Thursday, July 3, 2014

Messy Church: The Vicar's Two Penn'orth for July 2014



I
 would like to begin my Two Penn’orth by quoting Justin Welby, Archbishop of Canterbury:
“There is every reason to be hopeful about the future of the Church of England, and indeed, all the churches in this country.
“There are many signs of growth, huge areas of development, and the church is – more than it has been for the last 60 years – demonstrating how essential it is to hold together our society.”
Wonderful words of encouragement from our Archbishop!

A
s the Open Golf Championship is about to begin and our Prayer Labyrinth is in its final preparation stages, I am looking forward to the future already. A church must continue to move forward or it will cease to exist. And that applies to us here at St Hildeburgh’s.
With our new head teacher of Holy Trinity firmly in place, and the former head, Peter Ham, accepted for readership, it seems quite natural that we should move to start a ‘messy church.’ For a number of people the term messy church may conjure up a mind-boggling con­ception.

S
o what is messy church? Quite simply it is an outreach to local children and their families. Messy church is a fresh expression of church, it is an opportunity for children and their parents to learn and play together. Messy church tells the stories of the Bible in an imaginative way using craft and all things messy. It combines all those things with worship and a sense of togetherness.
Taking on this massive new initiative takes a lot of planning, which will include a meal for children and parents. It is a massive task, but this is a fresh way for us to express ourselves and reach out to our community, which in the long run will grow this church.
I do feel that to achieve this new outreach successfully we will need an enormous amount of help from within the church and without. This can’t be realised without your help and prayer. Please pray for this new venture and all who will help in any way. In my experience we struggle when we rely on ourselves.



S
cripture tells us in 1 Chronicles 16:11: Seek the LORD and his strength, seek his face continually. Very easy and direct words to follow but time and time again we forget to turn to our Saviour and acknow­ledge his strength and his help. We need to be in constant contact and feel his presence with us. The Holy Spirit can turn sit­uations on their head, but we continue to take on tasks relying on ourselves and the very limited resources we have to achieve our aims.
When we trust in God and listen to his continual prompting we can achieve our goals and so much more. In scripture we are reminded of this in Psalm 37:4-6: Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart. Commit your way to the Lord; trust in him, and he will act. He will bring forth your righteous­ness as the light, and your justice as the noonday.

I
 hope people are as excited as I am, as we move forward growing the church family. I think the long-term vision of St Hildeburgh’s, going and working in the community and also being committed to grow the Kingdom is a wonderful goal. As Proverbs 16:3 tells us: Commit your work to the LORD, and your plans will be established.

 



Your friend,
Rev’d Paul

Third Sunday of Trinity : 6 July 2014

No comments:

Post a Comment