God took these bell ringers from their individual circumstances, with varying degrees of faith, wove them together in mutual submission to the discipline of the bells and used them to make something both wondrous and beautiful.
Key is a willingness to submit to discipline and authority. The giving of time and talent, the individual struggles to learn the “changes,” are important. But without submission to a common authority, the bell captain, they’d just be individuals pulling on ropes and ringing bells producing chaos of notes and chords rung at random. This would quickly drive the town’s population to distraction and anger. Not a pleasant result. No blessing to be gained here.
A church, or communion which has lost sight of its mission, pays increasingly less attention to the rich and varied accumulated wisdom of its past, and is unwilling to submit to the discipline required to achieve the interdependence that both creates community and blesses the wider populace, is a church of neither sacred nor secular value.
Even if the ringers affirmed the same faith with like-hearted passion, the bells would not long sound without acceptance of a common discipline of purpose and accountability.
Neither can the Communion proclaim a Gospel that blesses both the sanctified and the secular without a commonly held commitment to a discipline requiring voluntary submission of independent lives to a greater purpose than self-expression and personal gratification.
Fing brilliant.