Dear Friends,
One of my mantra’s that I have found to be true over the years is something I learned a long time ago, surround yourself with good people and you will experience the very best that life has to offer. I believe that was true of the wonderful welcome service we offered to God on Thursday 1st September as we welcomed Rev Abe Konadu-Yiadom to the Circuit. It had never occurred to me before, but there has been a bit of confusion about Abe’s gender. I maybe need to clarify that Abe is short for Alberta and she is female. I am hoping that as we make the preaching plan moving forward our presbyters, myself included can venture beyond the Churches where we have pastoral charge and become better known around the Circuit. One of the problems I currently have is that I am tied into communion services and I appreciate that my style of presiding might not be to everybody’s taste, so I am starting to consider ways in which we can be a little more flexible with plan making, so I will be working with you all on that over the coming weeks and months, mainly because it is reasonable for all the Churches in the Circuit to meet new ministers as they arrive to work among us.
We continue to struggle with the situation with Rev Saul Tadzaushe. As a circuit, we owe a great debt of gratitude to Liz Cope who has been fighting for us over the last couple of weeks and to the MOCC team at Methodist Church house. I’m sure that you can imagine, influencing change in a government office is challenging at the best of times, but is even more so in the current climate. We are still hoping that the situation will be resolved in the next few days, for the sake of Saul and Tariro (his wife) and for the six Churches who are still under my pastoral charge until Saul arrives. There is very little we can do that will speed up the process apart from praying, please keep the whole situation in your prayers. I would also ask for your prayers for Rev Ian Gardner who is recovering from a heart attack last week. Ian does a wonderful job looking after the church at Brantham and we appreciate all the work he does in the circuit.
This is the first week that I have included the Churches at Chantry, Landseer Road, and Museum Street in my weekly mailing. I apologise for the break between Joan Pell’s mailing and mine, but I’m sure that you can imagine that the last few weeks have been a bit hectic. I am looking forward to working with a new group of Churches again and I pray that in my final two years working in the Ipswich Circuit we might strengthen and develop the work that we have been doing. My vision is to care for the Churches we already have, while at the same time trying to establish new initiatives to help God’s Kingdom to grow further and stronger.
As I said at the beginning of my letter, I never cease to be amazed at the wonderful, gifted people we have in the Circuit at the moment, I believe that we are richly blessed and together, we can do great things.
May God bless you all as we embark on a new year in the Methodist Church together.
With best wishes.
Derek