Minister's Message February 2010

Our Vision

Our church vision statement is: ‘To embrace old things, explore new things and expect great things.’ What does it mean to ‘embrace old things’? It doesn’t mean that we should be doing the same things as the church did when it was built in 1907. Nor do we believe that because some things are old, it makes them out of date.

Being a traditionalist is that you are only optimistic about the past and pessimistic about the future. It is not wrong to be a traditionalist as long as you don’t trade or replace tradition with truth. Most of us do not like change, we feel safe and secure in what we are used to.

As a church we are poised to ‘expect great things’ from God, and we do ‘explore continually new things’, but not at the expense of rejecting all the old.

• we do mix old hymns with new worship songs
• we do value the old tradition of welcoming people as they arrive at church
• we believe ‘old truth’ is forever new and we would never compromise on it
• we have dropped to a large degree some of the older styles of music
• we do not normally read from the 1611 authorised version of the bible
• we avoid the old tradition of long sermons!

In ‘embracing old things’ we respect all that those of an earlier generation have brought to us.  Even they recognised we are in a constant state of change.

Scientist have come up with a term to describe organisations that are not constantly changing, it is ‘DEAD’.

February 2010