Summer Vicar's Blog

Welcome to the Summer blog! I think i'll take a break from the blog in August as part of the healthy season of slowing down. The gardeners/farmers/outdoor lovers will know that there's no such thing as a 'perpetual season' - maybe that's a word for some of us here where God is asking us to put something down we've been holding tight to our heart?

For some of us, August is also a time of going on holiday, or taking on less meetings, or pausing ministry for a bit. If you think you've been running in the red for too long, or running on empty, do pray about what a slower season might look like, and what those spiritual, physical and relational 'wells' are that you might be able to drink from in order to bring refreshment. Remember - a constant state of 'busyness' is not what the Holy Spirit wants for us. Let's celebrate the joy of limitations and boundaries and refuse to go ahead of the Holy Spirit, or take on things that he's not asking us to do.

This month, it's been so encouraging working alongside our new staff members - Gaz and Jared, and the passion, experience and love for the Lord and their ministries that they bring. We had a staff away day last week and had some fun looking at our Myers Briggs personality profiles - celebrating our differences and being aware of the potential ways we could stress each other out by not recognising each other unique personalities! If you haven't done it, you can take a simple free test on www.41q.com and then print out your 'normal head' here https://share.themyersbriggs.com/type-heads/ , and your 'stress head' here https://share.themyersbriggs.com/stress-heads/ Last year I even did this with our three teenagers and Alice, and it made for a fascinating dinner conversation!  For those of you interested - I'm ESTJ (gravitate to authority, leadership, order and justice but can be bossy and insensitive) , which I share with the likes of Margaret Thatcher, Henry Ford, Alan Sugar and even Michelle Obama!  Some scholars have even suggested that Paul the Apostle and Darth Vader may have been ESTJ, but we can't know for sure!

I've also enjoyed some time this month to do more of a deep dive into all things leadership including a leadership morning with more than 30 of us from church, a 2 day spiritual retreat in a tent in Wales, and also reading Paul Harcourt's (former head of New Wine) excellent book 'Spirit filled churches'. If Paul was to summarise what he's learned over the past 31 years of leading All Saints Woodford Wells in London for the past 31 years, he would write it as a tweet: "Dream big. Start small. Go First. Start now. Take others. Tell stories. Keep going".  He's given me plenty of food for thought as we continue our year of discerning the Vision, Values and Priorities that the Lord might be calling us as a church over the next 4 or 5 years.

The reason that Values are so important is because they address the issues of culture in a church- 'the way things are'.  For example, the things a visitor notices in the first few minutes of walking through our church on Sunday, the way that notices are read and prayers are prayed, the way that conflict is handled with grace and not buried under ground, the way that people are honest, open, the way they live out the gospel - all of this is like a current in the sea. You can't see it, but it affects everything. One of the key jobs of leadership is to make sure that our culture is moving more and more in a Kingdom culture way.  Everything else like strategy, planning, priorities are secondary to this. As the old adage puts it: 'culture eats strategy for breakfast'!  Please pray for the ongoing process of discernment this year, and as we communicate more to the church at our 'Impact 2026' Church weekend at Home 9th-11th October 2026 - put it in your diary!

Some other nuggets from Paul's book included the memorable line 'you can't lead people if you can't love people', or another way of putting it - 'they don't care what you know until they know that you care'; also that the role of the staff/ministry leaders is not to deliver everything but to set the culture and go first; that one of the jobs of the leader is to discern which 'season' a church is in, and to enable change to move a church from one season to the next. An example of a 'change triangle' might be moving from a season of 'Community' focus, to one of 'Vision' focus, to one of 'Task' focus, and then back into 'Community'.  I feel like we're in a season of 'Vision' focus at the moment, and next year will possibly be one of moving into 'Task'. Let's take it one day at a time though!

The start of July saw our annual Pool baptisms at the Ingram's pool in Churcham. It's one of my all time highlights of the year as person after person stands up to publicly acknowledge Jesus and say a big 'yes' to him, in front of friends and family. Hearing unique story after story of why people are choosing to be baptised, or reaffirm their baptism vows (made as an infant) are one of those occasions where Christianity, and following Christ becomes not just intellectually true but experientially real.  Please continue to pray for all of these baptism candidates, and all of us in our church family over this summer, that we would have the courage and daily inspiration of the Holy Spirit to acknowledge Jesus in front of others as Jesus has asked us to (Matthew 10:32). 

One of the words I had from the Lord on the day of the baptisms was just the reminder that Jesus' baptism was a day when his heavenly Father said that he was 'well pleased' with Jesus, that his favour and affirmation and blessing were all resting on him - and that was before Jesus had even started his public ministry! What a reminder that everything we do in this life is just a grateful response to God's salvation, grace and blessing spoken over us.  The good things, the good life we hope to live is never to earn God's approval, but overflows from his approval. This summer, may we all know the Father's blessing spoken over us, in whatever words or way we need to hear it.

See you all soon,

Revd John Monaghan