News and reflections

Way back in February 2016, I shared here the news that I was taking on a part-time role as a pastor of a new church plant in Cowley.  In due course that part-time role became a full-time role, and it has been a huge privilege to minister to this little church community over the last six years.

On Monday, however, we voted together as a congregation to close our doors (so to speak; we meet in a community centre, which will no doubt continue to open its doors).  May 15th will be our last Sunday Celebration together.  This has been the culmination of a few months of discussion and prayer together, and although I'm more gutted about it than I can say, I am convinced it's the right course of action.  In due course I will reflect on what's led to this closure, but for now suffice to say that two years of covid-related restrictions and pressures have exposed and intensified our fragility, and there isn't the energy to start again.  So here we are.  Thankfully a number of other churches have started in the last six years, and Cowley certainly won't be left without a gospel witness; nor is there any shortage of churches for the remaining members of CCC to move into.  Nevertheless, it's all very sad.

For us as a family, this means an uncertain future.  I have been planning for some time to do some more study - I have a PhD plan related to writing a theology of preaching.  Where we had been assuming this would be part-time alongside ministry, we now feel that perhaps we are being providentially led to start full-time.  That carries all sorts of challenges, mainly financial.  If you want to hear more about that, let me know, and I'm sure there will be updates in the future!

One line of reflection that I've been pursuing is around God's faithfulness.  I noted on Twitter the other day that a church was marking its 40th anniversary, and celebrating this evidence of God's faithfulness.  Has God, then, not been faithful to us, as we shut up shop just after our 6th anniversary?  But then I think about how it could have gone: we are not closing because of any great scandal, or because of any declension from the faith once entrusted to the saints.  People have grown spiritually in the last six years, and will take that growth into other church fellowships and be a blessing.  The Lord has carried all of us through tough times - not only covid, but other terrible things.  He has, over and over again, demonstrated his faithfulness to us.  Celebrating the 40th anniversary of a church should indeed be an occasion to give thanks for his faithfulness; in a different way, perhaps in a minor key, closing a church could also be an occasion for thanksgiving.  He is faithful, and will surely continue to be faithful to each member of the church as we move on.

Another line of reflection has been prompted by CCC members looking around for churches to go to.  There are plenty of solid churches in Oxford; we are deeply privileged that way.  But it has made me think a lot about the wider church.  I completely understand why many church leaders have become suspicious of anyone who has an agenda for the wider church.  We've had enough of the power hungry and the controlling.  I completely understand the priority of humble service in one local congregation.  But as the people I've been commissioned by the Lord to care for move on into different churches, I find that I can't be indifferent to the state of those churches.  Yes, what we need most of all is people who will work unobserved and unpraised in their little corner of the vineyard; but we do also need people who will seek the reform of Christ's churches on a wider scale.

My final line of reflection is prompted by a sermon I heard in college chapel many years ago.  The preacher was a Lutheran, and it being college chapel he was able to deliver what was basically a lecture about Dietrich Bonhoeffer rather than an exposition of Scripture.  Ordinarily that would make me grumpy, but this was useful, and I come back to it often.  I wish I could remember who the guy was!  He talked about Bonhoeffer's notion of life as fragmentary.  There is so much in life that we start but are not able to finish; so many bits that don't quite seem like finished projects.  Even the projects which do seem finished often don't seem to obviously fit into a 'whole life'.  Life is a series of fragments.  And yet the Lord is able to collect all the fragments of our lives, and make of them one whole: a really, whole person, fully integrated, and beautiful, like a mosaic.  Nothing wasted (remember the fragments of bread they gathered in Galilee!), everything properly placed.  We are closing our church in the Easter season, knowing that everything we put dead into the ground the Lord is able to raise into glorious new life.