Methodist Church/Annual conference: The new president of the Methodist Church in Ireland, the Rev Jim Rea, said "despondency, disillusionment and, worst of all apathy, bites again" in the North.
This was because people did not trust each other. Honesty and integrity were constantly in doubt, "and we retain our long memories of hurt and pain."
Mr Rea, who ministers in Portadown, was installed last night at the opening of the church's 234th annual conference in Ballymena, continuing until Tuesday.
He remembered growing up in north Belfast. His neighbours told him "never to trust the other side." Such intolerance was "ingrained in many of us and it fuels the sectarianism that some of us are quite unwilling to admit to".
He reflected on the words of Gordon Wilson when he prayed for those who killed his daughter, Marie, in Enniskillen, and the testimony of Michael McGoldrick after the murder of his son near Portadown. They were living testimony to what the Spirit could do.
He recalled a story from the Rwandan civil war when armed Hutus seeking revenge came to a church where members of both tribes were at prayer. They ordered all Hutus out, intending to kill the remaining Tutsis. The people inside refused to separate.
Within a half-hour all 500 Hutus and Tutsis inside had been shot. "Relationships transformed by the Holy Spirit brought the ultimate sacrifice," Mr Rea said. Inspired by that story there were now "amazing results" in Rwanda, with new churches coming to birth, he said.
In the North, were they "ready to say 'whatever the risks, we are neither orange nor green, Protestant nor Catholic, we belong to Jesus Christ'?" he asked. "Will we begin to repent of the 'God of Ulster' mentality or the link between Irish culture and Christianity?
"Will we lay aside the mistaken view displayed on T-shirts that 'God's a Prod' or, for that matter, an Irish republican?"
And while criticising politicians for not doing enough, were we giving the lead in transformed relationships?
He quoted St Paul: "There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ". It "challenges us to see people differently, to see them no longer from a worldly or human point of view but rather for what they can become and what Christ can make them be," he said.
