Can one church do everything? Is in fact The Church more than one single church family Or are we called to fellowship in a single church family?
These questions have been in my mind for a couple of days. I have argued with myself quite convincingly from both sides, and the result is simply more confusion!
The debate stemmed from the exciting start of a young men's house group this week at my home church. The group was started by people from one church (mine), was the vision of a group of people in that church, and has a lot of young men who worship on Sunday at that church. However, there are also young men who are part of the group who worship at other churches nearby. They are all friends: going to college, school or football together; and they all attend youth camps and youth worship events together. For me, this makes sense - this is the only young men's house group in the area, rather than having 3-4 small groups of 3 or 4 young men who all worship at the same church meeting up, isn't it better that we join forces - having a larger group of 10 or so young men, all who come with different church backgrounds, listen to different teaching on Sundays and will support and grow together? But, there have been questioned raised about whether young men from churches outside our own should come along too.
I think that youth work, certainly in our area, is paving the way for how The Church is going to have to be in the future. We have a number of small churches: each church group has around 5 families with young children, about 5-10 young people, about 10 old people, 2-3 people in their 20-30s etc.
There will be a couple of people who have experience of special needs, there will be a few who have experience of divorce, or bereavement, of mental illness. No single church can offer a really effective ministry or outreach in any area on it's own - we simply lack the resources. And yet, there remains a reluctance to accept this. We are all trying to do it all, and are therefore managing to do nothing really but we "should" reach out to young families, to the elderly, to 20-30s, to the youth. Why?
If the church up the road has a really strong youth programme, what is wrong with young people from our church accessing that? If we have a strong programme for young families why don't we encourage other young families in the area to access them. Tit for Tat as it were... Those people in our fellowship who have a heart for the elderly, can be involved in outreach based at the church over the hill, the one right next to the old people's home!
The Church is larger than one single group of people - In Acts 4, Luke talks of the early church: "All the believers were one in heart and mind. No one claimed that any of their possessions was their own, but they shared everything they had." (Acts 4:32, NIV) All believers. Not all believers in Jerusalem. Not all believers in the house on that street, but ALL believers.
I think, personally, we need to learn from those early believers and stop thinking that we have to do everything in one small church - we need to be believers together, sharing everything we have.
Sunday 6 February 2011
Tuesday 25 January 2011
Let God be God, and you be you.
God created the world with a word, we know that nothing is impossible with Him but it can be tempting to get fatalistic when praying because we focus on God's power to do the incredible. We say, "your will be done" and that is entirely right, but it shouldn't be God's will being done while we sit back relaxing and waiting for it all to happen!
This is a story that I love, the story of Peter being miraculously saved from prison by an Angel of God, it's in Acts 12...
" 5 So Peter was kept in prison, but the church was earnestly praying to God for him.
6 The night before Herod was to bring him to trial, Peter was sleeping between two soldiers, bound with two chains, and sentries stood guard at the entrance. 7 Suddenly an angel of the Lord appeared and a light shone in the cell. He struck Peter on the side and woke him up. “Quick, get up!” he said, and the chains fell off Peter’s wrists.
8 Then the angel said to him, “Put on your clothes and sandals.” And Peter did so. “Wrap your cloak around you and follow me,” the angel told him. 9 Peter followed him out of the prison, but he had no idea that what the angel was doing was really happening; he thought he was seeing a vision. 10 They passed the first and second guards and came to the iron gate leading to the city. It opened for them by itself, and they went through it. When they had walked the length of one street, suddenly the angel left him. "
What I think is brilliant about this story is not so much what the angel does, but what it doesn't do. I mean, it's an angel - it has the power to just appear in a locked cell, surely it could have just picked Peter up like superman and blasted him out of the prison in a blaze of light... but no, it doesn't do that.
The angel is sent to do the impossible, the miraculous - but Peter has to do what he can too. He has to get up, put on his clothes and sandals and walk himself out of prison.
We have to do our part, God will do His. When we pray "your will be done" is what we are really asking is that we sit back and watch God work while we admire? I don't think so, what we are really asking is that our actions will go along with His will. That we will be ready with our shoes and cloak on because we have been and we are doing our bit!
This is a story that I love, the story of Peter being miraculously saved from prison by an Angel of God, it's in Acts 12...
" 5 So Peter was kept in prison, but the church was earnestly praying to God for him.
