A message from Martin
Each month our Minister, Martin Burrell, writes a short message ....
Our Staff retreat to Turvey Abbey
Three times a year Christchurch staff team (Martin, Caroline, Wendy, Helen, and Lee) and our two churchwardens (David and Chris) spend quality time together with the monks and nuns at Turvey Abbey, just north of Bedford. It’s wonderful to get away from the usual demands of life and chill out together and take stock of the life and mission of Christchurch. We spend time in prayer, time reviewing how things are going, especially new ventures like Messy Church and Wednesday Church, and time looking to the future that God has prepared for us all.
The one single thing we came back with is the desire to go deeper into the heart of God in our worship. We all recognised that there is a tendency to think you have to park your problems outside the church door before you can come into the presence of God. As we looked together at the Psalms we discovered afresh how in those ancient prayers absolutely everything must be brought into our worship, even our very darkest thoughts, for after all, God already knows them! Feelings of anger, despair, desire for revenge, bitterness, betrayal, guilt, as well as feelings of hope, delight, wonder and gratitude. The more honest we are with God, the more authentic our worship becomes. God smiles on us, the angels do cart wheels in heaven, and in and through our worship the miracle of transformation takes place. We offer all of ourselves as a living sacrifice, and somehow God's grace meets us where we are and moves us on. We leave the time of worship in a new place, having experienced something of God's healing power.
The process reminds me of messages that come onto our computer screens from time to time. "Update software. Now or later?" Click ‘now’ and (for techo-phobes like me) a mysterious electronic process kicks in and sometime later a message comes us ‘update completed’. St Paul didn't know about computers. He put it like this: "Be transformed by the renewing of your mind." (Romans 12:1)
Lord, as we bring all that we are into our worship, transform us into the likeness of Jesus, from one degree of glory to another. Amen.