God's Mission at SMC

REFLECTING ON THE LAST TWELVE MONTHS AT SMC...

This year has been an extraordinarily busy year for SMC, at least in my short experience. We have seen some wonderful highlights in worship, not least the wonderful atmosphere and presence of God in our most recent Easter Sunday Worship for All. We’ve also had some difficult decisions to make; perhaps the church extension being the most notable! It’s been a year in which we have been brave and taken risks as well as reaching out to our community.

It’s also been an extremely difficult year for us as a church family with folk dear to us journeying through difficult times and times of crisis. It’s at these times that I have been so grateful for our pastoral team and also the ability of our congregation to look out for our church family members and enfold them in our love and prayers, as well as supporting practically. As a minister who finds the pioneering element of ministry more natural than the pastoral side I have personally been extremely grateful for those who have nudged me in places and also been very patient and gracious. And, of course, we’ve also celebrated the life of dear friends as we commended them to God and trusted that they will rise in glory! As we hope to grow closer to God, our ability to grow closer to each other will be key. A church that can only be pastorally supported by their clergy will always place a glass ceiling on their growth, but one that can create a culture of the priesthood of all believers will be stronger both individually and together.

I’ve been privileged to see, this year, how our congregations have engaged with the prospective new worship pattern. Worship is a deeply personal thing, as well it should be, but it’s also a corporate thing. We have been magnificent in engaging in the discussions with grace, openness and the needs of others (including those we don’t yet know) in mind. I am truly grateful to God for this culture and for the amazing leadership that has nurtured it and chaired the discussions as we journey towards it - I’m learning a lot from the amazing giftings we have amongst our church family!

One challenge has been discussions about evangelism. We’ve seen the Methodist Church, connexionally, place this at the top of the agenda and our district has it prominently placed. I’m glad to see this as I feel sure that the neglect of our outreach has a great deal to do with our denomination’s decline. If we do not share the gospel, the good news - the ‘evangelos’ then we let down both God and our community. On the other hand, we are learning that the word evangelism need not carry the same connotations as, for some, it may. We are all evangelists in our own way and we need to find ways to tell our stories, give glory to God and point others to God’s love and grace. One of my lamentations of the past year has been that I have not been able to get the Risk Taking Mission and Service committee off the ground. That doesn’t mean we haven’t been taking part in evangelism - I particularly enjoyed the Alpha Course that we held in the Autumn and of course everything we do involves an element of sharing our faith! I do hope, however, that we can find (or create) the right forums to critically evaluate how we grow in evangelism and develop our own ways of sharing the good news. Without this we are lacking in one of the four areas that the Methodist Church regards as our mission and more importantly neglecting the great commission to make disciples! When was the last time we saw someone come to new faith as part of our church family? When will the next time be?

We continued to develop our radical hospitality and we are often encouraged by feedback from folk who experience our hospitality and feel blessed! The ‘First Impressions Count’ seminars have been great forums to evaluate the way forward and I’m grateful for all who’ve participated. I think it’s now important that we find a way of involving everyone in the job of welcoming and extending hospitality to the stranger.

I have been really excited to see the development of our Intentional Faith Development Committee. The team are few in number but great in enthusiasm, commitment and giftings. As such we are aiming to take seriously the discipleship element of the great commission. We must be intentional in the way that we develop faith as a church. Our connection with God, firstly individually, and then collectively is the reason we are a church and without it we are, in the words of John Wesley, simply a dead sect. We don’t exist as a church to do good things but to relate to our creator and saviour - our good works must flow, then, from this relationship and will always do so more powerfully when compelled by the power of God through the Holy Spirit. I’m excited about the prospect of a church weekend away and also of our Big Day Out. But at the same time I lament how few of us are involved in midweek study groups, which are in many churches known as discipleship groups! There is evidence to link the decline of the ‘Class Meeting’ (Methodism’s historical name for such groups) and the decline of the Methodist Church generally. It is often in these greenhouses that discipleship flourishes and blossoms. I hope, moving forward that we can increase participation in these and make them the general practice of church membership that they should be.

The development of the Cavern has also been a great source of encouragement to me, in my ministry. I feel so fortunate to have a church, here, that takes risks and is devoted to those outside the church, of any age. The Tools For Self Reliance group have been a dedicated and essential part of its development, working extremely hard to create the space for it - without their support it simply would not have worked. We remain committed to TFSR as an important part of our ministry and I’m looking forward to benefits to TFSR that all of the disruption will hopefully bring in the long term! It’s true to say that I would have like the Cavern to have been more fruitful by this point but then I always suspected that the difficulty would be in building the teams, rather than preparing the space. Financial support for this project has been a real blessing and deepened my faith - I remain convinced that when we step out in faith, money will never be the main obstacle. My hope, moving forward, is that the community will support this venture (as well as the churches of Southwell) and we, together, can pitch a tent for the youth of our town to feel at home in. The Methodist Church here in Southwell has certainly not been found wanting in its approach to this wonderful mission opportunity and I have every confidence that in the fullness of time it will be a strong and powerful part of what we do and who we are.

It would be remiss of me to fail to mention the wonderful work of our Families Worker and her teams. Our families worker has written her own report in this regard so I won’t go into detail, but it is an incredible blessing to me that we have such a vibrant programme of families work. Links with the schools, toddlers work, families provision in worship, holiday activities and most latterly youth work on Wednesday afternoons in the Cavern have all contributed to strong and deep connections with the young people and families in our community - many of which are making their spiritual home with us and this involvement will continue to grow as we continue to reach out. In truth there are more opportunities here than our Families Work teams can pursue - the field are white unto harvest but sadly the labourers are so few. That said, we are blessed with so many folk who contribute greatly in time, effort and expertise. My encouragement is that we continue to support our Families Worker in every way we can and I’m over the moon that we are able to extend her employment and increase her hours in the next few months. We are truly blessed.

We set out eighteen months ago with nine targets in mind and as I reflect on these to focus this report I feel that we are making incredible progress in all areas. If you feel weary at times in your support of this then I’m not surprised - you’re working with great devotion! This is a wonderful church, blessed by a wonderful God. When you feel weary then, trust in the Lord.

“But those who trust in the Lord for help

    will find their strength renewed.

They will rise on wings like eagles;

    they will run and not get weary;

    they will walk and not grow weak.” Isaiah 40:31

It's not really a detailed action plan as we're still working out exactly what we mean by these and how we might move forward in these areas but they are the areas where we feel God is leading us to impact. These will be the foci of our discussions, moving forward, alongside the business of being church.

If you’d like to get involved (and we’d love you to) in any of the conversations about how we do church (which happen under the surface) and move forward with these priorities please either speak to the minister or have a look at the ‘Get Involved’ page.