If everything goes according to plan, you will be reading this message – and the whole of this issue of the newsletter – in “full technicolour”. Ever since our layout editor produced the first drafts of the new-look ECC News a few years back, this has been – and remained no more than – a dream, and anyone wanting to admire the finished product in its full glory has had to resort to the internet to do so. But now that dream has come true since our printers, Gebrüder Hoose, kindly arranged to run off this special trial colour issue (in a print run of 350) for us to see how we like it.

And there could hardly be a better time than the Pentecost season to splash out into full colour, could there? Somehow, this venture reflects the colourful, multicoloured nature of the world church at large and of our church community in particular – what the German language refers to as “bunte Vielfalt”. And Pentecost itself is about just that – about discovering that differences are something to celebrate, something to rejoice in, and not (as many in politics and the media would currently have us believe) something to be afraid of or suspicious of.

No better time than this, then, to stand up and openly confess our conviction that colourful unity in diversity, so especially evident at Pentecost (see Acts 2), is not just our personal persuasion of how human society should be, but actually God’s continuing message to us across the centuries:

“There is no difference between Jews and Gentiles,
between slaves and free people, between men and women;
you are all one in union with Christ Jesus.”
(Galatians 3:28)

Differences are there to make life more interesting, more vibrant; barriers are there to be overcome, to be broken down ... so let each and every one of us do what is in our power as individuals and together, as a powerhouse community of the Holy Spirit, to overcome all barriers to trust, to love, and to community that fear, suspicion, and xenophobia might have erected in our society and in our lives. There is no end to the colourful diversity of ways we can engage in that Pentecostal mission of spreading the Good News of all-embracing love in a language everyone can understand!

Let’s give it a try!

Your Pastor and friend,

James Brown