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An all-age, living-faith Christian community - English speaking - between Marbella and Gibraltar

Christ's love underpins this church and we guarantee to welcome you wherever you are on your journey

 The Church of England's Diocese in Europe WORKING with the UK Methodist church		 The Church of England
The Methodist Church
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Sunday 17th February

San Pedro 10am Anglican Holy Communion followed by optional lunch

Sotogrande Midday

Methodist Worship

ICE Songs of Praise 5pm

The Anglican Church of the Costa del Sol West is a Chaplaincy of the Diocese in Europe of the Church of England, part of the worldwide Anglican Communion. 

The Sotogrande Church is also, alternate Sundays, worshiping as a Methodist Congregation, part of the South East District of the UK Methodist Church.

 

BEING AN ANGLICAN

The Scriptures and the Gospels, the Apostolic Church and the early Church Fathers, are the foundation of Anglican faith and worship in the 44 self-governing churches that make up the worldwide Anglican Communion.

The Church of England is part of the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church. It worships the one true God, who is Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

It professes the faith that is uniquely revealed in the Bible and set forth in the Catholic Creeds (the statements of faith developed in the Early Church that are still used in the Church's worship today). The Church is called to proclaim that faith afresh in each generation.

Led by the Holy Spirit, the Church of England bore witness to Christian truth in historic texts that were developed in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries: the Thirty-nine Articles of Religion, the Book of Common Prayer and the Ordinal (services for ordaining bishops, priests and deacons).

The bishops, priests and deacons of the Church of England and also some laypeople (Readers and certain lay officers) are required to declare their loyalty to this inheritance of faith as their 'inspiration and guidance under God in bringing the grace and truth of Christ to this generation and making Him known to those in [their] care'. They do so by making a Declaration of Assent.

The Church of England

 

  

BEING A CHRISTIAN

Christian life is lived in relationship with God through Jesus Christ and, in common with other Christians, seeking to deepen that relationship and to follow the way that Jesus taught.

Central to that relationship is knowing we can trust God.  Saint Paul says at the end of the eighth chapter of his letter to the Church in Rome, 'if God is for us, who can be against us?' And this is the heart of faith.

How do we know that 'God is for us'? Because Jesus Christ, the one human being who is completely in tune with God - with what God wants and what God is doing - has carried the burden of our human betrayals of God and running away from goodness.  He has let himself be betrayed and rejected, executed in a humiliating and agonising way, and yet has not turned his back on us. 

Death did not succeed in silencing him or removing him from the world.  He is alive; and that means that his love is alive, having survived the worst we can do.

Nothing - says St Paul in the same passage - can separate us from this love.  But this isn't an excuse for doing what we like, knowing we can get away with it. 

Once we know that God is 'for us', we open up to the gift that God wants to give us - which is a share in his own love and freedom and mercy.  We breathe with his breath - that's part of what it means to say that we receive God's 'Spirit', which makes us live like Jesus 'in tune' with God. 

If we have really taken the message in, we shall live lives of selfless generosity, always asking how the gifts given us - material or imaginative or spiritual or whatever - can be shared in a way that brings other people more fully alive.  And we shall be able to trust the generosity of others and be free to receive what they have to give us. Generosity, gratitude, confidence that when we fail we are still loved - all of this focused on Jesus' life and death and resurrection.  That's where we start in the lifelong job of being a Christian.

Baron Williams of Oystermouth.

Archbishop of Canterbury		  

BEING A METHODIST

The Methodist Church claims and cherishes its place in the Holy Catholic Church which is the Body of Christ. It rejoices in the inheritance of the apostolic faith and loyally accepts the fundamental principles of the historic creeds and of the Protestant Reformation. It ever remembers that in the providence of God Methodism was raised up to spread scriptural holiness through the land by the proclamation of the evangelical faith and declares its unfaltering resolve to be true to its divinely appointed mission.

The doctrines of the evangelical faith which Methodism has held from the beginning and still holds are based upon the divine revelation recorded in the Holy Scriptures. The Methodist Church acknowledges this revelation as the supreme rule of faith and practice. These evangelical doctrines to which the preachers of the Methodist Church are pledged are contained in Wesley's Notes on the New Testament and the first four volumes of his sermons.

 

The Notes on the New Testament and the 44 Sermons are not intended to impose a system of formal or speculative theology on Methodist preachers, but to set up standards of preaching and belief which should secure loyalty to the fundamental truths of the gospel of redemption and ensure the continued witness of the Church to the realities of the Christian experience of salvation.



The Methodist Church