Reader Writes November 2023

I’ve noticed plenty of smiling and animated faces around the church recently; there’s a

certain buzz about the place. People have roles to play and things to do. I think this is

normal during a vacancy, ie the period, a year or more usually, between vicars. You could

say that when you don’t have a ‘professional’ running things, church members have to

step up, and this is not only rewarding but very effective. So it’s not surprising that an

essential requirement of an applicant for the job of vicar in Kington, stated prominently in

the ‘person profile’, is that they should be “a team maker and team builder, able and

comfortable to delegate”. In other words the vicar must empower lay teams rather than

recruit helpers. That takes a lot of both confidence and humility.

Wherever you see effective leadership you see teams. A tank crew or a special forces

team or a mountaineering expedition has essential roles; no one can afford to wait to be

told what to do. Training and operational experience have rehearsed this as far as

possible. In a forest harvesting operation there are combined teams of commercially

independent players: client, sawmill, road builder, haulage contractor, harvesting team,

replanting crew, even the forester somewhere in the middle.

The huge frustration around the most serious and complex challenges in the world, from

global security to climate break-down, is that they are in the hands of short term leaders; in

other words, politicians. Recent government decisions to dilute or delay carbon reduction

targets is transparently dishonest but judged to be electorally popular. Those voters won’t

be around when the earth becomes uninhabitable. A form of proportional representation

might produce the political diversity necessary to carry out tough measures in the long

term.

Coming back to church teams, the very obvious difference is that God is there in the midst

of the church itself; in its mission and in the lay teams that are called to do its work.

Churches sometimes borrow business and corporate models to improve efficiency and

clarify goals. This may be helpful, but the absolutely fundamental fact is that we belong to

and serve in God’s church. Jesus promised that where two or three gathered in his name,

he would be there in their midst and would answer their prayers. And as Paul reminded the

Corinthians, we may sow and water, but God gives the growth.

For a church, the direction, the strategy if you like, with the gifts and power to carry it out,

all come from God; and God’s power and grace are unlimited. So when you see this buzz

in a church, and lay teams seem to be humming, sometimes a little mysteriously, it’s

because God, via his Holy Spirit, is at work. But we shouldn’t find it mysterious because

that is how it should be working! Paul makes it clear in two or three of his letters that “In

Christ we form one body, and each belongs to all the others” (Ro12:4). We are given

different gifts, be it prayer, healing, teaching, leadership, serving, prophecy etc; when the

Holy Spirit is on the move, church members and lay teams have to be both listening, ready

to receive, and courageous enough to pick up those gifts and take action.

Robert MacCurrach