Induction of David Sherwood.  8^th March 2005 

Tonight is an important occasion in many ways.  Of course, it is important for David and Lizzie as they move into a new chapter in their lives.  It is never easy to leave a place you have enjoyed and where you have many friends to go to a new work, but the Lord has called and you are obeying that call.  It is a call that you have received from these churches, from the Bishop, and from others, but I know that after much prayer and thought, it is also a call that above all you feel is one from the Lord himself. 

It will not be easy to leave a congregation I know you have loved, and who have so cared for you.  Many are here tonight.  You have spoken to me of a congregation where I know you have been impressed by the faith of so many and have hugely enjoyed their hospitality and friendship.  But you also come to a place where I’m sure you’ll find the same again in a people who will love you and the family, and care for you and above all pray for you.

Tonight is also an important occasion for family members, for Vicki who will be moving here too, but who, I’m sure will miss being close to some of her best friends.  Though thankfully Vicki, you are not going to be too very far from them all.  But also for Heather, as you watch your parents move to a new work for Christ, and as you find yourself with a new place to come back to.  And Lizzie’s mother, also here, — an important occasion for you too as you see Lizzie and her husband beginning this important work for Christ.  So tonight is important then for you as a family.

But it is also important for these lovely parishes that I have come to know over the last couple of years.  For you I know there is a sense of anticipation.  For wardens and so many others who have done so much during the vacancy, there is probably a sense of total relief as well.

But anticipation is good and right..  Hopefully not just anticipation about what the new Rector will be like, so much as anticipation about what the Lord can do in your midst, and in the communities in which you live.

            David, you come to parishes and to an area where the Christian faith has been taught for centuries.  This church where we are now was probably originally a Saxon church.  Part of the Norman church still exists.  You might like to know that it was altered substantially three times.  Once in 1290, once in 1330 and then substantially in Victorian times in the 1840s which is why people now sit in box pews.

One might say that it is surely time for some more change now, that will see even more come to know and love the Lord Jesus Christ in our day and age.

But this evening is also important for the Diocese.  David, you are being appointed at a time when mission and evangelism is very high indeed on our agenda.  We live in an age where, even here in Devon, many have never heard even the most basic Bible stories.  We talk about “Moving on in Mission and Ministry”.   And some of what is involved of course concerns structural re-organization of our churches that will allow us to do our best and make most use of the particular people resources of our generation.  I know you are already aware of the need to work closely across deanery boundaries with Nick Wall and also with other denominations in the area.

But structural change must only be a means to an end, for we are called to be a people who evangelize, a people, all of us who are believing Christians, a people who will speak to our world of Christ and his love and forgiveness and his Lordship.  This is our Gospel task.

But let’s remind ourselves of where it all starts.  It starts back in that Gospel reading from Matthew 28:18-20, and with Jesus saying

All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore…   

Sometimes we fail to see how this is linked to taking the Gospel, the Good news of Christ as Saviour, to the world.  But we must never forget that this is in fact the context in which we work.

People go out with the authority of Christ himself who has been given all authority by the Father.  This is his world and he has told us to go out.  We go out in his name.  Of course this will often be hard work.  It was not for nothing that Jesus said to the disciples earlier “Take up your cross and follow me”. 

He never said this would be an easy road.  It is the call of all Christ’s disciples, all of us here who would claim to belong to Christ must both see the call to go out into the world to bring people to the knowledge and love of Christ, but also recognise that Christ is Lord.  He has authority.  As we learn elsewhere, it is by the power of his Spirit that we may see lives changed, families changed even whole communities changed as we preach the word of Christ and God works through his Spirit to redeem and save.

            But we must also note that our job is not simply to look for conversion to Christ.  That is our pre-eminent duty for without that there will be no discipleship, but the issue really is that a people are brought into being who will be known as disciples, followers, people who take their lead in what they say, in what they believe but also in what they do from the Lord himself.

            Disciples will be people who reflect the Lord himself into this world so that others may see and believe.  All sorts of things are tied up with discipleship for it  affects every area of the Christian’s life.

There is no divide in the human person here in Christ’s thinking, between that which we do as something ‘spiritual’ and that which we do day by day.  Jesus was not more spiritual sometimes than other times.  He let the wonderful truth of the image of God be reflected in all that he was and is and all that he did and said and says even through his word today.

            It bears thinking about this.  Jesus was deeply countercultural.  He met with all types of people, not just with the more spiritual.  His great aims in life were not more comfort and a better home, but to do the will of the father who sent him.  But he was countercultural in his behaviour as well.  He had huge sympathies for people who received little sympathy from the established religious leaders.  He reached out to them, but he did so from a position of holiness, and he calls upon us to do the same.

