Ministry Team Letters July – December 2003
Dear Friends
Many years ago, when credit cards were first becoming common, the Access card came up with a slogan: ‘Access takes the waiting out of wanting.’ It had a good ring to it, it was memorable, and – most important of all – it pandered to the basic human instinct: ‘I want it and I want it now!’ How often, I wonder, have we heard these words? Children demand computer games of their parents; bosses terrorise their employees for the monthly sales figures; and, as we have been reminded in the media recently, there is an alarming growth within our society of underage sexual activity. In all areas of life, there seems to be a refusal to wait, a demand for instant gratification: ‘I want it and I want it now.’
As we look around our shops, we could be forgiven for thinking that Christmas is ‘now’ (or any time from 1 October) and not still a month away. Of course we have to be organised well in advance (you would expect a list-maker to say that!) – but do we really have to get rid of the waiting? I believe it does us good to remember that Christmas doesn’t actually start until 25 December (well, maybe the evening of the day before!).
We try and emphasise this through our worship in the parish. We don’t sing Christmas carols at our Sunday services in Advent, and although the Christmas tree will be in place part way through the month, its lights will not be switched on until the 4.00 Children’s Nativity Service on Christmas Eve. Likewise, the Carol Service at 6.00 is the occasion for Blessing the Crib and placing within it the figure of the Christ-child. Then, once Christmas comes, we have a full 40 days’ worth of the Christmas season in which to celebrate with joy God’s gift of Jesus to the world.
The rest of December – the season of Advent – is about waiting. It’s about wanting as well – we all know our need of Jesus, God’s Christmas gift. But God has an Advent gift, too. And that is the gift of waiting, of time for preparation. In a sermon last month, Ally reminded us that the Kingdom of God is both ‘now’ and ‘not yet’: that although we see signs of God’s rule around us, that rule is still to be fully established. As individual Christians, we live our earthly lives as a preparation for the life of the world to come. One of the most important Christian messages for us all to take to heart is that ‘the best is yet to be’. Advent is an opportunity to think in a concentrated way about this: preparing our hearts to receive again the message of God’s love for us; asking God to shine his light into our hearts to help us put right the things that are wrong in our lives – so that we are prepared and ready, for Christmas and for life in the Kingdom of God.
With prayers and good wishes for a good Advent and (when it comes) a blessed Christmas.
Yours in Christ,
Peter Moger
Dear Friends,
November is the month associated with all sorts of memories. Not only does the Church hold special services on Remembrance Sunday itself on 9th November, but also a week earlier for All Souls and All Saints.
In the light of the recent war in Iraq, and the ongoing strife there and in so many places around the world, it seems particularly important to keep Remembrance Sunday, and to try to hold together the need to pray earnestly for a lasting peace throughout the world with the need to remember with gratitude all those especially from our armed forces who have given their lives in the service of this country, and those who continue to risk their lives on a daily basis.
All Saints is an occasion on which we give thanks for of the community of faith through the ages. Our own worship day by day and week by week as the ‘Church Militant’ is our way of joining with the saints and angels in the eternal worship of God in heaven by the ‘Church Triumphant’. All Saints is the time when we particularly give thanks that we are not alone, but are ‘surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses’, as St Paul put it.
All Souls is really the other half of All Saints – it is kept in this parish as an opportunity for all who have lost loved ones to come together and remember them before God; to remember them in thanksgiving for their lives, in sadness at their death, and in hope of the resurrection to eternal life. Our evening service at 6:30pm on 2nd November is open to everyone, and we do encourage all who have lost someone close to them to come and take part in this.
Remembrancetide, as it is known, is a time for re-telling stories – stories of wars past, of dear ones we have lost, of saints who have inspired us – it is a time for looking back, and making sense of where we have come from. The stories that we tell each other, and that we tell our children, enable us to understand our shared past, and so are a big part of what makes our community what it is. Understanding our stories helps us understand where we are now, and gives us hope for the future. The Bible is full of such stories – for the ancient Israelites the account of the Exodus from Egypt was a story so important that it formed the backbone of their identity as a nation, and the story of how God had saved them in the past gave them hope for the future.
I wonder if we can look back on our own individual and communal past and, like the ancient Israelites, see God at work in it? If we can recognise God’s presence on our journey so far – in the times of joy and of sadness, of war and of peace – perhaps we can also learn to let God lead us into the future, whatever it may bring. In the words of John Henry Newman:
So long thy power hath blessed me, sure it still will lead me on
O’er moor and fen, o’er crag and torrent, till the night is gone,
And with the morn those angel faces smile,
While I have loved long since, and lost awhile.
Yours in Christ,
Ally Barrett
Dear Friends
Are you are one of life's list-makers? I am. I've even been known to write something on a 'to do' list simply so that I can cross it off again (what an admission!).
Each day, the form of prayer we use each at Morning Prayer includes these words:
- The night has passed and the day lies open before us; let us pray with one heart and mind.
