VICAR'S LETTER
17
Sundon Road
Streatley
August, 2006
Dear
All
Three major challenges face the church at the present time. Each arises from a change that has taken place in our culture. We have begun to address each of them, but they seem likely to dominate the agenda for many years to come.
The first challenge is that posed by the tidal wave of secularism which, after quietly gathering strength over the last two hundred years, has now broken and is racing up the beach. We are responding to this challenge by trying to develop a gospel that is credible - one that brings together the insights of faith with the truths being unveiled by science and by biblical scholarship. We are also responding by trying to offer a faith that is intelligible - one that expresses itself in forms and in language that are accessible to those unused to traditional services and unversed in traditional religious language. It is to this end that we have built up a services "ladder" leading up from Buggy Group Services, through Family Service and Family Service with Communion, to Seasonal Communion and to Parish Communion itself.
The second challenge arises from the change that has taken place in peoples' understanding of community. Whereas people once thought of themselves as belonging to a real community - their village, their town, their district - now their first loyalty is to a virtual community. This community is defined by a shared agenda, an agenda that is largely set by the media we watch and read. Striking evidence of this change was provided by this year's World Cup. It cost us some £1500 because people preferred to remain by their televisions rather than turn out for local events. We are responding to this change in two ways. We have enlarged our pastoral work to match peoples' expanded horizons. We now seek to be of service not only to our parish but to the world beyond. This is the work being spearheaded by the Care Committee. At the same time we have sharpened the focus of our pastoral work within the parish to target those who are paying the price of the changed understanding of community - the lonely and the vulnerable who could once rely on a level of neighbourly care that can no longer be taken for granted. We are trying to offer to them an oasis of real community where they might find human love and fellowship and a Father's care. This is partly why we built the Parish Centre. We are also trying to reach out to offer to them something of that neighbourly care that is no longer built into the system. This is one of the major tasks of the Way Warden network.
The third challenge is the one presented by the rise within our culture of individualism, or, to put it more bluntly, self-centredness. Christianity has traditionally taught that self-fulfilment is to be found by forgetting self and focussing on what God wants and on the needs of others. Resurrection comes from following the way of the cross. Contemporary culture, however, teaches a very different message. The combination of a popular psychology that says repression is bad for us and the strong desire of commerce to stimulate appetites in order to make a profit from satisfying them, has promoted the belief that self-fulfilment is to be found not by forgetting self's demands but by pandering to them. With such a culture there can be no compromise. We are trying to challenge it in our teaching and preaching. We are also trying to resist infiltration by it. We have reinforced the bulwark of prayer by activities such as the Parish Retreat. We have centred our worship on communion with its message that the search for unity takes precedence over all individual wishes.
It is not easy to be a parish church at the present time. The challenges we face are considerable. Nevertheless a start has been made on trying to meet them. We now have to build on the foundations we have laid.
All best wishes,
Roger