My Name is Jools

I’m still finding my way in ministry, even after more than three decades.

One of the things I’ve learned is that people who seem “disconnected” from church aren’t necessarily disconnected from God. In fact, particularly during my years in youth ministry and chaplaincy, I often found the Spirit hanging out in places where established church wasn’t.

God is already at work in people’s lives. Part of ministry is simply learning to notice where.

I’ve learned that God hangs out in unexpected places.

When we walk alongside people who are doing it tough, we can sometimes imagine that we’re bringing God into a difficult situation. More often, I think, we discover that God got there before us.

That’s changed the way I think about ministry.

Belonging is such a basic human need. We’re social, tribal creatures. We’re better together.

For me, creating a welcoming church begins quite simply: we open ourselves to the people around us. When we learn to do that as individuals, it becomes much easier to become an open and welcoming community.

And I think faith has something important to say when people are experiencing homelessness, loneliness or hardship.

There’s the call of God to look after one another. Faith can give people the motivation, courage and strength to serve.

But faith doesn’t belong only to the person doing the helping.

The person who is struggling may also have extraordinary faith, wisdom, generosity and strength.

I know someone who started attending a foodbank because life had become too hard. They were in serious financial difficulty. They found food there, but they also found acceptance.

A few months later, when the crisis had passed and they were working again, they started turning up at that same foodbank with large donations of food for other people.

I love that story.

Faith wasn’t simply being offered to someone in need. Faith came alive through the person who had been helped. They became part of the helping.

And sometimes the most important thing we can offer someone is simply our presence.

Most of us who have the privilege of walking alongside people who are struggling feel inadequate a lot of the time. Thankfully, Newtown is full of people who genuinely know how to help, where to go, who to contact and how to find practical support.

Those people are gold.

But most of us can at least listen.

We can offer companionship. We can stay alongside someone. We can try to be a helpful, peaceful presence.

And, by the way, a helpful, peaceful presence almost never begins a sentence with:

“Well, at least…”

I also think we need to get better at working together.

Churches, faith communities and organisations can sometimes become tribal or protective of what they do. But none of us has all the answers.

We need to listen to one another, appreciate what others are doing and share what we have, knowledge, experience, finance, networks, passion and compassion.

When different organisations speak together about an injustice or a need, that voice becomes much harder to ignore.

And when someone has lost hope or feels that God has forgotten them, I would begin by saying: God has not forgotten you.

I understand that sometimes it really can feel that way.

The Bible is full of people who found themselves in exactly those places.

Hagar sits in the wilderness with her child, lost and abandoned, and discovers God there.

Elijah cries out, “Why me? Why only me?”

Naomi loses almost everything.

Jacob runs away and encounters God in the darkness.

Job loses almost everything and shouts his anger at God and discovers that God can cope with his anger.

And then there are Jonah, David, the widow of Zarephath, the Samaritan woman, Mary Magdalene, and those two devastated disciples walking home to Emmaus saying, “We had hoped…”

It’s one of the great threads running through the biblical story:

God is present with us, perhaps especially when we cannot see or feel it.

God is faithful to creation.

God does not forget people.

That’s the kind of community I hope we can continue building here at Newtown Mission, one where nobody feels forgotten, judged or left behind.

I think one of the keys is creating a culture of curiosity rather than judgement.

When we become genuinely interested in people, their stories, experiences, struggles and gifts, curiosity can lead us towards understanding, and understanding can lead us towards acceptance.

Like all questions of culture, it only takes a few people to begin creating it.

Unfortunately, it can sometimes take only a few people to wreck it as well!

Andrew is a brilliant leader at Newtown because he models a culture of acceptance, listening and simply being alongside people. That matters enormously. It helps build a strong team and, through that team, a community characterised by welcome and embrace.

So, if I could leave the people of Newtown Mission with one message of hope, it would be this:

God is not finished with us yet.