New Year's Message

New Year's Message:

For many years now I have in a way fallen into the trap of telling a joke at the beginning of every service I take in Church. If for some reason I dont, I always get asked where the joke was today. The reason I dont always is that some occasions are not really suited to joke about, for example on Remembrance Sunday. Yet most of the time I do. However, it reminds me of a joke about a vicar who was very bad at telling jokes!

A vicar, who shall we say was "humour impaired," attended a conference to help encourage and better equip clergy for their ministry.

Among the speakers were many well-known and dynamic speakers. One such person boldly approached the pulpit and, gathering the entire crowd's attention, said, "The best years of my life were spent in the arms of a woman that wasn't my wife!" The crowd was shocked! He followed up by saying, "And that woman was my mother!" - The crowd burst into laughter and delivered the rest of his talk, which went over quite well.
The next week, the vicar decided he'd give this humour thing a try, and use that joke in his sermon. As he approached the pulpit that sunny Sunday morning, he tried to rehearse the joke in his head. It suddenly seemed a bit foggy to him.

Getting to the microphone he said loudly, "The greatest years of my life were spent in the arms of another woman that was not my wife!" The congregation inhaled half the air in the room. After standing there for almost 10 seconds in the stunned silence, trying to recall the second half of the joke, the vicar finally blurted out, "...and I can't remember who she was!"

Well, hopefully, I have never had that problem and never will, about the joke I mean! When I look at Rotary and I look at the Church there are many things I see that are the same or at least very similar! I remember for example the following quotation:

The Church is the only organisation that does not exist for itself, but for those who live outside of it.- William Temple.

I hope that is true of the Church although sadly I believe it is not always the case. In a way it can also be said of Rotary, that we exist for those outside of Rotary! That is surely what service above self means. We are here not for ourselves but for others! It does not say that self is not important but that our service to others is more important! Do we get something out of Rotary? I certainly hope so but the good we do far outweighs the return we get from Rotary. As I look back on the Rotary year just gone we have certainly done a lot of good and have been good ambassadors to Rotary in our community. Its not just about the money we have given away, although 19,000 is pretty amazing, it is also the service we have been to the community as well. We are first and foremost a service organisation. We have all given well of our time and our money to good causes.

Looking back to when I was a young lad, and that is quite a while ago I remember going to Church at the age of about 16! Sounds impressive but its not! St Stephens in Chatham had a good Youth Group and I used to go every Sunday night as there were some rather attractive girls there. Eileen was one of them! We used to go in the balcony for the evening service. I am sure something else rubbed off as well but the initial idea was simply the girls!

From then I got really involved in church life although I am sure I was quite often a pain in the side of the youth leaders as I always asking very awkward questions. I still do! Indeed one of my favourite quotes is doubts are the ants in the pants of faith, they keep you scratching! The time I stop asking questions is the time I cease to be a human being! However, being a vicar is a great privilege such as being involved in peoples lives at some extremely significant moments, some joyful, some not so joyful. Quite often in the past I have talked about my Church, almost in the sense of ownership. However, that is not exactly what I meant, more in terms of belonging, such as belonging to my family! That is partly how I regard my congregations, as being part of a family with all the ups and downs family life brings!

The one thing we learn very quickly about Church life is that we are not perfect! That can also be said about Rotary. We try hard to do the best we can but sometimes we get it wrong! One of the important truths about Rotary that is the same as in Church life is that we are all volunteers! We have the people we have and we have to work with that! We all have strengths and weaknesses, some can give more time than others, and some can give more money than others. Is that not the story of the widows mite! Things sometimes go wrong in church life as in Rotary, sometimes we get annoyed by something that we dont necessarily agree with or something is not done exactly as we would like it to be done! Thats life! I hope in Rotary we are grateful for anything our fellow Rotarians can do within the limitations of their time, finances, work life and family life. There is after all some sort of pecking order in our lives as to what we can do and that is usually family, work, and then Rotary together with all the other demands made upon us.

The other important lesson I learnt about Church life (and I use the word church with a small C) is that it must always be on the move, never static. There is a saying from the Bible that we often use in Church after the psalms and it is this: as it was in the beginning is now and ever shall be world without end And in my experience the Church all too often practices that phrase to the exclusion of all else! Change is a vital part of any organisation. It must move forwards, not forgetting the past, even learning from the past but still looking to the future. That is true of Rotary just as it should be true of the church. As members come and go each new member brings with them new experiences, new ideas. That is what enriches our club. Those who have been members of this club for many years will probably say that the club today is hardly recognisable from the club of say 20 years ago. That is purely down to the members who bring with them new experiences, new strengths, new ideas and hopefully new enthusiasm. The time I lose my enthusiasm as a vicar is the time I need to hang my cassock up!  

If you come to our house during the Christmas period the one thing you will see, much to Eileens annoyance, are many different Christmas gadgets. If it moves, flashes, makes a noise then I have got to have it! The grandchildren love it! The problem now is where to put it all! One example of this I have brought with me and we must have had this for over 15 years! I have various other examples but I could not bring them all. This one involves Winnie the Pooh and Tigger. They work together but they also work separately. Sometimes Tigger takes the lead, sometimes it Pooh.(Play) Together they make a good team! As Tigger says, Jingle and Bells is what Tiggers do best! Inside is a sensor that unites them together. If that sensor were to break then it would not work. As members of this Rotary club we have to work together, yet we also have to be sensitive to the other members, remembering that we are not all perfect but together we can work for the good of this community and this club. On our own we can do some good but together we can do a lot of good. To partly use Tiggers words, service above self is what Rotarians do best!

Finally, a story: a man was beaten up by robbers on a road to London. He lay there, half dead and in bad shape. A Vicar came along, saw him and passed by on the other side. Next, a monk came by but also walked quickly on the other side. Finally, a social worker came along, looked at the man and said "Whoever did this needs help!" The point about Rotary is that we dont just talk, we do something about it, and long may that continue to be the case!