Vicar's Blog - November

Happy November Church! Our Church Weekend 'Impact' was a little simpler this year, and from the feedback I've had, it feels like it was a good balance of low cost and more interactive teaching.  We took some time to ponder again the theme of 'Identity', and the wonder of Paul's words in Galatians four, where he makes the point that Christ not only 'redeems' us (pays the price so we are no longer slaves to sin), but he then 'adopts' us into his family as his children.  We were reminded that if Jesus gives us the 'status' of Sonship, then the role of the Holy Spirit is to give us the lived 'experience' of being children of God. A helpful prayer is to ask the Holy Spirit to remind our spirit, that we are children of God (Rom 8:16).

On the Saturday afternoon we did some very simple 'love your neighbour' jobs in our community, including prayer walking, painting and gardening. There were some powerful (and humorous) testimonies on the Sunday (the wrong paint was mistakenly used!) celebrating these God-given opportunities.  Helping with a few jobs on a Saturday once a year is nothing really, but I think these actions can be prophetic and symbolic of our desire as a church to keep leaning outwards, to seek to be 'blessing machines', and to take opportunities to point people towards Jesus.  I wonder what prophetic acts of blessing we can individually do this month, as we seek to 'love our neighbour' as Jesus would encourage us to do? 

I also loved having name badges at the Church Weekend - can we do that more often?! I don't know whether it was my traumatic brain injury in 2018 where I fell off my bike and had 2 bleeds on the brain, or whether it's just me being rubbish at it - but I really struggle to remember what faces look like, and so I find placing names and faces together an almost impossible task. If I'm not seeing you regularly in ministry leadership, or rubbing shoulders with you regularly, the chances are, I might not know your name. It's not that I don't care, or don't try - I constantly journal new names and pray for you regularly.  I'm disclosing pastoral confessions here: I know I'm not alone in this either! So can we get over the embarrassment, and humble ourselves a little more and just gently say 'can you remind me your name' a little more in church?! And if you're on the receiving end of that question, can we let go of any sense of pride  ('tut tut - they should know my name') and graciously offer our name, even if we've been asked 50 times!

Similarly, if I see you in church and say 'hi', but don't say your name, please just assume I don't know it and offer it in the conversation!  There is such power in having our name spoken with warmth, and it's a beautiful way we can encourage each other by making eye contact, saying your name and offering a caring smile.  God has made us for connection with each other and he also wants to remind us that he never forgets our name.

Last month we tried a new way to get the Shoebox campaign launched, by clearing the church for the week after Impact and encouraging Connect groups and others to help en masse. Many thanks to Margaret Riddock and team, and everyone who donated and helped to make these boxes ready to be a blessing to hundreds of children this Christmas.  We also had our youth weekend 'Amplify', as Jamie and team were encouraging our young people to pray that the 'quiet revival' in the UK right now gets louder and louder in our homes, schools and communities. What a great prayer to pray!  I also need to add a huge thanks to our Thursday Knitters, who raised £1000 for our local Foodbank! How amazing is that!

With Christmas around the corner, we were approached by a member of the congregation who asked us to consider putting a copy of the New Testament in every home in our parish, alongside our yearly Christmas card. There does seem to be a 'cultural moment' where this might bear more fruit than previous years. Having prayed about it, we duly laid a fleece out and asked you to donate towards the cost of 2000 Bibles, and within a week we have raised far beyond the funds needed (so we can have a stock of extra Bibles). Isn't that exciting?! Let's pray that the Lord brings people to him as they read it, that we have great gospel conversations and opportunities to invite folk to some of our Christmas services this year.

Finally, as I've shared previously, one of the values I feel the Lord putting on my heart for the church is being appropriately vulnerable with each other. I've enjoyed reading three of Brene Brown's books on the subject this past month.  As a social research scientist, Brene puts forward the case that the opposite of vulnerability is shame, and that being vulnerable with each other is a key to healthy community and relationships.  I've shared a little bit of vulnerability, about being rubbish at remembering names, but I'm refusing to accept a cloak of 'shame' for it - that belongs in Satan's wardrobe, not the Lords'! 

Over the past few months, the Lord has been speaking to me and others about questioning the helpfulness of continuing to live-stream our 10.30am service.  It's always a tricky balance between offering that service to those in our community who can't for various reasons (illness, travel) attend, as well as 'seekers' looking in, and prioritising the needs of those who are in the service.  Back in 2020 when live-streaming was introduced, it was done because most of us couldn't attend. No-one asked the question back then about the long-term viability of it.  No-one (to my mind) asked the leaders, preachers or worship-leaders permission for their faces and content to be uploaded in the 'forever web'.  No-one gained consent of every parent who's child comes up the front to help with the actions in a song.  Few people weighed up the fact that having cameras and live-streaming on the internet might hamper the very vulnerability that we need as a church community to be ourselves without putting on a mask of invulnerability - from encouraging testimonies from our congregation members, to the leaders and preachers sharing personally in a way that they would not be comfortable doing on the internet.  What I'm suggesting, is that from 1st January 2026, we're going to trial only recording the Bible reading and sermon at the 10.30am service, either in just audio or audio-visual.  We'll review how that goes and I've love to hear your thoughts.

I'm going to close with an extract from a book called 'Sustaining leadership' by a Vicar called Paul Swann who I feel captures something of the heart behind the vulnerability I'm praying we would grow towards as a church community:

"They explained that in prayer that morning, one of them had seen a picture of a broken priest's wafer being offered to God in the Eucharist. And God was saying, 'Offer your brokenness to me, and I will use it… What would it mean for you to risk saying, 'I have nothing to offer you but my weakness'?  Is there anywhere you feel safe enough to do that? Have you any experiences of inspiring or being inspired by an encounter with weakness?

For leaders, the uncomfortable reality is that this type of community will only emerge when we set the tone and begin with our own choice to live in vulnerability. We need to model a community in which maturity is defined by freedom for people to be who they really are. The saint shouldn't be someone who makes us think, 'That's too hard for me', but someone who makes us think, 'How astonishing! Human lives can be like that."

See you in church, err… what's your name?!

Revd John Monaghan