What we believe

 1) Introducing us

2) Who was Jesus?

3) Saints for today – reflections through the year. Saint Columba

4)A comfort and a challenge -  a Christian in the community

1) Introducing us

We are an ecumenical congregation in the care of the Methodist Church in Ireland.  Vist www.irishmethodist.org to learn more about Methodists, or click on one of the links to the right.

We welcome newcomers and visitors.  We started when Shannon was first  being built, in 1962.   The congregation was joint Church of Ireland (Anglican), Methodist and Presbyterian.  Until recently we met in the wooden church that was given to the congregation at that time. 

In our worship we express together our joy in Jesus Christ, our thanksgiving for all the things we have been given, commitment to finding God  more fully in every aspect of our lives, and our desire to support each other in our service to the world.

Below is a short background to the Christian faith, followed by a personal view on what it is like being a Christian today.

2)  Who was Jesus?

Christians follow Jesus of Nazareth, known as Jesus Christ.  Jesus was a Galilean Jewish preacher and healer who lived under Roman rule between about 4BC and about 29AD, when he was executed in Jerusalem by crucifixion.

Christians believe that he was God made human and together with the Father and the Holy Spirit is a member of the Trinity.

Christians believe that Jesus rose from the dead after three days, returned to his disciples for a period and then departed from their sight. However he has promised to be with his followers until the end of time.

The main teaching of Jesus is summed up in the Great Commandment: Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength. Love your neighbour as yourself. (Mark 12:30, 31)

There are four accounts of the life and preaching of Jesus, which were written shortly after his life on earth, and are known as the four Gospels (Good news). These and other writings from his earliest followers make up the New Testament of the Christian Bible. Christians also use the Jewish Bible, which they refer to as the Old Testament. The Great Commandment comes from the two of its books (Deuteronomy 6: 5 and Leviticus 19:18).

Jesus preached a religion of transformation, peace and service to one’s neighbour as part of a journey towards God which also means life everlasting after death. He valued life on earth very highly, and paid particular emphasis on the fullness of life being allowed to the poor and rejected. Everyone is uniquely created by God, is of equal value and is equally and totally loved. Each person is individually called to turn away from a fruitless, self-absorbed life, to realise how far they are from what they are meant to be, and to start again.

The main prayer of Christians, which Jesus taught them, is:

Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation. (For thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory for ever. ) Amen.

Christian belief is further summed up since ancient times in the Creeds, the earliest of which is:

I believe in God, the Father almighty,  creator of heaven and earth. I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord. He was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit and born of the virgin Mary. He suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried. He descended to the dead. On the third day he rose again. He ascended into heaven, and is seated at the right hand of the Father. He will come again to judge the living and the dead. I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy catholic Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and life everlasting. Amen.

Very early on the followers of Jesus shared the good news of the Gospel beyond Judaism. At first it was a religion mainly of poor people in the Roman Empire and its followers were much persecuted. However after the adoption of Christianity by the Roman Emperor Constantine in the fourth century it spread rapidly. It is now the largest world religion.

Five aspects of the life of Jesus are of particular importance to his followers.

• Jesus emphasised the personal relationship with God the divine Father. He believed in regular prayer as a source of relationship, strength and service.
• Jesus was a teacher. Spreading the good news to others and enabling them to understand its relevance to their lives is part of Christian commitment.
• Jesus was a social prophet, challenging people to a radical reform of their lives and of how they treated other people.
• Jesus was a community builder, who gave people tasks and gathered them together around a central meal.
• Jesus was a healer, of illness and of personal and social sin.

Christianity is thought to have came to parts of eastern Ireland in the late fourth century and was spread widely through the fifth-century mission of Saint Patrick, rapidly becoming the religion of the entire island. Christianity in western Europe split in the sixteenth century at the Reformation and afterwards. However Christians of all denominations share the same basic understanding of their faith, and today they seek to work together.

The ‘Five Marks of Mission’ , which many Christians identify with  are: 
As followers of Jesus Christ and as part of the universal Christian Church, we commit ourselves to: proclaim the good news of the Kingdom; teach, baptise and nurture new believers; respond to human need by loving service; seek to transform unjust structures of society; safeguard the integrity of creation; sustaining and renewing the life of the earth.
  

    3) Saints for today – reflections through the year.

 The following is one of the reflections first published in the Methodist Newsletter .

‘Rowing through the infinite storms of this age’ – Saint Columba

 Born in Gartan, now inCountyDonegalin 521, and originally known as Colum, this saint was one of the early followers of Christianity inIreland.  His family were princes and he had a normal young man’s warrior career in front of him, but seems to have decided early on to follow a religious life. As a boy he became known as Columcille, ‘Colum of the church’, and later adopted the Latin version of his name, Columba, which means ‘dove’. 

 Columba used his social position to develop faith life inIreland, founding monasteries at Durrow in theMidlands, and atDerryon the northern coast, among others.  Both these names are derived from the word ‘dair’, oak-tree but Columba’s next venture was to ‘the island of yews’,Iona. He was about forty years old when he turned his back on power and privilege and went to live among strangers.

