A Conflict of Interests

 

As we commence our Elders’ Meetings at AFC everyone present has to declare if any items on the agenda gives them a Conflict of Interests.  If, for example, we were about to award a major church building project to a firm owned by a family member of mine, I’d have to declare a Conflict. In other words, my impartiality on this particular subject would be inevitably compromised.

I suspect the Pandemic has given us all quite a few Conflicts of Interest over recent months.  We’d really love to throw a family party or have all our friends round for a meal, but we know our moral obligation to physical distancing brings a conflict we have to weigh up and work through.  Any government in the world today knows the conflict it brings on a nation to both open up society for social and economic reasons whilst also trying to monitor and control physical interaction.

We are living, in what I sense, is the most confusing period of my lifetime.  We love community and many of us see it as one of the most important parts of faith.  Yet for six months now, and possibly for six more to come, our understanding and practise of community is much more restrained and measured than anything we’ve known before.  It’s summed up for me in the rather clever catch phrase they are currently using in Australia: Staying apart Keeps us together. If we had heard that before March of this year we would just have called it an oxymoron, yet now, in our present context, we know it’s truth and wisdom.

Those early days of a Spring Lockdown were relatively straightforward.  These days of early autumn are far more ambiguous. 

As a church we continue to offer Sunday worship that is both in person and on- line, and it will probably stay that way into 2021.  It’s our way of treating one another with gentleness and kindness for there is no ‘one way’ to walk through these days of Covid19.

It’s struck me recently that we have become a Eucharistic community in essence, even at a time when we haven’t been physically sharing communion together.  That is, we, like many communities, are experiencing something of being ‘broken’ and ‘fragmented’.  Yet, like our Lord upon the cross, it is precisely such brokenness that shows the depth and faithfulness of our love and God’s.

I long for the day when, once more, there will be one loaf on the communion table at AFC from which we can all share.  Until then, as broken and scattered pieces we live out our Eucharistic faith with thanksgiving and with God.

Just one or two pieces now of Church Life news:

Thank you for the pictures you have been sending in for the All Creatures Great and Small website project for Harvest – we’d love to carry on receiving them, photos that celebrate creation, and we’ll publish them on the EcoChurch page of our website on Harvest Sunday.

Matthew has put together a CD of the Worship songs he’s arranged and recorded, sometimes with Sara, over these last six months.  If you’d like a copy then please contact Rachel on rmgreen9497@yahoo.co.uk.  We’re suggesting a donation of, say, £10, which will cover costs and the remainder – around £8 will go to this year’s Harvest Appeal of Trees for Tanzania. Alongwith the CD you’ll receive a link, if you wish to use it, to also hear the songs through Spotify. If you contact Rachel she’ll tell you about how we might distribute the CDs.

And lastly… we were glad that Junior Church was able to meet up outside last Sunday afternoon and that they had a good time together