View from the Manse

Dear Friends,

It certainly does not feel like ten years has passed since Tabitha and I were preparing to move to Abingdon. Where has that time gone? Well, as the saying goes, 'time flies when you're having fun', and there have certainly been some fun times, just as there have been more profound moments, serious moments and deeply sad moments. Jesus promised us 'life in all its fullness', and indeed that is what we have experienced here in Abingdon.

I remember well reflecting on Messy Church at All Saints and how, in Messy Church, we celebrated the various stages of life, and marker points in life that all church families do. Perhaps that would be no surprise for the wider All Saints church family, but in Messy Church it was something to notice and celebrate, because it was on a smaller scale, but all there.

Someone once commented, 'Ministers come and go, but some of us are here for longer. The congregation remain.' That is true: Methodism has an itinerant ordained ministry; but we cannot pretend that the congregation that remains, remains the same. There have been changes, and there will continue to be changes, because all families, even church families, do not remain the same.

Methodist Churches often mark the passage of time by which minister was here when, and as this minister prepares to move, so another prepares to come. A new chapter opens. A chapter with possibilities, with hope, with excitement, and you who remain will be part of that chapter. Will it be like a chapter of a carefully crafted book? No, God is far less predictable than that. The one constant, though, is that God is always with us. So as one chapter comes to its close, and other begins, I pray that together All Saints Methodist Church will be open to the movement of God's Holy Spirit to see what surprises are in store.

It has been a privilege to have been a minister here. All Saints certainly has become a large chapter in my life and one that I will remember well for a long time to come.

Every blessing

Ian