Our mission is stated on the news sheet. It is to grow in faith, love and numbers. That task is being addressed by some 60 of us involved day by day in church activities and another 60 either retired from an active role, save Sunday worship, or currently too stretched by work or family commitments or health considerations to be up front. This is a remarkable achievement for a village with population under 2,000.
The growth we seek has three dimensions – towards God in faith, towards the community in love and in the number that gather Sunday by Sunday and who work with us for Christian outreach. That growth is a work of invitation as Stuart Townend’s new hymn written out in the news sheet reminds us:
Come, people of the risen King, who delight to bring
him praise. Come, all and tune your hearts to sing to the Morning Star of
grace. From the shifting shadows of the earth we will lift our eyes to him,
where steady arms of mercy reach to gather children in. Come, young and old
from every land, men and women of the faith. Come, those with full or empty
hands, find the riches of his grace.
Growth comes from the Lord’s
invitation through us to seekers. It’s happening through the quality of our
worship and friendliness as new attenders testify. Sacraments don’t need to be
mechanical rituals. Preaching doesn’t need to be finger wagging moralism.
Christian fellowship doesn't need to be holier than thou superiority. At St
Giles there’s awesome warmth in the eucharist, gracious inspiration we trust in
the range of preaching and preachers and a fellowship that sees its Christianity
as about getting your head screwed on the right way.
The Gospel reading set for
today addresses the issue of discernment that’s so essential as we look forward
as a church with limited personnel and energies. The news sheet boat and fish
logo capture its essence. The disciples fish unfruitfully until they get
discerning advice from the Lord. Look with me at the last five lines of the
passage from the beginning of St John Chapter 21:
Jesus said to them,
‘Children, you have no fish, have you?’ They answered him, ‘No.’ He said
to them, ‘Cast the net to the right side of the boat, and you will find some.’
So they cast it, and now they were not able to haul it in because there were so
many fish.
Over the last year we've prayed discernment as a Church - and we've received it!
A year ago we were fishing fabric-wise on the left side of the boat as
our PCC gave attention to best provision of amenities including a toilet at St
Giles. The Lord turned our attention during 2012 to the right hand side, so to
speak, as he opened up the Martindale refurbishment as a possibility through
the Martindale Committee’s identifying and seeking the Verity Waterlow funding.
That hasn't meant the church toilet being forgotten, just that Jesus gave us
discernment through circumstances to
shift priorities as we sought to enhance our buildings overall to better serve growth in
faith, love and numbers.
Faithful to that leading,
and the call to fish for or rather engage with new people we’ve set out at the
end of the PCC report a major challenge for 2013 as making the Martindale a more effective mission focus serving to
bring new folk into the orbit of God’s love. If that is to happen we need
people on board, people well formed in Christian faith to help build outreach.
Over the last two years
several of us have been fishing to get connections with the youth. We sense, as
if from the Lord, we need his discernment to fish elsewhere for them or for
whoever the Lord has up his sleeve to lead the youth. That’s why we've written
down another 2013 challenge as involving
more young adults in church leadership.
In finance again
discernment is being given and sought. For the third year running we've been
unable to pay our parish share in full. It’s clear that of recent years we've only managed to pay it from the reserves we had then that are now pretty well
emptied. I would like to see fresh transparency over our finances which will
serve corporate discernment and demonstrate more fully the generosity of St
Giles membership and how the Lord is repaying it. God indeed loves a cheerful
giver as St Paul writes to the Corinthians (2 Corinthians 9.7) and also
encourages them, as I would encourage you, in these words: On the first day of every week, each of you is to put aside and save
whatever extra you earn (1 Corinthians 16.2). In other words put your
giving to God’s work top of the list and make it a proportion of your income.
The 23 group reports for
2012 are full of encouragement, though I ask myself as a church with 50 weekly
communicants is our fishing like that I saw on Dieppe pier last week, too many people
throwing their own lines? Most fish landed in Dieppe is caught in nets by
fishing teams. Can a small church like ours really keep up 23 realms of
engagement? How can we team up more?
That being said I’m a bit
of a loner myself and that may need addressing. As the group reports show I’m responsible
for two new initiatives, electronic discipleship and meditation group both,
near to my heart, but which I see as experimental.
The First Steps and village lunch reports remind us how much the
Martindale serves our mission. Now the Martindale looks a more attractive venue
commercially we will have to watch and guard its use so that it serves our aim
as a church which isn't raising money so much as growing Christians in faith, love and numbers.
That vision is best
implemented by a strategy founded on prayerful discernment. As I said at
Epiphany when we launched the new Mission Action Plan with my pair of scissors Show Each one reach one may be a good motto for 2013. Our main challenge
is one of reaching out, cutting into spiritual apathy with the two scissor
blades of prayer and invitation.
Through intercessory prayer for the spreading of
the gift of faith we open ourselves to Our Lord’s invitation to fish in the
right place. There are a good number of folk who’d come to Church if someone
would ask them. The best way to identify who in your acquaintance, or down your
street, may be open to an invitation from you to attend St Giles is to commit daily
in prayer to the spread of faith.
Our spire points up to a God whose
possibilities, exceeding our imagining, are released on earth through prayer.
'The future of the world lies with the
intercessors and connectors.' Someone wrote. Will you help change the future of the world
through St Giles by being the intercessors and connectors we so badly need to
see the body of Christ built up in this place?
Each one reach one – by scissor blades of prayer and invitation –
so that we anticipate in Horsted Keynes John’s Revelation, part of which we
heard as our first reading, where every
creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and in the sea, and all
that is in them, sing, ‘To the one seated on the throne and to the Lamb be
blessing and honour and glory and might for ever and ever! Amen!
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