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Mike Writes for January 2010
Another year and another
decade opens before us. As I look at January there are a number of things
of interest, beginning with the feast of Epiphany when the wise men reach
Bethlehem. What exactly is Matthew trying to tell us through this story? Towards
the end of the month there is the Conversion of St Paul, arguably the most
important event after the resurrection, for without him the Church today would
be very different.
Also this month we have the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, 18th –25th.
I am not sure how long we have been praying for unity between the Christian
Churches but we seem no nearer now than at any time in my lifetime at least.
It is true that we now have a Covenant between the Anglican and Methodist
Churches and it is possible to have an inter-change of ministers, but the
Eucharist celebrated by a Methodist Minister in an Anglican Church should
be advertised as a Methodist service, even thought the words used are straight
from the Anglican Order of Service!
Relations with Rome seem to be somewhat strained, to say the least, with Pope
Benedict appearing to entice disenchanted Anglicans to move over en bloc to
Rome. That aside at grass roots level relations are very cordial and it is
our intention that all the churches in Ingol should march together at the
next Guild. Certainly at ministerial level there has always been a good relationship
between the different church leaders and I value highly my weekly meetings
with Fr Peter.
That said is there really any enthusiasm for unity? We might say that we have
an abundance of churches in Ingol and if you do not like one it is not hard
to get to another one in the village, or in deed any where in the rest of
Preston. I suspect that most of you attend St Margaret’s because you
are happy with the form of worship on offer here. It is home. You are a member
of the Church of England, have always attended and quite frankly do not want
to go to a Methodist, Baptist or Catholic service on a regular basis. I understand
that, and to be honest I have no wish to change denominations, even if I were
able to – I don’t want to jeopardize the pension at this stage!
We all want to worship where we are happy and indeed it is the style of worship
that separates us; indeed it is probably one of the main things we would look
for if we were to choose another Anglican church. We want to be apart for
worship, but that is only a small part of being a Christian, just an hour
or so a week. The rest of the time as we go out into the world to witness
to our faith we are just the same.
It is clear that, unless we have to, we will remain separate, worshipping
in our own modern buildings, each having to cope with all the expense of running
them. Money always comes into the equation and we know that most of our income
comes from members of the congregation and this makes us defensive in our
outreach together. What about a joint Sunday School where we could pool our
resources? Great in theory, especially if it were held at our church for the
chances are that we would pick up most of the parents of the children who
came along, not so good if it were at the Methodist Church and the parents
went there. We cannot afford to lose people.
We had a very good joint venture with the Methodists through the M&Ms
group for the 5-8 year old children, based here at St Margaret’s. It
closed when the Methodists withdrew to try something else. I suspect that
the real truth was that we were picking up children from the group in our
Sunday Club and they were not.
It takes a lot of courage to do something jointly, which may not benefit your
own church. In theory we should be working together to bring people into the
Kingdom of God, but really we want them to be Anglicans and to come and join
us. We cannot afford to be otherwise, we have bills to pay and accounts to
balance. It is going to take real faith and real courage to work in a way,
which will not directly benefit us, but until we take that step in faith we
will forever remain apart and our witness to our community will be divided
and weakened.
We need to pray very hard for unity and for the courage to go where God directs
us. It cannot be right that we should always be apart, in our separate buildings
doing our own thing, often duplicating what others are doing, and may be better
than ourselves. Come and pray with us on Sunday, 24th January, 4.00 pm in
Ingol Methodist Church and perhaps together we will discover God’s will
for us.
Have a happy New Year.
Mike
