November 1, 2004
All Saints Day

Dear Friends,

One Sunday last month I think I set a personal record: I participated in worship on four occasions in three different denominations. It required some fast driving, but, interestingly, all four services celebrated the theme of journeying in faith.

At ten o’clock I preached in St Gall’s Church of Ireland (Anglican) in Bangor. Two weeks previously I had facilitated their leaders through a process of strategic mission planning. My task had been to help them share concerns, hopes, and visions as they sought to perceive and embrace the horizon toward which God is calling them—and then to look at how they begin to live into that vision. At the end they asked me to preach and help to share the emerging vision with the rest of the parishioners, to encourage their participation in filling in its detail, and then to implement it, under God’s guidance.

It was an amazing experience for all of us, but I am particularly grateful for the deep impact it has had on Niall. He threw himself into the work, the relationships with the locals, the worship times of our team—and even did justice to the plateful of caterpillars we were served on our last night! I’m quite sure he entered university this autumn a very different young man than he might have without that experience. That evening I was back at Stormont again to speak about the Botswana experience at the youth praise service.

However, in between I had been to St Patrick’s Roman Catholic Church in North Belfast, where I had been invited to a special celebration of 150 years of ministry in Belfast by the Mercy Order of nuns. By the time I arrived the church was packed. As I was looking for a place to squeeze into one of the side pews I was spotted and escorted to the very front row and placed between the Deputy Lord Mayor and another local politician. Many in the congregation were women who had attended one of several Belfast schools run by the order. Some of the current pupils enacted a liturgical drama as part of a moving expression of thanksgiving to God for the vision and example of their founder, Catherine McAuley, those who, in obedience to Christ, had followed her into teaching, nursing, and community work with the poor of the city, and the ideals of mercy and compassion that still inspire new patterns of service today. It has been a privilege to get to know some of the current members of the order and be invited to discern with them where God is leading us. On several occasions over the past few years I had led workshops at their peace and justice gatherings, trained some of their leadership team on “handling conflict,” and co-led inter-church discussion groups with one of the sisters.

Sharing in the journey of faith being undertaken by others is one of the common privileges of all of us who serve as mission workers. This summer marked the twenty-fifth year that it has been my privilege to do so with people in Northern Ireland.

For the past ten years I have accompanied PC(USA) Young Adult Volunteers as they journey through their year of mission service in Northern Ireland. A few days ago I received an email from one of last year’s group, Gordon Pace, who has gone to serve as a YAV with Borderlinks in Tucson, Arizona.

Writing about the impact of his first year as a volunteer Gordon said, “perhaps the most meaningful change in my life is the emphasis on the social outreach called for in the Bible. I grew up going to church every Sunday and know the basic parables and lessons from Scripture, but until I began letting faith interpret the way I view and act in the world, the Christian life seemed incomplete. The social justice and righteousness called for by Jesus does not seem to be a solely internal struggle of personal faith, but rather an avenue to fulfill the needs of those who are outcast, lonely and have no voice.”

May God also grant you challenging and enlarging journeys of faith—with wonderfully diverse companions.

Faithfully yours,

Doug Baker

The 2004 Mission Yearbook for Prayer & Study, p. 333