The MSC Loretto, one of the world’s largest container vessels docked at Felixstowe in June this year, the ship is a massive 400 metres long and 61 metres wide and can carry a staggering 24,346 standard containers. I am sad enough to have calculated that if the entire contents of the ship were loaded onto forty-foot-long trucks, including the cabs and they were parked end to end on the M1 motorway, the queue would stretch from London to just south of Sheffield! Have I nothing better to do with my time? Year on year, container ships get bigger and bigger and bigger and as each one is launched, the next one is being built, no doubt there will be somebody somewhere trying to figure out how to fit 25,000 containers onto a ship, one wonders where it will ever end.
We live in a developing world and there is a belief that we must constantly be striving for more ways to improve things, faster, higher, longer, and so the story goes on. My first wage packet for weeks hard work in 1975 contained less than ten pounds, and I remember feeling like a millionaire, it was a massive increase on the fifty pence spending money I received before starting work.
I can remember reading many years ago that somebody was worth twenty million pounds, and my brain could conceive how anybody could ever spend that amount of money. One of our customers at work in my early days was the pools winner Viv Nicolson who was famous for her spend, spend, spend approach to life when she won £152,319 on the Pools, which is nothing compared to the tens of millions won weekly on the lottery these days, and there are people earning far more than this every week now. I wonder where it will ever end.
Culturally, we are used to making things bigger and better, so it seems counter cultural to find the Christian Church getting smaller, more tired, and poorer. We punish ourselves, and if we are not careful, we can get lost in our guilt. Surely if we were being successful, we would be building bigger Churches, rather than closing them down?
We are not alone, this week we have seen yet another high street store go into administration, walk down most high streets today and all the familiar brand names are gone. Look at how many pubs and village shops have closed, changing communities for ever. We haven’t stopped spending our money, wearing clothes, buying food, drinking alcohol, the world is changing, our habits are changing.
The knack for the Church in the twentieth century is to understand what we need to be to become the most effective witnesses for God.
A prayer:
God of all that is good and worthwhile, help us to understand how we need to work with you in this modern world. Help us to be creative and open to the guidance of your Holy Spirit, that we might truly be your body on earth. Amen.