Phillip Hockley, CS

Date: Sunday, Sept. 27 at 3 pm

Webinar URL: www.bit.ly/royal-oak-hockley-tmc

Speaker: Phillip Hockley

— When most people think about life-changing moments, they may not think of a lecture on Christian Science. That wasn’t why I attended a lecture for the first time; I didn’t expect to walk out a new person. But I found something in that lecture that was indeed life-transforming. Christian Science gave me a new view of God that I’d not had before: a view of God as Love itself, divine Love that loved me fully. I also discovered that this loving God was not the source of my troubles (which were many) but the solution to them. My life began to improve quickly after that and I became a healthy man after many years of suffering.

There’s no question that I was jubilant about the way my life was being transformed. But what impressed me the most was finding out that these kinds of breakthroughs aren’t one-time, personal miracles. God’s love is available to everyone, and there’s even a textbook on Christian Science healing that explains the power of God’s love in our lives: Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures.

What I’ve gone on to learn, and what I’ll share in my lecture, is that the perspective of God and reality that Christian Science opens up is one that offers freedom from whatever in our lives seems painful, debilitating, or limiting. I’ll talk about a 19th-century woman, Mary Baker Eddy, who after a life-threatening injury, discovered this new view of God for herself and went on to explain her discovery and its Bible-based principles in her book Science and Health. And I’ll share how that discovery is still relevant to our lives today because of what it reveals about God’s great love for each of us and its powerful, life-transforming effects.

Lindsey Taylor

Speaker: Lindsey Taylor, of Gloucester, England

Date: Oct. 17, 2020 at 11 a.m.

Webinar URL: to come

Topic: Love—The Healing Answer to Prayer

This lecture explains the perspective that Christian Science brings to prayer and its healing potential, putting prayer at the forefront of progress for individuals and communities in the 21st century.

It traces Mary Baker Eddy’s love for God and for mankind from childhood and on to her discovery of the divine healing Principle, the Comforter that Christ Jesus promised.

It explores some essentials for effective prayer that are brought to light in the Lord’s Prayer and in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures.

It answers the question, ‘What does prayer have to do with science or health?’

Through examples of healing it describes the transforming effect on people’s lives of prayer that is based on understanding God’s nature as divine Love.

About Lindsey Taylor: I grew up in a family in which Christian Science was at the heart. The Bible and Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy became like good friends and from them I learned how to pray.

The foundation of effective prayer is an understanding of God’s nature and of one’s relationship to God, and on this basis I found that prayer is a natural and gentle way to take care of one’s health and activities. This gave me a great sense of security and so when I left home and went to university to study politics I made the decision to keep Christian Science at the centre of my life. I am so glad that I did! In my studies, in business and in bringing up a family of three children I have found its teachings invaluable.

For me, the most wonderful thing that Mary Baker Eddy has given mankind through Christian Science is an explanation of God which is accessible and meaningful to people from all backgrounds and with diverse interests. I have always loved exploring ideas about the role of God in our lives — with young people in Sunday School and with the public through my work as a Christian Science practitioner and teacher, as a prison chaplain and as Committee on Publication for Gloucestershire.

The needs of humanity haven’t really changed since Bible times and one of the greatest today remains the need for mental peace and security. Good health, good relationships and a good life follow from that. I would like lecture audiences to know that they can find whatever they need to establish these through understanding God and how He works in their lives.

Date: Tue, Oct. 27, 2020 at 7 pm

Webinar URL: www.bit.ly/3hwn8Th

Speaker: Lyle Young

Topic: Christian Science — a clearer view of you

Who are we, really?  You and I, and all humanity?  The health, harmony, and joy we experience in life depends on our answer to this question.

Mary Baker Eddy, who founded the Christian Science church, had a profound insight into the nature of God as infinite Love.  She perceived that God is the only substance, intelligence and Life of the universe, without the opposition typically ascribed to darkness or evil.  Moreover, Eddy realized that this was the basis of Jesus’ healing works.

