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St Mary the Virgin Clergy Letter July 2011
One of the joys of more recent months of my ministry at Middleton has been the introduction of our informal
St Cross and St Mary’s “Joint PCC”. I put its title in inverted commas, because it can’t really be called
in any legal sense a shared parish church council, whilst St Cross and St Mary’s remain separate parishes.
But putting aside the legalities I have found the meetings we have alternately at our parochial Hall and St
Cross church to be the thing we often miss at more formal PCCs- occasions when we have a bit of time together
as parishes to think about what our churches are really about.
Now we have to have the hard work of business meetings of our PCCs - without them we cannot run a church
practically and I’m very grateful to the many individuals of our PCCs who put so much hard work into the
day to day tasks without which we could not be an effective presence in Middleton. But we must never
forget that PCCs are a means to an end and never ends in themselves.
I have some sympathy for the many people who say to me that you don’t need to go to church to be a Christian –
and sadly us Church-goers can often put people off Christianity altogether. I try to be sensitive to what people
are trying to tell me when they say this, but the bottom line is that I don’t think Christianity makes sense
unless it entails active membership of a body which for want of a better word we must call “church”.
Incidentally I read recently that Randolph (son of Winston) Churchill and Evelyn Waugh (famous author of
“Brideshead Revisited” and a practicing Roman Catholic) had a huge bitter argument one day, and understandably
Churchill remarked with words to the effect that he couldn’t understand how he could argue so bitterly and be
as he was if Waugh were a Christian and a Catholic: to which Waugh replied: “…think how much worse I’d be if I
wasn’t!!”. I certainly can relate to this!!
So one obstacle we’ve got to keep removing from those who believe but can’t belong because they regard us as
hypocrites is to keep rubbing away at the ancient mistaken belief that the Church is only for good people! In
fact as we know it’s for all ordinary people like us who recognize our sickness and know that the only remedy
is to be found in Christ Jesus.
But more importantly than this is the fact that I often think people don’t want to be members of churches for at
least two reasons none of them connected with lack of belief:
1. We place obstacles in the way of their being members or at least don’t make it easy for them to be part of our churches.
2. We all find it hard to commit to a way of life which puts worship before personal pleasure and which puts the
service of community and the least amongst us before personal gain.
Now we churchgoers are as much guilty of the second as the first when we think of the church as just a different kind
of social club, or a building; or a time to enjoy a bit of peace and quiet, or sing a few sentimental songs from our youth.
And now comes the good news! Church is never more church than when we join together in our little joint PCCs and come
up with ideas like the idea we had at the last one held at St Cross, when we decided to have the Poverty Sunday joint
service in June in the Parochial Hall. The decision was made after we watched a short film by the Church Urban Fund
(which has funded both our Crossroads Youth project and our Kidz Klub) and extracts from a longer one commissioned by
Leeds Churches Together in Mission.
The latter celebrated all the wonderful things which our churches in Leeds are doing to make a difference to the lives
of people with a drug or alcohol addiction; or to help asylum seekers; or sex industry workers; or people with mental
health issues; or homeless people. We can I think be justly proud of being part of a church which is doing so much good
in our local Leeds communities. The many church run or funded projects which make a real difference to people’s lives
are what Church is all about and can only happen where people come away from the security of their home and family,
away from the big TV screen; or the drug of shopping at White Rose or the game of football or other leisure pursuits
and take the time and trouble to expose themselves with others to the life transforming and disturbing presence of Christ
in the liturgy.
Every Blessing- Andy
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