Healthy Church Image by Daniel Taylor

On the Tuesday of half term the junior church met in the lounge to decide whether or not to replace the painting on the wall and if so
what to do. We spent the morning discussing ideas and came to a conclusion so discussed a list of materials and what colour paint we
wanted for the next day. On the Wednesday some of us met again to sketch out the design and to begin painting the canvases, a couple of others also arrived later in the day to paint over the board where the last painting had been and where we were going to mount the finished painting. On the Thursday we met again, finished the painting and had a look at the finished thing up against the wall.

Thank you Sue for organising it we all enjoyed it.

Daniel Taylor

 

Artwork Catches Idea of a Healthy Church by Sue Waddington

Over the past few weeks the SNuG team have been challenging young people with;

• The positive and negatives of Trinity.
• How do we Energise our Faith?
• How do we respond to the needs in our community?
• Where is God in Trinity and what is God’s vision for Trinity

In amongst tongue twister games and balloon debates laughter and serious discussion we have explored together. I want to share one of their ideas with you but do talk to the young people yourselves.

I invited the group to think how we could re-paint the large board in the lounge to represent the seven marks to “Healthy Church”

Daniel came up with the idea of using rays of light to represent marks of a Healthy Church. Over the October half term a group of youngsters headed by Daniel met up.

They planned, discussed, argued over colour, why, how, and what the picture was representing, who uses the room and how the lounge room is going to be used. At times the discussion became heated; some became frustrated, while others chose to think long and hard about the task in front of them.

Daniel and his team have also talked about how to make the lounge a quiet and reflective place to come and sit after church or just on a day when you needed time with God, this became the key to the outcome of the picture.

They all worked hard over the next two days putting the design from Daniel’s computer on to canvas. I had very little to do with the picture I just gave encouragement and advice if asked and bought what was needed.

The results are fantastic I am so proud of them all, they worked hard, they thought about others, they thought about the impact the picture would have and what the picture represented.

Please go and visit the lounge and see the picture now in place, it is truly amazing the colours and the story it represents.

Thank you Daniel and to your team for sharing with us all your talents and inspiration of what Healthy Church means to you.

Sue Waddington, Youth Worker

Facing the Cost of Growth and Change by Charles Cooke

I have been handling the desk top publishing for the study notes on the Healthy Churches programme – unifying the styling and following the theme developed by Any Chapman for the original bookmarks – so it was not unexpected when the draft notes on Facing the cost of Change and Growth appeared in my inbox one day.

The same day, surely by a piece of divine serendipity, my Bible reading was the first half of Acts 15. At that time the church consisted of a group of Jews who had decided to follow Jesus, a very select group of like-minded people. How they must have been shaken from any complacency by Paul. He had freshly returned from a trip around eastern Turkey during which many non-Jews had come to the same faith — a possibility that surely had never crossed their minds. It was as if Barbarians were besieging Rome. Here is what David Smith wrote in the Bible Notes for that day.

Recently I was in a church that meets on a housing estate with serious unemployment and health problems, accompanied by the breakdown of family and social life. The church was founded by a prosperous city-centre congregation, and two couples had decided to live on the estate and open their lives and their homes to local people. As a result, a few neighbours had come to personal faith in Christ. One of the couples made this comment to me: The existing congregation can cope with the occasional convert from the estate, but what happens when Christ becomes the Saviour of more and more people around here? When the church starts to reflect the community in which it exists there will be a lot of changes and we are not sure that our middle-class friends will be able to cope with that!’

The wise words of James relate to situations like this: ’We should not make it difficult for the Gentiles who are turning to God’ (v 19). James is not denying that the commitment to follow Jesus is demanding for all who make it (he will later denounce a dead faith which lacks ethical power and achieves neither personal nor social transformation), but here he insists that we should not make it difficult for people who are on the path to salvation, freedom and renewal by creating barriers that block free access to Jesus.

There are familiar tales of missionaries who imposed Western culture on their converts, creating barriers that offended people who were genuinely attracted to Jesus. Are we also in danger of ‘making it difficult’ for our neighbours – be they Muslims, humanists, or post-modern young people – to ‘turn to God’ by requiring that they adopt our cultural patterns in behaviour, dress or social life?

One aspect in particular struck me. That is how did the church at the time in Antioch and later in Jerusalem deal with the issue? It involved a paradigm shift in their thinking. It is worth studying the last part of Acts 14 and chapter 15. Who were the parties involved? What challenges faced them? Who agreed and who disagreed with what was happening? What principles were involved in coming to the final outcome? By the way there were lots of disagreements along the way.

In the end they faced the need for change and acted on it – and how the church grew as a result!  Can we do the same?

Charles Cooke

The Healthy Churches Review: What Does it Mean for Me? by Joyce Nelson

I am just an ordinary member of the congregation, I’m not on the Review group, so haven’t been involved in any of the planning or discussions about this process until it was brought before the Church Council.

I then started to read the handbook and it is an easy read. The word ‘healthy’ implies that we may be sick, but we are not doing this to be healed (although this may be an outcome), but because we need to discern what God wants for His church (not our church) here at Trinity.

Then I went to Wesley Owen bookshop to buy some new Bible reading notes. I didn’t buy the current notes, but some for the previous two months, simply because of the title ‘Turning the World Upside Down’ and I realised they were about the re-formation of the church. As I studied the Bible passages and comments and read the handbook, things seemed to fall into place – it seemed as if God was saying ‘I can do great things at Trinity’. I feel really excited and enthusiastic about this e.g.

