Page 50 - Phonebox Magazine July 2007

Churches Together in Newport Pagnell
Ecumenical Moderator’s Letter MiSSiON PARTNERSHiP REviEW
The month of July is often a time for endings and farewells and I want to take this opportunity to express the deep gratitude of the Mission Partnership to Mr Mike Morris, who at our recent Assembly and AGM stood down from his role as Lay Chairman of the Mission Partnership, having served us for four years and completed two terms of office.
Mike's contribution to our life together has been invaluable. I want to pay tribute not only to his many gifts but also to the generosity in time and energy with which he has used them on our behalf. We have appreciated his skills, his humility and not least his great sense of humour. I am very glad that although he has reached the end of his term of office, this is not exactly a farewell, and we shall look forward to benefiting from his wisdom from time to time in his capacity as ex-Lay Chairman. He is succeeded by Mrs Di Miller from Woughton Parish – well known by many of you, I think, for her involvement in the past with Snakes and Ladders! We are delighted to welcome her into a new role and we look forward to working with her.
One of our on-going tasks this year in our life together has been the Mission Partnership review. I want to say a big thank you to all those who have contributed to the consultation process, and to those who are still working to complete the work. It has been an exciting time. The draft vision statement, which represented the first part of the review process, was circulated earlier in the year. Its title: A Way Forward: emerging ecumenism tries to encapsulate something of its flavour. If you have not received your copy, do ask for one from the Mission Partnership office (email: missionpartnership@tiscali.co.uk).
We are continuing to receive feedback on this document and we would love to hear from you. The review group is now looking more closely at the structures of the Partnership, and we hope that a proposal will be with you in the autumn.
The current review of the Partnership is taking place in the light of an earlier piece of work by the Review group which suggested a three-fold basis upon which to ground our thinking about ways forward. This threefold basis, which was accepted by the Executive and the Assembly, suggested that the
hallmarks of the life of the Mission Partnership should be:
● realising life
● re-presenting Christ ● releasing energy
As the year has gone on, and as I have started to live with this statement a bit more closely, I have found myself in different situations asking myself how much the particular activity I have been engaged with lives up to those criteria. How much do certain tasks we perform in our church life realise life, or what kind of life do they realise? Or which of our activities release energy, and which seem to drain it?
More than that, however, I have found myself challenged by the three-fold criteria to think about my own personal life as a Christian disciple. How much do I allow God's life of love and goodness to permeate the way I live? To what extent does the way I live re-present Christ to those around me? How energised am I by my discipleship? The process of review invites us to look at ourselves again, prayerfully confess our need for forgiveness and renewal, and rise to the new challenges which the Spirit places before us. ❑
Mary Cotes
50 Phonebox Magazine