The Metropolitan Community Church welcomes all sectors of the community and has a particular ministry with lgbt people.  We have young families in our congregation and try to include children in different ways each week.

On the last Sunday of the month, however, we will make the worship even more child-friendly involving them in the different aspects of worship so that they also feel welcome at God’s table.

Dates for 2011-2012

Between Christmas & Easter we will have five special services involving children:

• Sunday 18th December • Carol Service
• Sunday 29th January
• Sunday 26th February
• Sunday 25th March • Palm Sunday
• Sunday 8th April • Easter Sunday
• We will also focus on children in our Christmas Day service at 10.45am

More details from Rev Andy Braunston:

• 0161 881 6050
• www.mccmanchester.co.uk
• revandy@mccmanchester.co.uk

It is produced by combined choirs from the hospitals and police service to raise money for the CLIC Sargent charity which helps children with cancer.  It’s great fun and we hope to be joined by friends from Wilbraham St Ninian’s.

Tickets are around £15 depending on where we sit.  If you are interested please let Andy know and we will book tickets.  Details on the CLIC Sargent website are here.

The cost is just £10 per person for three courses. Please choose options from the yellow slips available in church and return to Andy with £10.

Menu choices are

• soup or melon
• beef, turkey or vegetarian option, with trimmings
• Christmas pudding or trifle

The meal ends with tea, coffee and mince pies.  Bring a bottle of anything you want to drink and there will be a Christmas Quiz too to keep us thinking and chatting as we eat.

Please book by the end of November.

On the Sunday before Christmas we shall be holding our usual Carol Service at our normal Sunday worship time of 4.30pm.  This will also be the first of our special Family-Friendly services with a special focus on worship and participation by children and young people.

Blue Christmas  (Thursday 22nd December 8pm)

Not everyone finds Christmas easy.  Sometimes we are bereaved or reminded of people we’ve loved and lost.  Sometimes we may have to spend the holiday season away from the ones we love, other times we may be recovering from a broken relationship.  Some people who are single may find the season with it’s emphasis on family life rather difficult and those who struggle with eating or drinking disorders may find themselves particularly challenged during this festival of consumption.  Many who are poor find the commercialism very difficult and excluding.  Others of us may simply prefer to have a quiet celebration rather than the exuberance thas this season often evokes.  To recognise this and to give a reflective space to mark Christmas we are holding a Blue Christmas service on Thursday 22nd December at 8pm in church.  The service will be reflective and, through music and images, we will mark Christ’s entry into our world where God took on all human life – with it’s joys and pains.

Christmas Eve – Midnight Service (Saturday 24th December 11.30pm)

We shall be joining with the congregation of Wilbraham St Ninian’s at their Watchnight Service.

Christmas Day – Morning Service (Sunday 25th December 10.45am)

In place of our usual 4.30pm Sunday worship, we shall be holding a service on Christmas Day morning.

New Year’s Day (Sunday 1st January 4.30pm)

As New Year’s Day falls on a Sunday this year, we will keep to our usual pattern of Sunday worship with a Worship Service at 4.30pm.

Some people have asked if we could explore some theology together and we’d like to do this using a “book club” format.

The Idea

We are offering a bi-monthly Book Club where we can talk about some theology and religious ideas and apply them to our own context.  We want to spend time exploring how different ideas from a range of theological writers can stimulate our own faith (either as we agree or disagree with them) as we work out what it means to be a faithful follower of Jesus in our own contexts – often as LGBT people.  It’s good to be able to deepen our faith and explore the depths and riches of our Christian tradition as it helps us:

• grow as Christians
• think about whether we agree or disagree with each other and the particular writer we’re looking at
• deepen our own faith journey as we explore, question and think.

Some people get a bit worried when they hear the word “theology”, but don’t worry – we will choose books which are easy to understand yet deep enough to stimulate some good discussion.  The books will be inexpensive, easy to get hold of and useful to keep as they will help deepen our faith and understanding of it.

So, every other month, after the Sacred Space service, we will look at some ideas in a book that we’ve read beforehand.  We can post some ideas about the book and the author online first giving us some ideas to work with.

By having the session after the Sacred Space service we’re making use of our existing booking of the church and allowing time for prayer and reflection as well as for discussion and thinking.  The plan is a 7.30 sharp (!) start for the Sacred Space service; tea and coffee at 8pm; and then from 8.15pm – 9.15pm discussion on the book.  Those who don’t want to come to both can easily come to just Sacred Space (7.30) or just the Book Club (8.15) with the refreshment break serving as an opportunity to arrive or depart.

We will try this on 6th December and 17th January – details are below.    If the idea develops, we will try and use books which are easily available either in print or electronically for download.  Please let Andy know if you would like to be part of this and if you have any suggestions for books worth including in the future programme.

