I was very glad that I was invited to join the Methodist Cities Network some time ago by Ian, the presbyter at Central Hall in Manchester. I guess I’m entitled to join as Ripon is a city. Today we met at the vast listed building which is Central Methodist Church in York and we heard stories of work out of that church in the city, refugee and homeless ministry, making the building greener, a bread church where people come as they are. Rachel Lampard was also with us as Methodism continues to grapple with the call to be a justice seeking Church.
Before lunch we went on a prayer walk round the city centre remembering women of faith. That was very powerful. And over and over in presentations we heard of our work to be with people not do things for them or to them. The closing devotions led by Graham Jones from the Learning Network summed things up brilliantly. He reminded us that Sam Wells, vicar at St Martin in the Fields off Trafalgar Square says the most important word in the Bible is “with.” God is with us and therefore to live in the light of God is to be with people. People, as Wesley would have put it, who need us most. He then reminded us of Harry Williams who called the Church “agents of resurrection.” In which case, the Church may need to be disturbed and unsettled. Remember God is into rolling stones away and miracles beyond our comprehension.
I came away inspired and with new friends. I reflected on my own ministry at the moment. The excitement is where we are in partnership with other bodies, where we meet people where they are, and where churches see they can’t do it all and work together either in a circuit or ecumenically to share resurrection hope with people. Simple isn’t it?
Some of us get it but alas some do not!!
I went to evening prayer in York Minster. Whilst our District Office is in York, I don’t get into the city centre very often so it was good to have a few hours in the sun dodging tourists with their cameras! Predictive text just wrote dodging Tories before I corrected it. Mind you the last meeting of the Network did a brainstorm on justice seeking and decided Methodists should be banned from reading the Daily Mail, according to a PowerPoint slide put up today!
The Minster charges big money to get in but you can get in for free for services. But when you get in they watch you. “No photography!” says the sign and then a officious little man herded us into the pews like cattle and then he said to a group of us, “the Psalm is in the blue book but it is in old English so you won’t understand it!” The two clergy rattled through the liturgy like they’d left their dinner in the oven and it might burn and there was little atmosphere.
So I came away thinking well, what is Church? Remember Archbishop Temple said “the Church is the only organisation that exists for the benefit of its non members.” Are we only going to exist if we meet people where they are and not expect them to magically come to some alien thing we really don’t want them at anyway? My city’s cathedral isn’t guilty of this. Evensong isn’t rushed and you don’t go away feeling you weren’t really welcome but there are bits of the Church that really don’t get where people are. Are we a movement or a museum?
Today I’ve had two types of Church around me. I know which I find more attractive and inspiring. On my way home I was catching up with DJ Spoony on Radio 2. His programme at 10pm in the week is uplifting and optimistic. He played a classic by UB40 which was written about racial prejudice and apartheid in South Africa but tonight as I listened to the lyrics it could be about the future of the Church and God’s story:
We will no longer hear your command
We will seize the control from your hand
We will fan the flame of our anger and pain
And you’ll feel the shame for what you do in God’s name.
We will fight for the right to be free
And we will build our own society
And we will sing, we will sing our own song.
People expect the Church to do something today to be credible. We have to be seen, to be with, to sing our own song, to be there for those we meet. I did some shopping in a large Tesco Extra off the York by pass earlier. I was dressed for work. A lady told me her taxi hadn’t come, almost asking me what was I doing to do about it! It was five minutes late. She was panicking. I did suggest it might come and later I saw her getting in it. The point is she wanted help!
We need urgently to be a people who see a different thing happening that there is hope in a despairing world. I write tonight as Donald Trump gives his make America wealthy again tariffs speech. It’s scary. And it feels like history repeating. If he says his friends have been the problem we have trouble. So maybe agents of resurrection need to be an irritant and a presence to say what is cannot be. Where the Church has no intention to be incarnate, we have to question its future.
Don’t we??
