Vicar's Blog - April
Welcome to this April Vicar’s blog! I want to give thanks to God for giving us an amazing grant (not a loan!) for solar panels, which will mean a substantial saving in electricity costs of our church centre, and a significant step in the right direction towards being carbon-neutral. I also want to thank God for the amazing church activity that has been going on throughout March. The church centre has been alive every day of the week with Connect groups, courses, classes, meetings, external community group and church bookings, services, schools groups and clubs for young and old. Just this past month our church members have been hosting the Parenting teenagers course, the Alpha course, the Lent ‘Passion’ course and the Grandparents and faith course – and I’m sure there are some that I have missed! How privileged are we to have so many opportunities to share some of our hope-filled stories with others this Lent season.
To quote the former Apple CEO Steve Jobs, "The most powerful person in the world is the storyteller. The storyteller sets the vision, values, and agenda of an entire generation that is to come." ChatGPT also had a good (albeit enigmatic) go of describing the importance of stories for me just now - "Stories are the blueprints of our hearts—each one building bridges of understanding and lighting the spark of change in every soul."
Easter is coming, and with it, the reminder that we are all real characters in a real rescue story being written by a real God as he supremely intervened in the course of human history to reconcile us with God, and to inaugurate the coming of his forever-Kingdom. Is there any bigger story than that?!
During our Sunday preaching series, we’ve been recently journeying through the Gospel of Luke, as Jesus encounters those in the temple, John the baptist, his first disciples, the woman who anoints Jesus’ feet with her tears, Peter’s confession of Christ and the lucky three (or five depending on who you are counting!) witnessing the transfiguration. Wherever Jesus went he told stories and invited people to be a part of his story.
This past month I’ve also been hearing stories of people encountering Jesus for the first time through the Alpha course here, and many other stories here and accross our Diocese (and country) of non-Christians just finding themselves turning up at Church, having had dreams, or God-incidents that led them to having conversations with Christians and curious as to who Jesus is! In church this month I shared the yougov research survey (https://yougov.co.uk/topics/society/trackers/brits-beliefs-about-gods?crossBreak=1824) which asked respondents to answer the question ‘‘I believe there is a God/ there are God’s’. What was fascinating was that among 18-24 year olds (between August 2019 to January 2025), there was a 23% increase in theistic belief (from 22% to 45%) in the UK!
What a window of opportunity we have to creatively and boldly share how our stories are forever transformed for good because we’ve been written into Jesus’s great rescue story. There has never been a better time to speak up about Easter hope. Jesus offers us a Kingdom that cannot be shaken (Hebrews 12:28), and a hope, regardless of circumstances, that never disappoints (Romans 5:5). Maybe there’s someone you know who doesn’t know the greatest story ever told. Can you pray for an opportunity to share something of your story with them? Maybe there’s an Easter service you could invite them along to? Happy Easter church! Revd John Monaghan