I am today thanking God for the privilege of being the minister at Rye Methodist Church.
Our church in Rye is only small but our presence there enables me to get involved in an amazing amount of community stuff, an example of which has been today.
Rye has been alive with Christmas today, a major initiative bringing every business and community group together. I took this picture this afternoon, and it was busy. By the time the procession with Father Christmas and a very large green dragon came along the High Street and the Mayor switches on the Christmas tree lights above The George hotel, the place was so full of people you couldn't move. There was a wonderful atmosphere of everyone just getting on together, enjoying the event ad being there. We opened our church for refreshments but there were no other events in our part of town to attract people past our building so that was sad, but a greater use of my time was getting involved and mingling with people for a few hours. I had more conversations about God in the street and in shops than I do in church. It was good the event ended with a carol service in the Parish Church shared between the clergy of the town. It was good for folk to see the three of us larking about and getting on. I guess the 400 or so in there were largely unchurched so we hope their image of church might have been a positive one tonight. I got a laugh anyway when I announced the last carol and reminded everyone we would all be home in time for the X Factor final!
Like my post yesterday said, if Christmas brings people together, can't we stay together after it? If Christmas is about God coming to everyone, shouldn't we have more community times of celebration? With the church at the heart of them? There was an appeal to join the Christmas Committee tonight - I am tempted! And Rye businesses, wouldn't dreary January be better if I came into your shops and you greeted me with mulled wine, coffee, food, prosciutto, cake, more coffee etc etc like you did today??!
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