Bus Timetables and Beatitudes

One challenge for today's church is to deal both with the hugely practical and very specific whilst at the same time engaging with the spiritual and those things that drive us from inside. Today's society knows all about practical issues and wants them addressed, often in a public way, but we tend to keep those things that drive us from inside private and to ourselves. Duncan MacLaren summarises this - "Although the majority of people in Britain continue to believe in God, what they think they know of God they do not feel permission to treat as real knowledge. In the modern world, the bus timetable counts as real knowledge: the Beatitudes do not. Christian beliefs constitute a second-rate, privatized form of knowing.” ("Mission Implausible", Paternoster, 2004, p. 19) Faith and church ought not to be privatised as they should belong to everyone - to the community, but too often, I fear, they are. The church needs to engage with the issues that matter whilst, at the same time, helping people to find that spirituality which brings meaning to life and being.