Last night we dissolved a committee! Always a good thing, I think - the fewer the committees, the nearer we are to the Kingdom. But this has been an important part of our life here at Blomsbury over the years, and its passing deserves notice.
The Central Committee dated from just over 100 years ago, and was part of a plan put in place to keep the church here at this site, and functioning. Drawing on resources and personnel from the wider Baptist community, the committee played a variety of roles over the years - often largely financial until very recently, and also a place to explore ideas, to try our possibilities, and to draw on wider wisdom. For the last few years, it has focussed less on finance, and more on helping the church, and the ministry team in particular, explore ways forward. With the changes in charity law, and with different ways of relating becoming stronger, the legal place of the committee was no longer necessary.
And so, with barely a blink, the committee dissolved itself.
For any who remember the huge place this committee has played over the years, it does feel rather as if it has ended not with a bang, but with a whimper.
But I think it has ended with grace, satisfaction and an alertness to the moving of the Spirit.
By voting itself out of existence, the committee has contined the practice of recent years of showing grace in the giving up of power, the letting go of control.
The committee has every right to be pleased at a job well done. Brought into being as a way of keeping this church functioning in this place, it can cease to function, secure that, in so far as we can every know what will happen, for the moment, the church is not only surviving, but thriving. And, a small part in the great effort, the committee has played its part in that.
And the committee has been alert to the movement of the Spirit, and been ready to respond as things have changed, and patterns have developed in new ways.
In its dissolution, the committee has offered one last service to the church it has served so faithfully. It has reminded us all as the people of God here and now, what it is to be graced, to be pleased with a good job, and to be alert to where God might lead us next.
To those who have served - representing those who served right back for over a century - thank you.
We dissolved a committee last night. It was a God-filled moment.