From a friend:

We start our services with the Iona Song. This has become our theme song

Behold, behold I make all things new,

Beginning with you, and starting from today

Behold, behold, I make all things new

My promise is true, for I am Christ the way.

And at Communion Iona Song often at the beginning and end

Take O take me as I am

Summon up what I shall be

Set your seal upon my heart

And live in me

We Often finish with Robert Mann’s Christmas Blessing

May the feet of God walk with you, and His Hand hold you tight,

May the eye of God rest on you, and his ear hear your cry.

May the smile of God be for you, and His breath give you life.

May the Child of God grow in you, and his love bring you home

I like to hold onto the thought that I am somehow made in the image of God. I may be broken and fallen but in Jesus the relationship is restored

God has now the ability to once again come to the garden and talk with me in the cool of the evening.

Perhaps read Matthew Fox “Original Blessing”

My favourite prayer in Be Our Freedom, Lord:

Weaver Spirit

Spirit of Love

who moves with creation

drawing the threads to

colour and design,

life into life, you

knit our true salvation.

Come, work with us

and weave us into one

Though we have frayed

the fabric of your making,

tearing away all

that you intend,

yet to be whole

humanity is

aching

Come………

Great loom of God

where history is woven,

you are the frame

that holds us to truth,

Christ is the theme,

the pattern you have given:

Come….

(I beat myself up enough, without the dreadful thought that God is beating me up as well. Perhaps we need to be a little less Augustinian. In the garden we were made in the image of God and we were blessed.)

Related Articles:

• Leadership Skills: Tools for Policy Impact (brilliant!)
• Pastor Burnout Statistics
• Stress and Burnout in Pastoral Ministry: A Prologue
• Leadership for success
• Tribes: we need you to lead us

This work, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 Australia License.