Salmon fishing

To the Salmon Youth Centre for our joint PCC (church council) awayday for the united benefice of St James and St Anne's.

Salmon Youth Centre

Both church councils have recently agreed a Mission Action Plan and today's meeting was going to be all about implementation or, to put it another way: what are we going to do about it?

We began with the Parable of the Talents. It was the man who buried his talent in the ground and did nothing with it who got it in the neck from Jesus. Where did he go wrong? The group said: (1) he was afraid to take a risk; (2) he didn't do anything with what he had. Spot on.

That got us off to be a good start. We needed to be prepared to take a risk. We need to actually do something with what we have been given.

So then we got stuck into thinking about the 14 targets or projects we have set ourselves for the next five years, spending quite a bit of time in groups looking at eight of these projects and asking: what needs to be thought about and what needs to occur to make it happen.

Lots of good stuff came from the groups and now we have a got loads of ideas to work on, as we seek to implement our five-year mission action plan. May God grant it will happen!

It was a good day: 'a real joy' said one person, with great 'team spirit.'

Watch this space for further developments.

Meanwhile, Southwark Park was festooned with red, white, and blue (but not the Union Jack) this afternoon as London's Norwegian community gathered for their annual Constitution Day celebrations in the park, reflecting Bermondsey and Rotherhithe's  long-term connection with the Scandinavian countries, going right back to the days of the Surrey Docks, and maintained to this day by the present of the Norwegian and Finnish churches (the former being the focus of today's events).