Connecting with God Although I know that the announcement this morning will have come as a shock or surprise to many of you, I wanted to make it at the beginning of the service so that over the course of the next 3 Team services, I can share with you some of the thoughts that I have had while reflecting on my time here, in the light of the new Diocesan vision and priorities that have just been formally released. I hope that you will be aware that for a number of years now we have had a statement of vision for the Bybrook Group of Churches. As a group of churches, our desire is to love, serve and worship God; to love and serve one another, our local community and the wider world; to live and share with others the good news of Jesus Christ; because we know that we are a loved by God. We then summarised this as Worshipping, Sharing, Growing. Last year we spent some time thinking about different aspects of this vision together across our the churches. These are sound Scriptural reasons for us to exist as a church, and to be honest are the best recipe for growth that we are going to find. The main reason that I want to preach on the vision and priorities of the Diocese is that they fit in wonderfully with what we have been striving in God s name to do here over the past few years. The vision is all about creating connections connecting with God, connecting with each other, and connecting with our communities. Can you see my cause for celebration here? Rather than being some clever abstract strategy, the idea is that this new vision underpins and affirms what many of us are already trying to do, instead of being yet another thing that we have to add on. And I might add that if we are not focusing on the elements of this vision, we probably need to rethink what we are doing. Alongside the vision about creating connections, the Diocese has also identified 3 key priorities, which again may strike resonance when we think about the plans that we have been putting into place as a group of churches. These are: 1) To make disciples 2) To grow and nurture wise, godly leaders 3) To engage with younger generations (those under 40, of which at least for a while I am still one!)
In the leaflet introducing the vision, Bishop Mike has written the following words. Jesus came with a message and a vision for the world. The message, the Good News, is that we can all be reconnected with God. The vision is of the Kingdom of God, a world where peace and justice reign and the whole of creation is redeemed and restored. This is God s big idea. As Christians we not only believe in this big idea; we play a part in making if a reality. In our churches, when we connect with God, we may then connect others with Him: we share Jesus story; we show what it means to follow Him; we become signs of God s Kingdom in the world. When we join together to do this across our diocese, we become a life-changing movement that can connect every person and every community with God. This is our visions for the Diocese of Bristol. It is an audacious vision energised by an all-powerful God. Will you join us on this life-changing journey? Over the next 3 Team services, I am going to be preaching on one of the elements of the Diocesan vision statement, and sharing with you as I have said, a few of my thoughts as I reflect on my time here in Bybrook, and some things that I would encourage you to think about in the future as you prepare for all that God has in store for you. Today we are going to begin this by thinking about what it means to connect with God. For Christians, to be connected with God is primarily about being, as St Paul would have put it, in Christ. There are so many verses that tell us that when we are connected with God, something changes within us. 1n 2 Corinthians 5:17, we read Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here! Throughout the Psalms we have prayers such as, Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me. And promises such as that found in Ezekiel 36, I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. This new relationship with Jesus empowers our lives and our faith as we journey towards Jesus in worship, through the Scriptures and in prayer, and as we allow ourselves to be changed by the Holy Spirit that we may become more like Jesus. To be connected with God is to learn to be more like Christ, allowing the Holy Spirit to influence our words, our actions,
our interactions with the world around us, and to focus on making new disciples. It is not simply about an inward transformation in our own lives, but about the outward transformation of the church in the community that it serves. Being connected with God is key if we hope and pray to see revival in our world. This means in practice seeing a commitment first to prayer, to really getting on our knees and seeking God s will for the communities and people that we serve. It also means seeing a willingness among the whole of his people to offer themselves for his service. Without prayer and willingness to serve the church simply will not grow, and therefore cannot survive long-term. At the Pentecost service in Kington St Michael recently, I preached on the role of the Holy Spirit in resourcing and sustaining the church. I want to share a few words with you from my conclusion to that sermon. In the Bible, we have God s word to us. In Jesus, we have the full example of what it looks like to live a life shaped by God s word. In the Holy Spirit, we have a companion to help us to follow in Jesus footsteps. If we long to share God s love and grace with our community, then the best place to start is to learn to recognise the presence of the Holy Spirit, God