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

Annual parochial church meeting eucharist 27th April 2014

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! By his great mercy he has given us a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead,

Those words from 1 Peter capture the solidity of faith that’s built on the sure foundation of the risen Lord Jesus Christ. That new birth which is ours in baptism and confirmation leads us in the apostle’s words into an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, who are being protected by the power of God through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.

Heady words – and a good tonic for APCM Sunday when the parish priest uses his sermon as a status check. As I read them I thought both of the joy of Easter and of the joy of admitting eleven new members to Holy Communion over the last year, a major encouragement to the life of the Christian community here at St Giles and very much an answer to specific prayer.

The testimonies they give to faith have been an encouragement to one and all, not least Lesley Whiting’s on Premier Radio following her July confirmation and those offered on Easter Sunday by those confirmed last month. Their Christian formation in creed, sacraments, commandments and prayer is having a ripple effect on us all and beyond these walls in the village. The lunch James Nicholson organized for the recently confirmed on Palm Sunday was a great welcome to them. It was also typical of James’ thoughtful leadership as Churchwarden which has been a great encouragement to me and to many over the last 5 years.

Another sign of resurrection faith that’s evident me is “5 o’clock at the Martindale” that’s brought together Christians across denominations over the last seven months in more participative worship and teaching, building on last year’s achievement in renovating the Martindale. Besides “5 o’clock” we have seen the Martindale well used for days of reflection and, at a more prosaic level, bookings are well up so there’s been good return on the investment of funds we made in our Church Centre.

In this [we] rejoice, even if now for a little while [we] have had to suffer various trials, so that the genuineness of [our ]faith - being more precious than gold that, though perishable, is tested by fire - may be found to result in praise and glory and honour when Jesus Christ is revealed.

When the apostle speaks of resurrection faith he does so in the context of hardship. For us that is focused on the struggle it remains to engage children and families with St Giles’s despite having 130 children at the school. We’re grateful for all the ways we engage with our School, not least the Friday assemblies led by St Giles’ lay leaders, school’s involvement in the October Prayer exploration and the two pupils confirmed recently. At the same time I continually entrust to God our difficulty in gaining commitment to Sunday worship. It’s also true of the baptism families that regularly pass through our doors, and it isn’t a problem unique to St Giles.  Nor does it reflect on all the energy Chris Wheatley and the team put into Sunday Club, First Steps and so on. People, young people especially, are missing spiritual vision capital S, by which I mean the sort of all consuming vision which has brought many of us in St Giles this morning to give our all to the service of God.

Faith – [is] more precious than gold [and will] result in praise and glory and honour when Jesus Christ is revealed.

Looking to that revelation, that cause which will outlast us all, is what St Giles is about if it’s about anything – not a social club or building appreciation club but part of God’s never-ending family we know as the ‘one, holy, catholic and apostolic church’.  Over the last year several individuals have had to suffer various trials some of which have taken them away from us but not from the Church overall. We sent off Stephen & Dawn Hitchen with their children to Jordan and John and Hilary Thraves to the West Country. Bob Pelling’s final illness and passing has been a great loss to the church and the village and most of all to Jean. I think of other individuals whose difficult journeys we accompany in prayer and care represented on our sick list as well as the pastoral ministry exercised towards bereaved families that is facilitated by having a resident parish priest. Another trial is financial, again one we’ve been surrounding with prayer, linked to our current incapacity to raise the share the diocese expects from a community with a full time priest.

In April’s P&P I addressed the state of St Giles in these words which seem worth repeating from the pulpit as they quickly  us where we’re at as a Church:

60 folk gather on an average Sunday, 10 at 8am and 50 at 10am including on average 8 children. These figures have been constant over my 5 years as Rector so we’re drawing in new members sufficient to balance loss through illness, death or moves away from the village. Our Mission aim is ‘to be a church growing in faith, love and numbers’.

The leadership of the parish priest is allied to that of the Churchwardens ..and another 8 members of the Parochial Church Council who coordinate the life and work of St Giles. PCC oversees four energetic groups serving Churchyard, Fabric, Finance and the Martindale and it liaises with School Governors, Five o’clock service, Friends of Horsted Keynes Church, Deanery Synod and our Parish Safeguarding Co-ordinator Kath Brooke-Webb and Webmaster David Ollington.

In recent months PCC agenda included planning and reflection afterwards on outreach services, dealing with carpet beetle in Church, sharing our faith, the new memorial path for cremated remains, renewing Prayerline, funding the work of the Church, inviting church members to write a Letter to God at Easter and working towards a church toilet – St Giles Church has an interesting and varied agenda.

We are your Church, I am your Rector and we welcome your support!

As a community-oriented Church we must beware any tendency to become a fortress over against the world around us even if some of recent changes in society push us that way.  Increasingly Christians in the UK are having to learn to speak two languages, that of their faith and that of their allegiance to the common life of Britain. Faith - being more precious than gold is tested by fire and one test is that of rendering to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and to God the things that are God’s to quote our Lord and Saviour in Mark 12.17.

As a Church we seek to give God what is due to God in the sacrificial worship of the eucharist. Part of that offering, some would say a part that is eloquent of the level of our allegiance, is the money put on the collection plate or transferred monthly by banker’s order to St Giles.  Along with the financial  gifts we make are those voluntary gifts of time and talents pledged in service we see exercised in the many and varied ministries here at St Giles. For these on everyone’s behalf, and on behalf of God, I say thank you this morning as we invite new commitments to service as in the PCC and other elections.

We are a community Church but we’re first of all the Church of Jesus Christ who rose from the dead welcoming him in word and sacrament, prayer and Christian fellowship. The last sentence of our first reading says it all in its invitation to keep that faith pure and untarnished by materialism.

Although you have not seen [Christ], you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and rejoice with an indescribable and glorious joy, for you are receiving the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls.

Such is the gift that best animates us here at St Giles, the gift from beyond this world that our spire invites us towards. The gift of Jesus Christ with whom we engage as we open ourselves to the meaning and power of both the scriptures and the eucharist. Here within these walls week by week is found a purpose for living and a reason for dying through an unquenchable hope stretching down from the miracle of Easter.

 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! By his great mercy he has given us a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead,

Annual parochial church meeting eucharist 14th April 2013 8am/10am

The annual parochial church meeting is an opportunity to be reminded of our vision as a church, of how it’s being implemented and who’s involved. It’s about challenge, affirmation and communication as well as refreshing leadership in some areas as the Holy Spirit prompts people to commit to new work as part of St Giles.

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!