Vision 720?

Last Sunday I conducted the third of Jesmond URC's services based on their Northumbrian Saints Windows, on Aiden By way of introduction I offered this little reflection, raising the question of how far our mission-orientated agenda pursued through Vision 2020 would have been understood by the Church of the Lindisfarne Gospels.

John Durell

 

Stop at the crossroads, says the prophet, and look back at the ancient ways (Jeremiah 6). Which I take it is part of what is involved in this series of  services looking through these four windows at some of the individuals who have walked the Christian way long before us.
But as we stand at the crossroads we also need to discern where the path ahead may be leading, and how we are to prepare ourselves for the way that we shall be taking. Again, I know that you are doing plenty of that here at Jesmond – and on the wider scale, all of us in the United Reformed Church are of course being encouraged to mould our church programmes into the framework provided by Visision2020.

But I’ve been wondering if we were to go back to the Church of the Lindisfarne Gospels, how our ten framework subjects might fit in with Vision720 (or thereabouts)......

1. Our first subject is Spirituality and Prayer: the Church of Aidan, Oswald and their successors would I’m sure be happy to start there too.

2.  Identity. We’ve been hung up on this one for the 40 years since we came together from our different traditions. For them, the differences between Celtic Christianity from the north and Augustine’s mission from the south had had to be resolved – and of course there had to be a winner and a loser.

3. Christian ecumenical partnerships. What I’ve just said suggests this would have been meaningless.

4. Community partnerships. Yes – but at a different level: the whole business of conversion of the king leading to conversion of his subjects suggests an essential partnership between church and palace – and no doubt with some of the tensions experienced in our community partnerships today.

5.  Hospitality and diversity. The Celtic Church was great at hospitality, but I suspect our affirmation of the value of diversity would have made little sense to them.

6. Evangelism. Yes – but they never agonised as we do over how to set about it.

7.  Church growth. Yes – though I sense they were more bothered about individuals becoming believers than they were about filling buildings on Sunday.

8.  Global partnerships. Yes, our world is more extensive – but Bede tells us amazing stories of the gospel crossing rivers, forests, seas and mountains. And as we’ll hear this evening, one nation depended on the resources of another for the gospel to be proclaimed.

9.  Justice and peace: Vision 650 was equally concerned with the needs of the poor and the freeing of slaves, and all that Jesus’s Nazareth sermon continues to demand of his hearers.

10.  Finally, the integrity of creation: and the Church that produced Cuthbert and his concern for the cuddy ducks has plenty to teach us still today – and the ubiquitous cat on the Durham Park and Ride buses (and everywhere else) says it all really.