My name is Mike and I’ve been involved with Churches Together in Uxbridge through Quakers for a number of years now, including serving as Chair for two or three years not too long ago. I’ve seen the character CTU vary in this time. Its personality, if you like, depends on the people involved in it at the time – some of whom come and go, some have stuck around.
I don’t think there’s any point in Churches Together unless it moves from building strength within, an essential prerequisite of course, to serving our communities in the town: Christians of all kinds, people of other faiths and the vast numbers of none.
It’s a fact that CTU is best geared to upholding Christian festivals like Christmas and Easter, at taking the opportunity for Christian outreach around these, and one would hope at bringing in people into our churches. However of late as it dawned on me after starting to work more on social action and peace with Quakers and through organisations concerned with a united front against the sources of war, oppression and poverty – here and around the world – that a living faith is a lot more to do with practise than fine doctrine, or belief, and I’d like to think that’s what Jesus is trying to teach us.
A fundamental truth that has been reinforced in my mind again and again in the last year or so – a simple practical fact actually – is that in the collective struggle for peace and equality it’s not about kind words or titles and roles, or lofty prayers… but it’s about what you actually do, your conduct.. whether you can find it in yourself to actually show up to things (beyond church services), spend time with people, put the chairs out, do the washing up, listen to people’s experiences, make an effort to learn about the material world, show empathy and solidarity, even if it isn’t necessarily fun, or in your comfort zone. But what’s great is that on the other hand, there’s often a huge amount of enjoyment to be had getting active in this way… If you like, to borrow Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s term, there is a cost to Christian discipleship, and ultimately to a large degree you get what you pay for. Or maybe to put it another way: you might say that if you don’t act on the leadings, the Divine leading you receive in your heart, then you betray not only yourself but your brothers and sisters as well.