A Cambridge God Adventure 9) Standing on the steps

I began these reflections with the story of  meeting someone outside the church on the front steps. I described how as I waited I was struck by how many hundreds of people were passing the church front doors. Shoppers laden with plastic bags from the large supermarket next door, smartly dressed business people, tourists with cameras round their necks, young mothers and toddlers, groups of young people, students weaving on bicycles (dangerously) through heavy traffic. A queue had formed outside the cinema nearby, some homeless were begging for spare change. All kind of people were five-deep on the pavement right outside the church.

In telling my story I need to mention that it was three or four months after my beginning that this event actually happened.  I am not sure whether it was April (as I mention in the first post) or in May. My first months were very much caught up in church business and I hadn't experienced that deep trouble that when the pavements were crowded and the city was alive we were missing.

It pushed me to ask why the church was actually here!  I mean here on this particular main street. This question pushed me relentlessly. What was God calling us to do in a city, then of some 110,000 people?  What was our mission?  Was it on Sundays only? Or more?

The person I had arranged to meet never showed up. But I knew this was an all-important God experience. I hesitate to speak of it as a vision for the future. I could not see anything that God might do with us.  Truthfully, everything was rather depressing.  But it was a kick from the Holy Spirit about continuing to do church as normal, Sundays only.  I knew something had to change.