After a faithful 10 years on our staff team, Sammy will be stepping down from her role of Families and Schools Ministry Leader to take up a new role at the Diocese. Below is her farewell letter to Highfield.

How do you say goodbye after 26 years …over half my life (with some to spare), longer than I’ve been anywhere else and working with children and families for the last 11. I’m not very good at goodbyes and prefer routine so the really scary thing is that if God can call Shaun and I away from Highfield he can call anybody!

I came to Highfield as an intern, I’d been ill for 8 years with Anorexia and had only just got better when I arrived. Broken and naïve, Highfield is where I’ve grown up … and now I’m leaving home!

Thank you for welcoming, nurturing, challenging and growing me over the years; for your patience with everything from action songs, to silly costumes and some fairly bonkers ideas. The world can be a pretty bleak place sometimes and I believe that being a beacon of light, hope and good news, sometimes starts with, ‘a little bit of bonkers’ because it makes people smile! Thank you for the many hours you have given serving on teams. I believe in scattering kingdom seed liberally and in faith. I believe there is a harvest yet to come. Peter Brierley the Chief Statistician for the Church of England reports that most of the people returning to church over the age of 30 had some connection with it as a child. Many people today are far removed from faith today, with no parents or grandparents to model it for them. So growing faith takes many points of contact, many seeds over the long term. Please keep scattering kingdom seeds liberally and waiting patiently. At holiday club 2 years ago God said, ‘not one of them will be lost’, and we claim that in faith for every kingdom seed sown. 

Southampton and Highfield are promised land. God told me this before I came, confirmed it when I arrived, and it has been a recurring motif over the last 26 years. To me, promised land means God has a claim on it, kingdom ground that God wants it for his own. Some might call it revival. I’ve always thought that Highfield would have a significant part to play in our city. That Highfield would have to embrace its promised land, its kingdom potential, in order for the city to enter into its. I’ve also thought that for this to happen Highfield would need a banner, a rallying cry bigger than itself. I believe the need to reach the missing generations and the call on Highfield to become a Resource Church, a planting church, is that banner and rallying cry.

It is said that the church in our country is, ‘one generation away from extinction’. 65% of Anglican churches have fewer than 5 under 16’s once a month and an 80-year-old is ten times more likely to go to church than someone in their 20’s. So there are ten times as many 80-year olds in the church as people in their 20’s. The call on this generation, on Highfield, to reach the missing generations (children, young people, households and schools), is a call bigger than ourselves, bigger than our style of music or which way round we sit to sing it; it’s a call that demands that we look out and up rather than in.

Highfield, this time now and your response to the call to be a Resource Church is your Kadesh Barnea moment. In Deuteronomy 1 the Israelites have travelled from Sinai to Kadesh Barnea, an 11-day journey. God tells them to, ‘See… go up and take possession,’ of the land He is giving them. But fear gets in the way, the spies exaggerate their reports and an 11-day journey becomes a 40-year wander in the wilderness. Highfield, this is your Kadesh Barnea moment. God is calling you into His promised land, don’t let fear get in the way. Caleb and Joshua were the only spies who made it into the promised land because they saw with eyes of faith rather than fear, they saw what is possible with God.

When I was commissioned in January 2009, I was asked what people could pray for and I asked for obedience and integrity. I haven’t always got it right, none of us do; thank you for your grace. Obedience and integrity are very important to me, and I’m finishing as I started, trying to have integrity by obeying God’s call. Leaving Highfield, leaving home, is hard but what helps the faith to outweigh the fear is the knowledge that in leaving we are helping take the call and vision of Highfield forwards. The promised land is drawing closer. Shaun and I are helping to plant a church in St Nicholas North Stoneham, and I’ll be working for the diocese supporting churches and creating a pipeline of people equipped to reach the missing generations and join future planting teams.

So, it’s not been 40 years… I’ve got off lightly, but my prayer for Highfield, city on a hill, beacon of light hope and good news is that you will see with eyes of faith rather than fear all that God has in store for you and embrace it; that you will enter into the promised land. Our city needs you to.

Every blessing,

S x 

Sammy Jordan

If you would like to contribute to Sammy's leaving present, please give donations in cash or cheque (payable to Highfield PCC) to the Office, or you can do a direct bank payment to our Funded Account: 30-90-34,  00120261 with the reference: SJ. 

Please also join us on Sunday 21 July at midday in the Church Centre as we say farewell with a bouncy castle, hot dogs and ice creams - details here.