Spring is here

This Sunday represents one of my favourite times in the year – the day when we move the clocks forward by an hour. This evening we can look forward to it staying light until almost 8 o’clock, and even later in the coming weeks. Hopefully we all remembered to adjust our clocks, and no one turned up to Church just as the closing song was being announced.

With the lengthening days we can look forward to warmer weather and the onset of Spring, when flowers start to grow again, animals awake from hibernation, and leaves and blossom appear on the trees. I have enjoyed hearing the distinctive sounds of woodpeckers over the past few days, and I’m sure I’m not the only person who has thought of Wordsworth’s immortal lines:

I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Spring is a time when we think of new beginnings – not simply in terms of the cycle of nature, but perhaps in our families, our communities and within our church fellowship.

Here at Brighton Road Baptist Church, we are looking to appoint a new senior minister to lead us forward over the coming years. We have all been asked to pray and think carefully about how God is leading us forward, and to discern His will for this new beginning in our church life. Hopefully, everyone has been able to visit the Chapel to look at the feedback which has been submitted by members of the fellowship regarding the way God is leading us, as well as the attributes of the person we are hoping to recruit.

There is already a wide range of suggestions, and it will be necessary to give serious consideration to evaluating what are the most important characteristics – after all, we are unlikely to be able to get superman or superwoman!

However, it seems to me that we cannot simply look to the new minister at this time of a new beginning, but it is also important that each of us is open to the possibility of doing things differently.

This year the Deacons have been studying the book “On This Rock” by Alex Harris and Chrissy Remsberg, which highlights some of the features of churches which have experienced extraordinary growth. One chapter highlights the importance of the church being open to new things, referring to “organisations which call for bold leadership, but don’t actually want much to change”. If we want our church to grow (and I think that most of us do), that cannot be left to the ministerial team, but we must all embrace that objective.

Over the next few months as we consider what our priorities for the coming years are, may we be willing to step forward and make the necessary changes, individually and collectively, to ensure that God’s work in this church and in our community goes from strength to strength.

Adrian Rudd