Posted Saturday 15 March 2008
The Church in Society Action Network has been busy producing a news-sheet, writes its convenor, Rev Ian Barcroft.
Our seven regional representatives have been collecting stories and experiences; celebrating some of the many projects churches and members are involved in across the diocese.
Every church in the diocese has been given copies of the news-sheet to distribute to church members. It is an attractive addition to a local church bulletin. Please use it in your welcome material and use it as a tool to explain that the church and its members are a key local resource. This kind of activity often connects with people’s needs and crosses the boundary between church and society and makes our church a key component of local community life.
The challenge of the Church in Society Action Network, and the encouragement and celebration such dedicated service brings, as seen in the stories of the news-sheet, allow all of us and our local community (village, suburb, town or city) to reflect on how we might integrate the idea of our weekly worship and the offering of our lives; communicating the idea that both are inseparable.
The lay theologian Ida Görres speaks of Holy Week and Easter as something that rushes past us. We look in awe and wonder, and that is about all we can do. The enormity of the events can overwhelm like a raging waterfall.
‘… Like the Niagara Falls thundering down right beside me, and there I stand, with a thimble in my hand, and I’m supposed to dip in and collect something, catch it up, assimilate it reacting properly, goodness knows how. But if you hold a cup under a waterfall, it’s not only knocked right out of your hand, but empty too. … But maybe this helpless state of just standing aside, this overpowering sense of not being able to do anything about it, is the sort of adoration I’m allowed just now.’
It is the same with the events of our society, as they impinge upon us. We can be overwhelmed. But to be the ‘Church’ in ‘Society’ we must have the same respect, our ears and eyed open to the grace of God which is active in the most unexpected places: a torrent of love available and there to refresh us.
Let’s not hide in our churches, or make them a safe refuge. Let’s go and experience the love of Christ that rages before us and tell each other, giving thanks for what we have seen.
Category: Church in Society Action Network
