A Bird in the Bush

** Backblip for Saturday 28th June 2025 **

An all-day workshop with lunch at St Luke’s for our Vision Day. No, not trying to have dreams like the Biblical prophets, but working together on the future direction of our church. We split into three teams of 8 or 9 people, and each team plotted a timeline of what we considered to be significant points in the history and life of St Luke’s. Next we all worked together on a huge map of our parish, identifying key places and facilities, plus areas of new housing which are under-represented in our congregation. Finally, back in our teams, we compiled three groups of post-it notes listing our resources as a church, our challenges, and our opportunities. We will take all these things further in our planning for the future. It will be especially helpful in view of our impending vacancy, when we will be without a Rector for quite some time and will need to write a parish profile as part of the job advert for a new priest to fill the position.

I’m not quite sure how all of the above relates to birds in hands or bushes - I suppose we need to appreciate the good things we already have at St Luke’s, and to use our existing resources well for a successful future. Anyway, when I got home I spotted this juvenile blackbird sitting on the bush outside the lounge window with its Dad, who then flew off leaving it on its own for a while.