Dear friends,

As you know, for a number of years now we have talked about the type of church we believe God has called us to be. We see in the book of Revelation a great multitude that no one can number from every tribe and tongue and we recognise that that is our future, that’s where we are heading. Right now, we are supposed to be a prophetic statement of what is to come. We cannot do this perfectly but as imperfectly as we can, we’re supposed to increasingly look like a beautifully diverse yet deeply united people, a “new community” of believers from across a wide range of backgrounds.

By God’s grace, we have come a long way in this journey, but we recognise we still have a long way to go. You can watch back the Race and Grace series that we recorded late last year, it is as relevant now as it has ever been. We have no doubt got a number of things wrong and likely will do again in the future, we’re on a journey and we’re learning.

The events of the last week have brought into stark focus that the issue of racial injustice has not gone away. We have all watched with horror, grief and anger the pictures on our news and in our social media feeds.

As Andrew Wilson has helpfully written, whilst it can be hard to know specifically what to say or do, there are at least four things we can do; grieve, learn, speak and pray.

We’re calling the whole church to respond in prayer. We will speak and pray into this issue at our Wednesday evening prayer meetings and I encourage you to come along.

You can also watch the latest episode of our podcast, as I had a conversation with a dear friend of mine, Pastor Paul Ilo from Higher Place Church, about this topic and our response as a church.

See you soon, the best is yet to come.

With love,

James