Skip to main content

'Go well! Stay well!' - A parting message from Rev Sarah

Image
By



‘Go well! Stay well!’

These are the English translation of parting words I learnt when living in Zimbabwe.

I had no idea, when I arrived in 1997, that Shipley was to be my home for the next 17 years!  And that my desire to follow God’s call to be ‘an ordinary circuit minister’ would be fulfilled in Shipley and Bingley and Bradford North Circuits.  Every ordinary person, however, is special and unique in God’s eyes, ‘I have called you my name you are mine’ (Isaiah 431) and each of us has a particular God given task to carry out. 

Sometimes, it’s only retrospectively that our task becomes clear!  As I prepare to leave, I’ve done some looking back hoping that I have been faithful to God’s will.

And the phrase that comes to mind is from John’s Gospel. Jesus says to his followers, ‘I call you servants no longer but friends.’   The time those early disciples had spent with Jesus had changed the nature of their relationship with Him and each other. They’d got to know each other, worked together: become friends.

Over the years, folk who were strangers to me have become friends. And I hope for you, people and churches, in the now established Bradford North Circuit, you are beginning to feel less like strangers and more like friends.

Friends love and respect one another. Friendship is a relationship of give and take, of support and challenge, and of straight talking and sympathetic encouragement. It is not always easy – we let each other down and don’t always live up to each other’s expectations. Some of us are easier to get on with than others!

Yet Jesus says we are to love one another as he has loved us. He was saying this to the motley crew of women and men who, after Pentecost, were fired with God’s Holy Spirit to spread the Good News of God’s love, justice and peace to the ends of the earth, beginning where they were.

And Jesus is still saying it to you and me. We are to love one another. It’s quite a tough calling. And there’s more! For we are to love our neighbour as ourselves! This calling, which is for each one of us, is set within the knowledge and experience of God’s overwhelming love for me and you.

I thank God for the friendships that have sustained me during my ministry here and I thank you all for the best wishes, gifts, support and prayers, my family and I have received.

So friends, I trust that I will ‘go well’ and you will ‘stay well’ as, in our different ways, we’ll be faithful to the ‘God we adore, our faithful unchangeable friend’.

Rev Sara

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Message from the Link

By
D ISSUE 16 OCTOBER 2012 ear Friends How many times have you heard people say in your church ‘Well, I didn’t know about that!’  Quickly followed by, ‘Well, if you read the notices …’ Communication within churches can be wonderful, it can be a little frustrating and it can be never quite what we had hoped.  The same is true across the Circuit, and very soon we will be reviewing methods and means of communication.  Part of this review may include looking at ‘The Link’ and ‘Outlook’ in the light of our focus upon Mission.  For example, it may be that we move more towards what has happened and how it worked to encourage churches to think about the stories that they have to share, rather than being a notice sheet of things to come. Which leads me to ask, have we ever wondered about who it is we are trying to communicate to, and about what?  For example, there have been many adverts in ‘ The Link’ about coffee mornings and cake....
Post a Comment
Read more

News from Allerton Methodist Church

By
Allerton’s Community Play & Learn Hub In October we were approached by the Bradford Community Play Partnership to ask if they could use the church premises for their Allerton & Lower Grange Community Learning Hub. They had been running this from Ladyhill Park since 1st April but needed somewhere more suitable for the winter months. Supporting local families and linking with 5 local primary schools, 7 volunteers, including 3 of our own congregation, are working together to provide ‘Bags of Creativity’ during the pandemic. The group have provided over 5,000 packs to children, signed up over 700 children to a Summer Reading Challenge, engaged with 1,500 children in the Light Project with a physical literacy music lesson in the car park, with pallet Christmas trees, a grotto, forest school activities including making Bird Cake and incorporating: Exercise Counting, Measuring, Weighing Investigating natural materials Growing Sunflowers Reading Music The Hub will continue until Februa...
Post a Comment
Read more

Fairtrade Summer Fair - 31 May 2014

By
Did you know that it is Fairtrade ’s 20th birthday this year? Yes, 2014 marks 20 years since the first Fairtrade product was sold in the UK. In that time, Fairtrade supporters have helped make huge progress, so that millions of farmers, workers and their families now have a brighter future. To celebrate this milestone, we will be having a: Fairtrade Summer Fair at Calverley Methodist Church on Saturday 31st May from 10 a.m. to 12 noon.  Please come along and give your support. There will be refreshments, Fairtrade tasting, a quiz with prize and lots of lovely Fairtrade products for sale.
Post a Comment
Read more