Reflections on the work of Birmingham Churches Together from Rev’d Ian Howarth

Ahead of his retirement, Rev’d Ian Howarth, Chair of Birmingham Methodist District and President of Birmingham Churches Together shares his reflections.

Further reflections on Rev’d Ian Howarth’s time as chair of Birmingham Methodist District can be found HERE

During my nine years as Chair of the Birmingham Methodist District, I have greatly valued the work and the support of Birmingham Churches Together. It has been a privilege to be a Trustee and to be able to have some involvement in the fantastic work with refugees that Restore provides as an agency of BCT, and also in my earlier days in Birmingham the work in adult education around English as an additional language.

Over these years it has been a privilege to work with two Development officers, Colin Marsh and Robert Mountford who in their different ways have enabled BCT to find a role at a time when other regional ecumenical bodies, like Churches Together in Warwickshire, have had to come to an end. That role has been based on building relationships and networking, rather than formal meetings.

I have valued particularly the meetings of Church leaders, where people with regional roles, like mine, moderators, regional ministers, bishops have been able to come together as equals to share the joys and sorrows, the challenges and opportunities that our churches are facing today. The sharing has been so important, for regional ministry can sometimes be a lonely job. My prayer for the future would be that the fellowship that we share might issue in some strategic thinking in how the traditional churches can perhaps support each other and plan together more in their mission.

In doing that we have become more aware of the need to build much better working relationships with the independent churches in the city, whose structures do not make involvement in the more traditional Birmingham Churches Together easy, and thanks to the work that Robert Mountford is doing, and also to the common commitment to Time4Change in response to the Black Lives Matter movement, relationships are now better than they have ever been.

As a President of BCT I have also had a seat on the Faith Leaders meeting, and again the fellowship with the Rabbis, Imams and other faith representatives has been important, particularly in terms of promoting community, but also challenging as it leads to questions about what Christian mission means in a multi-cultural city, and an awareness that different churches have different responses to that.

Both in our ecumenical work and in our inter-faith engagement there is a challenge to how we move from celebrating to what we hold in common, to working creatively and lovingly through the areas where we see things differently, perhaps in our attitude to other faiths, to same-sex relationships, to women in leadership. The starting point has to be in the building of trusting relationships, of respect for where people are coming from and an openness to listen.

As we face the challenges in our city, around community cohesion, poverty, climate change, I believe BCT has a really important role in helping those relationships to grow and develop so we can respond to those challenges together, and I wish Robert and all my colleagues every blessing as they continue that work in the future.