Play Your Part
Mr President, members of the Conference, friends and family.
Allow me to introduce myself to you. My name is Matt Forsyth — although if you call me Matthew, Andrew, or David, I will probably answer! (Isn’t that right, Dad?)
I currently serve as the Mission Team Leader in the Northampton District. When I registered the birth of my youngest daughter, I told the staff that I was a Mission Enabler, and they looked at me as if I were a character from a Buzz Lightyear movie, travelling to far-flung places.
My career has not always been in the church or within the Methodist community. I studied at Spurgeon's College and was one of his preachers, travelling around London. In addition to my work in ministry, I have experience as an estate agent and have worked in fundraising. More recently, I have been involved with "All We Can." All of this forms part of my story.
There are also a few other things you should probably know about me as we begin this journey today.
1) I am a firm believer that we should enjoy church, life not endure it. Notice the difference there. I hope that whenever you leave this Conference, whether it be today, tomorrow, or sometime next week, you will have enjoyed being here. On a deeper level, my heart hopes that you leave here positively different because of what the Holy Spirit is doing here, so much so that you want to play your part.
2) The second thing which I have come to love about Methodism is that if you don’t like me today or what I have to say, why not give it another chance next year, because I won't be speaking.
Our theme, “Our Story, Our Song,” reminds us that we are part of something far greater than ourselves. We are woven into the ongoing story of God’s love in the world, and invited to sing that story with our lives. Within my own story I owe organisations like Crusaders, now Urban Saints, CROPS (Christian options in Peterborough schools) for their residentials. For Oundle Baptist Church, and the late Mike Jones for saying yes to an annoying 17-year-old who felt the urge to preach. More recently I owe a gratitude to the Peterborough Methodist Circuit and Whittlesey Methodist Church.
I am grateful for my friends in this room and online, and one who I wish were here, Nathan. Thank you for being the soulmates I needed. To my brothers David and Andrew, thank you for instilling in me a resilience I never knew I needed by smashing endless footballs at me as I stood in goal. My parents, Mum and Dad. Thank you for your unconditional support. To my immediate family my wife and three kids.
Yes I have three children, if you want to lay hands at the end please do.
Olivia- you have taught me more about faith than any singular theological book for we share not a blood line but a love line which is far greater than anything
Amelia- Thank you for enabling me see the creation and life in a way I never thought possible. Stay in Amelia's world, it's quite fun.
Penny- You continue to help me challenge myself to balance life better and go at Penny’s pace, not the world's.
Amy- my soul companion that I am grateful for. You help make this possible. Thank you.
Some 18 months ago, I visited a church that I will not name, to support their ministry in my role as Mission Team Leader in the Northampton District. Upon my arrival through the front door, I was greeted with the British custom of a hello in the form of a handshake and the first words that came from the steward's lips…
"Why are you here?"
What a question!
I assured them I was there to worship and, to their surprise, I quickly reassured them, it was to play my part and lead worship that day.
This encounter has stayed with me. The question Why are you here is a question for the soul.
Why are you here?
I wonder Why are you here?
It was my privilege as VP-designate to visit Hong Kong, the International Church, and the Hong Kong Methodist Conference staff team.
One of the people who knows why they are there is someone named Jackie Pullinger. It might be a name that you know, but also one that means nothing. Like my older girls, she comes from the special place of Croydon, born in 1944
- She had no theological qualifications, no official church backing, no organisational support.
- A simple call: At age 22, she felt God calling her to go somewhere—anywhere—to share the gospel. She boarded a ship with nothing but a few pounds and a prayer, eventually disembarking in Hong Kong.
"I had no idea what I was doing. I just went." – Jackie Pullinger
Upon arrival, she was asked, “Why are you here?”
Jackie would go on and minister in Kowloon Walled City, a lawless slum in Hong Kong known for triads, prostitution, and opium dens. Few missionaries or social workers dared to enter.
When I visited the Hong Kong Methodist Church, Jackie was still active by speaking to Church and business Leaders within the region, including our very own Revd Eden Fletcher.
Jackie Pullinger is an example of how God can use someone ordinary to do extraordinary things when that someone is willing to play their part.
So why are we here? What does our part to play look like?
