Rev. Michael L. Jackson

2004 - 2009

Mary and Michael Jackson

“Park Road, Rushden, celebrates its centenary in 2005” was one of the statements made to me before we moved to the Nene Valley Circuit.  By the time I arrived both Park Road and Higham Ferrers had taken the decision to become one Church society.

What better way to celebrate 100 years of witness and service on the present premises and in the community than by asking what we should be doing as a thanksgiving for the past?  What better way to honour those who did something new in 1905 than by asking God for the same faith and vision for the present age?

“To serve the present age
My calling to fulfill”

Wrote Charles Wesley and that is our calling.  That will mean being thankful for and building upon all that is good from the past.  It will also mean being prepared to think, look and act in new ways that our ancestors in the faith could not have envisaged.  God does not change, yet makes all things new.

I have no doubt that this Church is called as much to be something new as to do something new that the two will happen together.  What our celebrations must not do is focus solely on ourselves.  We have to look both to God and to the communities where He has placed us – “These are the ones we should serve” (HP 145).

Christians are ordinary human people who have found life and hope and love in an extraordinary God who gives of Himself.  Let that be our role model for the Church for the next hundred years.  I look forward to sharing those first years with you.

Michael Jackson