope that this new covenant will provide a foundation for our shared activity in future and will also take us further in our church communities becoming places of deep exchange, where together we become all that God intends for us. Our covenant reads as follows:

We, the Seven Kings Fellowship of Churches (SKFC), give thanks to God for the unity we experience among us in the Lord Jesus Christ. We acknowledge our common heritage in the faith and profess together our belief in the one God, the Father, Creator of heaven and earth; the Son who dwelt among us, was crucified for us, and was raised from the dead for our salvation and the Holy Spirit who leads his church into all truth.

We regret past misunderstandings between Church denominations and traditions, and recognise that each of our churches has its own distinctive witness and tradition. We honour these traditions standing before one another in charity and praying for a deeper understanding and reconciliation

We undertake to explore together our doctrinal differences and our understanding of the church in the light of existing dialogues at national and international level, so that we may understand one another better and make a contribution to the reconciliation of the churches at those levels

On the basis of our existing unity in Christ, we commit ourselves to one another in love and charity to promote common worship, fellowship, witness and service to the community of which we are a part

In particular we commit ourselves to:

1. To declare our unity as the people of God in this community in whatever practical ways possible.

2. To maintain our common practices of worshipping together, and to seek to develop them further

3. To begin a process of co-ordinating our individual activities, as far as possible.

4. To seek to grow in understanding of the grace and love of God, and of each others traditions. To develop joint prayer and study of each other’s traditions, as well as of our Christian faith and its applications in daily life.

5. To listen to the local community, to become aware of its needs and aspirations and to develop a co-ordinated programme of service and outreach to it.

6. Thoroughly to review our Christian resources of buildings, people, money and ministry, and to develop proposals for sharing them to the best advantage for the church and the community.

We, as SKFC members, undertake to review this covenant at an annual service and then to renew and review it in five years time

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Iona ~ Edge of the World.