​Dear Friends,

​

As I prepare to retire from active Circuit ministry I have inevitably been thinking back over those 32 years.  My journey has taken me to five Circuit appointments: in suburbia, the inner city, outer London, the Yorkshire moors and finally the East Yorkshire country and seaside. All very different physical contexts! However, two common strands stand out for me: hospitality both offered and received and building community in many different forms; reflecting something of my call as a deacon ‘to gather in the outcast; welcome the stranger; and seek the lost.’

Those things are, of course, not just for me to do but for each of us to be prepared to offer hospitality to all. As we so enthusiastically sing from time to time ‘All are welcome’ (STF 409) I have had to ask myself are all welcome in our churches and worship? Or is it tempting to find it easier and more comfortable to welcome those who are like us and who fit into our ways naturally and don’t cause us to be much disturbed in our ways.

True hospitality is, I think, more than greeting people at the door as important as that is – it’s simply the first step. If we are serious in our welcoming of newcomers and each other, then it is about creating a genuine sense of belonging for individuals from diverse backgrounds and requires sensitivity and humility. Another essential quality is the building of meaningful relationships so that all can together know that sense of belonging whatever their previous experience. In it all we are called to reflect that extravagant hospitality of God which Jesus so clearly demonstrated in his earthly ministry as he spent time with and welcomed all whatever their background.

What an exciting challenge for us as to how we will welcome, how we will enable folk to belong; how we will walk together in discovering what is for now; it is all too easy to look back with a golden nostalgia; things are not as we think they once were and never will be again. We must, I think, be careful in all of this to not mould people to fit in with all our ways but to be prepared to accept any change that is happening; to willingly join in with what God’s Spirit is already doing.

Every blessing

​

Jackie

Deacon Jackie Fowler