What kind of society do we want?

Crumlin Road Presbyterian location

The call came at 6.30am on Sunday, 1^st October to tell me that the church minibus had been torched and all that remained was the shell. My first reaction was one of thanks that no one had been hurt or worse. But now I would like to ask a very important question- what kind of society do we want? Another question is what are we prepared to do to get that society?

We were only one of a number of incidents that night in the district around the church and the damage that is done by this affects the whole community. What we struggle with is the fact that we are really trying to develop projects to work for a better society. Crumlin Road Presbyterian has been one of the lights in this district all through the troubles- on Friday night I was at the Boys Brigade Company section where there were teenagers meeting in the upper hall and next week the plan was to take these boys to Dundonald to go ice skating. Every week there are groups of people meeting in the church and the bus is used to collect and return people of all ages to church. Over the years we have taken people on various trips and outings,. Only this summer we hosted a team from the USA who worked with local people to clean up the district and to improve the environment by helping with gardens and giving flowers and plants in window boxes. We took a large group of local residents to the Giant’s Causeway for the day. The bus was used every day to ferry the team to various places to help them do their work

In our reading of the bible we understand the Christian’s calling is to serve and to help to rebuild civil society. Over the last 12 months we have been asking questions about how we can best serve our community- we are not going away, not to the suburbs, not to the green countryside, we are staying because this is where we are called to work and serve. We have had many meetings where we have considered whether or not we should sell the bus just because of the expense of it upkeep- the insurance alone costs £1,800 a year- but we have always decided that the need and the use has outweighed the cost and so we have made a commitment to keep it.

Thankfully there was no one hurt. Thankfully all that was lost was a material asset but we need that asset to do this work. This is not the time to talk about those who did this in negative and harsh ways because, like it or not, they are part of this community and an outburst of moral indignation will serve no one, even if the temporary feeling is good. What we do want to say is that it is completely counter-productive to destroy the work of those who want to help. Yes the bus was insured but that will not be enough to buy a new one- we do not have the money-you will not find big expensive cars parked outside our church. We do not have the professional people with the healthy salaries. Any that we did have, have left for the more comfortable places- we are a truly indigenous church and that means we have ordinary working men and women struggling to keep above the debt line. We are running an overdraft. Earlier in the year our data projector was broken – it cost £1800 four years ago- to day the same model costs about £500 but we do not have even that amount to get a new one and will have to hope that the insurance company pays up.

Is this the kind of society that we want? Yes we can turn the other cheek because we know that in the end no one gets away with the consequences of their actions but if we are to continue working for the community we need help.