Twenty-one pilgrims of all ages walked from the Chapel of Gonville & Caius College, Cambridge, to All Saints’ Haslingfield on Saturday 24 September.

This, the third of such walks in the steps of Bishop Charles Mackenzie, marked the 150th anniversary of his arrival in 1861 in Magomero, in what is now Malawi. Magomero is about the same size as our smaller South Cambridgeshire villages. Prior to his departure for Africa, he had regularly walked from Cambridge to Haslingfield to conduct services and carry out pastoral work. He then went to Natal to serve as an Archdeacon. After coming home on leave, he heard David Livingstone speak in Cambridge and ultimately he led a mission to Central Africa as Bishop of the Mission to the tribes around Lake Nyasa, establishing himself at Magomero. Sadly he died of malaria the next year, but the foundations of the Anglican Church in Malawi had been laid.

Haslingfield, Harlton, Barton and the Eversden Churches were represented, and as christian communities, we will be working alongside our two local schools to support the work of the Malawi Association for Christian Support (MACS) in Magomero by raising money for help with building a church there, big enough for the number of people who wish to worship. Haslingfield has recently had formal Magomero visitors join us for worship, prayer and information sharing together, and we are to share the Chichawa culture. For more information please contact José Hopkins on 01223 872190.

Haslingfield, and many of the Lordsbridge Churches, have mission statements, and all of us have ’Mission Action Plans’ (MAPS), that help us to define our attitude to, and how we are going to relate to the world. I suspect that they identify how we are going to relate to our immediate village, and people like ourselves, as our immediate friends , work colleagues and neighbours.

However, the people stepping out in the footsteps of Bishop Mackenzie are also showing how we are called to step outside what is familiar, and to be changed by coming into closer relationship with Christians, and people in the wider world. People who live in a very different culture, or a very different life style from ourselves. This might mean a significant shift in the way one thinks about ’church’.

Being missional means we should engage in the world the same way Jesus did - by going out and by changing, and being changed by it, in building (not just another church) but God’s Kingdom here on earth.

John 17:18: As you sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world.

How does your church identify how you are going to step out in the footsteps of Jesus Christ?

Michael Matthews,
Team Vicar

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