Thanks

I remember a conversation on a plane as we descended into Kampala. Members of our party were discussing summer holidays when one of our group from the Diocese of Bristol said ‘perhaps it’s best not to mention holidays while you’re here, as for most Ugandans holidays simply just don’t happen; in fact the concept barely exists for many.’ It was later in my trip that I saw an offering with produce brought forward to front for the first time. This wasn’t a Harvest Festival, this was subsistence farmers, whose hands never encountered cash, bringing their offering to God. And this time they were spending in church was in fact their holiday, their holy-day, a blessed bit of Sabbath in an exhausting life. Seeing in a different context helped me to see my own context a little clearer; and with gratitude.

Ugandan Commuting (Photo: Chris Dobson)

The writer Mark Buchanan (in his book The Holy Wild) describes a night in Uganda when he couldn’t be bothered to worship God, thought the food was awful and was too sour to join in the praise, when a woman stood up to declare her love for Jesus:  ‘I praise Him all the time for how good He is. For three months, I prayed to Him for shoes. And look! He gave me shoes!’ The Ugandans went wild. They clapped, they cheered, they whistled, they yelled. Buchanan sat there devastated,  realising that not once in his life had he prayed to God for shoes, and he had certainly never thanked God for them. He was snapped out of his self-pity, he was repentant, and he made this astute observation: Thanklessness becomes its own prison.  Insightful words.

I sometimes wonder why I spot indifference within myself in a time of worship. That to an onlooker I might look no different standing in church singing to God than when I am standing in a queue in the Coop (although I don’t normally sing at the checkout.)  And I think Buchanan is right: Thanklessness becomes its own prison.  And I think Psalm 100 calls us, a people with shoes and holidays and the Cross of Christ before us, to a better place:

Make a joyful noise to the Lord,

all the earth.
Worship the Lord with gladness;
    come into his presence with singing.

Know that the Lord is God.
  It is he that made us, and we are his;
    we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture.

Enter his gates with thanksgiving,
    and his courts with praise.
    Give thanks to him, bless his name.

For the Lord is good;
    his steadfast love endures for ever,
    and his faithfulness

to all generations.

The Meeting Place

You’ve seen them. What a bunch of nutters, standing out there in Birdcage Walk in the rain, the snow, and less frequently the blistering Wiltshire heat, to proclaim the Kingdom of God on a Saturday morning. For six years the Healing in the Streets team from the Abbey has been faithful and has seen God’s immense faithfulness, with a steady stream of people coming for prayer between 10am and 12pm, and an encouraging number coming back or writing to thank God for His healing or His blessing. 

What has developed over the years has actually been very biblical. Healing prayer not disconnected from every other dimension of church, but connected in some way. Some have come to faith in Jesus Christ, some have made their way into the waters of baptism, some have chosen to come back week in and week out—Healing in the Streets is their church it seems—and others know the team members as a source of ongoing pastoral care and friendship. And recently the offer of a cup of coffee has been welcomed by market stall holders. Healing in the Streets +.

So in July we’re allowing things to emerge a little more, and Healing in the Streets will become the Meeting Place for a month. Churches across the UK have seen fruit when they've placed a new informal expression of church in ordinary market places. So the Meeting Place for us will be a trial of an Abbey Fresh Expression.

It will be small and beautiful and broadly be healing prayer, pastoral care and prayer, hospitality to Market Stall holders and passers by, and probably around 11am some sort of worship, music or creative arts (weather permitting.) In fact something undramatically similar to what has gone before. But we are asking the Spirit to lead us, to give us open and willing hearts, and to reveal to us how we might join with Him more fully in his mission in Malmesbury.

So a request to pray for the team, to come along and be a part if you wish, as church gets out on the street, and particularly an invitation to come for prayer or to be part of the worship or creative arts at 11am.