Welcome

“ God is a constant comforting presence, but the presence of God can be felt in many different places and many different ways – not in the same place every single time.

WHAT will 2024 hold for our world?

Peace and justice? War? Change and more change? An upturn in the economy or more financial challenges? More injustice for the poorest in our world?

The path of the year is yet uncharted and the way ahead is filled with mystery (with the answers only with God).

Perhaps the one thing of which we can be sure is that our lives will not be constantly mundane – the same every day or every Sunday. Life is simply not a ‘Groundhog Day’, but a bright colourful mosiac that challenges.

We would not expect our personal daily lives to be routinely identical – and would expect our own lives to be tailored by need and expectation – and yet there is an expectation that the church will remain unwaveringly the same – in complete contradiction of semper reformanda (‘always reforming’).

God is a constant comforting presence, but the presence of God can be felt in many different places and many different ways – not in the same place every single time. As the Church moves forward, the familiar will still be there for all, but just sometimes in a different way.

As the thorny issue of buildings continues to be grappled with – perhaps 90 years too late – the lessons of the early Church should be in the mind: Jesus and his disciples did not meet regularly in buildings – they encountered people where they were and gathered together wherever they could – not in the same place at the same time all the time.

Openness to possibilities is going to be vital this year: could resources be shared with other denominations? The declarations with the Scottish Episcopal Church and the Catholic Church have strengthened ties but locally in some places ecumenical working is already a feature as communities of faith recognise the need to share increasingly vital resources, but has the permission given by these declarations been fully recognised and realised?

Christian communities have more in common than that which divides and in times of trial and challenge for many churches, minds need to be open to embrace new ways of being and working. There will not be a one size fits all – each solution will lie in the context of each church, but sharing buildings, sharing a working team for administration, for example, could result in benefits for all. It could also open doors for all with spiritual longings who have forgotten or do not know how to connect with Christianity. Opening hearts and minds to new possibilities may pave the way to a new community of family belonging – and free vital resources to engage and grow rather than deal with consistent decline and negativity.

All that is needed is openness to catching the spirit as the wind of change breathes new life into our Church.

Lynne McNeil Editor