Dear Melbourne Community and Friends,

With this Newsletter and Program we are slowly moving towards autumn, Lent lies ahead of us, but also Easter, Ascension and Whitsun. The Easter time is always the time of year, where we celebrate the sacrament of Confirmation; the sacrament which celebrates the transition from childhood to youth. As Albert Schweitzer describes it in the quote above, youth as a stage of mind hopefully lasts until we leave this world. The baptism is a very important foundation for the confirmation, and we will be celebrating a number of baptisms in the coming weeks, to which you are all warmly invited, as well as the introduction of the Confirmation group to the community.  

In early Christianity it was the Baptism that made you a member of the Church. And that is still the case in many churches; however, this is different in the Christian Community.

Neither baptism nor confirmation makes you a member. Why is that, and how you can become a member of the Christian Community is another theme we will look at this autumn. “Meet Melbourne’s Members of the Movement” is a series of Community meetings where Members will share their impulses and journeys towards membership. 

Apart from many other events, concerts, and festivals there are two more events I would like to mention specially. One is the 90th Birthday of one of our most youthful members, Ligsma Kirpe. She will turn 90 on the 25th of April, and we invite everyone to celebrate with her and us at the Church. We may have the chance to listen to a Latvian fairy-tale from Ligsma, and I am sure that there will be many more artistic Birthday presents presented on that day.

The other event is Whitsun, as the Festival of the New Community! While the 12 disciples gather in prayer, they are filled by the Holy Spirit that des-cends onto them in the shape of a flame. A new “Spirit-Community” is founded, or I could probably say, the first real Christian community. From this community, the Holy Spirit, the message of the Gospels, the Christ Impulse was carried into the world. Where the strength of the individual human being unites with the strength of others, the world can be changed. The Healing, Holy Spirit can work.

This year in Germany the World  Congress of the Christian Community will take place, where hundreds of people from all around the world will celebrate Whitsun 2010. And so we would like to invite everyone from Victoria who feels a connection with our Melbourne Community to celebrate Whitsun together. To unite on a spiritual level by celebrating the special Whitsun Act of Consecration of Man, and of course on a social level through all the conversations and reunions. The Holy Spirit needs the communities of human beings in order to be in the world.

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