Farewell: Praying that they will be one
Please read Psalm 133, John 17: 20-26, Acts 2: 1-4 and then pray; Gracious God, as we open your Word on this special anniversary Sunday, may your Spirit whom you send upon your people with power – lead us, guide us, and inspire us to live to your honour, praise, and glory. Amen!
I would like to begin by thanking David Evans, our Church Secretary, for the enormous effort he has put into the writing of this special book – “Christchurch, Abbeydale – How it all began.” Can we show our appreciation to David please? I have thoroughly enjoyed reading the history of the first ten years of the life of Christchurch and I look forward to volume 2. I have been encouraged and inspired by the faith of this Church. If you buy a copy of this book, and I hope you do, you will not be disappointed.
May I ask you all a question related to the title of this book. When did your personal association and relationship with Christchurch begin? Let us start at the very beginning in 1985. Who was here then?
I hope you have no regrets. I hope and pray that your time and involvement at Christchurch has been a tremendous blessing to you as you endeavoured with others to demonstrate that the Church is one; – one body of people – seeking to live out the one faith and glorify the one Lord in the power and fellowship of the one Spirit. Today is a day to give thanks to God for the life and witness this Church, from its inception up to the present day.
To understand “how it all began,” we must step much further back in time. We need to go back to the life of Jesus. I want to take you back to that time in the upper room when Jesus shared bread and wine with his disciples. For several weeks we have been considering Jesus’s farewell discourse with the eleven disciples that remained with him after the departure of Judas Iscariot from the scene of the last supper. Following that significant time of teaching, Jesus shared a most profound prayer. The central focus of that prayer is what motivated the vision for Christchurch.
After briefly praying for himself and offering his completed work to His Father, Jesus turns to pray for the disciples with him. (17: 6-19) Then he prays for all disciples in every future generation (20-26) – all those who will come to know Jesus and the Father through the gospel that will be proclaimed throughout the world. “My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message – that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you.” (17:20-21) This is what occupied the mind of Jesus as he prepared to go to the cross and die for those the Father had given him. Jesus pleads in prayer for the unity of these people, that they may be one. This is the mind of Christ. This is therefore, the will of the Father, the Son and the Spirit who are One. The unity of the Godhead must be seen through the unity of God’s beloved people – loved and chosen by the Father, called by the Son, and filled with the Spirit.
We go back to our question. “How and why it all began?” Christchurch began because there was movement afoot in this country and across the world to recover the oneness of the people of God. Christchurch began because Christians who had moved into this new area of housing development wanted to seek and honour “the mind of Christ” and play a willing and active part in the ecumenical movement. This was and is a movement of the Spirit who came at Pentecost, and who brought the Church to birth; and it is a movement which seeks live out the mind of Christ concerning the unity of his people. David, on the first page of his book writes;
“However, what really makes Christchurch distinctive when compared with other churches in Gloucester is its deeply rooted ecumenical nature.”
The apostle Paul teaches the Church in Corinth that those who have the Spirit also have the mind of Christ. (1 Corinthians 2: 13-16) But do people really understand the mind of Christ when it comes to this desire for unity? When Paul wrote to the Church in Philippi, a Church that had many strengths but was experiencing some struggles with unity, he urged them to allow the mind of Christ to have its way among them. (Read Philippian 2: 1-2). Paul was driven by a passion to continually emphasise that the Church is one; and he, like his Lord, believed that this precious and vital oneness and unity should be demonstrated to the world.
Romans 12:5 “so in Christ, we who are many, form one body, and each member belongs to all the others.”
1 Corinthians 10:17 “Because there is one loaf, we, who are many, are one body, for we all partake of the one loaf.”
Galatians 3:28 “There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for we are all one in Christ Jesus.”
Ephesians 4: 3 “Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace.” And if I might continue to quote this passage but now using the Message paraphrase:
“You were all called to travel on the same road and in the same direction, so stay together, both outwardly and inwardly. You have one Master, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who rules over all, works through all, and is present in all. Everything you are and think and do is permeated with oneness.”
This teaching appears everywhere in the New Testament. This stress on being one in Christ should permeate and shape the life and the witness of the Church in the world. And seeking to strive for this unity was at the heart of the vision to create Christchurch in 1985; and this vision remains part of the DNA of this fellowship and its future direction. At the Inaugural Service on June 7th 1987, the questions members were asked included this one;
Will you commit yourselves to seek that unity of all Christian people which we believe to be Christ’s will, so that His prayer for His Church may be fulfilled?
And the reply of the congregation? By God’s grace, we will.
There is no doubt that the unity which the NT speaks about and which Jesus prayed for hours before his crucifixion is a spiritual unity, a unity of and in the Holy Spirit, with Jesus as Lord of a redeemed community of love. But that deep and real spiritual unity must manifest itself and proclaim itself outwardly to the world. The new command to “Love one another” must be practiced and lived out in community to the glory of the Father and the Son and the Spirit.
And is that not what happened after Pentecost? The Spirit came down with power as Jesus had promised in his farewell speech, and witness to the world began with powerful preaching, deeds, fellowship, and love! (Read Acts 2: 42-47) The unity was demonstrated through worship and practical love and acts of sacrificial service – and the Church grew. The blessing from heaven fell! This love and unity spoke powerfully to the Jerusalem community. Jesus had said that by this love “the world will know that you are my disciples.” This is what will have real impact. Demonstrating that the kingdom of God has come – and does live in and among ordinary people in a united community, whether they are in Jerusalem or Abbeydale. True unity will have a telling evangelistic and missional force. That the world may believe you sent me! (John 17:21) This unity alone demonstrates to the world that Jesus is the real deal – that Jesus was heaven sent – that Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life.
