Farewell to our curate

This afternoon we said goodbye to Geoff Eze, who has been our curate at St John's Seven Kings since 2008. This is what I said in thanking him for all he has contributed here during that time:

Because of your wise-cracking and extrovert personality, we have enjoyed and been challenged by some of your sermons that have stayed firmly lodged in our memories like your Christmas Day sermon where you gave us a humourous quiz about yourself (surprise, surprise!) that had us all thinking this is Geoff bigging himself up again. Only to then remove your robes in order to symbolise all that Christ gave up through the incarnation. I remember the whole mood and dynamic of the sermon and the service changing at that point with the meaning behind the action being crystal clear and lodging in memory just as much as the action itself.

We’ve had sermons using jazz, liturgies which rhyme, video interviews, as well as many sermons that have weaved a contemporary story (often personal and self-deprecating) together with the passage on which you have been preaching in such a way as to sustain interest in both the story and the passage. These are approaches to preaching that are not just for effect; they have helped us get at the heart of bible passages in a way that helps them stay in our memory and therefore continue to influence us.

You’ve done some great work with our children and young people over the time that you have been here; organising and fronting Holiday Clubs and building up the youth group with a varied programme which has interested our young people and drawn in young people from outside the church too. You’ve also developed youth leaders and helped in handing over the running of the Youth Group so that we can be confident it will continue. But you haven’t simply focused on young people, important as they are, those elderly and housebound folk that you have regularly visited have been very grateful for your conversation and for bringing them communion at home.

You have played an active role in the development of Street Pastors within the Deanery and took up the opportunity to provide a Christian witness in the community by becoming a Police Chaplain to the Newbury Safer Neighbourhoods Team. You’ve supported the deanery by being the clerk to the Clergy Chapter and by being the arranger for the early cluster meetings. You’ve been a key part of building the closer relationship we now have with St Paul’s Goodmayes and have organised and led the Palm Sunday procession and Praise in the Park. You’ve also done some excellent work with local schools, initially with the Christian Education Project, and then more recently through the Easter Activity Stations and by forging new links with the new Aldborough E-Act Free School and Seven Kings High School.

So, there has been lots that you have done and much that we will remember with real gratitude. But, of course, we will also remember with real affection the person that you are; your optimism and positivity; your liveliness and energy; your humour and piano playing; and perhaps, most of all, the challenge of your ministry here – the challenge to us to expand our vision of what God can achieve through us combined with the encouragement to become all that God intends us to be.

Although we will miss you, we also know that you do need to move on for the next phase of your ministry, so we want to pray for your as you move to Stoke and as you begin your new ministry in the parish of Stoke Minister. Let us pray:

Lord God, we thank you for Geoff and for all that he has brought to St Johns during his time here. We thank you for bringing him to us and for all that we could share together during his curacy. We thank you for his new role in Stoke Minister and pray that you will help him adjust to his home, parish and city with all of the changes that will be involved. We pray that Stoke Minister will be a parish where he can use all of the gifts you have given to him and where he can utilise all that he has learnt through his training and curacy. We pray that he will continue to learn from you through the new experiences he has and the people he will meet and among whom he will minister in Stoke Minister. May your Spirit fill him for these new challenges and opportunities and may your hand of blessing rest upon to sustain and strengthen him for this new ministry in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.

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