Welcome folks. It has been a very heavy week for me – but for better reasons than sadly, the number of funerals that have come my way as per the last two weeks. This week and next week, as a product of my Ministerial Development Review, and with the support of the Circuit, I am attending a Bridge Builder’s course.
This organisation specialises in helping people manage conflict – and when I did the first course two years ago it transformed by perspective. It helped me take less on myself and gave me some very practical skills to respond in the best possible way when difference and tension collide within my own family, within me, and within churches. One of the lessons I learnt was that some forms of conflict are a natural part of the creative process. The art of moving forward seems to revolve around acknowledging feelings, and what we are passionate about – and noting through all of this the common ground that we can agree on. A good example of this have been some of the really helpful conversations that we have had about God in Love Unites Us. The issue of same sex relationships can be a polarising one, but I have been proud of how we have lived phrases such as. ‘We can think differently, but love the same’. Another, Wesleyan, principle is that we can ‘disagree well. The main thing during our conversations as a National Church has been that despite our differences, those who are part of the LGBT+ community have felt listened to and respected – as have those who struggle. As with any form of conflict, progress begins when we have the confidence and the forbearance to face our emotions and share how we feel. Meanwhile, scripture calls us to discern a way forward which accepts that we bear in mind the health of the body as a whole. I did not intend to speak on God in Live Unites Us as I set out to offer my weekly bulletin today, but it has naturally led in this direction, and to me reminding us all to pray for the Church and our forthcoming District synod, and to invite anyone who wants to share their thoughts on the report to contact our synod reps, or anyone in CLT. Thoughts shared in writing are of course the easiest place to start though.
This second part of the course – four days over two weeks, is on Building Resilience in Ministry, which feels somewhat ironic given that if all of us were not resilient in the first place, given everything we have experienced, we would have fallen by the wayside already, I will report a little more on this once the course is over, but so far I have been encouraged by a focus on the Psalms which has underlined for me that a cycle of how feeling disorientated (either by difficult events or as things seem chaotic before a new order of things is established) is very much part of the human condition. There are of course times of blessing. The reality is that rather than pushing back against the discomfort of disorientation, we step more to it in the knowledge that a sense of order will emerge. Linking this to the pandemic, there is a tendency to go back to the way things were before – which is now a distant land, and in reality, unobtainable. Instead, we need to sit with the discomfort, in that heady mix of celebrating the good things that we have put in place despite the pandemic whilst questioning how everything fits back together as we emerge into face to face worship. What will we drop? What will we continue? What will we adjust? It all feels uncomfortable but we have no option to go back; we must move forward. My thoughts and prayers are with every church in the circuit as we reflect. Be reassured as you hear me acknowledge how challenging this might feel. We will get there in the end. And we will be all the better for it, having been crafted into the kind of churches that God wants us to be, fit for our present age.