British Churches Facing The Millenium
November 12, 2008

BROADCAST ON FRIDAY DECEMBER 3 1999 ON RADIO 2CBA FM.

The British churches are making a great deal of the Millennium and they are providing some ideas that are worth following in Australia.

Last Sunday I attended the morning service at the United Reform Church in the little old village of Ickenham, on the outskirts of western London. I was most impressed with the quality of the service and the large attendance (including a thriving Sunday school, which is a good indicator of a church’s future).

Last Sunday’s sermon by the visiting preacher Rev Dr Lesley Husselbee (Secretary for Training at the United Reform Church headquarters in London) contained an explanation of what the churches are doing for the Millennium. I am most impressed with the great use being made of the Millennium by British churches.

The British Government – much more so than the Australian and State Governments – is spending hundreds of millions of pounds on marking the Millennium. The Millennium Dome for example, is the largest covered area in the world and has the equivalent size of two Wembley Stadiums.

But there is a risk that all this secular froth and bubble could obscure the basic fact of the Millennium: namely that it is the 2,000th anniversary of the birth of Jesus. In other words, it could end up like Christmas, with people forgetting that Jesus is the reason for the season.

The churches in England have been working together on some common themes for the Millennium. The activities should be: Christ focussed, positive yet penitent, Jubilee proclaiming, Lord’s Pray conscious, community engaging, dialogue seeking, other faiths sensitive, and demonstrating Christian partnership.

The standard phrase is “New Start”. The Year 2000 provides a chance to start again. Therefore, there should be a New Start for the world’s poor, a New Start at home and a New Start with God.

The task of the churches in the Millennium is to forge a link in people’s minds between the year 2000, the name of Jesus Christ, and the possibility of personal meaning and public hope. If the churches do not do this, nobody else will.

If maximum impact is to be made, then there must be maximum co-operation and co-ordination between the churches. This inter-church co-operation is also vital in itself. It would be tragic if the churches’ response to the Millennium were to highlight disunity and rivalry.

For an atheist to walk along a street, passing one church and then another, may be a journey of only a few a minutes. But for a Christian, it may be a journey of hundreds of years as that person recalls all the religious strife that has gone on between the denominations.

The churches will mark the Millennium in ways that engage with the communities, rather than with activities that will only engage their own memberships.

Thus, the Millennium becomes a unique opportunity for outreach.