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September 2, 2024
It’s nearly time for Greenbelt Festival, and just like last year Modern Church will be there, sharing a stand in the Takeaway (no food sadly, that’s the name for the exhibition area at Greenbelt) with our good friends and partner organisation Inclusive Church. We’ll be telling people about Modern Church and handing out some copies of Signs of the Times, along with other freebies (like the prayer card below).
Last year, we were asking those that dropped by the question ‘What is God like?’ and encouraging them to share their answers with words, pictures, stickers, stick-on feathers, pompoms and googly eyes, resulting in a varied tapestry of who God is to all who visited.
Alison and Nic at last year’s (2023) Greenbelt stand
This year, Greenbelt’s theme is ‘Dream On’ and we are going to be asking what our dream Church might look like.
Visionary God,
You know there is nothing we can think
That may not be thought;
Nothing we can feel
That may not be felt.
Release us from human constraints
Of doctrine, rationality, convention.
Awaken in us a hunger and curiosity
For mystery, challenge and growth.
Draw from us love, of
Vulnerability that shapes our strength,
Interdependence that connects us,
Justice, that builds our power
To make one another’s dreams
Come true,
In you.
Amen
What are you dreaming that the future holds for the Church both locally and worldwide? Can we encourage you to think new thoughts and feel new feelings about God?
If you’re not going to Greenbelt this year, you can still share in the conversation by leaving a comment below. And if you are going, then we do hope that you’ll drop by the stand for a chat! See you there!
1 Comment
My dream for the Church begins and ends with people. So my dream is for a breaking down of the barriers that separate people from a deep knowledge and experience of God. With this in mind, I think the Church needs to ‘turn itself around’ (repent?) from the culture of deference which it has grown too comfortable with, along with the complacency and general blandness which that culture engenders.
Clericalism will be the death of the Church. People I speak to, some, but not all of whom go to church, are put off the Church by clergy. They find its clergy culture alienating. They dislike black clothing as a distinguishing identity which make clergy seem like a privileged elite entirely separate from ordinary people, an elite that is, for most of the time, talking to itself, busy with goals and priorities which have nothing to do with Christ or with his Gospel and are of no interest whatsoever to ordinary people. All of this suggests that the culture of deference, along with the top-down hierarchical authoritarian structure on which it depends, needs to change, as does the increasingly managerial mindset which the people caught up in that structure (regardless of their position in it) are often overwhelmed by.
I dream of a Church that is far more collegial in how it runs its life and which respects and pays attention to the people it exists to serve (ie the laity). I dream of a Church where people have the last say in its governance and in the appointment and promotion of clergy, if such a system continues to exist. I dream of a Church that has shed its preoccupation with status and career advancement so that it can better serve and teach ‘the least of Christ’s brethren’ who are the heart, soul and life of the Church. I dream of a more humane Church.
I dream of a Church which is passionate about God, about theology (so that it equips those tasked with teaching with the ‘ballast’ they need without necessarily asking them to do university degrees) and about the Holy Spirit. I dream of a Church whose life is shaped in prayer and lived out in compassion. I dream of a prophetic Church, one where people feel confident enough spiritually to interpret the signs of the times in the light of the Gospel. I dream of a Church that is not fixated on gender and sexuality, or on identity politics, because it no longer needs to be, given that its own internal life will be ordered in such a way as to make these kind of distinctions irrelevant. I dream of a church capable of changing the world from within, interpret that as you will.