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The Revd Roberta Rominger's address to Assembly
My engagement with the United Reformed Church
began when I wrote to the General Secretary. Bernard Thorogood still
remembers – I guess it wasn’t every day he got a letter from Tombstone,
Arizona. After an agony of waiting, the day finally came when I opened
my mailbox in the Tombstone Post Office and found his reply. I felt like
broadcasting it to the whole town. Bernard thanked me for my enquiry
about ministry in the URC (enquiry, with an e! We inquire where I come
from). He referred me to my own denomination for application details.
Bless him, he didn’t say, You’ve only been in the ministry five minutes
– don’t you think you should wait awhile? My denomination said that. At
that point I couldn’t have said why there was fire burning in my bones
for the United Reformed Church, but I knew I didn’t want to wait. To be
honest, part of it was a pretty urgent desire to get as far away from
Tombstone, Arizona as it was possible to go. From his desk at 86
Tavistock Place, the General Secretary of the United Reformed Church
offered me gracious encouragement and my life has never been the same.
The URC received me, welcomed me, included me,
nurtured me, taught me pretty much everything I know, gave me
opportunities, forgave my mistakes challenged and deepened my faith. I
could give you 50 reasons why I love this church, but the first on the
list would be the most important – I find God here. Have done from the
first day. Still do, over and over and over again. I find God in the
faithfulness of this church, its imagination, its boldness… and in its
restlessness, its dissatisfaction, its unease. What is God saying to us
through the signs of these times? Church attendance on the wane,
aggressive secularism dominating the media? Widespread rejection of
“institutional religion” even by many who would consider themselves
Christians. There are fresh expressions of church around us as varied as
the creativity of the Christians pioneering them. We welcome them – they
give us hope - but few of them are self-sustaining and scarcely any
could support the sort of infrastructure this Assembly represents, to
educate the next generation of leaders or engage with world Christianity
or speak a Christian word to power or administer a pension plan. What is
God saying? Are we facing the demise of church as we have known it? Or
if we listen carefully enough and respond openly enough, is there a
future for us in God’s unfolding purposes?
I dare to believe that we do have a future.
And while I share the URC commitment to walk in unity with other
churches, I believe that God still has a purpose for the United Reformed
Church. We have the flexibility, the openness, the readiness for
reformation, to respond to the challenges of a new day. The
restructuring we’ve done has left many of our churches feeling cut
adrift just now, but if we can get the glue right between us, we have
the capacity for a perfect combination: support and mutual
accountability and support on the one hand, freedom for local
imagination and initiative on the other. Light on our feet, ready for
mission in all the different forms it takes in all the different places
we are. Our worship can reflect that – we are free to worship as the
Spirit leads us. Our forms of congregational life can reflect it – have
a building if you want, or don’t have one. Stay where you are, or move.
Expand, contract, unite, re-plant. Develop with insights from other
cultures. Go with the energies of a new generation of believers. All of
it is as easy in the United Reformed Church as an institution open to
God can possibly make it. That’s not a mistake. It grows directly out of
our understanding of God and our understanding of faithfulness. We have
a vocation together: Christ’s people, transformed by the gospel, making
a difference. You don’t do that by sitting back passively letting
somebody else get on with the witness or squeezing yourself to fit into
somebody else’s mould. You do it by responding to God where you are.
The General Secretary’s job in the midst of
all that is partly to stay out of the way. Get the structures right,
support a light-touch operation at the centre, make sure it’s cost
effective, giving the churches what they need without burdening them
with what they don’t need. Enable those things we do jointly that we
actually couldn’t do on our own.
But more than that, the job is to be the face
of our belonging to one another. I want to meet everybody. I want to go
everywhere. I want to hear all the stories and help ponder all the
challenges. I know I’m going to bump into human limitations here, not
least on account of one or two things waiting for me to do at Church
House. But I want to see all of it and then I want to reflect back to
you who we are and where we’re going. I want to embody it back in Church
House. We have an exciting new team developing there – you will see at
this Assembly how many comings and goings there are at Church House just
now. This is a moment of opportunity for new relationships and fresh
ways of working.
As I’ve said, I know
personally what it’s like to receive encouragement from the General
Secretary. I want to give that encouragement back to you. And I want to
show a URC face to the world. Not an apologetic URC face, but one that
radiates the confidence of the second largest Christian family in the
world. We may be small here, but then we’re so self-effacing. Insofar as
I have a particular sense of calling as I begin this ministry, it is to
encourage the United Reformed Church to come out of hiding and stop
apologising and stand tall. Then if people don’t want to join us, fine.
But there is no virtue in being a well-kept secret. There is no virtue
in going into our ecumenical relationships like a bunch of doormats,
reticent about our own insights because our only priority is for
everybody to get along. There’s not time tonight for me to tell you the
other 49 things that are at the top of my list of why I love the United
Reformed Church. But there will be time. Let’s make time. I need to hear
yours too.
Good people, I thank you for your confidence
in me. I have confidence in you too. I sense God, urgent among us.
Impaitient for us to have enough faith to claim the possibilities of our
life together. God grants us the Wisdom we need, and the courage, and
the hope.
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