Video for July 16th, 2026
Hello everyone and welcome to this week’s video.
This is the 300th video since I started them during the pandemic. Well done to those of you who’ve stuck with it! I often ask myself the question, “where has the time gone?” Psychologists tell us that our perception of the passage of time does indeed speed up as we get older. Apparently, the brain judges each unit of time we experience as a proportion of the total we have experienced throughout our life. For a five-year-old a short car journey really does feel like forever. For a 65-year-old, one year merges into another.
Perhaps, like birthdays and the new year 300 provides an opportunity to pause and take stock. I was put into the Cathedral on Saturday, March 21st, 2020 and lockdown started on the evening of the 23rd, which wasn’t the most auspicious of starts. Since I’ve been here, we’ve had a pandemic. We’ve had two new Archdeacons, owing to one’s very inconsiderate departure to become a Bishop, a new Director of Mission and Ministry, new Director of Education, new safeguarding team, new Dean, Canon Chancellor and Succentor. I’ve licenced at least half the clergy, and I’m on my fifth Chaplain (which may seem like carelessness). Some of you are new to the diocese. Some of the clergy have been here a long time, modelling faithfulness to place, a very significant witness in a world that is so transient. Overall, both in the staff team and in our parochial clergy we are blessed with an amazing bunch of people with a heart for the gospel and the health of our churches. They are aided by a remarkable group of lay disciples exercising a variety of ministries: Readers, Churchwardens, Safeguarding officers, Lay Ministers, Treasurers and many others. It is a genuine privilege to work with you all. We sometimes struggle to recruit people for these roles, but we are in a far better position than many other voluntary organisations. But the point is that even in what seems like a stable, settled place like the Welsh Marches things change all the time.
We have risen magnificently to the challenge of COVID, care for Ukrainian refugees and the ongoing challenge of maintaining our many buildings. The fact is that God’s church always operates in a challenging environment. It has been thus ever since the time of the New Testament. The people of Israel had to be warned repeatedly that if things started going well, they would need to be especially careful. Deuteronomy 8: 12 says, “When you eat and are satisfied, when you build fine houses and settle down, and when your herds and flocks grow large and your silver and gold increase and all you have is multiplied, then your heart will become proud and you will forget the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery”. Jesus warns the church in Ephesus in Revelation 2, “You have persevered and have endured hardships for my name and have not grown weary. Yet I hold this against you: you have forsaken the love you had at first”.
The next 10 years could be amongst the most challenging the Church of England has experienced since its inception. Some of the demographic and financial challenges feel existential. Even if the Church Commissioners had a sudden rush of blood to the head and directed substantial sums at the dioceses for parochial ministry there isn’t quite enough to close the gap, nor enough stipendiary clergy available even if they were fundable. But the most frequent command in the Bible is, “Do not be afraid!” Fear is the opposite of love. Fear diminishes our freedom to act. It can lead to a paralysing timidity and uncertainty. The disciples diminished, small world, locked in the upper room for fear on the day of resurrection, was broken open by the power of the resurrection. Locked doors of the church or the heart are not sufficient to keep out Jesus’ uncontainable life. If I had one piece of advice gleaned from 32 years of ordained ministry and six and a half years here it would be: don’t be afraid because Christ is risen, his life is available through the holy spirit to all who trust in him, and there is a throne in heaven and someone is seated on it. Don’t be afraid because when we get to an end of ourselves institutionally, or personally; God’s grace truly has the chance to break through. Don’t be afraid if you haven’t the faintest idea what the future holds and all the lines are going in the wrong direction. If that leads you to abandon hope in salvation through strategic ingenuity it can release a deeper, sounder hope and trust. Let’s together commit to a hopeful desperation! Hopeful because our hope lies in the one who raised Christ from the dead. Desperation because we can’t discharge our call with our own resources but only through his, and his are inexhaustible. Therein lies a route to the good future the Lord has for us.
+Richard