People felt included by Jesus as he went among them and yet he never compromised his teachings about what reflected the glorious nature of God and what was sin.  The woman at the well was amazed at him, and yet was challenged about her sexual sin.  Time and again as people were drawn to the love of Jesus, they were told clearly what was hindering their relationship with God and they were told to go and sin no more.

            Making disciples is about this fullness of message.  It is about helping people to see that God has created them.  Yet that they are sinners.  yet also so loved by God that he sent his only son to die for them.

It is about helping people to see that discipleship means an on-going learning to serve the Lord, to overcome sin and temptation, and to live in holiness of life as part of that total witness to Christ and to God.  Some in our church today have forgotten what a powerful witness to Christ it is to lead a holy life, a life which is counter cultural, a life which puts Christ and his will, before us and our will.

            And David tonight you embark upon a leadership role among God’s people here which should be designed at every point to enable the people under your pastoral care to know and experience that love and joy that we have in Christ, but also to learn to live for him and speak for him so that truly in these churches you will see men and women, young people and boys and girls, attracted by genuine Christian discipleship.

            This area is interesting historically for all sorts of reasons.  I did note that the Clayhidon village web site says this:

Certainly nothing sensational or headline breaking has occurred, the most notorious event being the murder of a tax collector in 1853.

But from a Christian perspective few times can have been more significant than the mid 1800s when a revival took place that started in Clayhidon and spread through many villages in this area.  It became known as the Blackdown hills revival.

In the small baptist chapel in that village, one that became known as Rosemary Lane Chapel, now a free evangelical church, a certain Mr George Brealey began to preach in 1865.  This was the start of the Blackdown Hills mission which led to a quite strong revival in this area, a revival which is still spoken of in the parishes to which you are coming to work, David.

I am sure that you have looked at the Hemyock church web site.  It contains the most exciting and wonderful challenge of any web site I have seen for any church in this Diocese.   It says simply this when talking of the work being done and the potential for the future:

Hemyock can grow spiritually as well. The Blackdown Hills saw a revival of sorts in the late 1800 "s. Chapels sprung up everywhere, though most are closed now. The seeds for a new revival are here. St Mary's and the Baptists share in the leadership of the growing Crusader groups. The Baptist Church now employs a youth worker. It is seeing growth and is thoroughly committed to an outreach strategy, some of which is ecumenical. They and St Mary's, along with the other churches, seek to support each other when and where they can.

            It is good to have leaders of other churches here today.  For this is a challenge to the whole area.  Dare we pray today for another revival in this area?  If we think it wouldn’t work in this day and age, then we need to remember where we started.  The context in which we work is one of the supreme authority of the Lord Jesus Christ : therefore go and make disciples.

In our second reading this evening the apostle Paul speaks to Christians living in the very pagan city of Corinth, and what he says contains, I believe, the key to all revival:  2 Cor 4:1-2

Therefore, having this ministry by the mercy of God, we do not lose heart. We have renounced disgraceful, underhanded ways; we refuse to practice cunning or to tamper with God’s word, but by the open statement of the truth we would commend ourselves to every man’s conscience in the sight of God.

and v 5

For what we preach is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, with ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake.

Just listen to what Paul says in these verses.  First, there is often good reason to lose heart.  People are not always very nice.  Some reject the Gospel and reject the people who put it forward, however nice they are.  But Paul  argues that even so, we must never compromise the Gospel, we must never, he says, use underhanded means to bring people to faith.  In other words, we must never make false promises nor must we ever try to play down the fact of judgment that is part and parcel of the Gospel message.  We must never change the message to make is more palatable.  We must above all never, as Paul puts it, tamper with the Word of God, as if to say that the way out of the difficulties is not to preach the difficult parts of the message of Christ, or the bits that don’t fit well with our culture.  Rather says Paul

—— by the open statement of the truth we would commend ourselves to every man’s conscience in the sight of God.

            The revival in these Blackdown hills stands as a great example of what happens when the Word of God is not tampered with, and is faithfully preached even to the children as schools were started and as lives were transformed and people lived according to God’s will in Scripture.

            And then Paul says, and here I finish, with v 5

For what we preach is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, with ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake.

Here it is.  The faith, David, which you are called to proclaim and live, the faith in which the congregations here are to grow as they become ever better disciples, is centered in Jesus the person — Jesus who is Lord, who makes demands upon us all and upon all who do not yet know and love him.

And as we preach not ourselves, not putting ourselves or our ideas forward, but preaching him alone, we shall find that he leads, that we allow him truly to be Lord, we allow his Word truly to be the authoritative guide for the whole of life under his Lordship, and so we do indeed see disciples being formed as people turn to the Lord and grow in his righteousness.

            This evening I pray ,many things for the churches here and specially for David and the family, but no prayer surely is more than that once again in the history of this area God will be pleased to use his servants to bring revival and a true turning in faith to Christ as Lord.