Discipleship & Home Groups
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St Edmund's Church Living Well: Growing Disciples If you want to know more about being a Christian - click here.
There are a number of Discipleship Home Groups around the life of St Edmund's. Either meeting weekly or monthly in homes or at the Living Well. Discipleship Home Groups have an important role in helping people feel part of the church. There are about 45 members of St Edmund's in some form of Discipleship Home Group. They are a great way to get to know a few people really well. Discipleship Home Groups are the church in miniature.
You can access the studies which the groups covered by clicking on the title you require:
Abraham - Following where God leads Ruth - Finding God in obedience and suffering Psalms - Being honest with God Isaiah 40 - God comforts his people Isaiah 60 - God bring light to his people Jeremiah - Being the people God wants us to be Amos - "God doesn't like praise music"
If you want to be part of a Discipleship Home Group have a word with the Church Wardens by calling the centre office on 01322 311201. Confirmation and Renewal of Vows.
If you are interested in being confirmed have a word with the Church Wardens by calling the centre office on 01322 311201.
Follow this link if you want more information about confirmation in the Church of England.
Click here to find out what it means to be an Anglican.
Calling and ministry in the church.
As members of the church, we all have a contribution to make to society. Some people are trained and set aside to enable others to minister in both their local community and their place of work. God may be calling you to these or other ministries. The calling will be appropriate to your gifts and abilities and equally to do with God's purposes for creation.
You may feel that God is calling you to minister in one of the ways described in the section Ministry in the Church of England; explore these possibilities, but please do remember that all Christians are called to serve God with their gifts.
Within St Edmund's there are many ways to express your ministry and calling. As part of the Diocese of Rochester there are formal expressions of this as Pastoral Assistant, Reader or Evangelist, as well as ordained ministry.The Diocese regularly runs events to help people discern their vocation. If you would like to know more talk to the Church Wardens by calling the centre office on 01322 311201.
People exploring vocation and ministry
At St Edmund's people there are always people exploring vocation and ministry. In the autumn of 2007 Sharon Earl, Joyce Gibson and Pam Turley began their training as Pastoral Assistants. At the same time Nicola Earl begins training as a Reader with the army. Part of her training will be based here at St Edmund’s.
A number of others are continuing to explore their vocation. If you want to talk about how God may be calling you - talk to the Church Wardens by calling the centre office on 01322 311201.
The Diocese provides regular opportunities to explore vocation and ministry. Click here to be taken to the vocation page on the Diocesan Website
'Arrival Days' are for anyone who wants to engage in a process that enables them to grow in the Christian faith and in their understanding of what it means to be a Christian. The day is broken into four workshops which look at four questions: Where am I? Who am I? How do I learn? How do I worship?
An 'It's Your Calling Day' is the next step. This day is aimed at helping people explore the call of God in their own lives, through looking at biblical characters, the saints and ourselves. It will build on the work done at an Arrival Day and it will involve people participating in some group work, as well as personal reflection.
Details of current courses from the Church Wardens.
As you think about your ministry, you may find the following poems and prayers helpful:
Lord, you call us to be story-tellers: planting your explosive news into our defended lives; locating us in the script of your human history.
You call us to be trailblazers: living in your future that we receive only as gift; subverting the fixed, fated world of low horizons.
You call us to be weavers: tracing, stretching, connecting the knotted threads; gathering up unravelling, disconnected lives.
You call us to be fools – for Christ’s sake: bearing life’s absurdities and incongruities; puncturing our seriousness and grandiosity.
You call us to be hosts: welcomers of the sacred, intimate, transfiguring; lavish celebrants of our communities and homecomings.
You call us to be poets: artists and illuminators of inner space; naming, invoking, heralding your ineffable presence.
You call us to be gardeners: sowers, cultivators, nurturers of fragile lives; benefactors of your gratuitous harvest.
You call us to be conductors celebrating polyphony, coaxing symphony; orchestrating the praise of your inhabited creation;
Lord, you lavish gifts on all whom you call. Strengthen and sustain us and all ministers of your church, that in the range and diversity of our vocation, we may be catalysts of your kingdom in the world, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen
Roger Spiller (1944– )
Father, I know you love me and have plans for me. But sometimes I am overwhelmed by the thought of my future. Show me how to walk forward one day at a time. May I take heart while I search openly, learn all about the choices, listen to others for advice, and pay attention to my own feelings. By doing these things, may I hear your call to live a life that will let me love as only I can, and allow me to serve others with the special gifts you have given me. I ask this through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen
PRIESTLY DUTIES
Written for Eric Delve 23.5.96
What should a priest be?
All things to all - male, female and genderless What should a priest be? reverent and relaxed vibrant in youth assured through the middle years divine sage when ageing
What should a priest be?
accessible and incorruptible abstemious, yet full of celebration, informed, but not threateningly so, and far above the passing soufflé of fashion What should a priest be? an authority on singleness Solomon-like on the labyrinth of human sexuality excellent with young marrieds, old marrieds, were marrieds, never marrieds, shouldn’t have marrieds, those who live together, those who live apart, and those who don’t live anywhere respectfully mindful of senior citizens and war veterans, familiar with the ravages of arthritis, osteoporosis, post-natal depression, anorexia, whooping-cough and nits.
What should a priest be?
all-round family person counsellor, but not officially because of the recent changes in legislation, teacher, expositor, confessor, entertainer, juggler, good with children, and possibly sea-lions, empathetic towards pressure groups
What should a priest be?
on nodding terms with Freud, Jung, St John of the Cross, The Scott Report, The Rave Culture,
The Internet, the Lottery, BSE, and
Anthea Turner, pre-modern, fairly modern, post-modern, and, ideally,
Secondary-modern -
if called to the inner city
What should a priest be?
charismatic, if needs must, but quietly so, evangelical, and thoroughly meditative, mystical, but not New Age. Liberal, and so open to other voices, traditionalist, reformer and revolutionary and hopefully, not on medication unless for an old sporting injury.
Note to congregations:
If your priest actually fulfils all of the above, and then enters the pulpit one Sunday morning wearing nothing but a shower-cap, a fez, and declares: ‘I’m the King and Queen of Venus, and we shall now sing the next hymn in Latvian, take your partners, please’. –
Let it pass.
Like you and I,
they too sew the thin thread of humanity, Remember Jesus in the Garden - beside Himself?
So, what does a priest do?
mostly stays awake at Deanery synods tries not to annoy the Bishop too much visits hospices, administers comfort, conducts weddings, christenings - not necessarily in that order, takes funerals consecrates the elderly to the grave buries children, and babies, feels completely helpless beside the swaying family of a suicide.
What does a priest do?
tries to colour in God uses words to explain miracles which is like teaching a millipede to sing, but even more difficult.
What does a priest do?
answers the phone when sometimes they’d rather not occasionally errs and strays into tabloid titillation, prays for Her Majesty’s Government
What does a priest do?
tends the flock through time, oil and incense, would secretly like each PCC to commence with a mud-pie making contest sometimes falls asleep when praying yearns, like us, for heart-rushing deliverance
What does a priest do?
has rows with their family wants to inhale Heaven stares at bluebells attempts to convey the mad love of God would like to ice-skate with crocodiles and hear the roses when they pray.
How should a priest live?
How should we live?
As priests,
transformed by The Priest that death prised open so that he could be our priest martyred, diaphanous and matchless priest. What should a priest be?
What should a priest do?
How should a priest live?
Stewart Henderson From ‘Limited Edition’ published by Plover Books
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St Edmund's Church is in the business of growing disciples. We provide a number of opportunities for people to explore the Christian faith. 
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