Today Dr Bruce looks at Ephesians 4:1-13 and how the church has been given gifts to serve God in the world. “The church needs to be careful to preserve its focus on the things that really matter, if it is to preserve its unity – something which Jesus specifically prayed we would do.
“This week we turn a significant corner. Up to now, Paul has been describing what God has done in Christ: choosing us, adopting us, redeeming us, uniting us, empowering us, enlivening us, raising us up and making us his living home, like a new kind of Temple in the world. The church is to be nothing short of a new humanity, within which God has made his Home, Dr Bruce said.”
“But now we come to Chapter 4, and Paul starts to do a quite different job, changing tack. He moves on from the profound doctrine, which underpins the very existence of the church, pulling us back to basics, saying this is how such a new humanity ought to look. What God has done, gives way to what we must do. This is how we are called live. This is the beacon which must be lit before the world.”
As in previous weeks, members of PCI’s 19 local presbyteries will take part in the service. Joining Dr Bruce today is the turn of one of the three Belfast presbyteries, the Presbytery of East Belfast. During the service Presbytery Moderator, Rev Uel Marrs, who is Secretary to PCI’s Council for Global Mission, will be joined by Presbytery Clerk, Rev Stephen Moore, minister of Gilnahirk Presbyterian Church. They will introduce the Presbytery in a short video, read and pray.
Songs during this week's service include:
- Come People of the Risen King
- The Servant King
- By Faith we see the hand of God.
At the close of the service, another member of the East Belfast Presbytery, Professor Drew Gibson of Union Theological College, will lead prayers for others.
Presbytery of East Belfast
The Presbytery contains 23 congregations and a Presbyterian family of around 14,000 people. Covering a swathe of the city east of the River Lagan, the Presbytery stretches from St Andrew’s Presbyterian Church in Rosetta up and into the Castlereagh Hills and Castlereagh Presbyterian, then out to Dundonald and on to Holywood.
It then doubles back down the eastern shore of Belfast Lough and across the Sydenham bypass to Mersey Street Presbyterian and Westbourne on the Newtownards Road before continuing to the Ravenhill Road. The oldest congregations, three of them, date from 17th and 18th centuries with the vast majority, however, having been founded diromg the last century and in the 19th.
Next week…
In next week’s service the Moderator continues his journey through Ephesians, coming to Chapter 4:14-24, looking at how we are called to be a mature Church. Dr Bruce will be joined by members of the Carrickfergus Presbytery.