Visiting Bishops Concerned About Increasing Age Of Scilly’s Congregation
Two visiting Methodist Church bishops from Africa say they’re concerned about the increasing age of churchgoers in Scilly and the lack of young people in the church here, when compared to Nigeria.
Bishop Livinus Onuagha and Bishop Sunday Eze from Onisha have spent ten days in the UK. They came to Scilly following a conference in Derbyshire.
The clerics have been staying with Reverend Charlie Gibbs and have addressed members of the Methodist Church congregation. They’ve also met with Methodists on St Mary’s and St Martin’s
The Bishops believe the church needs to reach out and engage younger islanders or it could close.
Bishop Onuagha says the youngest people he saw in the congregation here was Charlie and his wife and he feels the church could “run out of steam” without younger members.
But our scenery has captivated the two men. Bishop Onuagha says that the view from St Martin’s Methodist chapel is possibly the best he has ever seen in the world.
The pair have invited Reverand Gibbs to visit Nigeria.
How is it that a God who believes in unconditional love, will condemn people to a burn in a pool of brimstone and suffering for eternity ?
Nobby Nobbs comments are, usually, pointless to say the least. One this occassion I am not so sure.
I fail to understand why the situation in Scilly should concern the Africans.
Perhaps they should consider putting their own house in order before commenting on ours.
Perhaps if we in the west stopped plundering the African nations, historically for slaves and more recently for resources, then they might be able to “put their house in order” . But that’s a hard thing to do when the continent is seemingly in a perpetual state of war, most of which are started by vested interests in the west, in order to get our hands on the large oil reserves.
The phrase “Those in glass houses etc” springs to mind
My goodness, what a surprise! I clicked on this article to see if anyone had left a comment and was pleasantly surprised to see that the only commenter, although a bit blunt, hit the nail on the head.
The good thing about an ageing church population is that in 50yrs time religion will hopefully have died, and we can be a truly secular society based upon fairness and facts not fear and fairy tales.