This is revolutionary.  Eddy didn’t say that conflict, struggle, and disease exist as unavoidable realities, then in addition there’s also God’s love.  Rather, she saw infinite Love, and genuine creation as the perfect spiritual expression of this Love, instead of the imperfect, material existence we typically assume unavoidably defines us.  To Eddy, infinite Love, being infinite, simply excludes the possibility of anything else.

Such an unusual theology might have ended as a footnote to history, except that Eddy and her students boldly used it to reinvigorate Christianity and its lost element of healing.  Since then, some 65,000 accounts of healing have been verified and published — healings of everything from cancer to AIDS to blindness, from drug addiction to broken bones.

Here’s one example.  Decades ago, a friend of mine was diagnosed with cancer in her abdomen.  Exploratory surgery revealed many tumors. Though her doctors didn’t think she could live much longer, they recommended a second operation to determine the best treatment.

Meanwhile, my friend was praying with a Christian Science practitioner.  She was understanding herself not as wholly or partly material — dependent on her genes or her childhood, or on surgery or chemotherapy — but as purely spiritual, part of the perfect spiritual creation mentioned above.

At her husband’s urging, my friend scheduled the second surgery.  Afterwards, the surgeon reported, in his words, that she was “clean as a baby.”

To the degree that we understand our identity as purely spiritual — knowing that each of us shines, now and eternally, as a unique expression of infinite Love — we experience healing.  The result is wellness, opportunity, spiritual progress, and the highest degree of joy.

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About the Speaker: Lyle Young learned of Christian Science when he was a university student through an on-campus organisation of Christian Science. Knowing the world needed healing, wanting to be part of the solutions to the world’s problems, and feeling that Christian Science provided the spiritual tools to pray effectively and find answers, Lyle began taking one newspaper each week to pray about the issues described in all the articles. Very quickly, he knew that doing this only once a week wasn’t enough! He began reserving first two and then three nights a week to pray for others and the world. And eventually, he left his university programme to devote himself full time to helping others through prayer as a Christian Science practitioner.

In addition to his public healing ministry, Lyle also is an authorized teacher of Christian Science, to help others reliably practice this healing system as well. He has served the Church of Christ, Scientist, (The Mother Church) in many roles, including legislative and media liaison as Committee on Publication in Canada; First Reader of The Mother Church, conducting multiple weekly church services in English and Spanish; member of the Christian Science Board of Lectureship giving lectures and workshops in 34 countries; member of the Christian Science Board of Directors, the governing board of the Church; Clerk of The Mother Church; and frequent contributor to the magazines published by the Christian Science Publishing Society.

It’s a deep and broad love that motivates Lyle: a love of God, of the ideas in the Bible and in the published writings of Mary Baker Eddy, and of all humanity. That love and affection for humanity expresses itself in a keen interest in cultures, languages, history, the arts, and sports. Lyle runs and swims regularly and is a four-season cyclist. The latter also relates to his support of environmentalism.

Lyle lives in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. Having served as Secretary-Treasurer of the Ontario Multifaith Council on Spiritual and Religious Care for five years, he feels at ease with those of a wide variety of faith expressions, both Christian and other than Christian.

Godwin Anakor

Topic: Proving Dominion Over All Evils

Date: Sat, November 14, 2020 at 2:00 PM EST

Webinar URL: to come

About the Speaker: Godwin Anakor is a Christian Science practitioner with a healing practice based at Enugu in Enugu State of Nigeria. He has been a member of The Mother Church, The First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston, Massachusetts, since 1979 and has been active in the Christian Science church in Enugu for many years

Prior to becoming a full-time practitioner of Christian Science, he worked for 29 years in business and finance, first as an accounting officer at the East Central State Marketing Board. In 1980, he developed a business importing spare parts for Mercedes cars from Germany, traveling extensively to Europe and Asia on business trips.

He decided to leave his business venture after 20 years; he felt compelled to do so in order to enter the full-time healing practice of Christian Science. He said, “I needed to do God’s business first. I had seen this power to heal firsthand when I had a ruptured appendix.

Mr. Anakor is married and has five adult sons. He speaks English and Igbo.