Accounts

It's when we run out of money that I realize I haven't done my ministry expenses claim forms for a while! So here I am at my accounts work. Usually, I'd rather not have to bother about all this money stuff, but it is interesting to look back over the last few months and to take stock of our ministry activities. Especially when you remember why you thought it was a good thing to organize at the time.

An example: in my diary somewhere in mid-January I had noted during one of our World Day of Prayer meetings : "About oecumenism - it's now over 500 years since the great split in Christianity - 1000 years if you go back to the split between orthodox and catholic. It's only in the last 50 years that the number of mixed marriages between Protestant and Catholic (and can be noted now between different religious backgrounds such as Muslim and Christian, Jewish and Christian ...) has really increased. Learning to live with each other, to respect each other, to concede that the other's relationship with God has its own sense and validity is such a recent thing really - and what strikes me is that it has come about because people have turned away from religious faith and practices in such a big way. As people were less tied to religious practice, they formed other alliances and now our formal institutions are being forced to related to each other through oecumenism; forced by the changes in society and the (often valid) questionning of past practices and beliefs.

Now we Christians are working in a spiritual desert - and you can't erase 500 years of animosity in 50 years. But this spiritual desert is making us ask all the right questions and opening us up to God's leading in a much clearer way. And here I am in Lamastre - a country town in the middle of Ardèche - working alongside women from the Reformed Church (more liberal theology, and quite liturgical), nuns from the Holy Sacrement Order and Catholic lay women, looking for ways to attract more children and their families into the World Day of Prayer, an ecumenical experience par excellence! In our discussions we are pinpointing the fact that this generation of children have no real spiritual 'prejudices' and their parents don't know anything much to transmit to their offspring.

Our challenge : work together for the Kingdom and see more of this generation intelligently informed of the spiritual choices we all have to make.

We are all accountable to God for this.

So I'm glad after all that I have to do my accounts!!