Book Club – sessions 1 and 2

We will kick off the first Book Club meeting at 8.15pm on Tuesday 6th December with C S Lewis’s classic, and funny book The Screwtape Letters.  This is available from Amazon.co.uk for just £5.50 or for download to a Kindle electronic reader for £4.50.

It is a set of letters from a highly placed demon who is an assistant to the Devil, “Our Father Below”, to a younger, more inexperienced demon who is seeking to tempt and turn a Christian away from his faith.  It’s a very good presentation of theology, is very funny and quite a light read whilst, at the same time, is deeply spiritual.  It’s a short book and won’t take long to read but you should allow time to order it and for it to arrive if you want to come to the session on 6th December.

The next book, which we will look at at 8.15pm on Tuesday 17th January 2012, is Surprised by Hope by Tom Wright.  Wright has just retired as the Anglican bishop of Durham and is one of the most popular theologians writing today.  He seeks to re-present traditional doctrines in ways which make sense to contemporary people and is a hero for evangelicals – even though he isn’t that evangelical really.

Surprised by Hope looks at the traditional Christian view of what happens when we die and argues that this is a two stage process (just as we sang in the hymn For All the Saints recently) of rest/paradise being followed by resurrection and a new heaven and a new earth.  It’s quite different from popular notions that we become angels or sit on clouds playing harps!  This book is available at around £12 new or about £8 used.  An e-book version is available for just over £10.  It’s an easy read.  Wright uses a clear accessible style and explains his ideas well.

Forthcoming

On 13th March 2012 the Book Club will look at the Dalai Lama’s Freedom in Exile.  This is available new in paperback for around £6 or can be obtained very cheaply second hand.

On 22nd May 2012 we will be discussing Jeanette Winterson’s powerful autobiography Why be happy when you can be normal?  This is available in both print and e-book format for around £7.

Feedback

Andy would really appreciate expressions of interest in the Book Club idea, so please let him know if you are interested or if you have any suggestions.  Contact details are here.

• The first, on Wednesday 30th November will look at the passages and what we think of them.
• The second, on Wednesday 14th December, will look at what contemporary scholars think Paul may have meant in his writings – some people don’t think he meant lesbians in Romans 1:26, some think he referred to pederastic relationships or relationships between slave owners and their slaves, others think he meant temple prostitutes.  We will look at these ideas, see why people think this and discuss them.
• A third session, on Wednesday 21st December will reflect on whether any of these contemporary views have changed our own thinking about these texts.

If you’d like to come along please let Andy know; please also let him know if you’d like more of this type of Bible study – we can plan some for next year!  Thank you for all those who have already said that you’d be interested in taking part.

Contact details are here.  Location details are here.  Facebook users are welcome to complete our short opinion poll about Paul and sexuality here.

Update

Notes from Discussion on 30th November 2011

Romans 1

• Written to the church in Rome in the context of some mad emperors.
• Roman sex regulated.  Sexual rules strict around passive and active roles giving or taking away status.  Pederasty rampant.
• God inflicts punishment of homosexuality not for!
• Free will means God lets us get on with it.
• Christianity still young, idol worship still prevalent this was Paul’s concern.
• Doesn’t read gay people into this passage.  Sex talk about sexual practice ie homoeroticism not gay identity as that is a modern phenomenon.
• His concern was power imbalance in relationships.  Did “gay identity” exist in ancient world?
• “Shameless acts” is about anal sex.  All this was beyond what was acceptable for men in Paul’s view.  Was Paul taking the piss?

Turning the tables on his readers? Because of start of chapter 2

• It’s about the cultic practices of worship of Cybele.
• How precise is Greek?
• The important part of the passage is “Salvation is open to all” and “who are you to judge”.

What do you make of the Passage?

• Others used it to make me feel guilty
• Have a reverse understanding, I am suspicious of translations.  It was written by a fallible human being and I differentiate from Jesus – the Gospels have more authority.
• Hard not to be affected by it.  At first it was what others said about it that affected me.  Don’t think he is talking about loving relationships was about something else.
• Ironic that homophobes still use it when the context is so different now.
• Thinks people don’t know the passage, makes me feel sick, I avoid reading it, it makes me angry.
• My illness was blamed on my sexuality due to this passage.
• Does Jesus talk about homosexuality? The Bible is never quite what we make of it, God is not against love.
• Most hurtful is the way we’re reduced to sex.  Biblical message as a whole is good for lgbt people.  Truth is found when we read the Bible in a group and allow different perspectives to come forth.
• But it’s hard to keep the argument going about pro-gay Christianity in the face of opposition.
• I am surprised at the imprecise nature of the translation.
• The bible is an oral work – it’s meant to be read aloud.

