Trinity 17 Enhancing our buildings 4th October 2009

I want to think with you this morning about enhancing our buildings.

This is the last of a three part sermon series on the priorities we identified in July at our thinking day at which those present identified three priorities:
Renewing our worship
Engaging with youth and families
Enhancing our buildings.

If your memories are good you may recall a similar threesome which we looked at before the thinking day – the ABC of the diocesan Life Together vision. Remember?

Attending to God
Building Christian community
Commending God’s love for the world

God is calling us to work for what is upward in renewing worship, who’s around as we gather, young and old into Christian community, and who’s out there as we work to commend God’s love in action and words and through our buildings.

We are wonderfully blessed in Horsted Keynes to have our worship sheltered, by this beautiful building that has heard God’s praise for over 30 generations. Keeping the House of God in good repair so that it is passed on to the next generation is a prime responsibility of mine and yours.

Our buildings, Church and the Martindale, are a given and we aim to make pragmatic adjustments to them in the name of Christian priorities. They need enhancing to meet the evolving needs and expectations, which goes beyond their necessary maintenance.

Bricks and mortar aren’t in the gospel overmuch. Christianity travelled light to begin with. What mattered was the Christian formation of individuals and families within God’s family.

Today’s scripture, for example, from Genesis 2 and Mark 10 sets forth marriage as God’s building block for human society. It has our Saviour Jesus Christ blessing children. A Christian society depends on the faithfulness of husbands and wives and on their faithful love for their children. It depends on the commitment of people to God, the Christian community and the needs of the world.

ABC – commitment to God, the Church and the world – these are priorities to clothe with Christian buildings! Trouble is the buildings are already there, which is not the ideal, and we have to develop them without ruining them!

I’ve been set up by our Thinking Day and the PCC’s desire to forward its three aims to speak this morning of our buildings and how we can enhance them.

Here goes then, and I hope we don’t stray too far from the readings we’re digesting on this 17th Sunday after Trinity!

Enhancing our buildings came down to two main priorities – a toilet for St Giles and refurbishing the Martindale.

There are other buildings we’re linked to. I spoke about Saint Giles’ School two weeks ago in the context of Engaging with youth and families. Then there’s the Parish Hall which stands on land belonging to the Diocese. There’s not much we as a parish can engage with on that account, save making sure any development of the Martindale complements the Parish Hall.

Firstly, then, a word about the proposal for a church toilet. As you know we already have access to the school toilet at this service but it’s quite a long way away. There are also occasions like funerals during term time when we cannot easily use the school toilet.

The annual cost of maintaining Saint Giles Church averaged out over the last ten years is in the order of £12,500. Our parish share is, additionally, around £50,000. Overall expenses are just short of £100,000 which is a lot for a church with Sunday adult attendance just over 50. Finding the extra £50-100,000 we’d need for the toilet would be a challenge but if it is in God’s plan it will bring with it God’s provision.

Every five years church is inspected under diocesan regulations and we are completing the repairs recommended in the 2007 inspection. You should shortly see the porch painted which will greatly enhance access to our church. Other areas due for painting are in the Lady Chapel, Crossing and above the High Altar where damp penetration has now been overcome. The Tower bell frame is to be further stabilised. The Sacristy and Choir Vestry are being renewed to be more fit for purpose. There are shingles to be replaced on the spire. All of these agreed repairs should be covered from designated funds.

The PCC agree with the consensus of the Thinking Day. We aim to raise funds in the medium term to enhance Saint Giles by installing a toilet and refreshment facilities beyond the north door by the font. All church growth theorists, and I was a church growth guru before coming here, all church growth theorists say that however awesome, intriguing and accessible worship is in a building three things will affect attendance. These are car parking, church heating and toilets. It makes sense for us to work on what’s missing here and so enhance this beautiful House of God by making it more accessible to young and old.

Secondly the PCC is working on the best way to develop the Martindale. We picked up the feeling expressed clearly on 5th July that having a church property situated near the middle of the village is a vital mission resource that we should develop to the best of our ability. Such enhancement would serve to make more of a meeting place and to build occasions where church members and non church members meet for a common purpose, such as the Wednesday toddler group and the Thursday coffee morning. In thinking and planning ahead the Martindale committee are aware that the success of any enhancement will depend on the emergence of ventures and leaders allied to Martindale use that are for the good of our community.

The vision needs broadening and promoting if the enhancement is to be useful. We don’t want St Giles left with a facility no one wants to use.

May I commend these two building enhancement schemes at this stage to your prayers?

We need to land a clearer forward plan as well as the human and financial resources to implement them. God willing there’ll be some specific proposals to put to the church and the village around the end of this year.

In reflecting on this third priority of enhancing our buildings the scripture readings for today look at first sight unpromising. What have the Genesis account of marriage and Our Lord’s reiteration of it and commending of children to do with our buildings? A few steps removed, certainly, but there is the business of recovering the main things and making the main things again the main things.

In Our Lord’s day we heard how a man was allowed to write a certificate of dismissal and to divorce his wife. Jesus takes us back to first principles and restates the principle, neglected then and certainly neglected now, that marriage is unbreakable in God’s eyes. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.

What we are about at Saint Giles is setting priorities as best we can. We have seen some things that we need to major on – renewing worship, engaging with youth and families, enhancing buildings – and this morning has been an occasion to state those principles more loudly so to speak. As a Church we are being called back to these tasks just as the Jews of Jesus’ day were called back by him to a view of marriage they’d lost sight of.

Another Spirit given connection between Thinking Day priorities and the scriptures this morning might be in the importance of using our buildings to strengthen marriage and family life which are just as much under threat today as they were in the Palestine of Our Lord. The provision of toilets is another move towards family friendliness in our worship. Thinking ahead on the Martindale we could see ourselves, with renewed facilities, being in a position to run marriage enrichment and parenting courses which benefit not just church members but the whole community.

Enhanced church buildings in Horsted Keynes would create spaces that better serve to engage families in worship and training in marriage and family life.

I’ve talked about the need to keep the main things the main things. On the ABC model the main thing of the three main things is Attending to God

The St Giles, Horsted Keynes main priorities are similarly headed by renewing worship.

Our worship and attending to God is both corporate and individual. The quality of this Eucharist is the summation of what the church membership aspires to as we offer our souls and bodies as a living sacrifice. Similarly the quality of our individual spiritual life is enriched by coming together in the way we do to hear God’s word and unite our own spiritual sacrifices with the Sacrifice of Christ. We can’t plead Christ’s Sacrifice in public without admitting his purchase on our lives.

When it comes to discerning God’s timing and provision for enhancing our buildings our individual and corporate attending to God will be pivotal.

Let’s keep the main things as the main things at St Giles by lifting up our hearts not just in Sunday Eucharist but in daily prayer, receptive to his possibilities for our lives and for our church.