I came across a story recently of a man who comes out of a factory one day pushing a wheelbarrow in which he has a carefully wrapped parcel. The security guard eyes him suspiciously and then challenges him. “What’s in the parcel?” “Sawdust,” comes the reply. “I don’t believe you. Open the parcel.” And sure enough, it is sawdust just as the man said.

This goes on day after day, with the security guard getting more and more frustrated. He knows the man is up to something, but every time the parcel contains sawdust. Finally, he can take it no longer.

“Look”, he says, “I know you are up to something, and I can’t work out what. Tell me what you’re up to and I promise I won’t report you”. “You promise?” asks the man. “Absolutely. On my honour”, replies the guard. “OK. I’m stealing wheelbarrows.”

Things are not always as obvious as they can seem at first and we can find ourselves barking up the wrong tree if we are not careful.

There was a report a month or two back about the census results for 2001. You may remember that there was a question asking us to state our religion. It wasn’t compulsory and there was a campaign on the internet at the time to get people to put down Jedi, from Star Wars, to try to get this recognised as an official religion. A bit of mischief. What is startling is that over 70% of the UK population put down Christian as their religion. They didn’t have to put anything and could have ignored the question, or indeed could have put their religion as ‘nothing in particular’ if they had wanted to. For Leeds, given our multicultural mix, the figure is slightly lower, something like 69%, so still high. I find this staggering because it is certainly not borne out by church attendance patterns or knowledge of the Christian story. It is not what I would have expected from occasional offices, particularly baptisms and weddings when the congregation appear to contain a large number of people who have clearly never been in a church before. So I give the news a bit of a cautious cheer. The caution I have is are we looking at sawdust or wheelbarrows, are we in danger of misinterpreting what we see.

When we add this to other bits of information we are often given about people not knowing what Easter is about, or even knowing the Lords’ Prayer, I get a bit more pessimistic. I would like to know the age spread of the census results and that isn’t available yet. My guess is that the older the generation, the more likely they are to have stated Christian and the younger the less likely.

But then in the past year, in fact within my first 6 months or so here I was asked to be a governor of 3 of our 5 schools in this parish. I felt I could only accept two of these – at Temple Moor and Colton - and sadly had to decline the third. The other two have both either asked me in to give a spiritual focus to particular events or activities or have wanted to come into the church to look at it as a religious building not just as an old one. Added to that, I still sense a great deal of warmth and respect for clergy, even if sometimes people don’t seem sure how to react, usually because they think they are going to be judged and looked down on!

So it is very difficult to know what is sawdust and what is a wheelbarrow when trying to get a grip on what is really going on in the spirituality of our nation. 70% declaring themselves to be Christian means that we are not flogging a dead horse completely. But we should be careful that we don’t assume this means that the great public are just waiting to walk through the doors either. There are a large number of bridges to be built first and in this we all have a part to play.

I am reading a book at the moment about leadership in the church. It jumped out at me because the author, Jonathan Gledhill, used to be vicar of a very lively church in Canterbury. He comes from a different church tradition to me, more St Georges, Leeds than Whitkirk, but I know that he has a lot of experience at the sharp end of ministry and has many sensible things to say. He is now Bishop of Southampton. One of the factors that comes out of his book is that churches that grow do so because a large number of the church community decide that they are going to live what they believe. The spirituality of the church touches the lives of those who come into contact with it. This is not just a clergy thing, it is something that belongs to the whole people of God, to the royal priesthood to which we all belong through baptism, so ordained ministry becomes about leadership rather than omnicompetance and omnipresence - we leave that to God! It is also a leadership that is shared with people like churchwardens and others, which is why our failure to elect two wardens is not good at all!

If we are going to be a growing church we have to be clear that this begins by being deeply focussed on our core activity. This is quite simply focussing our lives on God, so that we worship on our knees and with our hands; in other words with the whole of our lives. So God is seen to be part of Monday not just Sunday. The old Benedictine monasteries knew this with their focus on praying through work and working at prayer. I was reminded of this on a visit the other week to Selby Abbey which had the Latin tag phrase for this written round the TV screen that showed the welcome video. We decided that it was about time we found out what was at the other end of the Selby Road, since we live on it! Working at our worship and worshipping through our work. In other words, being lives that are consecrated in the service of our risen Lord. This shifts the emphasis so that we don’t so much talk about going to church as seeing the church as the place where our Christian community comes together to refocus their core activity, the spirituality that holds and guides us in and through the whole of the week. This may sound like playing with words, but the subtlety of this means that we make a mental shift of focus from Sundays and churches to what gathers in them and has a life that continues outside it.

