The last twelve months has brought into focus the different ways we access news and the reliability of it.
Years ago news spread by word of mouth with reliable and unreliable sources muddled up together, with the local gossips adding the necessary spin to sensationalise the otherwise dull. The previous President of the United States of America pointed out the problem of fake news proceeding to demonstrate that some of us define fake as ‘what we do not like to hear’. COVID came along and some of us became obsessed with news, getting it from every available source without much thought for reliability.
You may have noticed a recent standoff between Australia and Facebook over the question of free-access to news sources. The sovereign state and the corporate behemoth paw the ground, breathing heavily, marking out territory ready to fight out the battle of the news. The beast was curtailed.
You would think, would you not, that a fact is a fact and there is no need for dispute. But that could not be further from the truth. Facts are merely the start of interpretation, discussion, debate, entertainment and more. People who read newspapers tend to find the one they like, employing journalists they relate to stylistically, and pay for their output. It feels safer that way.
The Gospel is Good News. The Church on earth takes the bare bones of the facts of God’s love and from there begins the interpretation, discussion, debate and more. We align with those whose preaching and teaching we relate to and trust. We support them and they feed us. That is how Church structures work…I will stop short of likening them to newspapers for fear of playing down church or bigging up journalism.
My point is this. Free-access news is good and free-access faith is vital. No one should ever face a bill for approaching God; that’s something Jesus himself made clear in different ways in the Gospel. But, the preservation of the quality of the human interpretation we rely on, by which I mean the Ministry, comes at a cost, and rightly so. People commit their lives to the service of God and in turn they are supported.
This is better coming from a lay person; as the new shape of church develops we must not lose sight of the need for the quality of Ministry underpinning it. That Ministry requires the structures of the denominations, or whatever they morph into, in the future. What will not change is the harsh reality that just as free-access news is only sustainable at a certain level and for so long, so too with free-access church.
A prayer
God, you poured out your life for us, giving generously of inexhaustible love. Grant us the grace to be brutally honest in our reflections with you, and to challenge what we put back into the life of the Church as well as all we take from it. Remind us again of the importance of all three of the vital elements of time, talents and treasure, and with your guidance, to work out what our commitment looks like. We ask this for the sake of Jesus who has committed his all to us, to the very end of his earthly life.
Amen.