Like all students I'm in the middle of my summer holidays without the pressures of directed weekly reading tasks and homework to complete. This has given me the chance to catch up on more general reading and to reflect on what I have been learning and what is still to come. Next term we will be studying St Paul's Epistles in the New Testament and I have been doing some preparatory reading about both St Paul the man and the relationship he had with the various churches he formed. It is very evident from his writing that he cared a great deal for his churches both for the people who formed those churches and for what they did; the way they led their lives.

That got me reflecting about what is "church" for us in the twenty first century. However we define "church", what binds the people together is our shared sense of trust. This summer I have also been reading "Tokens of Trust" by Rowan Williams and found myself thinking about who do we as Christians trust and what do we believe in? When we say the Creeds together we are setting out what Christians can expect each other to take for granted, our shared belief in God and so we have a basis for trusting each other. This is an attribute sadly lacking in our society today. I can remember when the doctor, the teacher, the local bobby and the bank manager were all seen as professional people and the trusted pillars of their local society. However, we now seem to distrust the education and health systems, the police and even the government. In business we have the examples of Enron and other very big company and bank frauds damaging images and reputations. Caution in our dealings, or natural suspicion, is good for us but perhaps the pendulum has swung too far when we assume that matters are not arranged for our benefit. Our sense of mistrust stems from a sense of not being in control or sensing that someone else is "pulling the strings".

Paul in his letter to the Ephesians writes with passion about the events surrounding Jesus Christ and tells the people in Ephesus that God has at last revealed his purpose, his agenda of peace and praise. We are created to live in a world that should be reconciled, in which communities should share life together. So what do Christians have to offer? We believe we have encountered a God who has forgiven us unconditionally and that causes us to think about the freedom and power of his love. This is a God we can and should trust, a God who has our well-being at heart. I also think that we need to be prepared to talk about how and why we know any of this is true.

Belief in God starts for a lot of people from a sense of "we believe in"; we trust some kinds of people. We like the way they live, the way they live is the way we want to live. If we really believe in all this then, as Christians, we have a responsibility for making God believable to other people; we need to share our faith. Part of the way we do this is through the work of the Mission Committee with its policy of "cheque book plus" as it seeks to get more involved with the causes supported than just sending a donation; we seek to engage with the people we are trying to help. Another way it is done is through all the pastoral work of the church community a lot of which passes unseen.

At the end of September both Elstead and Thursley are joining the national "Back to Church Sunday" campaign though the invitations we will be giving are not intended to be restricted to those who have previously been to church. We will be inviting people to come along to church with us and to share in our life until they too can say "I believe". For some people the initial attraction will be the physical building with its atmosphere of tranquillity in an otherwise busy world, for others it will be the choral traditions, for others it will be the pattern of services. What is important is that people realise that "church" is somewhere where we can safely put feelings of dependence and need, that the church and the God that it worships is something in which people can put their trust.