An interesting Article - thanks to the author, who says (inter alia) `the next few years, I believe, should be focussed on separating out Methodist values from those institutions which, for better or worse, have contained and preserved them. What is it that makes Methodism as a set of emphases, worth preserving?`
As I rapidly approach retirement age, I have found myself reflecting on one Methodist notion in particular - that of `Itinerancy`. In nearly thirty years of circuit ministry, I came to recognise and greatly value the enormous privilege of having lived among so many people in so many different places and communities throughout the north of England. In the last decade, as a Minister `Without Appointment`, I have ceased to be geographically itinerant - but have learned that there are other kinds of itinerancy. Even people who live all their lives in one geographical place still can, and almost invariably are forced even if they do not choose it, to `move on` - whether in their thinking, their relationships, their interests, and in countless other ways.
The Methodist Church throughout its history has displayed great capacity to `move on` - witness, as one example among many, the great number of church buildings that we have relinquished as they have become inappropriate to the new demands and opportunities of new times. We are not, I believe, a people who allow our past to weigh us down.
As we look to whatever unknown future may be in store for us, I am certain that the principle of `itinerancy` - of travelling forward in faith into whatever God may have in store for us - is one of the most important contributions we have to offer to one another and to the Church as a whole. In that lovely phrase of (the Quaker) Sydney Carter, let`s keep on travelling on.
