The feedback about our recent weekend with the Northumbrian Community has been largely positive. The most comprehensive response has come from Iain Macritchie, and it is below for you to read.
Dear Duncan,
This is a belated but sincere note of thanks to you and to Hilton Kirk Session for a fantastic weekend with the Northumberland Community a couple of weekends ago. It was inspiring, challenging, sensitive and timely in the life of Hilton Church, raising several hugely important questions at both a personal and congregational level.
It was also a necessary follow-up to last year’s weekend, when we looked more at personal spirituality and personal spiritual growth – this year’s emphasis on communal aspects of faith was most welcome.
BIG POSITIVES:
- the constant challenge to reach out and to be an inclusive, non-judgemental community
- the worship: inclusive language, and culturally rooted in their own community, challenging us to a similar inclusiveness and rootedness in our own rich culture
- the worship: use of liturgy, unafraid to take a tradition and adapt it, challenging us beyond our comfort zones and the easy routines of our own patterns of worship
- the worship: use of story-telling as another means of communicating scripture – brilliant!
- harnessing people’s creativity: the use of art, music, narrative, language etc in building and celebrating community, for me this is where it really is at.
- the challenge to know people by name! (And if people have a name, then they also have an identity and belonging and a voice and an opinion in the shaping of our church)
- the challenge to find our church’s DNA. Our own, rather than an imported or imposed identity. What makes Hilton Church what we are? And can we embrace this answer unafraid and with confidence?
- the challenge to embrace local culture in order to transform it – e.g. having a regular Ceilidh
- the challenge to live by acceptance and forgiveness in community and to care for casualties along the way
SMALL CONCERNS:
- For me, sometimes I want to be where no one knows my name! Personal challenge here!
- ‘Soft edged and hard centred churches’ like Hilton do well. I guess I still struggle with the ‘hard centre’ where acceptance becomes a lot more conditional and where people can get hurt.
- I am very comfortable with liturgy. I’m not sure everyone is, and I would be concerned if important challenges were dismissed or lost because of the style in which they were delivered.
- For the whole church community not to define Hilton Church by those who attended the weekend
(I deliberately put this in terms of ‘positives’ and ‘concerns’ because it is all too easy to talk only negatives and then make excuses why uncomfortable challenges can be dismissed!)
I thought the whole weekend was prophetic in terms of the life of Hilton Church and dovetailed so well with a lot of the issues facing the Church at this time, e.g. engagement with the wider community, inclusiveness, embracing difference rather than imposing conformity, and generally living out Kingdom rules through the community that is Hilton Church.
So thank you (and presumably the Kirk Session) for having the vision to invite this group again. As a member of Hilton I look forward very much to seeing the fruits of the Northumberland Community’s visits in the life of our church.
With every good wish and prayer,
Iain
This is a belated but sincere note of thanks to you and to Hilton Kirk Session for a fantastic weekend with the Northumberland Community a couple of weekends ago. It was inspiring, challenging, sensitive and timely in the life of Hilton Church, raising several hugely important questions at both a personal and congregational level.
It was also a necessary follow-up to last year’s weekend, when we looked more at personal spirituality and personal spiritual growth – this year’s emphasis on communal aspects of faith was most welcome.
BIG POSITIVES:
- the constant challenge to reach out and to be an inclusive, non-judgemental community
- the worship: inclusive language, and culturally rooted in their own community, challenging us to a similar inclusiveness and rootedness in our own rich culture
- the worship: use of liturgy, unafraid to take a tradition and adapt it, challenging us beyond our comfort zones and the easy routines of our own patterns of worship
- the worship: use of story-telling as another means of communicating scripture – brilliant!
- harnessing people’s creativity: the use of art, music, narrative, language etc in building and celebrating community, for me this is where it really is at.
- the challenge to know people by name! (And if people have a name, then they also have an identity and belonging and a voice and an opinion in the shaping of our church)
- the challenge to find our church’s DNA. Our own, rather than an imported or imposed identity. What makes Hilton Church what we are? And can we embrace this answer unafraid and with confidence?
- the challenge to embrace local culture in order to transform it – e.g. having a regular Ceilidh
- the challenge to live by acceptance and forgiveness in community and to care for casualties along the way
SMALL CONCERNS:
- For me, sometimes I want to be where no one knows my name! Personal challenge here!
- ‘Soft edged and hard centred churches’ like Hilton do well. I guess I still struggle with the ‘hard centre’ where acceptance becomes a lot more conditional and where people can get hurt.
- I am very comfortable with liturgy. I’m not sure everyone is, and I would be concerned if important challenges were dismissed or lost because of the style in which they were delivered.
- For the whole church community not to define Hilton Church by those who attended the weekend
(I deliberately put this in terms of ‘positives’ and ‘concerns’ because it is all too easy to talk only negatives and then make excuses why uncomfortable challenges can be dismissed!)
I thought the whole weekend was prophetic in terms of the life of Hilton Church and dovetailed so well with a lot of the issues facing the Church at this time, e.g. engagement with the wider community, inclusiveness, embracing difference rather than imposing conformity, and generally living out Kingdom rules through the community that is Hilton Church.
So thank you (and presumably the Kirk Session) for having the vision to invite this group again. As a member of Hilton I look forward very much to seeing the fruits of the Northumberland Community’s visits in the life of our church.
With every good wish and prayer,
Iain
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