Letter from The Minister Revd Bruce Waldron - February 2005
The URC Moderator Visited Us
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| It wasn't quite an epiphany but a visit from the Moderator is always a good experience, similar to when the District Chairman of the Methodist Church pays us a call. He's going to do that on February 6th and he'll be taking services at Rumburgh in the morning and Ilketshall St. Andrew in the afternoon. | ||||
| I didn't understand when I first came here, that when the Moderator or Chairman comes, it isn't appropriate to allocate them only to the largest church. Alan Clarke said to me one day "The Chairman usually likes to get around every chapel and church." He'd picked up my Australian bred presuppositions and gently corrected it. | ||||
| Such is the way of the Christian church. Jesus never subscribed to secular concepts of importance and power. He went to the highest or the lowest. In fact, he always went to the lowest. Sometimes when the highest called he simply told them to have faith - the problem was already fixed. | ||||
| The size is not the important thing! | ||||
| I like the way we do it here. It's more Christ-like. | ||||
| Whilst we are thinking about the importance in God's eyes of each and every, not just the powerful and large, our Moderator, the Rev. Liz Caswell, gave us a pre-warning that soon we are going to be inundated with information about the "Make Poverty History" campaign. | ||||
| This campaign recognizes that a poor community is made up of people who are just as important as those in a rich community. Being tribal, agrarian or urban slum does not make a person less human than the people next door or the person who sits next to you on Sunday morning. All these people deserve a chance to live with food in their stomachs, shelter from the elements, medicine, clothes, education, and the ability to earn a living. Many people do not have those privileges and the reasons are often caused by structures that the west can change, if it has the will. | ||||
| There is a major push to recognize that whole communities are living in awful poverty and to coerce powerful financial forces such as the World Band, IMF, WTO, G8 group and many huge multinational conglomerates to make the changes that will change millions of lives. | ||||
| We are being urged to take the same concerns that stand behind Fair Trading and move the concerns into the structural arena, to get the structures changed that keep people in helpless, hopeless poverty. | ||||
| We can make a difference! | ||||
| In Christ's eyes, these people are just as important as you and me. | ||||
| Who
is more appropriate to be getting behind these changes, than the people
who follow Christ and share his compassion? I hope we can all get involved
in this in the name of Christ. Bruce |
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