Well, Christmas is over for another year and like it or loath it you can put it behind you and start thinking about 2015. Joyfully? Gloomily? Apprehensively? Do you start thinking about New Year’s Resolutions – practical or impractical? And do you stick to them? GK Chesterton said: ‘The object of a New Year is not that we should have a new year. It is that we should have a new soul and a new nose; new feet, a new backbone, new ears, and new eyes. Unless a particular man made New Year resolutions, he would make no resolutions. Unless a man starts afresh about things, he will certainly do nothing effective.’ Or are you one of those people who say January 1st is just the day after December 31st and really nothing’s changed – it’s just a day?
But we do mark time passing, don’t we? We look back, or ahead, we reflect and anticipate. How did this Christmas compare with last? Were there more people in church or fewer? The Diocese encourages this, requiring endless statistics about who was at what service, so someone must actually know – and it’s certainly useful when setting up for services to know roughly how many service sheets to print, how many wafers and how much wine to allow – but does it matter? Do we measure our success or failure in this way?
And what about 2014? Someone no doubt knows how the church did during the year. We do know, from Handley’s sermon in October if from nowhere else, that we didn’t raise as much money as we’d have liked (but we have been able to get the windows repaired and work will start soon on paving the floor at the entrance). We know the children’s groups are flourishing, we started Tea Services for the frail and elderly, we had talks and concerts and plays (two reviews further on in this issue). Anyone who’s on a rota will know that we’re chronically short of volunteers in every area – and that’s something that concerns those of us still on the various rotas – servers, sidesmen, cleaners, coffee makers, stewards – I wouldn’t know how to begin to prioritise the needs! But, and it’s a big but, we managed – we provided servers and sidesmen, there was coffee, the church was cleaned, there were stewards. You may have seen rather a few people covering all those jobs and thought about offering to help. Please do. We really need you! A list of the people to contact is included at the end of every magazine – could your New Year’s Resolution be to take on one job in the church?
On 14th December Diana preached about St John of the Cross and his recommendations for the spiritual life. That sermon follows and may inspire you more for 2015 than making coffee or cleaning. But spare a thought for the practical ‘outworkings of love’ too!
So, back to 2015 and January: a talk on Thomas Merton, an organ recital, a look at the Rossetti family, a music series on Living the History: Music and Faith, are all contained in this magazine.
January
Judy East