NEW JOBS - NEW BEGINNINGS

 

By the time this is read, a new P.C.C. will have been appointed at St. Boniface and a new P.C.C. will be about to be appointed at St. Jude's, along with all the church officials, Wardens, Treasurers, Secretaries.

 

Eastertide is traditionally the time of organisation and delegation, as we remember how the risen Christ set up the church, to represent Him and minister to the world, charging Peter with responsibility for the disciples and his followers. He is instructed to "Feed My lambs" and "Tend My sheep". Jesus also tells His disciples of the coming of the Holy Spirit who will guide them and the church for the rest of time.

 

So, they have a humbling responsibility who are embarking at Eastertide on the new jobs they have taken on for our parish churches, with all the hopeful plans - amongst other things for a youth worker, for a toilet, and various other visionary enterprises.

 

What about those who hold jobs outside the church? Do not they, too, have a humbling responsibility - to their boss, to the outfit they work for, to their profession?

 

We live in times when there can be a dangerous division in people's minds between what is sacred and the secular.

 

Dorothy Sayers in her book Creed or Chaos argues that the church has failed to recognise or respect any vocation apart from her own; as a result, the "world of work" is turned to purely selfish and ultimately destructive ends, and those who work in that "outside" world have become irreligious or at least uninterested in religion. In its turn, she says, the church has turned to moralising about behaviour, demanding, for instance, that the intelligent worker should not use his leisure time in drinking or partying but should come to church on a Sunday.

 

What the church should be saying is that the very first demand that our religion makes upon us is that whatever we do we should do to the very best of our ability.

 

Yes, church-going is good, so is enjoying ourselves, but what is the point of either if the very centre of our life and of our occupation is no more than an insult to God? If our work is shoddy, ill conceived, unworkable, valueless, "no piety in the worker will compensate for work that is not true to itself; for any work that is untrue to its own technique is a living lie."

 

If this is true of the "outside world of work", it is even more true for us as Christians in the work we take on for the church. The same rules apply. I wonder, do we sometimes allow pious intention to excuse poor workmanship?

 

Whatever we do in the name of our Lord, be it the presentation of the Bibles in the pew, the quality of coffee we serve, the flowers that decorate the church, the sermons we preach, the hymns, the prayers, the very conduct of our services, all must be of the very highest quality before we may claim it to be to the glory of God.

 

We are all called to serve God in our work, through our profession or trade, through what we do voluntarily, paid or unpaid. It behoves us to remember that all work can be - ought to be Christian work.

 

Let us all try harder to glorify God through our work and to remember that to Christian people all work is sacred.

 

I look forward to working with our new P.C.C.s in the intention that all things will be glorifying to God.

 

Rick