It is very good to be with you all this evening and for the first time to be amongst you in a
new way, in this new grouping, the Bishop’s Hatfield Team Ministry. For the people and parish of St John’s, Lemsford and of St Mary’s, North Mymms today marks a wholly new stage in your life and ministry, and your presence means that there is also fundamental change for the people and districts of St Michael’s, St Etheldreda’s, St Luke’s and
St John’s. You together give fresh expression to the truth which St Paul proclaims -
‘the body does not consist of one member but of many’.
That theological reality - that we are not individual Christians or churches or congregations - can sometimes be obscured by our commitment and affection for the immediately local. When we speak of ‘my church’ we instinctively and naturally mean St John’s or St Mary’s,
St Luke’s, St Etheldreda’s or St Michael’s. Your new interdependence and structure proclaims that you know that the body does not consist of one member, but of many.
As I go about Hertfordshire it is a delight for me to be reminded many times a week that
there are many of us in the body of Christ with varieties of gifts, services and activities serving God in the name of our one Lord Jesus Christ. It is not that it is convenient for
us to be one in Christ, administratively helpful, or structurally neat, or financially desirable,
or effective in mission – it is simply the truth – all the members of the body though many
are one body.
St Paul’s famous words speak of our diversity, our rich diversity, but our fundamental
unity. We in Bishop’s Hatfield have a special reason to celebrate that and to develop its implications for ourselves, for the Deanery and Diocese, and above all to be many-but-one for Jesus.
