Back to the Future

By Revd Philip Smith

As we approach Passiontide and Easter, it’s also the season of our Annual Church Meetings. One down, four to go, ha-ha.

Annual anniversaries, whether they are personal or a church, give an opportunity to reflect on how the last year has gone. They are opportunities to say ‘thank you’ for all the wonderful things people do for our communities and each other. Volunteers are not paid because they are worthless, but because they are priceless.

A BIG thank you to those who clean, write reports, do admin, arrange flowers, sing & play, serve refreshments, dig holes, ring bells, create rotas, read, pray, Community Matters donors and helpers, verge, and those who have served faithfully on church councils & deanery synods, especially our wonderful wardens.* Annual meetings are also a time to encourage others to fill the shoes of those who have offered long service and may need a break. I often say ‘if you’re older than the vicar, put your feet up. If you’re younger than the vicar pull your socks up’. But it’s often said ‘if you want a job done, find a busy person’. God also is prompting new recruits! Believe it!

Annual meetings are especially an opportunity to look to the future. To challenge and inspire, to reflect on fresh approaches. How might we do things differently or better? How might we encourage us all to share our faith with family, friends, neighbours, colleagues? Not for them to be pew fodder, but to experience the grace we have received unconditionally. The best way to share our faith, is to share our lives. ‘Go to their parties’ as Bishop Alan once said. There’s so much more to church, than services and buildings.

Nostalgia is not what it used to be and we should ‘never let our attachment to the past be greater than our commitment to the future.’ We are all called to be on a love mission not just in the maintenance team. We can never look back to some golden era, the good old days. There’s actually only one reason for looking back and this is where Easter takes us. For we look back to the cross and resurrection as the defining point in history that shapes all our ‘back to the futures’.

So never let our love of traditions, rituals, liturgy, buildings, past glories, be greater than our love for Jesus, for it may hold us back from moving forward, and from always keeping the main thing, the main thing.

Onwards and upwards, for the best is yet to come.

Keep the faith, but never ever to ourselves.

Love Philip x
*if you are missed off the list, you are loved beyond measure