WITH LAST NIGHT’S MUSINGS on making a modern world still fresh in my mind it was great to have a long overdue lunch with a friend and colleague today. Great discussion about what we’re supposed to be about. About the part that we (and every other Christian individual) plays in making the modern church. We agreed about the extent to which we’re at risk of being drawn too deeply into contemporary management-speak and the numbers game: growth = numbers attending church. And this doesn’t sit lightly with either of us.

There’s something in us that hangs on to the notion that the real work we’re supposed to be engaged in is to do with ‘inner work’; with what every person is CALLED to be and to do; to do with contemplation, prayer and reflection; to do with Church in people and not just ecclesiastical buildings (of whatever variety). We’re at times so absorbed in externalising everything, the-coming-in-the-clouds-sort-of-Advent being just one example, that we miss the Advent of the Christ that’s happening even as we draw our next breath, in our hearts. We ought to have lunch more often.