I’m glad to be back in the saddle at St Martin’s. I’m immensely grateful to those who stepped up into roles and sought to make the period of my three-month absence one of adventure and exploration rather than deficit or burden. I had a truly fruitful, restorative and energising time: resuming old relationships, discovering new things, having the freedom of no structure but that which I adopted myself.
Close readers of my pipeline and newsletter messages will know I continually return to the notion of story. I started writing regular messages at the start of the pandemic, when we were all bewildered because we had no idea what kind of story we were in. What’s bewildering now is that that’s still the case. We want to believe the pandemic is behind us and its health and economic consequences a thing of the past. But it seems the pandemic is more like a war, in which the aftermath can be as damaging as the conflict.
In the US, it feels like we’re back in the sixties, when Vietnam took the lid off festering and emerging tensions, which flared up around gender, race and the draft. Now it’s still race, and a profound split between those embracing America’s future and those yearning to restore its past. Whereas Brits are used to rolling their eyes at America’s extremes, we’ve had our own absurdities and divisions in recent years, and are in no position to point fingers.
One further paradox is this: almost everyone in the ‘mainline’ church in the US (Methodist, Presbyterian, Lutheran, Episcopalian etc) talks as if the party’s over; yet by my estimation churchgoing, at least in the South with which I’m most familiar, is still higher than it’s perhaps ever been in the UK. Yet again it’s about what story one thinks one’s in.
My single favourite thing about St Martin’s is that it’s a community that thinks the future’s bigger than the past. We’re not pining for a fantasy of 50 years ago or lamenting the status quo; we believe what the Holy Spirit has in store is exciting and only just beginning to be revealed. We’re a diverse bunch of people coming from different places but going together to a thrilling place. That’s why this is such an energising community. Long may it be so.
Revd Dr Sam Wells
