Friends

Methodism is a connexional church and the collective noun for us is “The Connexion”, deliberately spelled the way it was back in the 18th century. However, what does that actually mean? The technical description is “a form of church organisation especially in mission areas where scattered churches are held together by itinerant evangelists”. However, in our understanding, it refers to the way in which Methodist churches are connected and work together to support one another, share resources and carry out mission and ministry. All of us, at our best, are connected in a network of loyalties and commitments that support, yet supersede, local concerns.

We do this in practical terms by paying quarterly into the Circuit through the assessment, which allows us as a circuit to employ ministers and an administrator, and also to undertake joint ministry and mission projects. The big one on the horizon at the moment is the van project, and if you want to know more about that, then speak to your circuit meeting reps or to me next time you see us.

But thinking about it in a more spiritual sense, we can understand it like this. If each of us is a small piece or shard of pottery, we can hold a little water, but if those pieces are brought together, glued into a single cup, then they are capable of holding far more water than is ever possible by simply adding up the single pieces. We are able to go beyond feeling the presence of the Holy Spirit into holding within our togetherness “streams of living water” that allow our cup to be filled and then to overflow.

The times we spend together in fellowship, in our pastoral groups, in choir or Bible Study, or simply in coffee after worship, allow the pieces to come together and form the cup, and thus for the greater work of God within us as individuals, as a church community, and taking the water out as it were, within the wider community.

It is so easy to see church worship, usually on a Sunday morning, as a place when we are either fed or not fed, but it is far greater than this, and the times we spend together at any time are also part of that which glues us together into a cup that indeed runs over with the love and blessing of God.

God bless, Vicci