If Jesus had only been born, then that would have been amazing, we could have seen God face to face and had some brilliant teaching and marvelled at some great miracles, but we would still be sinners, separated from God for all eternity and destined to pay the just and righteous penalty for our rebellion against the holy creator God – death.

But, as we are discovering over Easter at St. Andrew’s and St. Michael’s, Jesus’ death and resurrection changed all that. Because Jesus died in our place, for our sins and because God then raised him to new and eternal life we can now have real, solid, definite hope, we can enter into the throne room of heaven and know God personally. Isn’t that great?

So lighten up. We might have a few more sermons to prepare (or listen to), that roast lamb on Easter day might be a little tougher than we hoped and, yes, the shops are ripping us off as usual for a chocolate egg filled with air, but grab another hot cross bun and reflect for a moment on God’s amazing love for us – for you. That’s surely worth a little joy.

Of course, it’s not that they haven’t seen me, they have, but they are very actively choosing to ignore me. Why? I know that I have never had any dealings with them (baptism, wedding, funeral, etc) so I can’t have upset or offended them, in fact I have never had the opportunity to talk with them so I cannot have said anything that could have so distanced them from me. They have simply chosen to have nothing to do with me. Maybe you know someone like that – odd isn’t it?

And that’s how many people are with God, some rant and rail against a God who allows suffering, or who hasn’t supplied them with what they want, but many simply choose to have nothing to do with God – they have never actually taken the time to acknowledge God, find out who he is, what he’s like, how much he loves them; they keep their head down or turned away and if God ever gets too close at times like Easter, Christmas, funerals or the like, they simply blank him. How that must break God’s heart.

So, what to do? Well, if we know people who blank God then we should pray for them, pray for their hearts of stone to become hearts of flesh (Ezekiel 11:19), pray for their unhearing ears and unseeing eyes to opened (Matthew 13:13) by God’s Holy Spirit so that they might truly know who God is. At St. Andrew’s and St. Michael’s we always seek to make the truth of God known in accessible ways which are faithful to his living word; the Bible, so why not encourage them to come with – or if you are that person, why not come along and explore for yourself?

And as for me? Well, maybe I should be bold, walk up to this person, stick out my hand and say, “Hello, perhaps we can be friends?” after all, that’s what God did by sending his Son Jesus in to this world to be with us, die for us and rise again to new and eternal life.

At the end I was left standing on my own and had to approach the group leader to ask, “what happens next? What about next week?” I was given a non-committal answer.

Needless to say, I won’t be going back.

But it gave me a taste of what church can be like on the very worst level – a club for insiders only, a holy huddle, a place you’re not part of and frankly I didn’t like the look of it.

Neither of our churches are remotely that bad, but there is always the danger that church can become too comfortable, too cosy, too insular and so this autumn we are going to look at what it means to be a real church like that found in Acts chapter 2, but this is no academic exercise, no interesting sermon series for the autumn, I sincerely believe that if we don’t rediscover how to be an authentic church then all that awaits us ultimately is the culture of being a club which is not what we are called to be because it is not God-honouring and that way lies the death of the local church.

Our title is “Leaving the Harbour” – it’s all about leaving the comfortable safety of where we don’t have to do anything and setting out into open water where we have to trust God and obey him. It might be a rough ride, but if it means we pick up lots of new crew members who love being onboard then it’s worth it. I hope that you will join us – you are very welcome!

From 1^st September St. John the Baptist, Stibbington and St. Remigius, Water Newton will be joining with St. Mary’s, Wansford, a move which makes perfect sense as it reunites the half of Stibbington to the east of the A1 with the other half to the west which has in recent years been reclassified as part of Wansford.

Elton is still in the final stages of arranging their future, but the options are looking interesting with, hopefully, a retired clergyperson having oversight for a couple of years before All Saints is joined to a new parish. Meanwhile I will return to my original churches of St. Andrew’s, Alwalton and St. Michael’s, Chesterton albeit as the Rector rather than Team Vicar and with a larger parish now incorporating Orton Wistow down to Ham Lane, the ever growing Orton Northgate and Orton Southgate with its own substantial business park.

This means that there will be changes in the website for instance (keep a look out for our new web address coming soon) and the possibility in some of St. Andrew’s and St. Michael’s service times changing. It is highly likely that Elton, Stibbington and Water Newton services will change, but I’m afraid that I have no information about that.

When we joined together we had no formal title and so we called ourselves the Alwalton and Elton Partnership, drawing our inspiration from Paul’s letter to the Philippians where he speaks of their “partnership in the gospel” (Philippians 1:5). Over the last four and half years I hope that we have striven together as partners to share the good news – the “gospel” – of Jesus and the amazing offer of an eternal restored relationship with God through Jesus’ death and resurrection. I also hope that although we will no longer be a formal group of churches we will still all hold to that shared goal as set before us by Jesus in the great commission recorded at the end of Matthew’s Gospel. So not an end to being partners in the Gospel, but September certainly marks an end to the formal Partnership between the five churches.