with us, and to see what he is already doing in our community, and join with him there. It is the power of the Holy Spirit at work that turns the disciples from a rag tag group of men who seem clueless often, into a galvanised group who spread the message of the gospel throughout the world. It is the power of the Holy Spirit at work today that takes ordinary people and through their faith and willingness to serve him, enables them to do extraordinary things. The reason that I am sharing all of this with you now, and have chosen the readings that I have for today is that in a few weeks time, as you now know I am going to be moving on from Bybrook and you are going to enter into a period of time of reflection about what you are looking for in your next incumbent. In the reading from Acts 20, we see Paul preparing to leave the Ephesian elders for the last time, and it feels as though his closing words contain elements that I want to say to you as we prepare for the future. During my time here, I have tried to show you a picture of what I think church is, not out of a sense of seeing personal glory or reward,
but because I think that it brings glory and honour to God s name, and his alone. I believe that the church is called to be a worshipping, growing and sharing community of believers who have been transformed by the Holy Spirit at work in them, having discovered the joy of a relationship with the living Jesus. I have worked with some of you to look at how we engage with the younger generations, how we can identify and build up new leaders, how we can encourage people to grow in their faith. I also know that not everyone has bought into this approach, and others may have very different understanding of what church is. You may wish to consider this when thinking about what sort of incumbent you are looking for next. Some of you have seen numerical growth, others have seen spiritual growth and that is really exciting. It simply doesn t matter what tradition of church you are or prefer that is not a boundary to growth. It is about a willingness to commit to prayer and to offering ourselves in service for God s glory and honour, not for our own. During the vacancy process, I want to encourage you ALL to commit to praying faithfully about what YOU want in the future. I also want to encourage you ALL to consider how you can commit yourselves to faithfully serving God in your community. I think in many respects, this vacancy is one of the most significant opportunities that you will have had in recent times to really work out who you are as churches, and how you see your future developing. I hope and pray that whatever that looks like, underpinning it all will be the choice to continue growing as outward looking, open, welcoming missional churches because if you do, you will have an exciting future ahead. What I do know is that in a vacancy, all sorts of different things can spring up to try and derail faithful churches from being faithful. Some of that comes from within the church, and some from outside of it. There will be people in our churches even now who will seek for all the wrong reasons (although they may seem right at the time) to step into the gap left during the vacancy intent on pushing changes that are not for God s glory. And I ask you seriously to listen to Paul s words as we says be on your guard! Do nothing without serious prayer, and do not panic. If God calls us on to another place, then also he has plans for you here. Trust him! The reason that I tagged Romans 8 onto the end of this reading is because it contains an encouragement to us. If we hold to Christ if we are connected to God, there is nothing that can separate us from his love. In all things, we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.
When I came here, I felt God give me a vision of this group of churches. In that vision, the churches here were serving their communities faithfully, working together generously, and communicating the message of the gospel joyfully. Each of the churches shone as beacons of light where they stood. Throughout out time here, lots of different people have given us prayerful words about God reclaiming the land here as his own. We as a clergy team have been prayer walking the benefice, praying these words into reality. I believe they can be if you choose to remain rooted faithfully in God for his glory. Some of you are already beginning to realise and see what this looks like. But there is a warning attached - if we choose not to be connected to God, Jesus is clear about what happens as we see in John 15. He explains that being connected to God is about bring grafted into the true vine. If we are not connected to the true vine, we will not bear fruit and the Father, the gardener will cut off every such branch. But if we are truly connected to God, we will bear fruit and God will continue to prune the church so that it can bear even more fruit. this as an opportunity to consolidate where we are now, and to look forward to the future with a desire to see new growth with a new incumbent. Those who aren t on the PCC, please feel empowered to share with your PCC members your own thoughts too because they are important. In connecting with God, as Jesus encourages us, surely our desire must be to enable all those around us to connect with him too, so that they also have the opportunity to experience the love of God and to respond by establishing an entering into a relationship with him for themselves. If not, then I find myself asking, what s the point of it all. The PCCs in each of the churches will soon be asked to engage with these vision connections, and my hope and prayer is that you will see