Imagine a church that is full of people who are worshipping God together, content with the Sunday services and happy with things as they are. Along comes a young curate on fire with the gospel wanting to spread the Good News to people who wouldn’t dream of setting foot inside a church. In 1882 this was the dilemma which Wilson Carlile faced. In response he established Church Army with a vision to train ordinary Christian men and women to reach those most in need with the gospel. As Church Army grew Carlile also focused the charity’s work on the slums of Westminster – one of the darkest spots in London.
Wilson Carlile was born in 1847 in Brixton. He suffered from a spinal weakness all his life, which hampered his education. He entered his grandfather's business at the age of thirteen but soon moved on and learned French fluently, which he used to good advantage in France trading in silk. He later learned German and Italian to enhance his business but was ruined in the slump of 1873. After a serious illness, he began to treat his religion more seriously and became confirmed in the Church of England. He acted as organist to Ira D Sankey during the Moody and Sankey missions and, in 1881, was ordained priest, serving his curacy at St Mary Abbots in Kensington, together with a dozen other curates.
The lack of contact between the Church and the working classes was a cause of real concern to him and he began outdoor preaching. In 1882, he resigned his curacy and founded the Church Army, four years after the founding of the Salvation Army. Under his influence it thrived and he continued to take part in its administration until a few weeks before his death on this day in 1942. By combining his message (his words) with actions (practical care in the slums of Westminster), Carlile was doing what the apostles commissioned by Jesus were called to do when he sent them out to proclaim the kingdom of God and to heal.
Jesus sent his disciples out with a message about the kingdom of God. They were to tell the people to whom they went that the kingdom of God was coming. The kingdom of God was beginning to be seen in the world in the ministry of Jesus who was making the love of God manifest in the lives of those he met and the society of his day. The kingdom of God would also begin to come in a more universal way through Christ’s sacrifice of his life on the cross for all people and his rising from the dead as the first fruits of the resurrection of all into a new heaven and new earth. As a sign of that coming kingdom where love and reconciliation, justice and peace are to be found, Jesus’ disciples showed the love and care of God in their healing ministry; healings, which in the culture of their day, enabled those who had been excluded from the community and from worship to be included within society. The practical care for others that the apostles showed as they told people about the coming kingdom of God was a tangible sign of what that kingdom would be like when it came.
We are still called and equipped by God to do the same and Wilson Carlile stands before us today as an example of that same call. The Declaration of Assent which is made by deacons, priests and bishops of the Church of England when we are ordained and on each occasion when we take up a new appointment includes the call proclaim the Christian faith afresh in each generation bringing the grace and truth of Christ to this generation and making Him known to those in your care.
The call to proclaim the kingdom of God afresh in each generation is a call to re-imagine that kingdom for our own day and time, not to simply repeat the way in which the kingdom of God was revealed in previous generations. The Church Army and the Church of England today seek to shape themselves in relation to the culture in which we are located in order to transform, through welcome and hospitality, individuals and the community that we serve, through the power of the Gospel and the Holy Spirit.
Three current signs of the kingdom practised here at St Martin’s as expressions of the radical welcome and inclusion found in the kingdom of God are our ministry with those who are rough sleeping or without recourse to public funds through The Connection and the Sunday International Group, our support of International Projects for which you can pray using the leaflet ‘Encountering out International Neighbours’ and our Autumn Lecture Series which focuses on encountering God through those who are different from us, in particular people of other faiths. I encourage you to find out more about these as a way of exploring your call to share news of the coming kingdom of God.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
No comments:
Post a Comment