John Lancaster has been struck by one of the 'loveliest mission statements' he's ever seen.,,,
Just recently my granddaughter Laura who lives in Eastbourne sent me photos of an ancient church she had visited in the village of Westham in East Sussex, just near Pevensey Castle. The picture which grabbed my attention was of the noticeboard outside St Mary’s Church which contained one of the loveliest ‘mission statements’ I’ve ever seen.
Talking of Pevensey, I was reminded that St Mary’s was standing, partially ruined, when William the Conqueror led his invasion force across the English Channel where it slowly crunched its way across the shingle beaches of the Sussex coast in 1066 on the way to an historic victory over King Harold’s English army at the so-called ‘Battle of Hastings’. Fourteen years after that battle, St Mary’s, now in the process of being restored in a typically ‘Norman’ style, was, according to its noticeboard, ‘Proclaiming the good news of the Lord Jesus Christ since 1080’.
It’s worth taking another look at what that noticeboard says: “We are committed to a Bible-based ministry in proclaiming God’s Son Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour.”
It’s so refreshingly simple, free from the somewhat exaggerated language sometimes used in promotional material. This ancient church is committed to the ‘proclamation’ of two important things: first, it is a ‘Bible-based ministry’, uncompromisingly founded on the authority of the Word of God for its doctrine and manner of life and worship. Secondly, it is unswervingly Christ-centred. It proclaims him as ‘the Son of God’ in the fullness of his deity; it affirms him as ‘Lord’, acknowledging his supreme authority in every sphere of existence, and finally it proclaims him as ‘Saviour‘, declaring the ‘good news of the Lord Jesus Christ’ through whose atoning death on the cross and glorious resurrection we are liberated from the power and penalty of sin and given entry into the kingdom of God.
Today, the great Roman fortress at Pevensey is just a picturesque ruin. No imperial guards watch from its broken towers, and no heavily armed Norman soldiers march through its gateways. The Roman emperors who once ruled the world are remembered as silent statues, and William the Conqueror is celebrated as a cartoon figure on the famous ‘Bayeux Tapestry’ which, oddly enough, was ‘made in England’! So, as the hymn says, ‘Earth’s proud empires pass away’.
In the year 1087 King William’s body was carried to his native home in Caen where he was buried amidst great pomp and circumstance, but seven years before that, a group of Christians in St Mary’s were to be heard singing songs of praise to another living, mighty King. Jesus of Nazareth, not William of Normandy, was proclaimed as the true ‘Conqueror’! Through his death on the cross of Calvary and his resurrection he broke the power of Satan, sin and death, and liberated us from their tyranny. He does not lie imprisoned in some ornate royal tomb but is ‘alive for evermore in the power of an endless life’, King of Kings and Lord of all forever and ever!
“Heavenly Father, we give you thanks for the inspiring ‘mission statement’ at St Mary’s, Westham. We pray for those who minister there and those who are members there. Lord, bless them and help them to uphold that biblical, Christ-centred vision in their worship and witness in the world.”
And we pray for ourselves: “Lord Jesus Christ, we are citizens of your kingdom, living in a world where secularism, humanism and materialism have created a culture of godlessness causing many to ‘depart from the faith’. Help us not to compromise with the world but to uphold ‘the faith once for all delivered to the saints’ (Jude 3), where the Word of God is proclaimed and a Christ-centred lifestyle is practised.”
From Direction Magazine issue 234
