Easter 4 Good Shepherd Sunday John 10.16 26th April 2015

Chairman’s address at the Annual Meeting

It’s a great gift to have our annual church meeting on Good Shepherd Sunday with its great pastoral and missionary impetus.

I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold. Jesus says in John 10.16. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd.

The wellspring of mission is God’s heart for the world – these I must bring – and our catching that heart so we work with him so there will be one flock, one shepherd.

As your parish priest I’m Jesus’ under shepherd for us and my invitation on his behalf is to ponder the heart of Jesus and make it your own, to ponder prayerfully those in your acquaintance who are in the words of the Prayer Book ordination service Christ’s sheep dispersed abroad…his children who are in the midst of this naughty world. WE are, in the words of the Prayer Book to seek that they may be saved through Christ forever.

These I must bring… Jesus has his heart on the lost of Horsted Keynes and its surrounds and he wants that heart to be more and more in us individually and as a Christian community. The lost who’re aching from employment, health, security or relationship issues. Those lost without space to be what they’re meant to be on account of pressures upon them of work or family or disability or poverty even. We are to be Jesus for them as he is in them seeking us as in the least of his brothers and sisters.

Our mission, our vision, is God given and that’s our greatest strength and why all we do is nothing worth unless it’s undergirded by prayer.

Last year we made a special Novena or nine day prayer focus in the run up to Harvest and we’re invited by the PCC to make a similar nine day focus next month in the run up to Pentecost.

Yesterday at Diocesan Synod the Bishops set forth a Diocesan Vision for Growth which the new PCC will be helping us engage with as a congregation later in the year. Some resources will be available to help build on our existing Mission Action Plan which is for St Giles to grow in faith, love and numbers

What can be said about these three elements of growth?

As I report as APCM Chairman on our life together over the last year and help set sights on the forthcoming challenges not least in the context of the Diocesan challenge I want to look backward and forward with reference to John 10.16 These I must bring and how that ‘bringing’ to Jesus is being effected so far as faith, love and numbers go.

First the Good Shepherd calls us as a congregation to grow in faith both ourselves and through sharing the saving gift of faith among his children who are in the midst of this naughty world seeking that they may be saved through Christ forever.

With the parish priest the PCC has shaped and monitored mission action to promote the spread and deepening of faith over the last year. There’s been special teaching and engagement with priest poet George Herbert through James Nicholson, the Jesus Prayer through my book and the Advent Premier series and on Robert Leighton in Lent through my partnership with Ann Govas. In October we held a not so successful stewardship renewal. Looking ahead we seek growth of faith expressed in better ownership of proportionate giving to God's work among worshippers, one of the stated challenges on our PCC report. We are also set for the teaching and pastoral gift and training task of a parish deacon as David Howland cones among us from his ordination on 27th June. With Sarah, Oliver and Charlotte he is to be kept in our prayers.

The Good Shepherd’s call secondly to build love in Christ's flock and beyond has been mirrored in the celebration of baptisms, marriages and funerals over the last year as well as in various pastoral ventures. Our church centre the Martindale has new financial buoyancy, allied to its energetic committee, and its use in new ways, and by new groups, like the weekly singing group. The pastoral work of St Giles operates through her School where church members work with me as governors and as teachers of the faith through hosting Friday assemblies. The school were involved in Prayer Spaces and we are talking with the teaching staff about developing Christian meditation in the service of our children. Looking to pastoral challenges ahead there’s a continuous need to raise up volunteers to man things: sacristans, Churchwardens, webmasters, church secretaries and so on. We’d benefit from an improving the communication of such needs so as to engage those appropriately gifted, willing and available to serve into the most necessary realms of ministry under God at St Giles.

I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold, these I must bring in Jesus says. The third prong of our MAP mirrors his desire for growth in numbers at St Giles. Over the last year we held a Back to Church Sunday and broadcast well a number of special services so church has been packed on a good number of occasions. A small team has worked assiduously to host the last Sunday of the month '5 O'clock Service' drawing together committed Christians from across denominations into a word based format with, as at St Giles, occasional surprise visitors. In the summer the new PCC will be heading up plans obedient to the Diocesan Vision for Growth launched yesterday. This requests a parish audit and identification of one thing we feel right to major on in 2016 in service of our better knowing, loving and following Jesus. This one thing has to be notified to the Archdeacon by the end of this year. We anticipate a facilitated congregational meeting probably around  harvest in October. Meanwhile we’ll be keeping the Prayer Novena before Pentecost inviting God’s Holy Spirit to bless us with growth.

Over the last year numbers of folk have come in, on to our Roll or as new communicants - one confirmed and three or four in training. Numbers have also moved heavenwards or to Ardingly, Cheshire, Haywards Heath or wherever. The Lord gives, the Lord takes away. Blessed be the name of the Lord. Job 1:21

Blessed indeed be Jesus our Good Shepherd whose heart beats in our midst in the Blessed Sacrament of his body and blood, the wellspring of our mission, the Jesus who is forming up a Eucharistic people in Horsted Keynes, a people thankful to God, an Easter people whose song is 'Alleluia'.

Blessed praised and hallowed be Our Lord Jesus Christ upon his throne in glory, in the most holy sacrament of the altar and in the hearts of all his faithful people now and for ever and to the age of ages. Amen.

Canon John Twisleton          Rector of St Giles, Horsted Keynes