To the Laos - To the People of God – Lent 2017

Dear People of God

This year we are celebrating the 25th anniversary of the ordination of women as priests in our Province. Bishop Margaret Vertue of False Bay and the ACSA gender programme have been discussing the impact that women's ordination has had on the church. While they have acknowledged that there is much to celebrate—and I believe we have been immensely enriched by their ordination—it is also clear that the church still has many challenges to overcome when it evaluates the leadership, empowerment, participation and inclusion of women, both ordained and lay, in the church today.

Reminder: Archbishop's Lenten Course - 2017

The link to the Archbishop's Lenten Course, first published in December. Parishes and Dioceses are free to download the PDF and to have it printed or photocopies for local use:

REFLECTING, PRAYING AND ACTING TOGETHER, a series of Bible studies for Lent commissioned by Archbishop Thabo Makgoba is now available online for downloading and printing by parishes and Dioceses.

The course comprises daily readings and six weekly teachings centred on weekly themes for personal and/or communal prayer and meditation. Excerpts from the Archbishop's preface:

READ the original post on the Lenten Course here >>

The Archbishop's Lenten Course - 2017

REFLECTING, PRAYING AND ACTING TOGETHER, a series of Bible studies for Lent commissioned by Archbishop Thabo Makgoba is now available online for downloading and printing by parishes and Dioceses.

The course comprises daily readings and six weekly teachings centred on weekly themes for personal and/or communal prayer and meditation. Excerpts from the Archbishop's preface:

...[T]his is an invitation to all of us as members of ACSA, to our friends, whether people of faith or of none, and especially to our ecumenical friends, to reflect prayerfully not only on our vison and mission statement (“Anglicans ACT”), but on God’s vision for the world. In these Bible teachings we are given an opportunity to put flesh on what I would call the eternal ideals enshrined in the Bible or in our dogma. In other words, it is an invitation to us collectively to get into the mind and heart of the incarnate Son of God, the second person of the Trinity, and to see how we as his followers can make him real by understanding his ways...

In these teachings, examples of society's failings such as inequality, corruption, unemployment, poverty and environmental degradation are highlighted. We rightly start with daily readings, for as Anglicans we need to begin with Scripture in order to apply our hearts and minds to our daily challenges, to read the mind of Christ in our readings and then to be deepened in our journey...

As I offer these Lenten studies to all of you, I hope you will be as excited as I am with this journey of Reflecting, Praying and Acting Together. I am grateful to the team of people who have prayed, reflected and acted on the challenge that I placed before them to help me construct these Bible studies and to those who have ably read and edited them.

Click here to download a PDF file (34 pages)

PDF file updated to version 7 on December 20, 2016.

Lenten Bible Study Poster - 2014

A poster to be used to advertise the Province's Lenten Bible studies - download poster here>>

If you have any difficulty downloading this PDF document from Google Docs, it will also be posted on the Province's website.