I often find myself thinking (or rather, shouting at God inside my head) 'open? - the day lies open? - you should take a look at my diary!' As a list-maker, no day is ever clear or blank in the diary; even time off is planned. But is that what 'the day lying open' really means? I suspect not. To have a day which is 'open' is much more about an attitude of mind and spirit than about allocation of hours and minutes. Over the summer, someone challenged me with this thought:
- Do you organise your worship so much that, if God were to turn up, you wouldn't notice?
I believe there is an issue there for us in Godmanchester, as in all churches where there is a concern that worship should be 'well-done'. But the challenge can be extended beyond worship. We could equally ask:
- Do we organise our time (or the life of our parish) so much that, if God were to turn up, we wouldn't notice?
It's so easy to get through the day, neatly planned and ticking off the things that have been done without ever having been 'open' to the presence of the living God with us and within us. This can be a besetting problem for clergy, where there is a strong temptation to fit God into the neat little slot of Morning Prayer or the Eucharist, to the exclusion of spending time with him in an 'open' attitude through the rest of the day.
When Jesus left the earth after his Resurrection, he promised his disciples: I am with you always, to the end of time. He made that promise real to them by sending them his Holy Spirit - his own self, living within them and being with them at all times and in all places. That promise was meant not only for those first disciples but for us, as it has been for almost 2000 years of Christians before us.
It depends upon our accepting that at the heart of our faith is not a moral code, nor even a set of beliefs, but a relationship with a person - Jesus Christ. A relationship that is possible through the gift of the Holy Spirit living within us. It is that Spirit who guides us, and - as time goes on - changes us into the people God really wants us to be. But we must make sure that we are 'open' - that each day 'lies open before us' - as we open ourselves (and our diaries!) to the working of the Spirit.
It might be that some of us feel that we are at a 'crossroads' in life and would like to explore this further. Some people might be approaching the Christian faith for the first time; others might have been coming to Church for many years. Either way, the promise of the presence of Christ day by day in our lives is there for us. We shall be starting another Enquirers' Group in the Parish - beginning on 1 October - and using the acclaimed 'Alpha' material as a basis for our discussion. Please pray about whether you would like to be part of this - and if so, have a word with me.
Yours in Christ,
Peter Moger
Dear Friends,
It seems to me that during the last few months, the spotlight has been very much focused on the ordained ministry. Our Vicar, Peter’s, letters in this magazine have covered the ordinations at the end of June, vocations to ministry, provision of ordained ministers in this and surrounding parishes, and, of course, the recent and continuing controversy surrounding the ordination of homosexual bishops.
Here in Godmanchester, as most of you will be aware, we are a training parish. We have Ally (a deacon), myself (a priest) – both in our first parish – Pat (a Reader in training), David Wakefield (an ordinand on attachment from Ridley Hall) and in addition we will shortly have a trainee Reader from Hemingford Grey who will be joining us for several weeks. So it is perhaps not surprising that much thought and discussion are devoted to the various forms of ministry and, it is to he hoped that this encourages each one of us to think about our own ministry both within and outside the church.
You may also be aware that each weekday the clergy and a Reader, together with a small but expanding group, meet together to say the daily office. It is this discipline of going to church each morning, in summer and winter, which sustains us in our ministries. This regular attendance is not always easy, particularly when it involves leaving the house shortly after 7am on a bitterly cold morning in December or January to enter an unheated church.
Karl Barth (one of the great German theologians of the last century) wrote, ‘To clasp the hands in prayer is the beginning of an uprising against the disorder of the world’. It is difficult not to find this a challenging statement.
All of us live in a disordered world with little idea what each day will throw at us. If, therefore, we believe in and take seriously the Gospel as a summons to us to address this chaos and to make sense of what often appears senseless and futile, then we need a form of dialogue. We need not only to be able to speak to those around us but also to God so that we can benefit from his wisdom and support in order that we can develop and grow. This will enable us to be like St Peter – a rock – amidst a raging storm. We are almost certainly going to follow in Peter’s footsteps in another way, in that we shall sometimes falter, but in those instances, if we are in dialogue with God, we can rely upon Him to catch us when we slip and set us back on the right path.
Unless we have a dynamic prayer life which creates space for openness with God and the guidance of the Holy Spirit, I find it difficult to see how we can connect our experience with God’s presence in the world.
Julian of Norwich wrote ‘for this is our Lord’s will – that our prayer and our trust be alike, LARGE.’
May God bless you all,
Brian Atling
Dear Friends
The past month has seen plenty of news about bishops. On 8 July it was announced from Ely that the new Bishop of Huntingdon, in succession to Bishop John Flack (who left at the end of June to take up a new appointment in Rome), is to be Canon Dr John Inge. Canon Inge is currently Vice-Dean of Ely, and has been on the Cathedral staff since 1996, where his major responsibility has been for education and mission. Before this he served as a parish priest on industrial Tyneside and, prior to that, as a school chaplain.
This is good news indeed. Canon Inge - having already been in the Diocese for over 7 years - is well known and highly respected by clergy and laity alike. We hope it will not be long before the new Bishop (or Bishop John II, as he has been styled) will be able to visit us in Godmanchester.
