Chaplains - People of Hope and Vision
The government’s austerity agenda has seen deep cuts to public services. These both affect those who rely on them and those who provide them. At a recent meeting with chaplains, a training manager from a major service provider in the West Midlands observed, “All public service workers want to do a good job, but find themselves hampered by lack of resources. But they still have a vision of what it could and should be like.”
This vision is an expression of the wonderful quality of hope. It keeps doctors, nurses, emergency service workers, local authority employees, teachers and many other dedicated staff working hard to provide the services people need.
There are chaplains in many parts of the public sector. We get to know the staff, sometimes hearing of their struggles to provide adequate services, and sometimes sharing the encouragement that comes from seeing people’s lives improved or even transformed.
Chaplaincy is a good fit here. Not only do we offer a listening ear. We are people of hope, a hope firmly founded on the events of the first Easter, and we bring that hope into the places we visit, helping to maintain the vision when the going gets tough. We believe that God transformed Good Friday into Easter Sunday.This was “The Day the Revolution Began” (Bishop Tom Wright), a revolution which started the transformation of a world hampered and frustrated by human sin so that it might become the world God always intended. We know what the world could and should be like, and it is a privilege to stand alongside people who simply want to do a good job, serving their community.