August-Sept '10
Along with over 400,000 others I am a member of the Camping & Caravanning Club. I pay the small annual subscription fee of £37 and Shona looks forward to getting our little book stamped whenever we visit a new site! I enjoy reading the free magazine with Club news, reviews and articles every month. Emilia and Esther thought the latest copy was the Christmas edition because it had a sparkling red cover with a bearded man on the front (Dr David Bellamy O.B.E is Club President)! I have a copy of the Club’s ‘Big Sites’ handbook which gives lots more helpful information about over 4,000 campsites in the UK and worldwide. Sadly I haven’t got the time to visit them all so I’m not using my membership to its full capacity, but I think I deserve some credit: the back windscreen of our car does indicate that I am evangelical about my commitment to the Club!
However I ought also to say that my sole purpose for joining the Camping & Caravanning Club was for my own consumer gain. I joined so our family could benefit from its value-for-money camping rather than to contribute to the wellbeing of the organisation. I have another little confession: when I visit their campsites I don’t spend hours engaged in long conversations with fellow members discussing the Club’s vision of being a friendly, welcoming Club that provides adventure in a safe, caring environment. I don’t even encourage fellow members to renew their subscriptions for the sake of the cause. Perhaps I should refer to my ‘membership’ loosely because I do not ultimately care all that much about the future well-being of the Club. Rightly or wrongly, I just ‘use’ it.
It would be wrong to say that our Church is like the Club I have just described. We don’t ask members to pay an annual fee, we don’t have Hanbury Hill car stickers to distribute and we certainly don’t stamp a Membership/Attendance card whenever someone comes to a service! We exist for different reasons altogether than to provide somewhere for people to set up a tent or caravan. But I’m sure there is still one significant similarity between Church and the Camping & Caravanning Club: there are a lot of people out there who are just ‘users’ and are not particularly concerned with the future well-being of such organisations.
For us at Hanbury Hill, our recently adopted Statement of Purpose outlines our aspiration to grow as a community of Christ’s disciples, in the power of the Holy Spirit, for the glory of God and building for His Kingdom. We are more than a Club; we are ‘being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit’ (Ephesians 2:22). This requires us all to take seriously what we can do to enrich this fellowship but also allow ourselves to be beneficially enriched by others. It’s about giving and receiving.
Prompted by God’s Spirit our future points us in the direction of relocation. What hope fills the horizon! But for such vision to become reality we shall all need to bear the financial challenge and show a generosity of spirit. We shall all have to put to one side the interests of self (“what’s in it for me?”) and commit to being all in this together. Although recent Church Meetings have been positive, the stark reality is that there is still a significant number of members and friends who do not take seriously enough the importance of coming to our bi-monthly meetings and attendance at Sunday services is for too many people still too irregular. Brothers and sisters in Christ this should not be! Let’s embrace the future together. It’s the only way forward.
Regards,
Andy
