Category Archives: LitBits – Commentary

BasisBits – Paragraph 4: Christ Rules and Renews the Church

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The Uniting Church acknowledges that the Church is able to live and endure through the changes of history only because its Lord comes, addresses, and deals with people in and through the news of his completed work. Christ who is present when he is preached among people is the Word of God who acquits the guilty, who gives life to the dead and who brings into being what otherwise could not exist. Through human witness in word and action, and in the power of the Holy Spirit, Christ reaches out to command attention and awaken faith; he calls people into the fellowship of his sufferings, to be the disciples of a crucified Lord; in his own strange way Christ constitutes, rules and renews them as his Church.

From Paragraph 4 of the Basis of Union (1992)

 

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BasisBits are intended particularly for congregations of the Uniting Church in Australia but could be easily adapted for general use by congregations of other denominations. The suggested use of BasisBits is as items in the “news” section of your Sunday pew sheets or regular congregational publications; some would lend themselves to incorporation into your liturgy order itself.

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BasisBits – Paragraph 3: Built Upon the One Lord Jesus Christ C

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The Church as the fellowship of the Holy Spirit confesses Jesus as Lord over its own life; it also confesses that Jesus is Head over all things, the beginning of a new creation, of a new humanity. God in Christ has given to all people in the Church the Holy Spirit as a pledge and foretaste of that coming reconciliation and renewal which is the end in view for the whole creation. The Church’s call is to serve that end: to be a fellowship of reconciliation, a body within which the diverse gifts of its members are used for the building up of the whole, an instrument through which Christ may work and bear witness to himself. The Church lives between the time of Christ’s death and resurrection and the final consummation of all things which Christ will bring; the Church is a pilgrim people, always on the way towards a promised goal; here the Church does not have a continuing city but seeks one to come. On the way Christ feeds the Church with Word and Sacraments, and it has the gift of the Spirit in order that it may not lose the way.

From Paragraph 3 of the Basis of Union (1992)

 

Download a high-quality image of this BasisBit for insertion into your pew sheet

 

BasisBits are intended particularly for congregations of the Uniting Church in Australia but could be easily adapted for general use by congregations of other denominations. The suggested use of BasisBits is as items in the “news” section of your Sunday pew sheets or regular congregational publications; some would lend themselves to incorporation into your liturgy order itself.

Posted in BasisBits, LitBits, LitBits - Commentary

BasisBits – Paragraph 3: Built Upon the One Lord Jesus Christ B

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Jesus of Nazareth announced the sovereign grace of God whereby the poor in spirit could receive God’s love. Jesus himself, in his life and death, made the response of humility, obedience and trust which God had long sought in vain. In raising him to live and reign, God confirmed and completed the witness which Jesus bore to God on earth, reasserted claim over the whole of creation, pardoned sinners, and made in Jesus a representative beginning of a new order of righteousness and love. To God in Christ all people are called to respond in faith. To this end God has sent forth the Spirit that people may trust God as their Father, and acknowledge Jesus as Lord. The whole work of salvation is effected by the sovereign grace of God alone.

From Paragraph 3 of the Basis of Union (1992)

 

Download a high-quality image of this BasisBit for insertion into your pew sheet

 

BasisBits are intended particularly for congregations of the Uniting Church in Australia but could be easily adapted for general use by congregations of other denominations. The suggested use of BasisBits is as items in the “news” section of your Sunday pew sheets or regular congregational publications; some would lend themselves to incorporation into your liturgy order itself.

Posted in BasisBits, LitBits, LitBits - Commentary

BasisBits – Paragraph 2: Of the Whole Church

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The Uniting Church in Australia lives and works within the faith and unity of the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church. The Uniting Church recognises that it is related to other Churches in ways which give expression, however partially, to that unity in faith and mission. Recalling the Ecumenical Councils of the early centuries, the Uniting Church looks forward to a time when the faith will be further elucidated, and the Church’s unity expressed, in similar Councils. It thankfully acknowledges that the uniting Churches were members of the World Council of Churches and other ecumenical bodies, and will seek to maintain such membership. It remembers the special relationship which obtained between the several uniting Churches and other Churches of similar traditions, and will continue to learn from their witness and be strengthened by their fellowship. It is encouraged by the existence of United Churches in which these and other traditions have been incorporated, and wishes to learn from their experience. It believes that Christians in Australia are called to bear witness to a unity of faith and life in Christ which transcends cultural and economic, national and racial boundaries, and to this end the Uniting Church commits itself to seek special relationships with Churches in Asia and the Pacific. The Uniting Church declares its desire to enter more deeply into the faith and mission of the Church in Australia, by working together and seeking union with other Churches.

From Paragraph 2 of the Basis of Union (1992)

 

Download a high-quality image of this BasisBit for insertion into your pew sheet

 

BasisBits are intended particularly for congregations of the Uniting Church in Australia but could be easily adapted for general use by congregations of other denominations. The suggested use of BasisBits is as items in the “news” section of your Sunday pew sheets or regular congregational publications; some would lend themselves to incorporation into your liturgy order itself.

