St Luke's Church, Eccleshill - The Link magazine

The Link is published monthly at 40p (Senior Citizens 35p), and we deliver free within the parish and post copies (at the reader's expense) to those who request it. Please contact us if you would like a free copy for a trial period.

January 2004, Page 2.
 

United we stand

Churches Together in North Bradford United Service Preacher: Frank Pagden (formerly of BBC Radio Leeds) 10.30am January 18th St James' Bolton There will be provision for children and commissioning of CTNB's new officers

Each year in the middle or end of January we hold a united church service with the churches of all the other denominations in this part of Bradford. We invite a visitor (a Methodist this year) to come and speak, and we try to focus on what unites us in a common faith.

We've been doing this for 40 years now. Time to review the pros and cons!

Why bother? Not to make a single denomination: most Christians don't want that. We want to keep the different styles of different churches so that there is something for everyone's taste and we reach more people. Outsiders sometimes imagine the churches are competing for members in a diminishing marketplace. But actually, we are trying to offer a variety so as to help more people come to faith.

So we need united services for two reasons.

1. To keep us in touch with the variety of ways of worshipping God, so that we don't imagine ours is the "right" way or even the "best" way of doing church. It does us good to go to a church which is not "our taste", so that we can see its good points and realize that others might have something to teach us.
    
2. To help people to see that we're all on the same side. If we cooperate and do some things together, it takes the wind out of people's sails when they try to say we can't be right because we're always arguing. We may debate trivial issues, but we're united in Jesus, the core of our faith.

John Hartley

 

This web page was last updated on 19th December 2003.