Our November newsletter is available to download – please click here to download the PDF.

Minister’s Message

As a congregation, we at Histon Methodist were thrilled to celebrate our 120th anniversary in October. And we were privileged to be joined in our celebrations by the most recent president of the Methodist Conference Revd Steve Wild (and his frog puppet!) who led us in worship and thanksgiving for all the ways in which God has blessed us and the wider community over those years. He also challenged and encouraged us about our future hopes, plans and vision.

Steve said: “Let’s make sure that the doors are wide open” – and that we are not saying to others “welcome to our church” –  but rather “welcome to your church.”

“Lets rip out the pews, lets make the changes, lets see a whole bunch of new people inside these walls that we’d never dream of seeing normally. Do you know what? God can do it!”

To let that happen, he suggested that we need to have received what he described as the “great grace of Christ”, in order that we might be people who both know that grace ourselves and are prepared to share that it with others. And also that we might be grace-filled enough to be open to others being and doing things differently to us and differently to how we might do things now.

Clearly this kind of grace is needed on large scale endeavours like our Development Scheme, but it is just as important in every aspect of our life as a community as we seek to live and work and minister alongside one another in many different ways.

And I would echo Steve’s final sentiments myself:

“I’m thrilled to be with you, you’ve got a great future ahead. I pray that God will bless you as the future unfolds and use each one of you to share his great grace… “

Let us hope and pray that our grace-filled efforts today will be being celebrated in another 120 years time!

Simon