In a single month a while ago I made four visits and had four snapshots of quiet revolution.
- A tour round Jimmy’s Nightshelter in central Cambridge
- Taking some furniture to be recycled at the Emmaus community north of Cambridge
- Buying some fairly traded food at the Daily Bread Cooperative in the North of Cambridge
- Popping in to see the manager of our own St Martin’s Centre for the elderly.
Each place exuded peace and a kind of a quiet well-ordered-ness. Each place runs through the hands of many volunteers and a number of full-time staff who are not paid well. Each fights almost daily battles with bureaucracy and politics that threaten to capsize the whole ship. Yet each provides a vital service to a large part of a city.
Each is an expression of Christian faith that is unsung, long-term, wholly appropriate for the 21st century.
Then I read this quote — more appropriate to regions outside Europe, but still relevant.
‘Alongside the political, economic, social and technological revolutions … which have commanded enormous media attention and coverage … there has been this far less trumpeted, but equally important revolution in the status and standing of worldwide Christianity. Few have taken on board what is happening.’ (Kenneth Hylsom-Smith To the ends of the earth ISBN 978 1 842 274 750)