Dear Friends

Most of you will have travelled on a roll on roll off car ferry over the past few years and noticed all the green signs clearly displayed which give instructions as to what to do in an emergency. Ever since the ferry disaster in 1987 all the ferry companies have made sure these signs cannot be ignored.

Every wall you look at has a sign, every seat you sit at as a ‘green card’ with life jacket instructions and just to make sure, at the beginning of every trip, the captain gives a warning that all passengers should read these messages and listen to the safety announcements which are played twice for all to hear on audio tape. There is really no way to escape the message – to add to the effect, often a crew member stands in the middle of the cabin and shows herself putting on a life jacket.

Crossing on such ferries, as I do two or three times a year, I find it particularly fascinating to observe the reactions of other passengers to this audio/visual/poster display. The plain truth is that most people pay not the slightest attention to the safety announcements. The announcements are faithfully given but most people are distracted by getting their ‘MacDonald’s Breakfast’, settling the kids, or reading magazines. They treat the announcements with contempt or as being totally irrelevant.

In January it was announced that the C of E has lost 100,000 members in two years – yes, two years. Hundreds of people are giving up on church every single week and not going back and when asked why they have stopped going to church they say that the message of the church is irrelevant to them. One can easily see the parallel – if people aren’t much bothered about listening to safety announcements when it could mean the difference between life and death – its not very likely that the church’s message is going to attract their attention either.

The ironic thing is that in both cases the reason for not listening is the same – they feel it’s irrelevant – “It’s a safety announcement – so what we won’t need it” – “Oh, it’s the church - so what we don’t need it“. The fact remains however that there are no guarantees they won’t need the first message and the second message is so relevant that the whole of society is breaking down because it’s being ignored. It is a most peculiar thing that the message of the church has never been more relevant to society and yet society regards it as having the least relevance ever. People are leaving the church in droves and then wonder why society is in the mess it is. They wonder why there is so much divorce, so many broken homes and broken children, they wonder why there is so much violence and unhappiness. They seem surprised when suddenly depression strikes them, or quirky psychological problems develop, they seem surprised that there is no satisfaction in material pursuits. What does it take to make individuals ‘wake up’ and see that the teaching of the Bible is most relevant and that one can never ‘fool the system’. God has created the world in such a way that ‘we always reap what we sow’: this rule cannot be broken. If people ignore God and His commandments then they will discover ‘God is not mocked’, there will be consequences and those consequences are being felt more and more every day. People may fool themselves, but they will never fool God. The only way for this nation to sort out its problems, social, economic, political etc. is to turn back to God and His laws, laws designed to preserve freedom and justice. All the time we regard His laws and His teaching as irrelevant, the more danger we place ourselves in. Let us make certain we aren’t like the nation of Israel described in Proverbs Chapter one where it was said of them ‘I have made my words known to you but you disdained all my counsel and would have none of my reproof. Terror will come upon you like a storm and your destruction like a whirlwind because you hated knowledge and did not choose to fear me. You would have none of my counsel and you despised all my reproof. The complacency of fools will destroy you’.

Let us not be complacent but diligent in our obedience towards God, because God is not mocked; whatever we sow we will indeed reap.

Your pastor and friend