Thursday, October 24, 2024
The mission of local resilience centres
A devotional I shared at a monthly Church Council I chair.
First, a welcome to new members. We are grateful for your willingness to offer your wisdom, gifts, and experience. Second, a welcome to returning members. We are equally grateful for your willingness to offer your wisdom, gifts, and experience.
The gospel reading for Sunday is of particular relevance to a church council.
In Mark 10: 42-45: Jesus called them together and said, “You know that those who are regarded as rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them. Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be slave of all. For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”
So, just in case any of us imagine that being on a church council is a chance to lord it over a church, Jesus is quite clear. We are here to serve.
We serve because of verse 45, the example of Jesus who comes to serve. And as we are reminded in other places in the Gospels, Jesus serves not just people inside the church but all those who are in need. So we, as a church council, are called to serve this church and the wider community.
Today, we have our budgets and our agendas. As we make decisions, we are making them because we are here to serve the community.
I was thinking about what it means to serve the broader community as I drove past the church building a few weeks ago. It was the day after the floods, which closed our state highway and rationed our water supply and caused some of our neighbours houses to be red-stickered.
Outside our church, as you can see from the photo, the Council had set up a water tanker. As I drove past, people from the community were at the water tanker filling up containers with drinking water. So, we, as a church, were part of serving our community. In a very practical way, providing a parking place for a water tanker.
I was on a zoom today, learning about climate change and Christian faith. The speaker described local congregations in a time of climate change as resilience centres. The speaker observed how congregations have buildings, locations, connections and networks with the community. So, in times of emergency, a congregation can play a role in serving the community.
So today we can be thankful for the way we as a congregation could serve a few weeks ago. But we also need to think about what it means to serve again.
Because the recent rain event is likely to happen again. Our community is likely to experience floods and damaged roads and water challenges again. So we will have future opportunities to serve. There might be other things we can do as a congregation that might help us be a resilience centre, serving in this community, besides having a place for a water tanker to park.
So I’ll pause there and see if my devotional thoughts have sparked any reflections or pondering.