Northampton is a town of 200,000 that once was full of shoe-makers. It was designated as a New Town in 1968 and has shifted its weight to the financial sector and other industries. It now has a university and has made two unsuccessful attempts to become a city. It is growing and has spread to include surrounding villages.
In a day when charismatic gifts are a prime concern in many churches one parish church that does not soft-pedal the issue is Moulton parish church, Northampton. Moulton grasps the nettle. On its website it deals with spiritual or pneumatic gifts, as some people prefer to call them. Gifts, it says, include hospitality, giving, singleness and teaching. These are in addition to the sign gifts to be found in 1 Corinthians 14. And far as those gifts are concerned, people are either cessationists or continuationists. (Excuse the jargon.) On the former view gifts were evident in the Church as an interim measure while the Bible was being completed. They ceased once the Church had the Bible to guide them. The second group takes the view that the gifts are always to be at the service of the Church and should be eagerly pursued.
The Moulton option is to favour the second (continuationist) view. It does, however, qualify the practice, saying that prophecy, for instance, must be regarded as a low-level practice, being particularly relevant to local issues. And gifts must always be tested by Scripture.
The Emmanuel group of churches, Weston Favell centre, Northampton is a Local Ecumenical Project comprising Church of England, Methodist and Baptist churches. ‘We love Jesus and try to serve the community around us,’ they declare. And they add: ‘There is always room for one more.’ One sign of life is the LEP website, easy on the eye, easy reading for strangers. Another sign of life is BERT, the church magazine (Boothville, Emmanuel, Rectory Farm Times). From BERT we learn that the church has signed up to be a sight loss friendly church. There are 20 volunteers staffing the Weston Favell foodbank serving 1400 customers a month.
In both cases the churches concerned have full programmes going beyond what is mentioned. The differing emphasis we see here reminds us that common sense has a part to play in all this. If we believe that everybody has a gift to bring to the people of the Church we have to beware that in the search for gifts we find that some people have a gift for cleaning the dishes and sweeping the floor. We all have to do chores. Herbert’s ‘Who sweeps a room ...’ puts it well. A sense of humour also helps to preserve a balance. And we also have to remember that some people are gifted in terms of art, music, architecture and similar accomplishments. It is given to few to excel but we have to take these gifts as seriously as any other.
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