As we consider this question, the good news is that
Meaning is not something we create; it is something we discover, because it is already there. If you like, part of us finding our story, our song is about discovering the hidden treasures that are there for us to use in our life’s work and ministry.
Today I want to offer three invitations from our passage that I believe help us to reflect on the question, ‘Why are we here?’ What does our part to play look like?
1) Invitation to receive living water (grace)
Our story begins not in a grand cathedral or a place of prestige. It starts at a well.
A well, unremarkable in its appearance, but resonant with memory and meaning. Jacob’s Well, a place carved into the land and the lives of generations. A place of necessity, routine, and sometimes isolation. And it is here in the searing heat of midday that a woman comes to draw water. Alone.
She does not expect company. She certainly does not expect to encounter anything. She comes burdened with more than just a water jar.
And yet, there sits Jesus.
Not surrounded by crowds. Not standing in triumph. He is tired. He is thirsty. He is waiting.
He does not begin with a sermon. He begins with a question:
“Will you give me a drink?”
It is an ordinary question but in that moment, the ordinary becomes extraordinary.
Here, grace begins not in power, but in vulnerability. Jesus does not enter this moment as the all-knowing teacher, but as one who shares in our need, who embraces human frailty. He opens a door, not by declaring truth, but by requesting kindness.
Olivia wrote this poem five year a go which has stuck with us as a family.
Give Kindness a go,
Be kind to everyone
I will say kind words only
Caring for other people
If you fall over, I will come
Sharing with you is my favourite thing to do.
Beginning with kindness, Jesus honours her presence. He disrupts social expectations. He sees her.
Henri Nouwen, whose reflections so often touch the tender places of our humanity, once wrote:
“Our brokenness has no other beauty but the beauty that comes from the compassion that surrounds it.”
This encounter at the well is surrounded by compassion. The kind of compassion that transforms a lonely moment into a holy one. The kind of grace that does not wait for perfection but meets us in our brokenness in our midday thirst and our hidden shame.
I don’t know about you I need that in my life.
This woman’s story is not grand. It is ordinary, even troubled. Yet it becomes the stage for divine revelation. A conversation that begins with water ends in the unveiling of Living Water — a gift that satisfies far deeper thirsts.
T.S. Eliot, writing in Four Quartets, offers a line that echoes across this moment:
“The hint half guessed, the gift half understood, is Incarnation.”
Here, by the well, the Incarnate One gives a gift not in thunder or spectacle, but in conversation. In presence. In kindness. In invitation.
And later, Eliot writes:
“You are the music while the music lasts.”
Friends, this is our story. And it is our song. A melody composed in the everyday in the drawing of water, in the asking of a question, in the grace of an unexpected encounter. Our song does not begin in our greatness, but in God’s grace meeting us in our humanness.
So I ask you:
Where is your well?
Where are you drawing water, thinking it's just another day, unaware that Christ may be waiting there?
This is the first invitation of the Living Water:
To receive God’s grace in the midst of our ordinary stories and to let that grace turn them into extraordinary moments.
The Olivia story?
We can only discover why we are here, what our part to play is, when we allow the grace of God to flow through us, to be our living water, to change the ordinary into the extraordinary.
2) Tell Your Story: From Hiddenness to Bold Witness
This story is remarkable because this woman’s story is complex and marked by pain. Jesus, with prophetic insight, lays that pain tenderly open. And here is the key: he does so without condemning her. He reveals the truth about her life not to shame her, but to let her know that she is truly seen, known, and loved by God.
At last, Jesus makes a revelation He had not yet made openly to anyone else. He says to her, “I, the one speaking to you – I am he” (John 4:26). The Messiah she has awaited is here, with her, at the well. In this moment, we see a powerful unveiling of identity: Jesus discloses his true identity as Messiah, and in doing so, he also discloses her true identity – as someone known, loved, and called into God’s purpose.
John 3 teaches us that, there is no one beyond the need of grace and John 4 teaches us that there is no one beyond the reach of grace
Because of this, encountering Jesus, she runs back to her village:
"Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Messiah?" (John 4:29)
- She moves from hiding to heralding
- Fear to Freedom
- Doubt to Declaration
- Silence to Singing
She become the first evangelist
Friends… Your Story Matters.