This means that I think we need to relax about church attendance figures and questions of how can we get people to come in. This is not because I think it doesn’t matter, quite the contrary, but because if the only reason we want to grow is so that we can keep the show on the road and stop the tower from falling down, then we have lost the plot and the reason for having a tower in the first place! Keeping the show on the road is not what we are called to be and do. We are called to lives that proclaim God’s love because they respond to the love which God has shown and does show us in Jesus Christ. I believe that this is infectious and where that is the case others of will find that which stirs within them recognises this and wants to find out more. It is, to continue the metaphor, about deciding what is sawdust and what is the wheelbarrow.

When we are beset by so many tasks and pressures that threaten to overwhelm us, this is not always easy.

• We have a building fund - though I still maintain that with an increase in general giving we could just write a cheque for this and forget the fundraising. That doesn’t mean forget the concerts because I think they are worth it for their own sake. Making music is a wonderfully subversive thing to do. Music puts a song in our heart and therefore counters the doom and gloom that would overwhelm us.

• We live in a much more litigious climate than even 5 years ago and so there is a raft of legislation which if we are not directly required to follow, best practice and the insurers demand that we take on board.

• We have a crisis in only electing one churchwarden. This is not good and should make us reflect on why a church of this size can’t find anyone to take up this necessary role.

As I look back on my first year in this parish I have been delighted by what there is here. There is a vibrant, active community around this church and boredom has not been one of my problems! It has taken and is taking a long time to get a grip on all its aspects, but I think I have managed to get an overview of what goes on. It is not possible to be present everywhere and it is easy to become overwhelmed by the sheer weight of things that cross my desk or path.

It is a great sadness that we are not going to be welcoming a new curate to the parish this year. It actually leaves us short of an active minister and there are implications of that. The basic maths, or numeracy as we now have to call it, is that two into one = half. We are now looking to next year for a new deacon to join us.

It is at this point that I want to pay tribute to Pam, David, Norman and Keith: our reader and 3 active retired clergy. Without them our existing pattern of worship and pastoral ministry would collapse. In their own ways, and some of these are not seen on Sundays, they keep this church’s public ministry on the road. Being vicar of this parish would be unsustainable without them. I am extremely grateful for what you do.

Claire has been churchwarden for 4 years and what I have valued especially about her holding that office is that she is truly a people’s warden. She knows the people of this community and is in touch with voices that are otherwise not easily heard. That is one of the vital roles of a churchwarden. Brian’s roles as churchwarden and chief groundsman get mixed up and we are very fortunate that he is around as much as he is to do those practical things that are so easily taken for granted. As I have said churchwardens share in the leadership of the church and we should record our thanks to them for their ministry over this past year.

There are many other tasks that are fulfilled and I appreciate them because I know what it is like when no one does them: verger/sacristan duties, printing and collating of service papers, organising the notices required for this meeting, coffee after church and at other occasions which some how just appears but of course doesn’t just appear someone thinks of making sure it is there, typing of notices and letters for bereavement services, taking down old notices so that the public appearance is up to date, organising Lent course speakers, the home communion team and visiting, baptism preparation and booking, youth work and the various satellite groups and organisations… the list could go on, but these are some of the delights to find these jobs being done. There are so many that do so much to support what happens here that it is impossible to name everyone.

I have said before that I think this church has a great past. It is our task to focus its future and the PCC need to give attention to formulating a vision for the next 5 to 10 years. There have been major changes in the recent past. These need evaluating and as we go forward we need a clear vision of where any developments of these are aiming. Plans to formulate a parish vision will be on the agenda of the first PCC meeting.

We have a missionary task, which is to be the church, a community of people who work at the their worship and worship through their work - whose lives are consecrated as disciples of Christ. In all our business and planning may God give us the grace to be able to distinguish between parcels of sawdust and wheelbarrows.

© Ian Black 2003

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