Bishop’s Management Group letters are sent approximately once a month to the clergy, churchwardens, lay ministers, diocesan and cathedral staff, they are included in your monthly Peterborough Diocesan News distribution.
They are mainly informative, may include policy announcements, or raise discussion on strategic and longer-term issues. Here is the most recent letter, earlier letters are linked below.
BISHOP’S LETTER 16 15 April 2024
Dear Friends
I find it strange that most of the worldwide Church treats Easter as the most important festival in the year, in the UK Christmas is a much bigger celebration.
Why is this? Is it that the apparent simplicity of a birth is much easier to understand than the complexity of death and resurrection? Is it that an innocent child is less demanding than a sometimes challenging adult. Is it a nicer story mostly featuring good people (leaving aside King Herod) rather than bad ones. Or is it that Easter more obviously changes everything? People are transformed. Nothing can be the same again.
Transformation sounds great, but we often find change difficult. We prefer to be neither shaken, nor stirred.
Yet Easter changes the world and Jesus changes everything. In my Easter sermon I said that the resurrection means that Jesus was right in what he said and showed us about God, the powers of darkness were wrong in thinking they could crush him, and when we get things wrong, Jesus helps us to put them right again. But this means change.
One Easter newsletter asks the rather pointed question; “How can I make a ‘life-changing experience’ truly ‘life-changing’? How do I stop the glow of a mountain top experience from fading away?” The author’s answer was to deliberately live close to Jesus, what is sometimes called “intentional discipleship”. You could more simply call it “Growing as a Christian”. It might involve some adventure, stepping out in faith, trusting that God will guide us. With a new bishop, that may be God’s call for our diocese. The newsletter concluded; “I think the best answer is don’t walk on any path that you can walk easily just by yourself. Look for the path and journey where you know you’ll need to be hand in hand with Jesus to help you to journey faithfully.”
The Archbishops have invited us to special prayer time between Ascension Day and Pentecost, “Thy Kingdom Come”. Last year, Canon Steve Benoy walked the length of the Diocese. This year (9th-19th May), two groups of walkers are going to pray around the edge of the Diocese under the banner “Light up the World in Prayer”. Please remember them in your prayers, perhaps join with them (and your bishops) at the events in every deanery, maybe even walk with them a few miles.
This is a super opportunity for us to walk with each other and walk with Jesus. Who knows… we might not be the same afterwards! Here is my prayer for the pilgrimage; Father God, bring us face to face with Jesus and by your Holy Spirit, make new Christians and Christians new. Amen
With best wishes
+John
Previous letters
Bishop's Management Group Letter 15 - 12 March 2024