A Vicar’s Vision for A.R.M.(Wales) Bob Pitcher
“O Vicar,
we’ve just been away on a holiday conference, with the Kids, and it was
great!!! People were falling over when they were prayed for, and lifting up
their hands when they were singing, some of them were talking in strange
languages.
The children, well, they were just going ‘whooop, whooop!’ and flying
round like aeroplanes.
It was just amazing.
We must have it here at St. Mary’s.
It’ll solve all of our problems.
Call a P.C.C. right away and we’ll start doing it!!!”
How many
church leaders over the last few decades have heard this sort of story and been
frightened stiff by some of their more keen families.
Perhaps even those who could have been persuaded to
run the Sunday School or youth group, come back with this sort of story.
With diminishing congregations, financial worries, and growing guilt over
their inability to be the sort of vicar they dreamed of being in the halcyon
days of theological college, the last thing they want is wide eyed extremists
coming from some sort of fundamentalist jamboree wanting people rolling about on
the floor, foaming at the mouth telling everyone that Jesus is coming back next
Thursday.
This is the
problem in the Church in Wales.
In so many, if not the majority of places, we have to find a way of
converting the vision and experience we have from the Holy Spirit, from our
conferences and other sources, into the life of our local church.
There seems to be far too many churches with members with vision having
vicars who resist it; and far too many vicars with vision whose members resist
it.
Somehow the vision, reality, and life-giving vibrancy of the Holy Spirit
has to be translated into parish life.
We must avoid at all cost being seen as a group of people who disappear
with caravans and tents once a year to the National Showground and reappear in
our parishes a week later as discontented and fanatical non-Anglicans: being
part of the problem rather than part of the answer.
Resolving
this problem has to be the mission of A.R.M.(Wales).
But how can it be done?
My prayer is that those of us who have a vision for the renewal of our
church might pray for, or be part of, or even take a leading role in teams
who are willing to
go to parishes where the idea of renewal is at least a possibility.
In those communities, with sensitivity and with God’s grace, life may
well emerge to transform that parish.
This of course is not a new idea.
David Watson, ‘The Fisherfolk’ and others were doing it in the
70’s with great success.
So my
personal heartache, at the present time, is that so little of what has been
received at ‘Flames’ has actually been translated into parishes in Wales.
Perhaps with the freedom we have been given from having to organise the
annual conference, we might now give ourselves to the task of translating the
dream into reality.
What
about practicalities.
Where are these teams?
How will it happen?
It seems to me
that one of the major doorways for Renewal, and also one of the major
battles at
a local level,
is the
transformation of
worship.
To this end we will be running a day seminar at Llanidloes in the new
year to encourage musicians singers and others to come for a day of teaching and
practical participation.
This will be a day which is definitely for those who want a taste of what
it means to worship in Spirit and Truth. For
so many of our members in the Church in Wales, to engage with God in worship in
a real and experiential way is something which has not really been thought of as
a possibility, let alone the norm.
At this day we pray that the Lord in his grace will open people’s
hearts to the reality of His immanence, His loving presence.
Later
in the year we (James and Bob Pitcher) will be leading a day for those who may
feel that God is leading them into some kind of worship leading.
This will be for those who have some experience in playing or singing
worship songs and want to move more fully into their ministry as leaders.
In
A.R.M., I know we will also be wanting to gather together communicators as well
who will be able to take to fragile, yet committed, parishes the Good News of
the New and Living way which Jesus has given us.
This means encouraging able Bible teachers, but it also means releasing
those who have a testimony of what God has done for them. Many people may not be
able to give an inspiring exegesis of 1 Cor.14, but they are able to share with
a group, in simple and sincere language, what God has done for them through the
power of the Holy Spirit.
Let us pray that those people will stand up and be counted in these days
and join a team, especially when so much of the church seems to doubt the
intervention or involvement of God into ordinary lives.
At the present time the future is delicate, but the purpose of God often is. 2000 years ago the destiny of the world lay in a new born baby, in a feeding trough, the child of a refugee family. But from that weak and vulnerable state came the greatest victory the world has ever seen; the victory over evil, sin and death. So it will be then when we, with our sails set to the moving of the wind of the Spirit, remain open to the vision of translating His life giving purposes into our local communities, that this New Life will come into view and New Wineskins will emerge. Two and a half thousand years ago the prophet Ezekiel gazed over a valley of dry bones and was asked, ‘Can these bones live?’ After some persuasion from One who loved him, and the bones, he was able to speak to them with authority, and they did live. May we have the faith of Ezekiel, because like him, we do have God’s Word, and be able to say with authority in these days ‘Bones, come to Life, Church in Wales …LIVE!!’