• As we thought about being ‘Energised By Faith’ the daily readings and comments stressed the importance of experiencing God and strengthening faith through our worship.
• ‘An Outward Looking Focus’ tied in with notes on caring for everyone in need – everyone, everywhere.
• Then last Friday as I was thinking about the third mark ‘Seeking to Find out What God Wants’ the notes were headed ‘A Church that Listens’. I quote:

Nothing is more productive and powerful than a church getting together to listen to God and then, having heard His voice, either by a sense of corporate witness, or by a prophetic word, rising up as one and saying, ‘We have heard the voice of Jesus, now let us get to work’. People of the world are hardly likely to listen to us unless we are listening to God…… A church which meets to fast and pray and hear what the Spirit is saying is ready for anything that comes. God has plans for each church and success depends on putting His plans into action, not ours.

But this is not just for a few individuals, it is for the whole congregation – for you! I urge you to read the handbook, ask the questions, come to the discussions, talk about it to others, make a note of the dates (especially the 15^th January). We need everyone to be inspired and involved and to own this. The most important thing is to pray about it. Please pray for the project, for Bob, for the Review Group and Leadership Team and for yourselves and your role in it. Pray with passion and enthusiasm and I am sure we shall see what God wants us to be as a church and as individuals as we continue this journey, this step of faith together.

Joyce Nelson

Harvest Vision

The Harvest Appeal at Trinity for me brings back many memories of being in The Gambia, a few of which I shared at church.  (And sorry, I was married when I went!!)

Although it is over ten years ago, I remember well the whole experience and in looking back recently through some of the photos, some of the faces of the people we met when we there.  Men and women, young and old; many had very little – unemployment then was running at 70%…adult literacy at 40%…life expectancy was about 50.  The need was enormous.

What to do about so many?  What do do about a whole village…a whole province…a whole country?  For that matter what to do about Africa?

J Neville Ward writes about the steps we take to follow Jesus something which  sums up what our Harvest vision should be: “Once you have seen the vast incalculable need of the world and stopped yourself looking the other way and felt your hold on what you possess loosen, you will probably have taken another step” (p. 32, Enquiring Within (1988) Epworth Press).  Our giving to others, our compassion to those in need has a value impossible to quantify.  One village, Marakissa, with only about 25,000 inhabitants, will benefit from the solar panels powering the water supply.  Even if it were for just one person, it would be worth it.

Our Outward Looking Focus should mean that we are prepared to look at that “vast incalculable need” – and instead of turning off the news early, or throwing the paper in the bin to avoid the international section, or mumbling “but what can I do?” before thinking about something else – should mean that we look at the need around us with eyes that see opportunities for giving.  Even if the opportunity will benefit just one person, or just a handful, we should be asking ourselves – “what can I do?”.

After the solar panels…what can we do next?

Outward Looking Focus

Having preached on this last Sunday, it would be probably immodest to suggest that you read the sermon or listen to it, but in a nutshell, the sermon outlined how we cannot choose who our neighbours are; that our response to need around us needs to be: “to whom can I be a neighbour?’; and that when we respond to other people through some form of care or compassion, then our faith and are daily living become entwined.

Clearly, there are many areas where individual members of Trinity are serving others through employment, charity work, voluntary assistance; in giving of prayer, time, money; in structured projects and commitments or through occasional, isolated, or momentary acts.  Putting those (briefly) to one side, as a Church, as a sum of all of those parts, what can we do to support this mission?  Daphne Lander made a point in the discussion after church about a ‘healthy’ church doing two or three things maybe – but doing them well.  What might that mean for us?  Which of the following could be areas where Trinity could focus energy, support, money, and adopt a particular focus?

How about – local debt management/financial advice; childcare and childminding; care and respite for carers; social visiting for housebound; homelessness; local drug/alcohol issues; support for our local, international population; what about further afield like our existing support for The Gambia?

It would be interesting to hear back from people – what are the areas where there is greatest need…and what gifts do we as a church have which could be a good match?  Where those two areas coincide, surely God’s blessing would be upon any such work of faith.

Energized by Faith

On Sunday morning, Bob talked about Peter’s journey of faith, with all its peaks and troughs – this is a man named as the ‘rock’ on which the church was built; who persisted in telling Jesus he loved him; who in tradition requested an inverted crucifixion as he was not worthy to die in the same manner of Christ.  And yet also the man who denied knowing Jesus, and who (let’s face it, along with the rest of the disciples) had his fair share of moments of confusion, slow-witted responses, and weakness while with Jesus.

Bob’s use of Peter as an example of a Christian life – including questioning at what he became a Christian – is an interesting parallel to the first mark of a healthy church we are dwelling on – being ‘Energized by Faith‘.   As his life and faith progressed Peter was clearly energized: by his realization of who Jesus was, by his acceptance of God’s Spirit into his heart, and in leading the fellowship of disciples and followers who were in turn energizing others.

It strikes me that – whether for Peter or for Trinity as a church – being ‘energized by faith’ is not an end-state to which we should aspire, but rather we should seek a constant, ongoing, flowing energy from recognition and praise that God’s presence is with us.  (John Wesley’s sermon on Christian Perfection also recognized that this was not an achievable goal in a literal sense).  As a community of believers and worshippers we are being energized by our faith in God in matters great and small, and as individuals and as a church we are likely to have moments when our beliefs may feel uncertain, our commitment flagging, or our understanding in God’s purpose lacking.  However, as our journey of life and faith continues, we should hold fast to the truth that God will nurture us, and nourish us through prayer, through scripture, and through fellowship with one another.  We should use this season of services to celebrate God’s activity in each one of us, in His world, and consider how we might better support one another in our journeys of faith.