Posted in BasisBits, LitBits, LitBits - Commentary

BasisBits – Paragraph 1: The way into union B

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In this union these Churches commit their members to acknowledge one another in love and joy as believers in our Lord Jesus Christ, to hear anew the commission of the Risen Lord to make disciples of all nations, and daily to seek to obey his will. In entering into this union the Churches concerned are mindful that the Church of God is committed to serve the world for which Christ died, and that it awaits with hope the day of the Lord Jesus Christ on which it will be clear that the kingdom of this world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of the Christ, who shall reign for ever and ever.

From Paragraph 1 of the Basis of Union (1992)

 

Download a high-quality image of this BasisBit for insertion into your pew sheet

 

BasisBits are intended particularly for congregations of the Uniting Church in Australia but could be easily adapted for general use by congregations of other denominations. The suggested use of BasisBits is as items in the “news” section of your Sunday pew sheets or regular congregational publications; some would lend themselves to incorporation into your liturgy order itself.

Posted in BasisBits, LitBits, LitBits - Commentary

BasisBits – Paragraph 1: The way into union A

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BasisBits Logo - 2 WITHOUT SThe Congregational Union of Australia, the Methodist Church of Australasia and the Presbyterian Church of Australia, in fellowship with the whole Church Catholic, and seeking to bear witness to that unity which is both Christ’s gift and will for the Church, hereby enter into union under the name of the Uniting Church in Australia. They pray that this act may be to the glory of God the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. They give praise for God’s gifts of grace to each of them in years past; they acknowledge that none of them has responded to God’s love with a full obedience; they look for a continuing renewal in which God will use their common worship, witness and service to set forth the word of salvation for all people. To this end they declare their readiness to go forward together in sole loyalty to Christ the living Head of the Church; they remain open to constant reform under his Word; and they seek a wider unity in the power of the Holy Spirit.

From Paragraph 1 of the Basis of Union (1992)

Download a high-quality image of this BasisBit for insertion into your pew sheet

 

BasisBits are intended particularly for congregations of the Uniting Church in Australia but could be easily adapted for general use by congregations of other denominations. The suggested use of BasisBits is as items in the “news” section of your Sunday pew sheets or regular congregational publications; some would lend themselves to incorporation into your liturgy order itself.

Posted in BasisBits, LitBits, LitBits - Commentary

LitBit Commentary – David Tripp on the Eucharist

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LitBit: When we take part in the Eucharist, our individuality is affirmed but also lifted into a corporate richness in which the individual is saved progressively from individualism. The model for this manifold transformation, and the power that enables and bestows it, is the life of the triune God, in whom “person” is not a closed and self-defending private world but an openness that knows no limit to giving and a shared life that reaches out in shared sacrifice. Growing into trinitarian life includes a new vision of hope for the whole human community, as well as for the church.

David Tripp, “How often should United Methodists commune?”

 

How to use LitBit Features and Commentaries.

Posted in Illuminating Liturgy, LitBits, LitBits - Commentary

LitBit Commentary – John Wesley on the Lord’s Supper

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LitBit: It is the duty of all Christians to receive the Lord’s Supper is often as they can … because it is a plain command of Christ, … because the benefits of doing it are so great to all to do it in obedience to him; viz., the forgiveness of our past sins, the present strengthening and refreshing of our souls.… This is the food of our souls: This gives strength to perform our duty, and leads us on to perfection.

John Wesley, “The duty of constant communion” alt

 

How to use LitBit Features and Commentaries.

Posted in Illuminating Liturgy, LitBits, LitBits - Commentary

LitBit Commentary – Gordon Lathrop on the Lord’s Prayer 1

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LitBit: The ecclesiology of the Lord’s prayer is this: the assembly is the community given this prayer, taught it in baptism, repeating it at Eucharist, invited to stand articulately with humanity—indeed, with all things—where Christ is amid the loss and fear. The assembly is made up of ordinary people, people themselves in need but also people willing to stand with the need of others. The assembly is also the community which, by the power of the Spirit and the presence of the Risen One, is given now, as an earnest-gift of all that God intends for the world, the bread and forgiveness that the world needs. The assembly is the community, therefore, that confesses the enfolding presence of the triune God and is called to practice the word of forgiveness and the meal of resurrection.

Gordon Lathrop, The Pastor, p.34alt

 

How to use LitBit Features and Commentaries.

Posted in Illuminating Liturgy, LitBits, LitBits - Commentary

LitBit Commentary – Gordon Lathrop on the Lord’s Prayer 3

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LitBit: …in the heart of the Lord’s prayer, we ask God, with an astonishing confidence—there is that word again—to forgive us now and give us bread now. …we borrow first-century Jewish apocalyptic language, but here we find that language transformed, reversed. These things are the presence now of expected end-time gifts. Only God forgives, and that at the end. Only God will spread the great, life-giving feast for the called ones: at the end. Here, in the assembly, in celebration of the actual presence of these things, Christians turn to each other in mutual forgiveness, which corresponds to and receives God’s forgiveness now, and the community holds a meal that it believes to be already God’s meal. Christians dare to do this, of course, because of the presence of Jesus Christ in the Spirit, the source of forgiveness and the grounds of the meal.

Gordon Lathrop, The Pastor, p.32alt

 

How to use LitBit Features and Commentaries.

Posted in Illuminating Liturgy, LitBits, LitBits - Commentary
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