The meeting place of 2024

The Rev Ruth Kennedy explains why the digital world is the meeting place of today.

THE new year always presents a good opportunity to sit and reflect but also to get new ventures going!

They sit hand in hand with one another, not fighting against each other, just holding one another. It’s an odd pairing when you think about it and it is an oddity we see in nature. Where autumnal leaves look utterly beautiful even though they are in the process of decaying. There’s a similar peculiarity in Scripture for the remarkable good of the Gospel.

Paul travels to Athens and is irately fascinated that it is full of idols, with one given the title ‘To The God Nobody Knows’. Paul recognises that this sums up the spiritual and religious culture, the people do not know Jesus but they want to – they even have an idol symbolising their spiritual hunger. Rather than discounting this spiritual curiosity, Paul used it to introduce them to the One True God, Jesus Christ, through a language and means of communication which they understood. It was relevant for their context. Despite the pagan worship he had to wade through and certainly not partake in, Paul listened to their stories, he saw them inscribed on the idols and responded in a manner which made sense in the Areopagus meeting place, in the marketplaces. Not all believed, but Paul shared the Gospel as was his, and our, calling to do and he engaged relevantly with the people.

And what of us? Are we engaging relevantly with the people we meet in our meeting places, marketplaces, streets? Our church can walk through any city and town and see not just spiritual curiosity but dire need. Every time we respond with kindness and non-judgmental justice, with love and peace, with prayer and Spirit-filled hope we are sharing the Gospel in a relevant way to the people we meet.

The people we meet are not just on the physical streets anymore, are they? One of the most significant marketplaces or meeting places of our time is the digital world and I am delighted that as the Digital Ministries Advisor and Minister of Sanctuary First I get to be ‘in it’. I know many churches are developing their digital ministries and I hope to equip them and you to be able to minister well in this particular meeting place, with creative ways of communicating which are bold and relevant to those we are connected with and understood by those we need to go and find. In our post-Christendom age, we have the responsibility to go to the contemporary marketplaces of Athens and make disciples, baptising and teaching, nurturing existing and new worshipping communities of faith and communicating in different languages that are understood by the hearers or receivers.

“The people we meet are not just on the physical streets anymore, are they?

How we do that needs prayerful consideration about who we are engaging with to ensure we are digitally relevant, where we listen and respond to what we hear from them and God. It might need some guidance from those who have walked the path a bit more, which Sanctuary First can help with. We, the Church, are the Bride of Christ meaning we are perfectly poised for the meeting place of 2024, we are not irrelevant in this world nor the digital world. There is no oddity there!

The Rev Ruth Kennedy is Digital Ministries Advisor for the Church of Scotland and minister with Sanctuary First.