Canon Inge will be consecrated bishop in Westminster Abbey on 9 October. This will be a joyful occasion. But for many it will be tinged with great sadness because the consecration of another new Bishop - the Bishop of Reading - was due to take place at the same service. For reasons well-known through the extensive coverage in the national press, Canon Dr Jeffrey John will not now become Bishop of Reading.
The controversy surrounding Canon John's appointment has done the Church no good. It is a fact that Christians disagree about the rightness or otherwise of ordaining homosexual clergy. People on both sides of the divide hold deeply cherished opinions, many of which are argued from a Scriptural basis. Nor is it only a debate within the Church of England. Throughout the Anglican Communion as a whole, there is deep division. On the one hand stands the largely liberal Episcopal Church of the USA, which has recently consecrated a practising homosexual priest as bishop: on the other stand many of the more conservative African Anglican Churches for whom such a step is unthinkable.
A difference of opinion is inevitable within a broad Church - and some would say that it is healthy. But two points need to be borne in mind.
The first is that, whatever our views on the matter, Christians must learn to engage in dialogue which is civilised and charitable. To assume that a single point of view is the last word in truth is, to put it plainly, bigoted. We have to learn to agree how to disagree. The content and tone of a number of Christian comments over the past few weeks has been deeply distressing and reflects badly upon all who seek to bear the name of Christ. As Pat Saunders said so tellingly in a recent sermon: 'No matter what our views are on this issue or what our place is within the Anglican Church, it seems to me that all of us bear some responsibility for the shame of the situation we now find ourselves in.'
The second is that disagreement over issues such as this seriously impairs the mission of the whole Church. All Christians, whether liberal or conservative in their outlook, are called to live and proclaim the Gospel: that is, that in Jesus Christ we can find purpose and meaning for life - a life that is lived to the full. There is no task more important than this. If we focus our energy on matters of internal politics we lose the plot and we have failed to keep on 'looking unto Jesus' (as the writer to the Hebrews puts it). Only in Him will we find a way forward. As Jeffrey John himself has written, in response to those considering leaving the Church in disgust, 'We have to keep praying, keep making our communion, keep studying the scriptures, keep loving those who hurt and reject us. Love wins in the end.' May this indeed be so.
Yours in Christ,
Peter Moger
Dear Friends
Last month I wrote about the changing patterns of ministry emerging within the Church of England, and some of the changes that will be affecting us locally in the near future as parishes are encouraged to form into informal groupings. Underpinning these changes is the conviction that Ministry (with a capital M) is the job of all Christians, lay and ordained: that because we are baptised, each of us is involved in some form of ministry. This is nothing new. It's there in the pages of the New Testament and, throughout history, the Church has been at its most effective when it has practised 'every-member ministry.'
It's important, though, that in affirming this, we don't neglect the importance of the ordained and licensed ministries of the Church. In his series of articles on the Sacraments, John Morgan wrote last month about the sacrament of Ordination, and within the last few days we have seen Brian ordained Priest and Ally made Deacon. Both Brian and Ally have responded to what they, and the Church, believe to be a vocation to priestly ministry - the word 'vocation' comes from the Latin vocare (to call). Christians believe that God calls men and women to serve within the priesthood of his Church. More typically that not, though, this 'calling' doesn't come like a bolt from the blue. Usually, a sense of 'being called' is supported by a growing consensus within the local congregation that God might be leading a person in this particular direction.
The Church encourages the testing of vocations first through conversations with the parish priest, and then with senior clergy (typically the Director of Ministry) and one of the Bishops. If they agree that someone has a likely vocation to ordained ministry, he/she is sent to a selection conference organised by the Advisory Board of Ministry (ABM). If ABM recommends positively, the way is open to move on to training, either full-time at a theological college, or part-time on a local ministerial training course.
Why am I writing this? Largely because it's all too easy for us to think that ordained ministry is something that's done by others: that priests and deacons are people who come into our church from the outside, stay a few years with us (a new vicar, or a newly-ordained curate perhaps), then move on. If we get stuck with this picture, we can forget that those who are now ordained were once lay members of their own congregations. (Brian was a Churchwarden, Ally was a choir and PCC member, I was a church organist, and of course Jerry arrived in Godmanchester as a Reader and was ordained some years later.) Statistically, a church of our size, with over 200 on its Electoral Roll should be fostering vocations. Of course it doesn't work mechanically: we can't legislate for the workings of the Holy Spirit, and we can't predict the ways and means of God's call. But it's unlikely that the Spirit is not at work among us in this way.
I ask that we all make it our prayer that God would show each of us how we should be serving within his Church. There's no doubt that, because we are baptised, we are called to some form of ministry. It might be that God wants us to continue in that same ministry - but it might be that he wants to call us to something new. This can be a unsettling thought - frightening, even - but we can take heart that, in all things, 'the one who calls is faithful' [1 Thess 5:24].
Yours in Christ,
Peter Moger