Beloved Brothers and Sisters, I go through these experiences so you don't have to. Indeed, only one as strong in faith as myself could be expected to get through this without flinching.
I have seen young people brought to faith, this week. And yet I have also seen women leading worship and even teaching. I have seen a bishop in an open-neck shirt, instead of the Papish regalia I would expect of a bishop. It puzzles and saddens and disappoints me, and I am sore afflicted by doubt.
I have seen lively worship, and people knowing an experience of God. And I have reflected that they didn't deserve it, especially given that type of worship. Too much happiness and not enough fear and trembling.
And at least once in this last week I have heard the word "enculturation". And I have shuddered. For it is this word that above all tells me all that is wrong about the modern Church.
But still I am inspired. Inspired by this example of how to go wrong. How can we hope to win souls if we read from a Bible translation that is easily comprehensible, when the Inerrant word of God was written in Jacobean English? How can we bring the country to its knees in prayer unless we look it straight in the eye and challenge it with its failings of iniquity and transgressions? Surely we must tell people that they have gone "a-whoring with their own inventions" - no matter how much that makes them laugh? We must nail the colours of a 6-day creation to the mast of our faith. Or vice-versa. I am still working on that metaphor.
No, I will guard the souls of my flock and myself, and we will cling faithfully on until Christ returns. And I will return to stand in the Dunstable Quadrant or the Brunel Centre in Bletchley, and shout at Society through my megaphone until Society sees the error of its ways. I will climb on my watchtower and watch - although few will hear the call, even fewer will understand it, and maybe none will act on it. That's what Mission is all about.
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