The Minister writes
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“The Useful Church” Joyce Grenfell, the comedienne with the cut-glass accent, was famous for her humorous monologues. Most of us will recall the Nursery School, with the teacher’s repeated and totally ineffectual admonition, “George, don’t do that”. But the very first monologue was entitled “Useful and acceptable gifts” and was based on a genuine talk which Joyce had heard at the Women’s Institute. In it, the speaker tells her listeners how they can make little presents out of items that can simply be found lying around the house. Well, I am sure all of us have received gifts that were fairly acceptable but not particularly useful! After being admired, they were stuffed into a drawer or placed on a high shelf, there to remain until a particularly enthusiastic attempt at spring-cleaning. Then, under the pretext of “downsizing” or “needing to clear away some of this clutter”, we placed them in carrier bags and whisked them away to the Charity Shop. Hopefully they were bought by other people – who probably found them just as impractical as we did! Some folk feel that that the Church is a useless anachronism in today’s world. It may offer beautiful architecture, glorious music or dignified language but, apart from providing an attractive setting for weddings, it has no practical use. Indeed, some people would go further, alleging that religion has been the cause of many of the world’s conflicts and suggesting that we who attend church are inadequate individuals who cannot live our lives without the crutch of faith. The world, such critics declare, would be a better place if the churches did not exist. I would naturally disagree with that analysis! Nevertheless, it might be helpful to think how useful a church can possibly be, both to its members and society at large. This is actually an important question for us, now that Christ Church is a charity in its own right and has to prove the “public benefit” of its existence. Knowing this helps to focus our thinking and makes us ask if we are we more than an inward-looking social club, enjoying friendship and religious activities together. What tangible contribution are we making to the common good? We could begin to answer this question by suggesting that a church’s mere existence has a positive effect on society, if only because Christians support each other (and their neighbours) in practical ways and so relieve the burden on the State. We can also say that Christians are often at the forefront of community-centred and volunteer-led activities. But we see the churches doing far more; just in Ipswich, it is churches which have run the Winter Night Shelter project, which provide the Town Pastors who stroll the streets at night, and which are pioneering the “Talitha Koum” project for women recovering from addictions. Clearly this pattern of service is being repeated up and down our country. And, of course, church-led organisations such as Christian Aid and Cafod provide aid and advice to millions of people in poverty all around the world. So I think we can safely say that our planet would be very different if the churches did not exist! Nevertheless, asking what use a church is to society might just be the wrong question. Perhaps we should be thinking about its value and use to God himself. And I think St. Paul gives us the answer, in his book written to the Ephesian Christians. Here he declares that, above all, a church should be a community through which God reveals his glory to the world. This will happen when it becomes a living example of the reconciliation which Christ can bring, when it demonstrates his holiness and spiritual power, and when it is a fellowship whose members are growing in faith and knowledge of God. Paul must have known that he was setting a noble aim for his readers – after all, he was well aware that every congregation is made up of all-too-human believers! Nevertheless, he knew what sort of church God would find useful. I sincerely hope that Christ Church meets with his approval, too.
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