Taste with the Archbishop of York
03/09/2012
St John’s Church, Neville’s Cross was packed for Archbishop John Sentamu’s visit to their evening monthly ‘Taste’ service. Many of the congregation were from the local community who had responded to the invitation put through their doors to come and hear the Archbishop’s story as well as his response to our questions.
The service began with food and drink as usual, this time, Fairtrade beer, wine and soft drinks. While we were gathering an African Drumming Group from Durham played and sang with the Archbishop at one point spontaneously joining in the drumming.
The questions covered a variety of subjects including belief about God, what we in Britain could learn from Uganda, risks we need to take, his vision for growing the church, the place of women, whether we should be using our bishops in a different way to free them up for mission.
When asked about what happens when we pray the Archbishop described it as “like joining a moving stream of water, relaxing and letting the stream take us as we join in this fantastic thing - the prayers of the Holy Spirit. Seeing prayer like that takes away the stress of finding the right words.”
A passion for mission was evident in all that he said and we were all challenged to talk about Jesus rather than the weather, to simply be friends with people and use every opportunity to share the love of God - to ‘zap’ them with the gospel of Jesus.
The real sense of anticipation and some quotes were shared during the evening via Twitter, some of which can bee seen below.
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