Deacons Meeting

Prayer time led by Cornel Tusosa-Merauti

Apologies

Minutes of the previous Meeting on 20th April 2022 (NEEDED? - to be resent prior to meeting to be sure)

Matters Arising Jubilee Event

Food Hygiene

Local Church contact

Future Events 3rd July Fellowship lunch and Communion - Birthday of Church

16th July Work Day

Film Night

Fabric Matters-Update Front Doors

Dishwasher

Manse Fence (NEEDED?)

Fire Extinguishers

Corridor – rear door

Finance Matters Figures as attached (NEEDED?)

Christian Aid total (NEEDED?)

Gift Day suggestions

Ministry Matters

Month of Evangelism (June?)

New Leaflets (Evangelical)

YPF on Sundays (NEEDED?)

Holiday Club

Youth Cafe

Bible Studies - New start in October - Wednesdays and Sundays. (New list for Sunday readers and pray-ers each week to sign to)

Pastoral Matters (NEEDED? ie. not to go over the same names but ighlight any other issues unknown at the time to other deacons)

Mary McFarlane, Moira Parkinson,

Audrey Smith, Sonia Weekes, Martin Smith,

Dorothy Garrard, Eda Taylor, Rego family

Yvonne Hack

Any Other Business

Becky’s Block Placement

Romanian Church

Agenda for Deacons and Church Members - cut down and rearrange the order

Date of Church Members’s meetings - every 12 weeks? 4 times a year each as per 10.2 of the constitution AND meet beforehand if there is an important issue that comes up. And Deacons every 2 months as per 17.2. Chair should be taken by myself or Becky.

Limit to 90minutes all meetings

MRC - many are deciding whether to stay. Crisis. Statement of faith including sexual ethics. Where are the Trust Deeds?

Welcomers make sure bibles are given out - powerpoint will no longer be used for this. NEW BIBLES

Ian and Irena away 5th-23rd September (Delay of Beehive unless others can step in)

Date of next meeting 17th - (10th is better not good for me) August 2022 at 5.00pm

Prayer time to be led by Mano Vijayamanoharan

Closing Prayer

Start

Something positive to start from each person

Agenda - Why are we meeting?

What is the point of this meeting?

Info should be shared beforehand by email or by hand

For ideas?

To make decisions?`

Talking Jesus course

Sexual Ethics

Then there are the pastoral conflicts that will emerge if the ministerial rules are changed. Let me highlight just four of many.

First, such a change to the ministerial rules will cause pain to families in our Baptist churches seeking to hold to orthodox Baptist beliefs with some supporting struggling family members. Some of our members are helping their children and in some cases close friends through the challenge of holding a biblical narrative whist working to find a pathway to a lifestyle that matches the biblical advice they believe Scriptures  provides on the subject of same-sex attraction. Many families will feel badly let down by our Baptist family if the ministerial rules are changed.

Secondly, changing the rules will let down those who have worked through the scriptures and, nevertheless have concluded that Scripture calls them to define their identity as being in Christ and not their sexuality. Such have chosen to work out their Christianity by following the plain teaching of the scriptures. They have chosen to live celibate lives, and some of these have written publicly agreeing that this issue affects the gospel message itself ( 1 Cor 6:9 ; Rom 14:5). We must stand with them and agree that no one has the right to take away from the work of Christ on the Cross or call good and acceptable what the Bible calls people to repent from.

Thirdly, we have many individuals actively working with the gospel message seeking to reach the lost on the fringes, and outside our church walls, they will feel that their core message on the mission field is in danger of being irrevocably undermined by misdirecting vulnerable sinners away from their need of repentance from sinful acts (temptation we acknowledge is not sin). Where will the redefinition of sin end? Will we, for example, change our understanding of biblical sin in terms of greed or false testimony? The Gospel without repentance from sin is not the Gospel Jesus and the Early Church preached.

Fourthly, for Baptist church members, spiritual integrity and personal holiness is what they look for in their ministers; changing the ministerial rules in the way being suggested will create great anxiety that our hard-won equilibrium and current diversity of views in the Baptist Union is being swapped for a liberal view of the scriptures

I have to say the way the invitation to explore this issue is being framed involves an invitation to redefine divine intention by introducing uncertainty into the simple reading of the scriptures. ” The problem we are being told is ” the way we read scripture” I find most Baptist church members read the scriptures perfectly reasonably well, and I have found that even a thirteen-year-old can explain Romans 1 clearly. Many theologians would agree that the simple reading of the text of Scripture is often the best.

On the question ” did God say?” marriage is only every scriptural if it is between ‘ a man and a woman?, we can affirm with a clear and emphatic, yes he did! It would be different if we were trying to understand an obscure passage of Scripture, but we are dealing with texts that have been expounded by diverse cultures around the world for 2000 years, all coming to the same conclusion that homosexual practice is a sin. Without the illumination of the scriptures, humanity is hopelessly lost in a human-centric view of what constitutes sin.

And, so we are left with the question, what will the Baptist Union of Great Britain do, will we downgrade the work of Christ on the Cross by redefining Christian marriage and promoting what the scriptures call sin as godly? If man can redefine sin, we do not need a Saviour.

I conclude by saying that this is not the issue that is foremost in most church leaders’ or churches’ minds, evangelism and halting church decline is by far a greater pressing problem for many churches and we should be doing more to address that. I personally would rather be engaging with that question as top of our many priorities.

Reading and Sermon Plan