Care and share

Over the past six months at St John's Seven Kings we have been talking and thinking through how we are using who we are to serve God in the church, at work, with our family and friends, in the community and our voluntary/leisure activities. We began with a Vocations Sunday in September, continued by studying the SHAPE Course and, most recently, have had a Sunday morning series of video interviews in which members of the congregation have shared ways in which their faith is expressed through their work (paid and voluntary).

We are continuing this thinking into our Lent Course this year by using a Course called Care and Share which looks at the basics of pastoral care. The course aims to enable us to develop our skills in confidence and understanding and listening through five sessions covering: What is Pastoral care? Visiting and Listening; Making Contact; Dealing with loss; and Getting organised.

Many, perhaps all of us, provide care to someone else through work (paid and voluntary), in our family, with neighbours or friends, through our church. So, we can all benefit from reflecting on our approaches and thinking about the resources for caring which our faith provides. St John’s already has a committed group of people involved in pastoral visits, home communions, and prayer ministry. After coming to the Care and Share course, participants might want to think about whether they could be a part of that group or show care in other ways such as the prayer chain or Redbridge Voluntary Care, among others.

As in previous years, the Lent Courses are a shared activity with the other churches in the Seven Kings Fellowship of Churches. This year, Goodmayes Methodist Church, Seven Kings Methodist Church and St Peter’s Aldborough Hatch are all hosting Lent Courses and all are welcome to join one of those groups.

These churches will be studying Rich Inheritance - Jesus' legacy of love, a York Course written by Bishop Stephen Cottrell, the new Bishop of Chelmsford. Jesus didn’t write a will. He left no written instructions. He didn’t seem to have a plan. At the end, as he hung dying on the cross, almost all of his followers had abandoned him. By most worldly estimates his ministry was a failure. Nevertheless, Jesus’ message of reconciliation with God lived on. It is the central message of the Bible. With this good news his disciples changed the world. How did they do it? What else did Jesus leave behind – what is his ‘legacy of love’? This course addresses these questions.

The participants on the Rich Inheritance course CD are: Roman Catholic Archbishop of Westminster, Vincent Nichols; writer and lecturer in Biblical studies, Paula Gooder; and author and public theologian, Jim Wallis. Dr David Hope introduces the course and Methodist minister Inderjit Bhogal provides the Closing Reflection at the end of each session.

Love is at the heart of both these courses. We love because God first loved us. (1 John 4:19). Pastoral care is at the centre of the church’s mission and ministry because it has one fundamental aim - to help people know love, both to receive and to give. Pastoral care is our response to God’s unconditional love and, through it, we follow Jesus’ command to ‘love one another as I have loved you’.

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Victoria Williams - Love.