Francis Schaeffer, the great Christian writer, and apologist of the 20th century wrote this: “We cannot expect the world to believe that the Father sent the Son, that Jesus’ claims are true and that Christianity is true, unless the world sees some reality of the oneness of true Christians.”
Sharon Swain, the first Minister of Christchurch and who is with us today, shared this in her sermon at the first church service held in the Community Centre on March 3rd 1985;
“A sick and divided church attempting to heal a sick world must expect the answer, ‘Physician, heal yourself.’ It is only when the Kingdom of God can be demonstrated in our relationships of love with one another, when we have put our own house in order, that we have anything to say with any credibility to an unbelieving and broken world.”
I want to take this opportunity to say thank you very much to all the people who have been involved the life and witness and growth of Christchurch. Thank you to those of you who were there at the beginning when you were willing to take a brave new step of faith. Thank you to those who joined the Church while it worshipped and operated from the Community Centre, serving this community in innovative and imaginative ways. Thank you to all who were involved in the creation of this building where we meet and worship today. A lot of work went into the planning and the building of this lovely place of witness which is our spiritual home. Buy a brick will never be forgotten! Thank you! Thank you to all who have joined the Church since 1995 and who have helped make the Church what it is today, by sharing your lives, gifts, church traditions and faith.
Thank you to the Ministers who have served here with faith, love, and dedication, responding to the call of God to serve somewhere “a little different,” but among a group of Christian people who value a very rich variety of Christian traditions and worship, and who want to demonstrate the unity that the Spirit brings and expects. Thank you to you all, and I am sure you will all want to say thank you to God, for giving you the opportunity to be part of a fellowship which blessed your soul and enabled you to grow in your love for God, for all God’s people, and in your service to the world.
During our recent Church review, our friend the Revd Ian Yates expressed openly and somewhat emotionally, how much Christchurch meant to him, how serving this Church in those exciting early days had been one of the most fulfilling and satisfying periods of his whole ministry. This does not surprise me because the bible through the words of the Psalmist tells us that where unity is prized and practised – there the blessing of Almighty God falls. That great promise is recorded in Psalm 133, and it is that message which is written on our main front notice board. What Ian and many others have experienced is a real and powerful sense of the Spirit and the blessing of God falling and touching lives that aspire to walk together with the mind of Christ. That “we” may be one.
May I end by sharing some of my own personal testimony. I have enjoyed a blessed Christian life, and ecumenism, that desire to unite and work with all Christian people, has been at the centre of my whole faith journey since the early 1980’s. My story is that I came to faith in a United Reformed Church on a Council Estate in Bradford as did many other teenagers. I quickly learned that the URC was passionate about working ecumenically, and my Church served that very needy Estate by working closely with the Salvation Army and the Anglican Parish Church. And today, one of the Churches I serve in Littledean, is involved in an ecumenical covenant with the Church of England and the Salvation Army. I appear to have come full circle.
I went to train for the ordained ministry in 1985 (when Christchurch was born) at Luther King House – a newly established ecumenical training institution in Manchester which brought together URC, Methodist and Baptist Colleges under one roof for one purpose, to prepare men and women for the ministry of word and sacrament. My training was thoroughly ecumenical, immensely satisfying, and enjoyable, and it broadened my thinking and appreciation of other Church traditions.
Then came my internship year – year 4 in which I was placed as student Minister in a URC on the Wirral in a village where I worked ecumenically with the Anglican Church. There were joint monthly worship services and shared weekly bible studies. It was at this time I met Julia in our joint bible studies. Meeting Julia meant that my interest in local ecumenical relations soared to new heights and new levels of commitment. The weekly time sheets I had to submit to my college tutor revealed more ecumenical engagement than any other student. My tutor seemed delighted by my ecumenical enthusiasm and wished others shared it.
After marrying, Julia and I spent six months in Jamaica at the Theological College of the West Indies which is another ecumenical College of some renown. In my work as a Minister in Leeds, ecumenical mission dominated much of my time and effort. This included working 4 years with the ecumenical chaplaincy team at Leeds University and Leeds Beckett University. And when it was time to move in 2019 after 22 years working across that great city, it was not surprising to me that God would lead Julia and I to such a place as this. You could say it was a marriage ordained in heaven. May be not. But here we continue to keep unity high on the agenda and guiding all our vision. That is not going to stop. It is a major part of all that has been done from 1985 to 2025. What I have discovered over more than 40 years of Christian service is that “where brothers and sisters dwell together in unity – there the blessing of God falls – even life forevermore.”
We are a Church community who continue to seek to know and live out the mind of Christ not just on the matter of unity but on all matters, and it is a joy not only to participate in much ecumenical work and mission, but to see this Church building used by so many other Church groups from across the city and the county. Even in the last 2-3 months we have been hospitable to a group of more 100 Indian Christians and their children, to the Order of St Francis on two occasions, and Worship 24/7 Gloucester met here last Saturday evening for three hours of Spirit-filled worship and prayer. Last weekend a very special service at the Cathedral led by the Dean brought together 220 Christians from about 35 different churches from across the city. Many prayer-walked their way into the city and toward the Cathedral that morning. This was organised by the vibrant Gloucester Christian Leaders Network, which often meets here, because we are known to be an Ecumenical Hub, and a Church which aims to be at the forefront of ecumenical co-operation and mission in this city.
Friends, the work of God which began in 1985 in a newly built Community Centre, and took a huge step forward with the completion of this Church building in 1995, continues in 2025 to the glory of God through the power of the Spirit. Long may this Church pursue the mind of Christ and know the blessing that falls like the dew upon Mount Hermon in Israel, and like that rare anointing oil which dripped copiously from the head of Aaron the priest down on to his beard and the collar of his magnificent robes.
Amen.
(Revd Peter J Clarkson 8.6.25)