 He sailed to theHebrides, with twelve companions and soon establishedIonaas the greatest of monasteries  He was among Gaelic-speaking people here, emigrants fromIreland, and his monastery spread Christianity along the western seaboard ofScotland. He then brought it to the Pictish kingdom that covered much of the Scottish Highlands.  Later monks were invited to preach the Gospel in the most powerful of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms,Northumbria.

 Perhaps for us the main contribution is that he encouraged his followers to work not only at manual agricultural work to provide for themselves but also at making books, copying out the words of scripture to allow others to hear them  At a time when making a single book was a  major work involving the slaughter of calves for vellum; the collecting of the other materials, such as oak gall for ink and many other ingredients for decoration;  copying everything out by hand and then having it checked by another literate monk; this was  a major contribution in labour and love to spreading the Gospel.  The Cathach, one of the oldest Irish manuscripts, may have been written by Columba himself.

 Columba’s monks involved themselves in prayer, study and labour.  The monks learnt by heart and recited the entire Book of Psalms daily as well as meeting to pray with the Gospels and the rest of the scriptures.  Columba seems to have been rather a fierce man but he was much sought after by people in trouble with their spiritual or moral life, and was much loved by his monks, as we can see from the biographies and other writings in his honour.

 A person like this attracts legends  Some of his own poems survive and others were soon attributed to him, poems that still move us today as they describe both his delight inIonaand the pain of having left family, friends and opportunities behind him inIreland.  He seems to known that he had the skills to do great things for God but had also to learn to allow God to channel his energies into what must have seemed smaller roles, but ones that we know had a lasting impact.

 A hundred years after his death in 597 his successor onIona, Adamnán, wrote an account of his life.  A hundred years later still, the Book of Kells, the wonderfully-illustrated copy of the four Gospels, may have been started to commemorate his life.  Another Life was written in the eleventh century and then in the sixteenth, in the age of print, a scholar-prince of the O’Donnell clan, who marked their descendance from Columba’s own kin, compiled all the existing stories into another Life. Columba was already so popular in the twelfth century that the Anglo-Norman invader John de Courcy claimed to have found his bones, along with those of Saint Patrick and Saint Bridget, at Downpatrick.

 He attracted attention and people talked about him, but most remembered him with kindness, and for the most significant reason – that he pointed people not to his own powerful personality but to God. A fiery man, he is remembered as a dove, one who helped people in trouble, not by shirking to challenge them but by offering gentleness as well, pointing to the grace of God and God’s desire to give new direction to every life. 

 Perhaps he can model for us today as we struggle to help the churches find new ways of expressing the love and companionship of God, touching the hearts of people who have no faith. 

 Perhaps his story can also remind us to allow God to control the timing and the means by which we are to expend our energy, perhaps achieving little in the immediate future but something more durable in God’s time.

 His feast is celebrated on 09 June.          (osemary Power)

 4)  A comfort and a challenge – a Christian in the community

The apostle Paul wrote:

“I am not ashamed of the Gospel: it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who has faith, to the Jew first, and also to the Greek.”
(Romans 1:16)

Being not ashamed of Jesus today may be met with incomprehension. Having come to Christianity as an adult, I know both sides of the fence.    I sometimes get patronised a bit for believing “fairy stories”,  for looking for soft endings, for childishness.

Christianity does bring comfort.   It brings peace.   It brings daily challenge, to stretch more widely, live more fully, see Christ in other people.

It means that the Gospels are not just a book, that the New Testament is not only the story of a good man and a set of precepts for living a just life, but a means by which God speaks to each of us individually.   The stories about, or told by, Jesus, touch our own story, and help us through prayer to understand what God is saying to each of us personally, and each of our communities, here and now.   What Jesus says comforts, refreshes, inspires, challenges. And it is all done in love.

Jesus lived one earth two thousand years ago, but lives on in a different way, through each one of us, and between us today.

It is not by chance that Christians are active in the messiest of work, voluntarily or through employment, in prisons and homelessness projects, in the caring and medical profession, in overseas aid provision. This faith stretches and strengthens us to do seemingly impossible things.

Christians function in community.  We have to meet with each other regularly to pray together, to praise God and give thanks, to learn new ways to hear the words of scripture, to share the story of Jesus and act together in the name of Jesus.

The meeting in community can be a challenge in itself, for we mix with the people God has chosen for us, not the ones we would have chosen ourselves.  We learn to be fully human, to give more of ourselves to our God daily by rubbing up against each other.

We have different styles of worship, different emphases on aspects of the ministry of Christ.  We have our different personalities.  Somehow, we survive each other.  Where the Body of Christ, the community of believers, is strong, we grow together and influence the world God loves for the better.

The personal times of prayer, the intimate moments with God when it is possible to lay aside the day’s concerns and be with God, being loved and cherished for what we are, whether or not we feel anything, must be the sacred centre of what we do. We were each planned for, designed from eternity and therefore eternally valuable.

My belief is that everybody else, however they have lived, whatever they have done, was also planned and loved into being to have a place in this world, and can become part of the eternal adventure of life with Christ.