Vicar's Letter

Over the last couple of years we’ve spent a lot of time thinking about who we are as a church community and where we’re going. We’ve developed some phrases to help identify the direction of travel and, since Bournemouth, we’ve been working on selecting a group of words that we can use to dream our future. At the last PCC meeting we made our final choice. It’s taken a couple of years, but we’ve done it! Here’s a quick reminder about the work we’ve done.

Every journey must have a final destination, “Journey’s End”. For Christians, our journey will end when the kingdom of God has broken through and God’s love replaces human greed and hunger for power. This probably won’t happen in our life time, but it’s the vision of “Journey’s End” that keeps us going. We’ve chosen to capture that Christian vision in the words:
 

Your Kingdom come on earth, as it is in heaven.

But what route are we taking towards that final destination? If we’re travelling to Portugal there are any number of routes we could take; each of them right and valid. We may want to visit Aunt Edna on the way, or not! Whatever the route, the destination is the same. So it is for church communities. “Journey’s End” is the same, but the route each church takes is different. So to capture the route we feel God is calling us along, we’ve come up with this:

We long to be open to God,
open to one another, and open to the community

And how do we know if we’re sticking to that route? If we’re in the car heading towards an unknown destination, chances are we’ll have a map. “Dreaming the Future” was all about identifying the values, feelings and ideas that will be like a map for us. From the sheets you returned, from their own experience of St Nicolas, and from two long conversations at PCC meetings, members of the church council have been able identify the five key words that we’re going to use to check that we’re sticking to that route:
 

It is our hope that by bringing together the phrase which defines our route and these five key words we will know that what we’re doing, who we are as a church community, is moving us towards “Journey’s End” – towards God’s kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven.

Have a wonderful summer.

Dan