Skip to content. | Skip to menu. |

Change (May 2019)

Dear Friends

It is said that variety is the spice of life and I, for one, would not argue with that. Variety brings, in it’s wake, choice, selection and perhaps, most of all, change.

A good example of change was our experience at the end of February, just a couple of months ago, when we enjoyed some beautiful summer-type weather including the hottest February day on record – compared with conditions exactly one year earlier, when we had to endure the ‘Beast from the East’!

Whether or not we approve, we seem to be surrounded constantly by change – changes in traditions, values, technology, social media, global activity as well as changes in attitude to gender and race. And of course, we can always look forward to Artificial Intelligence!

I have to admit that I sometimes wish that “things were as they used to be” – perhaps deep down I am a “20th century person”. After all, whatever the future holds for me, more than two thirds of my life will have been spent in the last century!

We can all think of examples where we welcome change and others where the opposite is the case. My golfing friends and I are irritated by the fact that we cannot play the game as well as we could thirty years ago! The reasons are obvious, but stupidly we still find the situation hard to accept (but we do realise how fortunate we are to be still playing).

The last twelve months have been a time of change here in our church at Henleaze. Tracey’s decision to accept a call to another ministry, followed by the interregnum, is giving us a chance to have a variety of people to conduct our services.

An interregnum is an opportunity for us to reflect on the past and anticipate the future. For many of us, we have had this experience before (for me this is the tenth interregnum since becoming involved in what was the Henleaze Congregational Church). And it is in no small way we now owe grateful thanks to the church officers, elders and others involved for ensuring that we have excellent services, conducted by a selection of some of our members and some visitors, all of whom have been well received. No doubt more changes to come during the months to come, and I am confident we will meet the challenge to encourage change when it is right to do so.

Some words in the form of a well-known short prayer on the subject of change seem appropriate to conclude these jottings:

 “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
   the courage to change the things I can
   – and the wisdom to know the difference”

Have a good summer!

Graham Chamberlain