I’ve been off with my colleagues in the Synod Development Team for an overnight at The Beild, a christian retreat in Perthshire. It’s a beautiful place and well worth a visit if you need a small space to meet and think and pray.
This window is in the chapel housed in what was originally the carpenter’s workshop.
Our meeting was good, I think, although with less concrete outcomes for us to work on which is in some ways difficult but in other ways gives us space to think some more and see where we are heading. I think we might be on the edge of something significant, perhaps even looking at it, but not quite knowing how to describe it or what to do with it. As always the tension is between being ‘life support’ and ‘bringing new life’. Working for the institution but seeing the need to move and change and develop new things. That can bring frustration and insecurity both for the congregations we work with and for us and we prod and provoke but I have the feeling we are perhaps on to something. When I work out what that might be I’ll let you know!
As a pastor serving in a “connectional” church, I’m now asking myself – “What would be the harm if our institution collapsed?” Would it really prevent us from sharing Christ’s love? I don’t think so.
I’m not sure it would either pistolpete, but don’t tell my employers I said so!!!
I’m pretty sure that the bits of the church that will grow and connect with people are the bits that exist on the edges or outside denominations unless denominations change from being about finance and property to support and nurture.