I found the title of this Blog when browsing the many entries on Twitter and as with many items I see on Twitter, it captured my imagination.
We have an interesting scenario playing out at my local church at the moment. Mid way through 2010 it was announced that our Vicar (incumbent) would soon be marrying and as is often the case with a newly married incumbent he would be leaving St. Peters so they could start a new journey as a married couple.
The situation of having no incumbent is not an unusual one for St. Peters in Yateley as the last incumbent moved on a few years previously leaving St. Peters with the task of managing on its own during the recruitment process. An incumbent moving on is not uncommon for any church, but for the purposes of this article, it is the space in between that I am interested in. How does a church keep going when there is no incumbent in place?
I joined the Church relatively recently, beginning my journey at the end of 2007 on the Alpha course. Prior to this I had humbly believed that everything in a Church revolved around the incumbent and the only volunteers were the occasional flower arranger, those who served coffee and the annual jumble sale. Having been a member for a few years I now realize this of course could not be further from the truth, perhaps I’d be better to have used the term naïve rather than humble!
So much voluntary work happens in a church that is often not visible from the outside, what’s more surprising is much is not visible from the inside either. That is not to say there is a bad job of promoting activities, but these activities are very targeted to certain groups. And as we are in the current situation of not having a regular incumbent the opportunities to volunteer are even greater.
We currently have six regular services, for each of these services we will have a Rota for leading, reading, preaching, praying, serving coffee, welcoming, preparing announcements, sound and organising musical worship. On top of this we have extra services, youth clubs for each of the various age groups, women’s ministry, men’s ministry including weekends away. We have the youth church, youth bands, adult bands, many home groups and all this without mentioning buildings to manage and a Vicar to recruit. Even in this exhaustive list, which is only the tip of the iceberg there are multiple areas within each of these areas that offer opportunity for many to volunteer, get involved and grow in their faith.
I am proud to be a part of St. Peters, like any family, it’s not always a bed of roses, sometimes we don’t always agree and sometimes we don’t see some people for months on end as they deal with just they’re part of ministry. I am not sure there is such a thing as the perfect Church but if great churches are indeed built on the sacrifice of many and not the gifts of a few then I do believe we at St. Peters are building that great church and have a lot to be proud of.
We still however, look forward to seeing a new Vicar in place and all that he or she will bring to the community. What's more, they've got some flowers to arrange and a jumble sale to organise.
