Dear All
I thought I would share with you the review that I shared with the whole church before the APCM in May.
Revelation 21:1-6 A new heaven and a new earth
Today’s talk is a review of the year, as part of our annual meeting which will take place after the service. I want to start that review by sharing a meditation that I shared with St Paul’s when talking about our outreach to new families and children.
Hopeful Meditation – a new take on church
You are both in your thirties with two children from BH school and have decided to try out the new look Morning service after reading about it in the school newsletter. You walk into church with your Dad and your Grandma to the sound of uplifting music and children’s voices. The church is warm and you are welcomed on the door (by a lovely retired couple, you have seen picking children up from school and asked if you would like a coffee, there are snacks for the children. Someone with a badge marked ‘Children’s Church’ asks if the children want to stay in or go out to Children’s Church. If they do, they will need to be registered for safeguarding purposes. But you are re-assured they can do that later. You are shown to your seat and the person introduces you to another extended family. Someone asks if you are new and explains that there are no books, all the directions for the service are on the screen overhead.
The first songs are immediately recognisable, your children have sung them when you came to the school harvest service in church. The children leave – your Dad takes them out and stays with them to settle them in. You get a rare moment to yourself and as the service continues you notice other families from the school gate and even your old reception teacher with her family. You also notice that the church really is an all age community. You start to remember your own experience of church as a child and also of being part of wider family celebrations. In some ways it feels a bit like this. A bit messy and noisy but also you have a sense of belonging, of fitting. As the service continues someone shares about their work with the homeless as part of Street Angels and someone else mentions in the notices that they are asking for donations for the foodbank. You remember yourself when your family were struggling financially and you were not always sure where the next meal was coming from. You feel grateful that life is no longer like that. As the children return and you stand to sing some final songs, you start to realise that just maybe there is more to the church than first met your eye. Later the children say they have met friends and had a good time, in fact your shy 6-year-old sounds happy and has a lot to say. You decide there and then that you will return and give it another go. You don’t really acknowledge it to yourself, but deep down you start to feel a peace settle over you and you believe that it is related to going to church.
After Covid we looked for signs of hope amidst all the challenges we faced. This hope was founded on a belief that not only did we hope to see our churches transform, but also we hoped to see our schools, our businesses, our community transform too. And we still believe this picture of the new kingdom that God is preparing, not just as we have seen in the images earlier for after we die, but here on earth, right now! Last week we mentioned a key slogan of Christian Aid’s – we believe in life before death. And that resonates so much with that famous line from Jesus in John 10.10.
I have come that you might have life and life in all its fullness
So when (we) reflect on this year, which really started last year with our Vision day in Whalley, our hopes were to build a community here at JohnPaul that would reflect the very character of Jesus.
The phrase ‘I am making everything new’ kept re-occurring – in terms of our work with schools, our outreach to the lonely, the bereaved, those with mental health problems, those living below the poverty line. But also as we shared the good news with our families and friends and those seeking baptisms or places in our schools.
And yet, what we have discovered is that sort of work is costly, not just in terms of time and money, but in terms of our emotions, our hearts too. We have had three or four successful outreach events to our communities (the Harvest Ceilidh, the November Fair, the Christmas Brass Band concert and the recent Fashion show) We have launched a new family service at St Paul’s in the evenings. We have recently received nearly £60k in legacy and grant fundraising.
However, we have also had to close our well-being group, Kintsugi Hope, we have lost Toast Time, our toddler group at St Paul’s, we have not been able to launch the Youth work we had planned, our numbers are not growing in either church and our income is down by over 8%, so we have had to access our reserves.
And yet, and yet, OUR hope is still alive, we still believe in life before death, but we have had to accept that maybe we can’t do all we want to do. We struggle to get young leaders, we struggle to maintain our buildings and those who are leading are tired. The JohnPaul Ministry team decided 2025 would be a year of consolidation with more of an emphasis on reaching within the church community. That is why we did the Prayer course in small groups and in main services and before Easter we did the Bishop’s lent course across three Connect groups. And this is why we are doing Alpha now as a spiritual MOT for our regulars and as an introduction to faith for newcomers. And we have just encouraged churches across the whole of Accrington to take part in the world wide wave of prayer called Thy Kingdom Come.
We realise the need to deepen our own roots before we can have the confidence to share our faith more widely. But we still believe in small groups as the place where people will learn most about God and where people will get most support and encouragement. So, after Alpha, we hope to re-launch our small groups – we call them Connect groups from September.
And in the midst of this year of prayer and spiritual growth, we are conscious that many are hurting, many are struggling. And a key message through all this has been about ‘love’. As the Ministry team have unpacked this message, we have started to see it as a challenge to us personally to receive God’s love more, to share God’s love more, to allow God’s love transform us, so that we can reflect His love more within our homes, work and communities. We can only do church in community; this is not a lone ranger faith. So I don’t want to talk about individuals today, but I want to talk about signs of this love in community that I have noticed.
- Busy Mums and Grannies giving up precious free time to reach out to lonely new Mums
- Endless practical creativity displayed by young and old through Guides, Children’s parties, Knit and Natter, creative fundraising and our new website.
- The sight of children leading us in worship.
- Many services and connections with our schools – being part of recruiting a excellent young Christian head at BH.
- Young leaders – Baptism Co-ordinator, Website development, Comms team, Children’s Church and Fabric Team.
- And the backbone of our church, those who have served faithfully over the last twenty years or more: many feeling tired and elderly, yet still giving financially, still encouraging, still motivating the next generation.
- And finally, a big thank you must go to or amazing PCC, the Ministry team and our Church Wardens who have given so much time and commitment to keep everything on track.
Our Vision says we want to reach up, reach in and reach out. Let’s continue to hold that picture of heaven in our heart while we encourage each other to love God and each other more.
God bless you all,
Amanda and the team at JohnPaul