Recently, as a family, we visited Florida and the playground that surpasses all playgrounds .... Disneyworld. One of the rides we went on was called "It's a small world", sponsored by the makers of Barbie dolls, Mattel. You queued for a while and then got into a small boat which took you around a huge display of dolls, representing the different countries of the world. At each display, a tune.. "It's a small world" was playing in the style of that particular country. When it came to the United Kingdom exhibit, there were the Houses of Parliament and a guardsman... Scotland, bagpipes and a kilt… Ireland, a little leprechaun. Unfortunately they'd omitted Wales! So the boat moved on to France.

I was reminded that it's not a small world. It's a big one. And the r part of it I belonged to was small enough not to get a mention on a ride intended to depict all the countries of the world. I was also struck by the thought that though the world is a vast place, with thousands of different cultures and nationalities, we often behave as though it was only our small corner that was important. We create a small world for ourselves and in that world our understanding of God can also become very small. So I take as my text.. "Who can tell all the great things He has done? Who can praise Him enough?" (Psalm 106:2).

I was not looking forward to being moderator. I don't have anything against moderators, just myself being one! I hope that the performance of my duties has been of an acceptable standard. For there have been some interesting moments in our meetings. The debate about 'that' prayer book. Our strategy for the future. The Inductions of Rev Philip Thomas and John Alderson were occasions of great hope and promise. A personal highlight for myself, was taking the greetings of our Presbytery to that of the Twin-Cities Presbytery of Minneapollis and St Paul.

To say that the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A) is on a different scale to that of the Presbyterian Church of Wales, is putting it mildly. A membership of nearly 3 million, around 19,000 ministers, 1000 mission workers, 2000 candidates for the ministry, 120,000 elders. The average Presbytery consisted of 60 churches and a hundred ministers, many churches having a multiple staff of ministers, youth leaders, administrators, etc..

A great mystery to me is why, as a denomination, we have contact, through C.W.M, with a church here and a church there, but no contact with this thriving and dynamic Reformed church, rich in expertise and resources. Surely such a relationship would be to our benefit? Which brings us back to where I started., too often we are comfortable with a small world mentality.

Having attended our General Assembly, I've sometimes had the impression that the borders of Christianity only extended as far as Offa's Dyke. You can be a big fish in a small pond. We produce statements about great world problems, but who's listening? We don't have a high profile in the national life of Wales, yet alone the whole world!

At a Presbytery level we can be just as foolish. Our Christianity becomes narrowed down to what happens to us, in our church. Little disputes and misunderstandings blind us to the greatness and vastness of God.

"Who can tell all the great things He has done?" Can you? "Who can praise Him enough?" Can I?

It is tremendously dangerous to have a small-world mentality. Whilst in Florida, there was a serious accident on the "Small World" ride. As the ride came to an end, a little girl decided she would like to get out before the boat had docked properly. She got half way out, then tried to get back in again and fell between the landing stage and the boat. She became crushed against the side, receiving multiple internal injuries from which we never found out if she recovered.

When the accident happened, the paramedics were called to the scene. But they were stopped from getting there.., by you know what? Holiday makers with video cameras trying to catch the whole thing on film. The scene became worse as a fight developed between a medic and an onlooker.

What had happened? Somewhere along the way, the separation between fantasy and reality had become blurred. Some thought it was all part of the show, but really it was a matter of life and death.
To live as though the rest of the world was on another planet is to live a lie. But that's just what we can end up doing as churches. There is nothing wrong with our message. It is still the good and great news of the gospel of Jesus Christ. But we are presenting it in a way that makes it totally irrelevant to the majority of people in our cities, towns and villages. We are not scratching where they are itching.

We can react to that in different ways. We can make our small world even smaller. Pull up the drawbridges, man the battlements and forget about that godless generation that never darkens our doors. We're right, they're wrong.

Or we can change. But to do that means a reappraisal, not only of what our vision is, but of how those outside see us. It means thinking through some of the issues to an even deeper level than we have yet done. It means creating a Presbytery elders would love to attend. Being a church, where all are welcome, even if they don't dress like us, or like our hymns, or share our theology or appreciate our traditions. Above all, it means enlarging our vision of God.

When I read my bible, I do so from the perspective of a thirty-something, male, white, heterosexual, married, middle-class, Anglo-Saxon, who's lived most of his life in a small corner of Western Britain, who has been nurtured on Reformed theology and 'conservative' Christianity, who belongs to a small denomination of limited resources and outlook. (Of course I'm not prejudiced).

I recently saw a book... "Faces of Jesus", a collection of artists impressions, from around the world, of how Jesus appeared to them.

The Native-American Christians pictured him as a Native American.
The Orientals saw him as an Oriental.

The dark-skinned nations pictured him as dark-skinned.
The Eskimo's as an Eskimo.
The Americans as white-skinned, blond haired and blue eyed.

Try as I like, if I shut my eyes and picture the face of Christ, I don't see him as an Eskimo. And I'm sure, that try as she liked, an Eskimo could not shut her eyes and picture Christ as a European. Which of course, He never was.

It is in our nature to make God in our own image. If that is true of our mental pictures, surely it is also true of our theology. Writing in 'Leadership' magazine, in an article titled "The Messiness of Ministry", the Dean of Duke University, Carolina, makes this comment about our vain attempts to rationalise God into neat, tidy formulas or ways of doing things:-

"Just when I get my church all sorted out, sheep from goats, saved from the damned, hopeless from the hopeful.., somebody makes a move, gets out of focus, cuts loose.., and I see why Jesus never wrote systematic theology.

I give thanks that the focus of christian thinking appears to be shifting from North America and Northern Europe where people write rules and obey them, to places like Africa and Latin America, where people still know how to dance.!"

When I read that, I tried to picture North Wales Coast Presbytery meeting.., dancing. I couldn't do it. Thats just one example of how culturally-bound, prejudiced, biased, small-world, unbiblical our Christian understanding is. For does not Psalm 150 exhort us to.."praise Him with drums and dancing" (verse 4)? That is the Word of God.

But it's not British, not in our tradition, times have changed, the pews would get in the way and the drums clash with the organ, it's undignified, untidy.

Like it or not, we are small world people. But we is all we've got! Well not quite all.

"Who can tell all the great things He has done? Who can Praise Him enough?"

The beauty of the gospel is that God can take, people like us, churches like ours, Presbyteries like ours, and still use them for His purposes. He takes us with all our limitations and misunderstandings, our heresy's and moral failures, our false images and enormous blind spots, and says.."You are my people, You are the ones Christ died for. You are the ones through whom His Risen Presence must touch others."

Thank God our strength does not lie in ourselves. It cannot. It must not. We are too small and the task is too great. I make no apologies for speaking pessimistically of the church as it is, because I see no hope in staying as we are. My only hope, is that through the Spirit of God, our small worlds may expand their horizons., our prejudices may be discerned and overcome, our lives renewed and our churches revived. That the name of our Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ, may be lifted up. For then others will be drawn to Him.