|
|
Welcome to ST MICHAEL & All ANGELS CHURCH (Church of England) St
Michael's Green, |
|
|
||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
||||||||||
|
Record of the Annual verbal overview and encouragement given by
Reverend Camilla Walton to the Church of St Michael and All Angels,
Beaconsfield Team, at the Annual
Church meeting for 2009 It should be noted this was written intended to be heard
and not read… For myself much of the year has
been about making contacts: With you as my new family in Christ, with the
wider team, and with the community in which we live. This has included re
igniting our relationship with High March school where I have led assembly to
all age groups, and recently we welcomed a senior year group to the church
for an exploration of what goes on. I am happy to report that the school
wishes to continue my visits on a regular basis and more classes will be
coming into church. I hope also to develop my shared role with the rest of
the team with St Mary’s primary school and others. Other
natural points of contacts have been happy excursions in to the T-club, the
local professional women’s meeting and I will be speaking at the women’s
group of the Baptist church in the summer. I am a
great believer in ‘lurking’. Being seen to be around and being open to
conversations. It has been a delight to meet new mothers and carers at
Bulrushes and green shoots of faith enquiry are evident. I ask for your
prayers and support for this to grow in the coming year. Before I
move on to a vision for the future I would like to make final note of those
who have retired in this past year. Tessa, who had so ably assisted a
succession of priests in church administration, Joy, who has been a dedicated
Verger since Harry’s time, and Helen and David
Baker as leader of the choir and male voice respectively: we have given our ‘thankyou’s’ already but I would like to add a personal
note of appreciation for all they have done.
In looking for that vision lets briefly consider context
and resources. Context:
John Finney says ‘Christendom, as an
overarching cohesive body of belief and morals held to by the great majority
of the people in the West, is evaporating’, That
original Christendom was probably what the majority of us here grew up with,
so assuming he is right and this country is now a secular one, this means our
natural assumptions and own experience is going to be at odds with the
reality of people with whom, in the main, we have contact with. I do not want
to get entangled with discussing Post modernity, suffice it to say, the
‘times they have been a changing’ and if we want to proclaim the Gospel with
effective witness we have to be realists about context. Graham
Cray, Bishop of Maidstone writes: ‘All major church traditions were
shaped by Christendom, and so by an expectation they have a special right to
be heard and that people ‘ought’ to listen to them. Whole strategies of
evangelism have been based on residual guilt about not going to church. But
no longer’ and
again, in his book Being Human being
church Robert Warren helpfully
speaks of the church defined in two styles: the
Church in ‘inherited mode’ =
building + priest + stipend or ‘emerging mode’ = community + faith + action. Inherited
mode isn’t all bad news, it holds an excellent record in pastoral work and
care, examples of sacrifice, service and compassion through the church and
its clergy, but this model can also be fixed and unwieldy. There is a danger
of disconnection from the world because church and society are not co-terminous. The
emerging model has emphasis on community, faith and action and resonates with
what is happening in 21 century society. i.e.: meaning is found through
relationship. I suggest
we have feet in both camps, and I am not criticising anything of what we do,
however I think we need to stay alert to the change that the post-modern
mindset brings to our own ability to evangelise and communicate with the
world in which we are placed by God. For a
decade now my own feeling is that we are church in transition. Church that is
bridging the past Christendom and the future mission based church. This is
both exciting and challenging and will necessarily be messy and uncomfortable
for all of us at some time. I would
like to encourage us to see this as opportunity. We have a church here with a
great tradition of natural community, of care for those in need and hopefully
of welcome to all comers. So in some terms we need to go on doing what has
been done, but we are being given a chance for rediscovery and fresh
discovery. Today’s scene is not a comfortable place for any church and
its ministry but I suspect it is more close to the roots that we read about
in the emerging church recorded in the Acts of the Apostles. I spoke of mentioning my role in vision and future. Part
of that role is to consider “What does
it mean to provide leadership in a church that once shaped culture but is now
fast becoming, or some would say has become, a minority sub-culture?” my response is ‘to care, tend and celebrate the existing church, people,
structures, traditions, but also to offer models and resources that will be
freeing and enabling, nurturing ways to grow and support effective ministry
for all we touch. I am both your servant and your leader, supporting and
challenging. One wise comment about ministry suggests: ‘love and
challenge = disruption and growth’. So enough theory what about real action for the future:
So my friends, what I offer to you is this. We are a
church of many blessings, in the shape of activity and people. We are a
church of transition, well set to cope with the changing landscape of our
environment because of the tradition and faith upon which we are founded. But we
are a church in need of God’s guidance and support as we seek to grow and
develop, to be ‘the midwife’ as it were of tomorrow. Lets not
be daunted by all this, I have laid out what we have been, who we are and a
hope for the future. However, the real I look
forward to journeying on with you. Thank
you. Back to |
|
|||||||||||||
