Lent 3 -  14 March 2004 - St Peter's

Fr Mark Bonney

Normally in the course of the Annual Church Meeting I say something about where we are and where I hope we're going - since I have a captive audience now, and perhaps not everyone will stay to the meeting - and also so as not to prolong the meeting too much I thought it would be a good idea to use this sermon slot for the state-of-the nation report.

Some words from the first reading "Everyone who thirsts, come to the waters…. Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price…..Seek the Lord while he may be found, call upon him while he is near."

It's a good idea occasionally to remind ourselves of what we're basically about because the myriad of things that we do (and the weighty report of parish activities covers a myriad of things) - these things that we do can sometimes make us forget what we're principally about and to what end we 'do' so many things. 

And what we're about is God - God as revealed to us in Jesus Christ: all the things that we do are there to say to us and to others - 'Come - come and see that the Lord is good - come and seek the Lord while he may be found'.

The Christian community is first of all here as a worshipping community - people who gather to focus on God - not to focus on themselves - but on God. Far too much worship gets focussed on ourselves, what I like, what I get out of it, what it does to me - God is the focus - it's in worship that we begin the journey of becoming selfless. It's vital that we have worship in both our churches that's God-centred - that's the only thing in the end that will really be attractive.

Then inspired by our encounter with the living God we can turn outwards to serve our neighbours and community in the multitude of ways that our reports put before us - the loving service of neighbour is at the heart of Christian witness and is vital if we're going to share the love of Christ.

We also need to be able to give an account of the hope that is in us - as St Paul puts it. So I have, and will continue to place emphasis on the support and teaching given to young and old alike. One of my concerns is the low level of understanding of the Christian faith in many adults - having been to a confirmation class when they were 11 or 12 some have never been to anything of a Christian educational nature beyond hearing a Sunday sermon. I've been fascinated by the number of fringe church people I've spoken to recently who are clearly seeking for something, but have a real problem with a great deal of the Bible, and parts of the Creed - when I say to them, well, it isn't all meant to be taken literally - and then explain some parts of it really exciting conversations ensue. We could probably all do with being more articulate about what the Bible, the Creeds and the basics of the Christian faith are about - and to that end I strongly recommend the Emmaus courses to people - those who have been on them, especially the ones run by John Malcolm can vouch for that. 

Worship, service and teaching - vital to what we're about. And it's fantastic that we're so blessed in this parish with opportunities for all of these. God has blessed us and is encouraging us to develop these things even more.

It's within this broad picture that the PCC has looked ahead and discerned four important areas for us to think through and develop in the coming years: Fr Martin wrote about them in the Review and they're mentioned in the PCC report in the Accounts - but I expect many won't remember or have got that far in the reports. So let me remind us of these areas.

Firstly there's the felt imperative to develop the partnership with the Methodists at All Ss and to move towards greater integration. Much has happened recently - as I said earlier, worship is the fundamental activity of a Christian community, if Christians can't worship together then they're lost… and because it's so vital we have the strongest feelings about it… and this is an area that has been a stumbling block in the past, and which prayerful efforts are being put in to ease and remove. My plea is for those at All Saints not to judge on one experience but to consider the bigger picture. My plea for St Peter's people is to drag ourselves out of the view that this is something that happens 'up there' so we don't need to worry about it…. It affects us all, and the call of the gospel for Christians to be one in mission and service, needs to touch us all. It's hard - we all like our comfort zones - in the Deanery smaller parishes who are simply not going to have a priest to themselves in the future, are being encouraged to co-operate with neighbours: sadly the way this works out sometimes can give one the impression that the next-door- parish are enemies engaged in something quite different rather than fellow Christian pilgrims. There are some St Peter's folk who don't go to All Ss when the service is up there - there are some All Ss folk who aren't here this morning because it's here - that gets writ very large when we talk across denominations…. but literally, for God's sake, we need to work at it.

The second important area of the PCC's vision is about exploring what lay ministry really means. Lay ministry doesn't mean helping the clergy do things that we think they ought to do if there were more of them or if they had more time - lay ministry isn't about getting as many lay people as possible to take different parts of the service so that the priest only does what the priest absolutely has to do - it isn't about getting as many people as possible into cassocks and surplices. Lay ministry is about each of us - and I mean each of us because priests are members of the laos too - the people of God - it's about each of us fulfilling our baptismal calling. Each of us has special gifts - and the annual reports are in many ways examples of lay ministry in action - one aspect of that is that we don't realise, and we don't acknowledge, that, for example, facilitating the Tuesday Club and the Women's Fellowship is lay ministry - just as being a Reader is lay ministry - we need both and we need to properly encourage and support both . 

This part of the PCC's vision is linked in with the third aspect which is about strengthening and supporting the roles that many already play in the community. To this end the two sub groups of the PCC have a meeting planned after Easter with Canon Robin Brown the local ministry officer.

The fourth part of the vision supports the previous three and encourages us to look around for best practise and new ideas.

There are a huge number of good and exciting things happening in the parish - we have been given many opportunities to work together and with others to further God's mission in this place - grounded in prayer, worship and the sacraments let's pray that we may pursue together the vision of the one and only living God who is Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.