Induction

So many people kindly travelled to my Induction today.  Many, many thanks to them and those kind enough to write their greetings and promise their prayers.  Here's the statement I read:

 

My calling to Christian ministry in its dedicated full-time form came when I was working for NatWest Bank.  I was at the Keswick Convention in the Lake District, a large annual gathering of people seeking to know God better.  Following that clear sense of call the first role I enquired about was in administration for a medical facility in Bangladesh.  I was told it would be a good idea to go to a Christian training college first. 

So I left my home in North London and went to BTI in Glasgow, the furthest I’d ever travelled up to then! I wondered what far-flung place or places in the world my commitment to follow Jesus might take me.  I wonder where then I’d have guessed I’d be called to in 2014?  To what obscure desert, mountain range, city ghetto or jungle valley?

What I wouldn’t have expected was to be just 2¾ miles away from my then home in Finchley and be here in Muswell Hill.  Not only that, but I have been called to Pastor a Church that I occasionally attended when I lived up the road.  In the event, I used to travel twice as far as this from Finchley commuting each day to work in Central London.  It is, I suppose, a reminder that the adventure of Christian service is not to see the world but to change the part of it the Lord calls us to serve in. 

When the opportunity arose to explore a call to this Church I was excited by the opportunity to work for God in our capital city.  Through our multi-national congregation and the church’s long history of support for missions we will yet touch many parts of the earth in the years ahead even though we don’t visit them.

At the same time our Church offers the privilege of ministry in a real local community.  In our years of local church ministry Diane and I have enjoyed immersing ourselves in genuine community.  We have felt very kindly welcomed to Muswell Hill and we look forward to doing good here in the name of Jesus Christ bringing comfort and challenge in the Good News of the Gospel.

I am especially grateful to be called to Pastor a Church which was founded, to quote its original Trust, holding ‘the Deity of the Lord Jesus Christ and the Sole Authority of the Holy Scriptures and that interpretation of them usually called Evangelical’.  These are the roots from which, by the grace of God, we will seek to bear fruit in this community for his glory.   

Together as Pastor and people we do not appear to amount to very much in a great city.  But as Pastor and people with the Spirit of God and the Word of God and the Love of God I believe that in the unfolding years we will make a real difference.