6th July 2020

You can’t go back – it’s one of the immutable laws of human existence.

Having left our home church to come to Bristol Baptist College in 1985, we visited a few weeks later. Worship much the same; no new faces; friends sitting in the same places – we made for our “regular” seats. On the surface, nothing had changed. And yet, it felt as if everything had changed.

We were no longer part of the place; we were visitors. We noticed things differently; got asked – and attempted to answer – different questions.

It was both negative and positive. Though we initially felt “out of place” we soon discovered that our experiences were richer and our perspectives wider than they had been… and we were made very welcome.

It will, I’m sure, apply when – hopefully before very long – we go back to worship at Tyndale. It will all look much the same, though there will of course be new layouts and arrangements – the Officers and Deacons are beginning to make plans for those. And we shall attempt to do, substantially, what we have always done – worship in an open, accessible, hopefully inspiring, way.

No one knows, though, how, for any one of us, it will feel. And if some of that is negative (not much singing; keeping a distance; not much hanging around after…), there will be positives as well – as the change makes us see things from a changed perspective. You can’t go back. But, thankfully, with God’s help, you can always go forward.

Michael Docker