Published on: 09/12/2025
This month’s blog posts are all about gifts. In relation to starting New Things, New Congregations, the gift might initially not seem like a gift. It might be an unexpected gift. We might call this gift, ‘Holy Dissatisfaction.’ Perhaps you instinctively identify with this idea, perhaps not. Maybe you sit in church wondering if things might be different, maybe more people would come, maybe new people, different kinds of people. Perhaps you are frustrated with the status quo, how things are, how things always have been. It might feel like things should change, there should be new things, church should go further and faster.
It can feel like a moan, or a gripe, and to express it can feel like that to the receiving ear, but you aren’t just highlighting problems. In your heart of hearts, you want there to be solutions, perhaps you feel like you are part of the solution. If you feel like you can be part of the solution, I would suggest you have the gift of Holy Dissatisfaction, and it’s a gift from God.
Within God there is the eternal and unchanging and the creative and sending. The church can sometimes feel like it tends very much towards the former and is not very keen on the latter. There’s a tendency to stick with tradition, with what’s familiar and what’s gone before. To someone without the gift of Holy Dissatisfaction this is reasonable and right, to someone with the gift its frustrating. So, what to do?
In the Bible there is no gift of Holy Dissatisfaction, there are however gifts that bring about change. That’s why it feels like an unexpected gift, we aren’t expecting change in the church and so we get dissatisfied and so the gift to bring about change doesn’t feel like a gift it feels like a problem or burden. Perhaps we can rename the gift to the gift of changing things, or starting things, or pioneering? This casts it in a positive light and it feels like a gift to those who have it, although to those that don’t, it can still feel confusing and challenging.
In Matthew’s gospel, 9:17, Jesus says, “Neither do people pour new wine into old wineskins. If they do, the skins will burst; the wine will run out, and the wineskins will be ruined. No, they pour new wine into new wineskins, and both are preserved.”
Both are preserved! If you feel like you are a new wineskin type person, then you might want to accept that as a gift. If you see people expressing Holy Dissatisfaction then you might recognise them as gifted as a change agent, a new starter, someone well suited to think about new wineskins in the life of the church.
If you would like to chat these ideas through so that you can best make use of this gift in yourself or help others to express it, do get in touch for a chat, john.marsh@sheffield.anglican.org
This week’s Blog post was written by John Marsh, Mission Development Adviser