| |
No Easy Buttons
General
Secretary David Cornick updates us
on
Catch
the Vision
‘Catch the vision’ is a pilgrimage to God’s
tomorrow. In the past few weeks I’ve been privileged to share in some
remarkable moments in local church life. I took part in exhilarating,
exciting worship in one of our black majority churches in London, and it
was obvious that every member of the congregation wanted to be there,
and expected to meet God in worship. The following week I was in the
middle of England, sharing the life of a church which has been
re-vitalised by cell church, and grown a vision of outreach in the local
community. During worship they commissioned a youth worker to focus that
outreach. Then, over a hectic weekend in commuter-belt, an act of
induction showed me the life of a delightful, multi-age ‘normal’ (is
there such a thing?!) United Reformed Church, and the opening of a
stunning church extension showed how mission can be brought to very
heart of a dynamic town centre. The architecture, art and furnishings
were so good you wouldn’t have known you were in a church!
a point of change
That is where the churches in Britain are at –
a point of transition and change. Part of the institution is creaking
(not all experiences are as good as these three), yet there is
excitement, passion and sure evidence of the wind of the Spirit rustling
the leaves. And out beyond the church, in the rest of God’s good
creation, there is what some have called a ‘spiritual revolution’ going
on as people turn increasingly from secularity to all forms of
mysticism, from astrology to reiki to holistic healing.
‘Catch the vision’ is about allowing
ourselves to be moulded by this time of transition into a new shape, and
discovering ways in which our understanding of Christian spirituality
can enter into a genuinely missionary dialogue with our changing
culture. A small part of that moulding is to do with structures, and (as
readers of Reform will know) that work is well under way in discussions
across our Synods and districts.
The second stage in the moulding process is,
we hope, a temporary one. It is about financial prudence, making sure
that we can afford what we do. Part of that work is a review of our
stewardship of money, most particularly the money we raise for M&M which
supports ministry and runs our programmes. The complementary part is to
look carefully at our programmes and institutions and ask how we can
work smarter to take about £1m out of the budget for 2007. That, we
think, will balance the books. We hope to have completed that piece of
work in time to bring recommendations (in the form of a variety of
scenarios) to the March Mission Council. We hope this will be temporary
because we dare to believe that the church actually wants to be involved
in spreading the good news of Jesus Christ in word and deed (which is
what our programmes are about), and will give generously for things that
it feels called to do.
change and the local
We have various principles in mind as we go
about this work. The most important is that the local is the arena of
change. If we are, as the Catch the Vision prayer invites us, going to
‘make a difference’ for Christ’s sake, it will be where local
communities of Christians are gathered. The vision has been caught, and
the excitement is there, often in unexpected as well as traditional
places – my experiences of the past few weeks suggest that the future
will be shaped rather differently to the past.
We are able to do church differently – we do
mid-week youth church in PILOTS, we have cell church systems and network
churches in our midst – and (thanks to the Ministries Resolution on
special category ministry at Assembly) we now have the possibility of
entering into yet more experimental work. But at the heart of all of
this are local communities. We believe that is where we need to be
directing our resources, because that is where change will happen.
We will reach the heart of ‘Catch the Vision’
when together we address the questions of what it means to be the people
of God in the places where we are, what it means to be a people who sit
under the Word of God and wrestle with the ways in which God’s Word in
Jesus Christ challenges and subverts the values of our consumer-led,
growth obsessed, frightened word. That is where we will be going, once
the structures debate has finished and the books are balanced.
Personally, I can’t wait because it’s exciting and about discipleship.
The other month I received a letter from a church complaining that
Church House ought to be able to tell them what to do to reverse their
decline. If there were a programme that could do that, a button to push,
the churches of Western Europe would have discovered it by now. God,
however, isn’t into systems and programmes. God is into prayer,
faithfulness, risk and joy. Find those in local churches, as I’ve
discovered over the last few weeks, and by the grace of God amazing
things can happen.
top |
|
|
LINKS:
Reform
Catch the Vision
|
