Path of Renewal - The Next Generation

The old and the new - Girvan Lifeboats

"Every generation blames the one before. And all of their frustrations come beating on your door..."

Mike and the Mechanics - The Living Years

As we seek to find ways to work intergenerationallly, rather than multi-generationally in the church, there's a glimpse of that being modelled in Path of Renewal. As we work together with 25 new congregations, the lessons learned, the things discarded and the discoveries made are still fresh enough for us to move forward together without one cohort feeling alienated from another. We're still in the business of learning together with all our different ministry contexts informing how we are involved in God's mission in the world today.

Perhaps that is the nature of a movement - that learning and practice is always fluid and adaptable and that each will contextualise what we process together.

As we learn how to be church in this generation, sharing and valuing the gifts that each different generation has brought and continues to bring, we are careful to honour the treasures of the past and to value how those inform the present, unafraid to lay down those that weigh us down and, together, forge a way forward blending the old and the new, guided by one whose love exhorts us to be one.

None of this is easy work but it is vital to our witness and service today. By valuing each other's stories and, through listening and sharing, understanding one another, we are building the kinds of relationships that Christ envisaged that enables us, together with God to build the kingdom of God.

Romans 12:2

Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God—what is good and acceptable and perfect.