Story
The Methodist Church is committed to living a story of grace a story that shapes us as inclusive, evangelistic, growing and justice-seeking communities.
- Not a perfect story.
- Not a polished story.
- But a true story – a real story that acknowledges the ups and downs of life we all face and the need for God’s grace in each one of us.
So may we be encouraged as a Church to continue to share our story.
Lastly, as we ask those questions, ‘Why are we here?’ ‘What is my part to play?
3) The third invitation is to lay down what holds us back and move forward with boldness.
Growth and change are on the far side of disruption and challenge.
The Samaritan women embraced this very reality.
In John 4:28, the Gospel tells us something quiet, almost incidental but deeply significant:
“Then, leaving her water jar, the woman went back to the town…”
The jar, the reason she came to the well, is left behind. It was practically essential for her survival, which speaks to her isolation. But now, she leaves it behind. Some would say it is because she has encountered Jesus, the Living Water. And the vessel she once carried becomes unnecessary. She is no longer defined by what she came to the well carrying.
What are we still carrying, as a Church friends?
- As Mr President hinted at earlier, are we burdened by nostalgia? For the Sunday schools that were overflowing? For a time we had too many stewards? Are we longing not for the future God is opening up, but for the safety of what we once knew?
- Are we limited by fear, a fear that change will unmake and change what we hold dear?
- Are we held back by shame, believing that our failures or our past disqualify us from being part of God’s new work?
The call of Christ is gentle but clear.
Lay it down. Leave it behind. Move forward. Play your part.
This is not a rejection of the past far from it. We are not called to discard our story but to discern within it. And here we can learn from the wisdom of the Ghanaian proverb of Sankofa:
“It is not wrong to go back for that which you have forgotten.”
To look back is not weakness; it is faithfulness. But we look back not to relive the past, but to retrieve its treasure.
Because the treasures of our past are our testimonies, our prayers, our songs, and our resilience, they were never hidden from us.
They are hidden for us.
Hidden like manna in the wilderness.
Hidden like pearls in the depths.
Hidden like the seed in the soil, waiting for the right season to bloom.
The psalmist reminds us that even in exile, God's people learned to sing again:
“How shall we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land?” (Psalm 137:4)
We ask the same question today in the strange land of post-Christendom, in the dry lands of institutional decline, in the anxious lands of uncertainty. But even here, even now, there is a song to sing.
And we are not alone in this.
This year, we rejoice with the Hong Kong Methodist Church as they celebrate their 50th anniversary. Their theme speaks powerfully to us all:
“Following our roots and co-creating new chapters.”
They remind us that our heritage is not a burden to carry, but a wellspring to draw from. It is from our roots that we grow. And it is with God and one another that we are called to co-create the chapters still unwritten.
So let us do the same:
- Let us live in/hold onto Living Water which is God’s grace to us.
- Let us look back to claim the treasures God has hidden for us not from us.
- Let us carry forward the wisdom, the worship, the witness of those who came before us.
- And let us lay down every burden that no longer serves the journey ahead.
Our story is not stuck in the past. Our song is for us to sing now. It is being written, being sung anew, by the Spirit who makes all things new.
Conclusion
So why are you here?
Perhaps it was routine.
Perhaps it was curiosity.
Perhaps it was calling.
But the Spirit whispers, as Jesus once did by the well:
“Will you give me a drink?”
A simple question that opens sacred possibility.
You did not come here by accident.
You have a part to play.
You are not just a listener to this story
You are a line in it.
Not just a voice in the congregation
You are a note in the song.
Our song is still rising
Because grace is still singing.
So play your part:
Even if your voice trembles.
Even if your chapter feels unwritten.
Even if you’ve been holding your jar too tightly.
Lay it down.
Let go of the burdens that have shaped you
But no longer serve you.
Pick up the treasures God has hidden for you
the prayers of past generations,
the courage of those who came before,
the wisdom of a Spirit who still speaks.
For this is the moment
To follow our roots,
and co-create new songs.
And as you go,
May the well you draw from never run dry.
May the story you tell always make room for grace.
And may the song you sing
Join the great chorus of saints
Who have played their part
And passed the pen to you.
The page is turning.
The Spirit is moving.
The story is yours.
The song is ours.
Play your part.
Amen.