A changing landscape...?

I have just returned from a four day visit to Manchester and to the Ashton under Lyne Circuit, where I was stationed as a probationer minister in 1997.
Last Monday, I had two very interesting walks which helped me reflect on the important things we are when we say we are "church" in today's society.
I walked in the morning along Park Road in Dukinfield, where I had a little church called Tame Valley Methodist Church. It served in its heyday an industrial area, chiefly of mills. The church was nowhere to be seen having been closed in 2008 and then demolished because it was unsafe due to asbestos.
In its day, it was a place full of activity, spiritual and social, no it has been, unless you know its story, erased from history. It might have never been there. My picture above, shows what it looked like when it stood.
I met some friends from the church for coffee on Monday morning. I watched the closing service of the church on a video with them. I watched them cry as the Superintendent said words of de-consecration and the video went on to show folk dismantling important things that were inside the church that had always been there. The minister said on the video, they were no longer a church. It was very sad.
However, Marie, the steward there, when she spoke said, "the building might have given up, but we haven't!" It was good to learn that four years on from closure, they still meet as a group of folk from that place in her home, for prayer and bible study. A church building unsafe and then demolished, a people doing church together in a differently, caring for one another pastorally, and still learning together with regular visits from their minister in the place the building served. Being church with no building...
When life changes and things that were always there are no longer there and you have to watch them change, it is painful. This area has not only lost both its church buildings (there was also a small Anglican mission along the road) but also most of its employment, the mills having long closed. But I saw hope in the story of a little fellowship still meeting - and regularly praying for their community.



Later on Monday, I went and stayed for a night in Manchester City Centre. I trained for ministry in Manchester and greatly enjoyed living in the city. We were in college the Saturday in 1996 the IRA bomb exploded in Manchester, and caused widespread damage, although miraculously, killing no one. The city has changed especially round the Cathedral and Exchange Square beyond recognition. There are new buildings, new projects, and there was a confidence that things had to be rebuilt, because the people were stronger than the hatred of a few, that buildings could go, but people's resilience and strength to keep going were more important than them, even if some of them had been there for a long time. I rediscovered this postbox on Monday evening. This postbox was undamaged around absolute chaos. It has been put back where it was as a sign that in the end we keep going, despite hardship and confusion. It was interesting to see in the visitor information centre off Piccadilly Gardens, the aftermath of a campaign called #ilovemcr where people came together after last year's riots to say in the end we are better than horrible things that happen, we will keep going.

These ramblings really are trying to say that in the end, buildings and circumstances may cause us pain and leave us bereft when they fall, but we can move on beyond them. Sometimes I think today's church needs to learn this simple truth, when we are spending so much energy on them.

As the hymn says, tower and temple may fall to dust.... but that is not the end. Even though leaving a building or familar landscapes can be really hard.

At that closing service I sent a message with this prayer by Bruce Prewer from "Jesus, our Future":

Give your people the will, loving God, to close down some churches with the same faith and vision with which we open them. Let us give thanks for all precious memories, but do not permit us to live in them. Inspire us to move on gratefully and graciously, to worship and witness in new places and in new ways. And may the God of hope fill us with all joy and peace in believing.

I like that prayer a lot.

Easter Footprints

Amazingly, my Easter message came this afternoon after sitting here for an hour thinking...
I have been struck by a paragraph in the Lent course some of us did this year. The writer of the material talked about the Early Church, and how the first Christians started the rumour of a loving God revealed in Jesus Christ by the way they were, often counter cultural to society around them. To a world which prized brute strength and exploitation, they offered love and service. And he says “Before we can pass on the good news, we must live the good news, by responding to each day with gratitude and generosity. If the church on the corner is to communicate good news, it must first BE good news.”

I know in my churches some people are worried that people aren’t coming to church anymore.  I know some people are worried that we don’t seem to be attracting new people to church. But I believe Christians have and need to be good news where they are, every day. Being good news can make a difference, perhaps to just one person today as Jesus was to a weeping, desolate Mary in the Easter Gospel. 

A man on the radio on Friday lunchtime as I was driving home from my service said he believes we are living in an age of unrest and deep spiritual questions. People are weeping because life is hard and they are searching for answers, and for God – they just aren’t looking for him inside the church, some through bad experiences inside church, but others frightened by us, and others needing us to go to them where they are. That’s why so many of our ministers are now in chaplaincy posts, at work, in places of leisure, that’s why part of my time each week is spent having conversations with people nowhere near a church building, but still doing the work of our church. How sad people don’t think people who are Christians or go to church will have anything to say to their world. We need to BE good news.     

              

I’ve always been drawn to a quote of Gerard Manley Hopkins who uses Easter as a verb, something to do. “Let him Easter in us” he once wrote. See good news and then be good news. If there is no good news in our local church community, and all we do is moan, and wallow that nothing is good, like it used to be, life won’t be much fun and we won’t be attractive. 

I have been sitting here thinking about Mary. It is not wrong to weep. It is not wrong to say life stinks. It is not wrong to question where God might be. Mary stayed in the discomfort of that place. If we do the same, in his time, and often unexpectedly a God we cannot imagine comes and introduces us to new possibilities. Because he knows us, names us, calls us to see that we live a valued life he also gives us power to see that what we are is linked into the centre of his reality, that nothing can separate us from his love.

When you’re tired, and you lack inspiration for the sermon and you desparately want it finished on Good Friday afternoon so you can have Saturday off, it is always a wonder to me that God points me when I’m struggling to the good news of a resource. Somehow I was led into my files and an Easter letter from Rev John Walker in a church magazine from ages ago. John was my Superintendent at home from 1988 to 1994 and I worked with him as his lay worker for three years. He was a deeply honest preacher, his sermons were often raw and real. He had a gift to say to his congregation listening to him it is okay to tell God how you feel. I’m going to let him end my thoughts on transforming weeping into laughter, and desparation and bad news into good and us struggling into being good news around us right here:

“If we were each to draw a graph to depict the course of our lives to date, the line would have peaks at when we felt confident and happy, and low points when we felt in the depths. Some people mistakenly associate God with the high spots only. Really he is with us at every point and turn, even when our depression makes it difficult for us to believe in him or feel him to be present. His power at work inside us can help us turn the corner. Belief in the resurrection makes us expect and look for turning points in our lives, but they sometimes come after what seemed to be the point of no return.”      

On Easter Sunday we declare that ‘Christ has risen!’ We celebrate joyfully that the God who created us knows us, and meets us.It is like that old "Footprints" poem, Jesus was always there in the walk on the sand.  

God meets us where we’re weeping for our deprived and depraved self. Like Mary Magdalene discovered, he meets us in the place where all hope is lost and all seems destroyed. It’s at that point that God is restored from the grave to make all things new.