Over the summer we will still be joining together for our Sunday Services and these “Partnership Services” will begin at 10.30am each Sunday, details of where they will take place are on the website calendar. Then as we approach the end of the holidays, keep an eye out for what’s happening on September 5^th – the first Sunday in the new pattern for us all.

And so with summer well on the horizon and fast approaching we dutifully go down to the garden centre to purchase the essentials – but return home with so much more and with all the best intentions to plant and nurture. Of course, the shopping trip is the easy part, the difficult element is the actual planting, growing and nurturing. So perhaps it should come as no surprise to us that the most tempting items in the garden centre are the easy to install ones which make our garden look lovely but which require very little effort. So it is that we can find ourselves walking past a garden which is pristine and beautiful, but which suddenly strikes us as odd – what can it be which looks so wrong and then it dawns on us, the garden is perfect except that there is nothing living there, the easy to install items have done away with the need for living plants.

I am reading a book at the moment called “The Trellis and The Vine[1]” which draws a similar analogy to the church and reminds us that so often we can become overly focused on creating a beautiful “trellis” in our church, spending all our energy on the structure and framework, the committees, the building, the form filling etc all the while neglecting the most important part of any church; the “vine” work.

In John chapter 15 Jesus states, “I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.” So the vine work of the church is to graft people into the living vine which is Jesus, to make disciples of people just as Jesus commissioned his followers to do until he returns in glory. If the church fails to do that then it will be nothing more than a grand, but empty building.

Of course this is not to say that we should neglect the trellis, there must be something there to support the vine as it grows, but like a garden, the church needs to be full of life, energy, vitality and colour as it blossoms, grows, spreads and propagates God’s Word. The dictionary defines a “garden” as “a plot of ground where plants such as fruits, vegetables, or flowers are grown,” so in the same way that a garden without life is not really a garden, a trellis only church would be a cold sad thing to behold and not really a church either. As we seek to keep our buildings in good order, such as the long awaited installation of Alwalton’s replacement boiler, let’s also be committed to keeping them full of life and bringing glory to God. For example, a warm church is only a good thing if it is a warm church full of people exploring who God is and worshipping Jesus in the power of God’s Holy Spirit.

One of the most positive signs of vine work recently has been the increased partnership in Elton between the chapel and the church, the Revd Trevor Sands and I have enjoyed getting to know one another and work together, so it has been wonderful to see chapel and church sharing Maundy Thursday and Good Friday events and services as well as quiz evenings. I was thrilled when Trevor preached at a Sunday morning service in All Saints back in February and I have just preached at a Sunday service at the chapel, something I was deeply honoured to have been invited to do. As we look to the future in Elton, Trevor and I both believe that our two Christian communities must continue to see that we are all branches grafted into the same vine and that together we are called to glorify our head gardener in this beautiful part of the world. It could well be time to roll up our sleeves and get our hands dirty.

Yep, some of you are ahead of me, of course what I am referring to is the brand new episode of Doctor Who where the beloved Time Lord will appear, risen again having cheated death for a tenth time (I know he’s the 11th Doctor – you do the maths) once again able to save to world.

Funny how we can get so excited about that and yet when it comes to the true Lord of time and space who died and rose again to new and eternal life, who conquered sin which cut us off from the awesome God of the Universe and defeated death, taking away its sting for all who will believe in him, we try to hide Jesus away behind fluffy bunnies, chicks and chocolate eggs.

Perhaps its easier to imagine our enemies being cybermen, or daleks rather than our own sin and rebellion against our loving and just God. If we distance ourself from the responsibility of our actions then we can turn disaster into entertainment  - truly heaven must be filled with weeping angels. 

But Easter is a time of amazingly Good News, that (as our verse for last year reminded us) “God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son so that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life” – pick out those important words; “God..loved..gave…only Son…whoever…not perish…eternal life” all wrapped up in belief, it’s no wonder that this year our verse is one of joy and celebration; “Sing to the LORD, praise his name; proclaim his salvation day after day.” (Psalm 96:2)

I love Doctor Who, I can’t wait for the new series, but I love Jesus much, much more and I can’t help praising him and proclaiming his salvation, so I hope that you will encounter him for yourself this Easter, as the trailers on TV point out, “It’s about time”.

The idea of this blog is really to update the old “vicar’s letter” idea, a monthly input on things spiritual and practical in the parishes of Alwalton, Orton Wistow, Orton Northgate, Orton Southgate, Chesterton as well as Elton, Stibbington, Sibson and Water Newton for the moment. I’ll be getting going in April, so let me know if you find it useful.

Best wishes,

Malcolm Ingham