new church life: september/october 2015
Swedenborg’s theological works in Latin, English and other languages – French,
Spanish, Korean, Portuguese and others, with more coming. Supporting these
are plain-language explanations of the internal sense of Biblical words and
stories; and links to videos, artwork and photos. The site is getting 36,000
visitors per month.
One ambition is to make this a global, crowd-sourced project. Volunteers
are needed to keep improving the website and content. Mr. David invited
ministers to send in sermons and to encourage church members to use the
website often, since popularity breeds popularity on the Internet. He also
spoke to the need for donations to this non-profit corporation to keep this
rapidly growing work going, and the link to do so on the website. Further
information about the project and how to get involved can be found on the
website, at the bottom of the home page.
The second afternoon session had two electives: a repeat of the one
offered earlier by Nathan Cole, and a workshop led by the Rev. Chuck Blair,
“Difficulties Growing a Church.” He suggested some areas of challenge, such
as attendance, buildings, funding and discipleship. After sharing Arcana
Coelestia 1419 which says that the essence of heavenly love is to be a blessing,
he divided participants into groups to list barriers to growth and then grouping
them by affinity. Then they were invited to report to the whole group. Mr. Blair
concluded that in growing a church, what you do as a leader is what you can
control.
Following the afternoon sessions, ministers and their wives were offered
an opportunity to take Holy Supper together in a service at the Cathedral led
by the Rt. Rev. Peter Buss Jr. In the evening Cairnwood Estate was opened
to ministers and their wives for hors d’oeuvres and dinner. Grant Odhner
provided welcoming remarks and introduced our first and only minister
in India, the Rev. Peter Devassy, who sang a hymn in his native tongue,
Malayalam. His lovely rendition was a first for this body.
Life and Doctrine on the Mountain
Thursday’s morning worship was led by the Rev. Derek Elphick with readings
from Genesis 41 and Arcana Coelestia 5352 and 2493. He encouraged us to
enjoy the present moment in our ministry and not allow the evil spirits to
turn our thoughts too much to the past or future. During the announcements
that followed, our oldest member of the council, the Rev. Douglas Taylor, was
heartily welcomed.
Our first speaker was the Rev. Göran Appelgren. He introduced his precirculated paper, “Life and Doctrine or Stay on the Mountain,” which used
the imagery of a mountain to recognize love to the Lord and the neighbor at
the top of a pyramid of doctrines. Like the Lord’s life, the life we have from
476