Celebrating My Spiritual Ancestors

I first came across the idea of spiritual ancestors last week during discipleship group prayer at college.  The idea is that just as we inherit our physical DNA from our physical ancestors, from those members of our family who have gone before us; so too we inherit our spiritual DNA from Christian brothers and sisters who have gone before us.  These spiritual ancestors can either be people we know well or people we’ve never met, but they are all people who have had a profound spiritual influence upon us.

I would have to include members of my own family amongst them.  One was my mother who forced me as a child to go to Sunday School even when I didn’t want to and who thereby grounded my life in the Christian faith.  Another was my Aunty Christine, who persuaded me to go to a Christian Youth Camp in the Yorkshire Dales where I gave my life to Christ.

A number of Methodist Ministers have had an influence on my spiritual development and journey.  Their names would mean nothing to most of you, but I give God thanks for their lives, ministries and witness.

As a Methodist I have to acknowledge John Wesley and Charles Wesley as spiritual ancestors and I am profoundly grateful to the for the Methodist movement they started and which has blossomed into the church I am proud to be a member of today.

I also give thanks to God for the late Revd. David Watson, the Anglican Rector, evangelist and author whose theology so simply and clearly expressed in his books has had a huge influence on my understanding of the Christian faith.   I would also include in those thanks the late Revd. John Stott who has also has a huge influence on me through his books.  Stott’s book on ‘The Cross of Christ’ is without equal in my opinion.

To these spiritual ancestors, and others, I owe an enormous debt of gratitude and I thank God for each and every one of them; as well as for my brothers and sisters at Poulton Methodist Church and North Fylde Circuit and my brothers and sisters, both staff and fellow students, at Wesley Study Centre/Cranmer Hall, Durham who are shaping my walk with Christ right now.  May God bless them all.