It happens every summer, and, indeed, I’m sure I have made the point before! School stops, meetings take a back seat, and you think you’ve all the time in the world for those things you want to catch up on. Then suddenly, it’s all over! The ‘spare’ time has gone and a new ‘season’ has begun.

Of course, it’s a matter of organising your time and whether you do it badly or not is up to you. But, generally speaking, you do have more time in a Parish, and you have more time to think; which can often be a dangerous thing! We need the summers, or certainly we need particular periods of time to re-think and revaluate what we are about. Glencraig is always on my mind; where are we going, what are we doing, are always constant questions, and, I suppose, they should be for all of us.

There’s one thing I’ve concluded over the summer, and that is a Parish has only two speeds. Standing still is not a speed – zero is zero, nil is nil. So, standing still is not a viable option.

I think a parish, a church is either going forward, or it’s going back.

I can show you this pile of cards which are all filled-in cards of the ones that you have on your pews in front of you. Apart from notifying the office of a few change of

address, these cards, since we introduced them, represent new people. And, remember, over the years, we have lost a whole parish-full of people whether through funerals or people moving away or whatever, and even more recently, we have also examined more closely, the ones who have been on our list for quite some time with very little contact and there has been some ‘pruning’ I have to admit - nothing that any good parish should do from time to time. (I’m very tempted to tell you of a parish, not a million miles from here, three times the size of this one, and it is reckoned that half of their number shouldn’t be even on the parish list!) All in all, we could argue that we are holding our own. But holding our own, remember, is not a speed.

We are very good at putting out a regular show. Yet, I feel that we desperately need a sense of purpose, direction and focus. The lack of any one of these things is down to me entirely; there’s no one else to take that one on board! I know, and, unfortunately, you know all too well, that personal circumstances tell me that to get from one Sunday to the next is an achievement in itself. And that may be part of the problem. I don’t mean to offer that as an excuse, it’s just the way it is. However, I still feel that we need to develop a clearer game plan as a parish; a clearer focus and direction to achieve the kind of things we want to achieve...or else, perhaps, we’re not going forward at all, but rather, we’re going back.

There’s a book written by Rick Warren which was very well received a number of years ago and it’s called, ‘The Purpose Driven Church’. It begins by asking, not what will make our church grow, but what is keeping our church from growing?

The point is, all living things grow – you don’t have to make them grow. It is the natural thing for living organisms to do if they are healthy. You don’t have to ‘command’ your children or your grandchildren to grow, so long as you take out any hindrances.

In the same way, since the church is a living organism, it is natural for it to grow if it is healthy. The church is a body, not a business. It is an organism, not an organisation. It is alive!

So, the real issue for churches in this century, according to Rick Warren will be church health, not church growth. Did you get that? Focusing on growth alone misses the point. When congregations are healthy, they grow the way God intends. Healthy churches don’t need gimmicks to grow – they grow naturally.

Paul explained it like this: ‘it is from him that all the parts of the body are cared for and held together. So it grows in the way God wants it to grow’ (Col. 2:19). This is the point: God wants his church to grow. If our church is genuinely healthy, we don’t have to worry about it growing. As one of our points in our five-year plan said a number of years ago; we’re still here, aren’t we?

I know, generally speaking, we enjoy our predictable services. They follow a particular formula and most people are very happy with that. I know it is a factor in some cases among this pile of cards – they wouldn’t be here otherwise.

Arguably, we are the traditional sort. As a keen Anglican pointed out to me once, even if the sermon is rubbish, you still have all that makes for good worship; the confession, absolution, praise and all this together makes formulaic Anglican worship very distinctive and, really, quite unique. I know people who enjoy marking out their prayer books and hymn books before the service even starts, and that’s great. I am convinced that that kind of preparation helps what it all says on the page translate to what is in here! (Your heart!)

Having said all of that, change has become an inevitable part of church. . Nothing can ever really stay the same. We want to grow; but we want to grow naturally and healthily.

My time over the summer has acquitted me to ask the question whether we want to go forward or to go back.

It’s good to take stock over the summer and ask ourselves how we go forward.