Peter Costello
Jim Deeds, poet and author, speaking out. Dreaming a New Dream: Conversations on the future of the Church in Ireland,
by Jim Deeds, with a foreword by Julieann Moran
(Messenger Publications, €9.95 / £8.95)
The pastoral minister Jim Deeds will be familiar to many readers as the co-author with Brendan McManus of Discovering God in the Mess and its two follow-up titles. This is his first solo title and aims, in a very short space indeed, to urge people to give thought, not to the glorious past, but to the fresh possibilities of the future.
This is a short book, a mere 80 pages, little more than a pamphlet. However, it is the intention of Jim Deeds that the readers rather than him will do the creative work. Like a good teacher he does not provide the answers, but poses the questions, which the readers must answer for themselves.
In this way they will arrive at some notion of where they feel they are now, and where they might be going. The future of the Church, he suggests, lies in the hands of those who are “Church, “the people of God” or whatever term you care to use.
He want those who go to church on Sunday to think about why they go there, and what they would really like the place, and he people, to be like in the coming years,
It poses the questions. The answers of necessity have to be the reader’s own.
One thing he suggested shocked me a little. Should there even be a church, in the sense of a building. After all the universal enthusiasm for the restoration of Notre Dame, which I shared, this is an idea to bring one up short. As they so often used to say, the very idea makes you think.