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Michelle Moran, director of training for the Sion Community, and member of the English NSC, shares about the new Life in the Spirit seminars that have been filmed and put on video for small groups.
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THIS
PROMISE IS FOR YOU|
Although the grace of Baptism in the Holy Spirit is a free gift from the Lord, people often need to be prepared to expect and receive it and the Life in the Spirit seminars have been one of the major ways over the last 30 years that God has used for this to happen. The power of the simple gospel message At the heart of it is simply the gospel message. This is a spiritual truth that moves people from being nominal or well informed Christians to people who are transformed and fully alive in the Lord. We see this clearly in Peter’s life. After he had experienced the outpouring of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost his life was transformed and the ‘uneducated layman’(Acts 4:13) was able to deliver such a powerful sermon that in one day three thousand became believers. It is only through the Holy Spirit that we can come to know and grow in intimacy with God. Indeed, without the Holy Spirit the Gospel is an impossible ideal that at best we can only aspire to and at worst we can fail miserably in. In the Church, I meet so many good people who are trying their best or doing their duty. Whilst this is good, it is only the Holy Spirit who can bring us to the place where we understand the amazing and life changing message about God’s freedom and grace. Seminars for priests Over the years I have spoken at dozens of seminars in a variety of contexts, using various versions of the seminar material. Sometimes the talks are given weekly over a couple of months and more recently people have favoured a more condensed weekend approach. Sometimes the seminars are simply offered in a parish, at others they are targeted at a specific group.. A few years ago, for example, I helped run the Seminars for priests as a kind of Lenten retreat on the Tuesdays of Lent in the Brentwood Diocese. Although I have given the talks many times, the message always seems fresh and new and participating in the Seminars is a life giving and life changing experience as well. Throughout this year with Charles Whitehead, Eileen O’Kane and Barbara Mason, other members of the NSC, I have had the great privilege of working on a new Life in the Spirit project. We decided to produce a version of the Seminars in video format to make them more widely accessible to the English speaking world. The videos come with comprehensive leaders’ notes, questions and materials for group discussion and daily reflection material for the participants. There is even an accompanying CD with some suitable ‘songs of the Spirit’ for those groups without a music ministry. The package will enable small groups to run the ‘seminars’ without having to finance outside speakers. The videos are versatile and can be easily used in a home group setting or in a large hall. One benefit of having the material pre-recorded is that the leaders can look ahead and know the exact content of each session. Also, there is a continuity and a cohesion between the weekly themes which doesn’t always occur when different outside speakers attend each session. It is possible to communicate an experience? The Life in the Spirit seminars are not primarily a teaching series they are more like a retreat and I was hesitant as to how this would come over on film. I am pleased to say many people who were present for the filming said that they experienced a powerful anointing even in the somewhat artificial conditions of a film set. An invaluable component of running the seminars is the organising group. We will be encouraging people to surround it in prayer with the team regularly praying for the sessions and their group members. Ideally as many of the organising team as possible need to have experienced for themselves the Baptism in the Holy Spirit. Importance of Intercession The Seminars were filmed in Brentwood at the Sion Community’s centre. Throughout the day there was adoration of the Blessed Sacrament in the chapel and a team of people continually interceding both for the filming and for all those who will have an opportunity to participate in the seminars on video. The talks were given by Charles Whitehead and myself. It was encouraging for me to be filmed at home with some of my community in the audience. However, we also had some people with us who were doing the seminars for the first time. After the filming it was a great delight during a very powerful time of ministry to pray with some people for baptism in the Spirit. We decided not to call the series Life in the Spirit but to use the invitational words from Acts (2:39) ‘This Promise is for you – The life changing work of the Holy Spirit’. The series has six sessions each with testimonies to accompany the teaching. The first two talks are a basic presentation of the Good News message and it is out of this context that we move on to speak about the Holy Spirit. During week 5 we try to model the Baptism in the Spirit and the video facilitates the movement from watching the screen to moving into prayer in small groups. It is my hope and prayer that as many people as possible will use this material as a way of introducing many others to the life changing work of the Holy Spirit.
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