Pastoral Letter
Dear Friends,
DURING the month of May Holy Trinity Church Bottisham celebrates it's 800th birthday. John Betjeman described Holy Trinity as "one of the finest Churches in Cambridgeshire". We are very blessed that at the heart of our lovely villages are the most wonderful Church buildings.
I expect that when you are on holiday our on a day trip you might well drop into a village Church to have a look around. Someone once wrote this little poem about visiting Churches:-
Every time I pass a church
I stop in for a visit,
So when I'm carried in
The Lord won't say,
"Who is it?"
That little poem reminds us that Churches are meant to be more than simply attractive buildings. They are meant to be a reminder of God's presence amongst us. Churches are places where we can meet with Him. They are places where we can share with Him the joys of our new relationships, the blessing of new life, say farewell to friends no longer with us and especially give thanks for the wonder of God's everlasting love for us. Churches are places where we can share with God our fears, our worries, our sense of loss, our hopes and our aspirations; knowing that all these things are important to Him, and that He cares about everything that is important to us.
The Biblical definition of a Church is not actually a building at all, but a group of people who meet together to praise God, to pray, to encourage each other in their journey of faith, to be taught about God's word and to be fed and strengthened to go out into the world to serve God. It was C. S. Lewis who wrote:
The New Testament does not envisage solitary religion; some kind of regular assembly for worship and instruction is everywhere taken for granted in the Epistles. So we must be regular practicing members of the church. Of course we differ in temperament. Some (like you-and me) find it more natural to approach God in solitude; but we must go to church as well.
So as we gaze on and admire our wonderful Church buildings let us never forget that it is not the buildings that matters so much as the people who meet with God inside them. I would not like to think that our Churches become merely historic reminders of a distant and irrelevant religion. I would like to think of them as power houses sending out revitalised worshippers into the world to share the love of God and to seek to make this world a better place.
May God bless you all,