Just how much can an act of the imagination achieve? Steve Tomkins, Editor of the United Reformed Church’s Reform magazine, explores on behalf of our associate, the URC.
Martin Luther King died 50 years ago this month saying he had seen the promised land. He never reached it but it was in view. He had been to the mountaintop.
Dr King was a man of incredible vision, somehow managing to see a world of racial justice and equality in the middle of segregated 1950s Alabama. But faith gave him the vision and the vision made a way. He was, to get a bit U2 about it, ‘packing a suitcase for a place … that has to be believed to be seen’.
Believing is seeing. Transformation is an act of the imagination.
What would you see in the world where you live if you could go up the same mountaintop as Dr King? What promised land would you see in your own life?
At Greenbelt in 2018, United Reformed Church embarks on Pilgrimagination. (Yes, it’s a real thing. Starting from now.) We’ve got places to go, things to achieve, changes to make, people to become. Life is a pilgrimage.
And where are we going? To a place that isn’t there yet, a destination that has to be believed to be seen. The journey starts with an act of imagination.
As Christians who pray for God’s kingdom to come in the communities where we live, we’re wondering: Where do we go from here? What might happen next? What could we achieve? Who might we become?
The URC’s focus for its own church life this year is ‘Walking the way: Living the life of Jesus today’. It’s an emphasis on lifelong discipleship and mission. And alongside that personal journey, churches across Britain continue their week-by-week work of transforming their communities. They have a vision and are following where it leaves.
Join the URC at Greenbelt 2018 in a weekend of Pilgrimagination. Picture the place, walk the way.