1  Corinthians 6 

•  It’s easy to deal with this  – just point to the ambiguity in translation.
• I’m glad we’re not at the top of Paul’s list!
•  This is used against us in evangelical circles as they are taught this passage a lot.
• Romans and Corinthians didn’t bother him but had an emotional reaction to Rev 22:15 as some translations have “homosexual dogs”.
• It’s clear that it’s about gay sex but what Paul knew about gay sex was bad and abusive.

We captured certain parts of the weekend on a few short videos and have uploaded them to MCC Manchester’s YouTube Channel:

• Rev Andy Braunston (MCC Manchester) preaching on the Tower of Babel during worship on the evening of 28 Oct - http://tinyurl.com/andysermon
• Mary Smail (MCC South London) preaching on St Paul’s Thorn in his Flesh during worship on the evening of 29 Oct - http://tinyurl.com/marysermon
• Rev Elder Darlene Garner preaching on the Miracle of the Loaves and the Fishes during worship on the morning of 30 Oct - http://tinyurl.com/darlenesermon
• Darlene also led two workshops on the morning of 29 Oct on An Introduction to Church Size Theory as a basis for a Church Size Summit she hopes to lead next year here in Europe.  This was a lengthy session and consists of her presentation and a long question and answer session.

• Part 1 - http://tinyurl.com/darleneworkshop1
• Part 2 - http://tinyurl.com/darleneworkshop2
• Part 3 - http://tinyurl.com/darleneworkshop3
• Part 4 - http://tinyurl.com/darleneworkshop4
• Part 5 - http://tinyurl.com/darleneworkshop5

Rev Dwayne Morgan

Also, we would love to welcome you to worship with us at our regular Sunday service at 4.30pm in our church home in Chorlton.

We are honoured to have the Pastor of our church in Bournemouth, the Reverend Dwayne Morgan, as our guest preacher on Sunday.

Visit our main web site at www.mccmanchester.co.uk for full details of where we are and how to get there.

Happy Pride!

Before entering the professional ministry, Darlene worked as the Executive Director of the Philadelphia Mayor’s Commission on Sexual Minorities, beginning in 1987.  She has served as the chaplain for an AIDS hospice and as President of the Board of Northern Virginia AIDS Ministry.  Darlene has also served as a member of the Philadelphia Commission on Human Relations (hearing complaints of discrimination based on sexual orientation, race, gender, and national origin) and the West Hollywood Business License Commission.

From 1977-1980, Darlene worked to help found the National Coalition of Black Lesbians and Gays (NCBLG), then known as the National Coalition of Black Gays (NCBG).

Darlene entered Lancaster Theological Seminary in 1986 and was ordained in the Metropolitan Community Church in 1988.  She has served as Associate Pastor of MCC in Philadelphia, and as Pastor of MCC in Baltimore, and MCC of Northern Virginia from 1991 to 1998, during which time she was used as a source by U.S. News & World Report for stories on LGBT issues.

Rev Garner was elected a member of the Board of Elders of Metropolitan Community Church in 1993.  She moved to Los Angeles and served as Clerk of the Board of Elders from 1999 until 2003.  During this time, she was also the Liaison Elder for MCC in Western Canada, Australia, Aotearoa/New Zealand, Europe, and various parts of the United States.  Elder Garner then moved to Cape Town, South Africa for two years to serve as the resource person for Africa.  Then she moved to Mexico, where she lived for five years in support of MCC’s ministry in Latin America.

Rev Elder Garner is particularly proud that in 1997 she founded the MCC Conference for People of African Descent (PAD), Our Friends, and Allies. Its mission is to improve the spiritual life of people of African descent, providing them with leadership training and encouragement.

Currently, Rev Elder Garner oversees MCC congregations and leaders in Southern California, Nevada, Central and South America, Western Europe, the United Kingdom, Australia, Aotearoa/New Zealand, and the Caribbean. In addition, she is responsible for the development of new MCC ministries around the world and for diversity and inclusivity concerns within MCC, serving as Director of Emerging Ministries.

On 3 March 2010, Rev Garner and her partner Candy Holmes were one of the first couples to apply for a marriage license under the Religious Freedom And Civil Marriage Equality Amendment Act 2009, allowing same-sex marriage in the District of Columbia.  On 9 March 2010, Darlene and Candy were married along with two other couples at the Human Rights Campaign building.

The following videos of Rev Elder Garner can be viewed on YouTube:

- Celebrating being granted permission to marry

- Darlene and Candy celebrate their first wedding anniversary

- American Prayer Hour, speaking against fundamentalist homophobia in Uganda

- Taking part in a question and answer session at Crave MCC – Part 1

- Taking part in a question and answer session at Crave MCC – Part 2

Everyone is welcome to join us for worship at 4.30pm on Sunday 30th October and hear Darlene preach, and then share fellowship with her during the social time after worship.  It will be a memorable experience.

You can hear an mp3 of the spoken parts of Andy’s broadcast, and link to YouTube recordings of his four songs, here.