Saint Michael’s Church

Serving God and Bishop’s Stortford since 673

Clergy Letter For October 2007

CLERGY LETTER FOR

OCTOBER 2007

The Vicar writes....

An article in a recent Christian journal has set me thinking. As we enter October with its traditional church activities of Harvest Festival and, in our parish’s case, Confirmation, perhaps it is a good moment to reflect on what is the church, nationally and locally. It’s almost impossible to define the word “church”. The dictionary says “a building for worship or a group of Christian people” but anything you try to say leaves something out of the equation.

In doing some research for a project called Beyond Belief? some years ago the authors found that non-believers were at times very hostile about the church. There were the usual criticisms “It’s cold…it’s long…and it’s not very inviting”. “It preaches an antiquated morality”; “people who go to church are patronising……wanting support….colourless…begging for money…misfits….etc. etc.” Interestingly the same people who so often savaged abstract Christians also often spoke positively about actual Christians…people they worked with, or played sport with, people whose names they knew. How often do we find that in a negative conversation about the church a speaker will say “I don’t mean you, you’re different”.

In a follow up project called Journeys and Stories the authors spoke to a number of adults who had recently made a public profession of faith. They found a huge variety of reasons had brought the people to where they were and that there had been many twists and turns on the way. There were common themes though that emerged from the tangle of lives and experiences. People had starting points, situations, beliefs or lifestyles from which they left to begin their journey. They had reasons for departure, motives for wanting to change themselves or aspects of their lives. There were crises, coincidences, encounters, experiences, sermons, signposts, and obstacles on the way. No two stories were the same but there were some similarities that could be drawn from the replies.

First there was the importance of people. It is generally people who bring people to Christ, rather than arguments, articles, talks or books. The people in question don’t have to be elders or ministers or even be theologically trained. They need to be themselves with just a genuine willingness to share what they have received.

Second, there was the importance of God. That you might think was obvious but in the widely differing interpretations of the experiences they had undergone the respondents were aware of a sense of God in their journeys, partly in the encounters, coincidences and healings that they had come across, and partly in the fact that the whole of each person’s story became greater than the sum of its parts. Where does the pattern come from?

Third, the importance of the church became apparent. By church was meant a body of Christians gathered together; it didn’t matter where. A church which displayed unconditional acceptance and human warmth was a church that could make a difference. The testimony of a group of individuals, of all ages and backgrounds brought together by nothing more than a common object of love is more powerful than we realise. Where else today would you find such a group giving time and money, thought and energy on a week-by-week basis to complete strangers?

Despite all its failings there is a sense in which the church allows people to be themselves and to take notice of others who may be very different in temperament social status, wealth or position.

The church plays a part in the life of the community. Never mind the variety of buildings in which it meets, or the curious rituals that it sometimes adopts, its importance is that it is there in the midst of so many communities. Torn apart by feuds, disagreeing over the doctrines by which it is supposed to live, failing to meet the standards it proclaims and yet somehow by the grace of God creating fragile, loving communities that do indeed against all expectation work, the Church makes places that risk the openness, the space needed for broken people to meet a healing saviour.

It must continue to be our hope that all the churches in Bishop's Stortford, not least our church of St Michael’s, will bring people in to a loving community, to a relationship with their Father in Heaven and to an experience of belonging in our fragmented society. Keep up the good work.

Toby Marchand.

Office Address:

Saint Michael’s Church

Windhill

Bishops Stortford

Hertfordshire

CM23 2ND