Bishop's Letter

Monday 9 April 2007

Retail Entertainment

The furniture stores and garden centres will be at bursting point this weekend.  When the three days of a bank holiday are past, it is to the shops that we turn for entertainment and therapy.  Here in Leicester the vast new Shires Shopping Centre is nearing completion – the cranes by this time next year will have gone and the new retail world will be opening to the public.

Much of our City’s regeneration is now well under way.  It is a tribute to the vision, hard work, energy and determination of many people over several years, and there is a long way still to go.  Billions of pounds worth of investment have been raised and part of the cityscape will be transformed for several generations.

What will people think of the transformation of our city as they look back in 50 years time?  The great engine of regeneration is retail.   On the back of it come other developments – the Cultural Quarter, the new housing areas and the casino announced this week in St George’s Tower.  Shopping, entertainment, gambling are ingredients of our everyday life.  In our new world, shopping is not primarily to buy objects.  The new shopping malls are designed as places of entertainment where you can have interesting experiences, live in fantasy worlds and play with virtual reality. 

But in the centre of our changing cityscape, there stand symbols of an unchanging world.  The spires of the city centre churches reflect a different set of values and a different age.  The Cathedral, Holy Trinity Leicester, St Mary de Castro, with fine gothic spires and the solid mediaeval towers of St Nicholas and St Margaret’s are also part of our city story.  They speak to us of different values and of a different hope.    

For Christians this weekend is the time of the celebration of the resurrection of Jesus.  The churches of the city are a physical witness to the new hope for humanity that Christians see in the resurrection.  And that new hope has to do with the flourishing of all human beings in community.  It has to do with justice for the poor and opportunities for all.  It has to do with the building of a city in which none are excluded and in which the benefits of a growing economy are equally distributed.  This is the hope that the Easter story gives us.  It is the vision for which Christians pray every day when they say The Lord’s Prayer and ask, “Thy kingdom come”. 

As our city regenerates and renews itself, it is vital that our churches do the same.  And it is vital that the energy, the resources and the vision that is driving change in the city can also be used to refashion, renew and refresh our church buildings so they are fit for purpose for a new age and bring hope and meaning to a society which will always hunger for something more than another day at the shops. 

+ Tim