We’ve all heard how a Church is a bridge between God and the Community it is situated in. But have you ever thought of what sort of bridge a Church is? I have looked at many bridges in my time, living in Bristol helped me make a final decision on the kind of bridge a Church is. A Church is a Suspension bridge.
You may be reading this thinking where is this going and I don’t blame you. But bear with me when I say it will become obvious as you read this that I am in fact correct.
You may see those huge towers and think it’s obviously a stone bridge, rigid and set in it ways, or a steel bridge like the Forth bridge all it needs is a coat of paint and its fine. But I know having been involved in my church for now 3 years that churches aren’t like that at all. When you see a church as I have it is obviously a suspension bridge, a vicar taking a new position has to be very careful what he changes, just like a suspension bridge.
The parts of the church are delicate, they hold the church together like the cables holding up a suspension bridge. A vicar taking a new position cannot go straight in and change everything about a church, the church will just collapse and the congregation leave. Like a suspension bridge you have to be careful which cable you decide to take out first and replace, remembering that it has to be made of a suitable material to make the church strong. It would be no use taking a big steel cable from the clifton suspension bridge and replacing it with a elastic band, similarly it is no use changing a communion service to a family orientated messy service. All i want is for our church to get rid of the hard pews and get some nice comfortable chairs, i think this isn’t an unreasonable thing to do, i’m not exactly asking for a easy boy for everyone.
People want to come to church for different reasons. There are those people that come for the hymns, those that come for the services and then there are those that come because they’ve always done it. I go for none of these reasons, I go to church because I want to be closer to god. This is another reason why a church is a suspension bridge. On a stormy day that road your on can be dreadfully shaky.
I think you can see that my argument is a fair one. A church has to be a suspension bridge. It is rigid and set in stone and hard to repair and it isn’t fine just by giving it a new coat of paint. A church need things changing or they will loose themselves in the past and never increase they’re numbers. But don’t change everything at once or it will crash into the river and the flock drown.
