Revd James Grenfell - 6 May 2012

'I am the true vine, and my Father is the vine-grower. He removes every branch in me that bears no fruit. Every branch that bears fruit he prunes to make it bear more fruit. You have already been cleansed by the word that I have spoken to you. Abide in me as I abide in you. Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me. I am the vine, you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing. Whoever does not abide in me is thrown away like a branch and withers; such branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned. If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask for whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. My Father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit and become my disciples.'

I’ve been reflecting on Jesus’ description of himself as the true vine, and of God as the vine grower, as I’ve been thinking particularly over the past week about our building plans for St John’s.

Four points in this passage strike me as being particularly relevant to our deliberations, and so I would like to outline those for you, and then tell you some of the important details about our plans, to help us to discern together how we can be fruitful for God.

First, whatever we do, we do for God, because all life comes from God. We are a church, committed to serving God, and all that we do needs to keep that fundamental calling at heart.

Second, we need to abide in the vine – to keep our faith strong, to be fed with learning, to worship with all of God’s people, and to build community in and around the church.

Third – and here’s where Jesus’ words become more challenging -- if we aren’t fruitful branches, we will wither away. This is hard, because we can become very used to being branches for the sake of being branches. But we need to bear fruit. If we aren’t bearing fruit – moving, changing, growing – then we are dying. There is nothing in between.

Fourth, bearing fruit glorifies God. We don’t want to be fruitful for any kind of worldly reasons to do with appearing to be successful, bigger or better resourced than other churches. We only do what we do ultimately to glorify God.

Now you might know that the background to our plans to embark upon a building project at St John’s have a long and chequered history. There have been plans to build some sort of extension onto the north side of St John’s dating at least as far back as far as 1964. There are some of us who weren’t even alive back then!

The congregation has periodically re-examined the possibility of building an extension but, for various reasons, those plans have never been developed. Informal conversations, and responses to the consultation exercise undertaken nearly three years ago, showed that the need and the interest to consider an extension to St John’s had not gone away. The responses to the consultation exercise also indicated a willingness to think further about how the church building itself might be developed.

This consultation exercise has been followed up by the PCC, and various congregational groups who, with the Diocesan Advisory Committee and our architect, are encouraging us to recognise the need to get on and respond to these needs.

We’re all respectfully aware that worshipping in this magnificent building is a huge privilege, and that we bear on our shoulders a considerable responsibility to make sure that any alterations we suggest are appropriate. But we are all also clear that we need to do something: otherwise our existence will just be about being a branch, rather than a truly fruitful branch.

Now, in order to be fruitful as a church, we need to abide in the vine. That will mean giving proper attention to the ways in which we can keep our faith strong, be fed through learning, worship with all of God’s people, and build community. So if we make changes to our building, we have to strive to enhance our ability to worship together as a community; we have to support and further the mission of St John’s in the areas of learning, welcome, and provision for newcomers, including young families. Practically, we also have to enhance (or at the very least, not detract) from the beauty and quality of our building, permit maximum flexibility for different users, and take a long-term view about the future needs of the congregation.

I need to be really blunt about what some of our actual practical needs are. Lavatories – there aren’t many sermons which talk about lavatories – but this needs to be an exception. We need more of them; they need to be fully accessible to people with disabilities; they need to contain baby change facilities; and they need to be able to be accessed discretely. If we improved the provision, we would also be able to be used more as a concert venue. But at the moment some churchgoers and members of the wider community alike do not come to our church because the facilities here are so poor. We cannot fulfil our calling to be a place of welcome, if people are put off coming here because we don’t have suitable loos. And simply continuing as we are is now bordering on being illegal.

We badly need here a room adjoining the church where children can learn more about their faith and where groups can meet throughout the week to study, reflect, and pray together. We also need to find a permanent solution to being able to offer hospitality to people after church. A small kitchen located outside the church building which could serve discretely into church would meet this need. And finally, while the development of our choirs, and the addition of the girls’ choir, have been fantastic, they have placed increasing pressure on a narrow choir vestry, ill suited to its purpose. It would make a big difference to the choirs if there could be found a way to remodel that space to make it broader, and to provide better storage.

The Parish Centre, already overused, has many advantages, but getting there quickly, safely, and easily from this building are not some of them. We do not want to do anything which will undermine its work, but it is clear that there is just a need for a greater on-site capacity.

I feel that, as a congregation, we have grown signficantly in our understanding of how we are called by God to be a distinctive and welcoming community, with a high standard of worship, and increasing aspirations to be a place of care, learning and growth.

Jesus challenges us to grow as a community, to belong to the vine, to bear fruit, and in all of this, to glorify God.

We need to work out together the details of how we do this, and I very much hope that you’ll be able to come along on 29 May at 7pm to the Parish Centre when Andrew Wiles our architect will be sharing a design solution to these needs. But let us be in no doubt about our mission as a church community, which is to bear fruit on St John’s branches of the vine and to do our level best to ensure that this branch remains fruitful for generations to come.

Amen.