6 The night before Herod was to bring him to trial, Peter was sleeping between two soldiers, bound with two chains, and sentries stood guard at the entrance. 7 Suddenly an angel of the Lord appeared and a light shone in the cell. He struck Peter on the side and woke him up. “Quick, get up!” he said, and the chains fell off Peter’s wrists.
8 Then the angel said to him, “Put on your clothes and sandals.” And Peter did so. “Wrap your cloak around you and follow me,” the angel told him. 9 Peter followed him out of the prison, but he had no idea that what the angel was doing was really happening; he thought he was seeing a vision. 10 They passed the first and second guards and came to the iron gate leading to the city. It opened for them by itself, and they went through it. When they had walked the length of one street, suddenly the angel left him. "
What I think is brilliant about this story is not so much what the angel does, but what it doesn't do. I mean, it's an angel - it has the power to just appear in a locked cell, surely it could have just picked Peter up like superman and blasted him out of the prison in a blaze of light... but no, it doesn't do that.
The angel is sent to do the impossible, the miraculous - but Peter has to do what he can too. He has to get up, put on his clothes and sandals and walk himself out of prison.
We have to do our part, God will do His. When we pray "your will be done" is what we are really asking is that we sit back and watch God work while we admire? I don't think so, what we are really asking is that our actions will go along with His will. That we will be ready with our shoes and cloak on because we have been and we are doing our bit!
Praise the Lord!
Today I have been signed off from counselling. I have been going to see my wonderful counsellor for sixteen months. On my first session I was a mess, I sat on the floor in the hall of my house crying while a friend persuaded me to get up, to put on my coat and get in the car. It was the hardest journey of my life. I sat in front of the counsellor, curled up on myself and tensed up to the extent that I had a headache.
It was around that time that another good friend sent me an email of Psalm 13. At the time reading was hard work because my eyes would swim, so the bible was hard. I didn't know what to pray for, and church made me cry. But this spoke to me:
1 How long, LORD? Will you forget me forever?
How long will you hide your face from me?
2 How long must I wrestle with my thoughts
and day after day have sorrow in my heart?
How long will my enemy triumph over me?
3 Look on me and answer, LORD my God.
Give light to my eyes, or I will sleep in death,
4 and my enemy will say, “I have overcome him,”
and my foes will rejoice when I fall.
5 But I trust in your unfailing love;
my heart rejoices in your salvation.
6 I will sing the LORD’s praise,
for he has been good to me.
Through the fog of darkness in my mind I knew that God understood how I felt. Someone in the bible had felt the same way once and so all I had to do was keep going and trust in Him if I could.
Singing the Lord's praise can look very different depending on where you are at. For me at that point, singing God's praise meant getting up in the morning. Getting dressed, getting out of the house. It meant eating and drinking, it meant making it through the next week until I saw my counsellor again. That was all I could do, and the choice to do that at all was, I think, worshipful.
We can't always do a lot - physically, mentally, financially we are limited. I think that what matters is that we do the most, the best that we can in praise of God.
Amen.
It was around that time that another good friend sent me an email of Psalm 13. At the time reading was hard work because my eyes would swim, so the bible was hard. I didn't know what to pray for, and church made me cry. But this spoke to me:
1 How long, LORD? Will you forget me forever?
How long will you hide your face from me?
2 How long must I wrestle with my thoughts
and day after day have sorrow in my heart?
How long will my enemy triumph over me?
3 Look on me and answer, LORD my God.
Give light to my eyes, or I will sleep in death,
4 and my enemy will say, “I have overcome him,”
and my foes will rejoice when I fall.
5 But I trust in your unfailing love;
my heart rejoices in your salvation.
6 I will sing the LORD’s praise,
for he has been good to me.
Through the fog of darkness in my mind I knew that God understood how I felt. Someone in the bible had felt the same way once and so all I had to do was keep going and trust in Him if I could.
Singing the Lord's praise can look very different depending on where you are at. For me at that point, singing God's praise meant getting up in the morning. Getting dressed, getting out of the house. It meant eating and drinking, it meant making it through the next week until I saw my counsellor again. That was all I could do, and the choice to do that at all was, I think, worshipful.
We can't always do a lot - physically, mentally, financially we are limited. I think that what matters is that we do the most, the best that we can in praise of God.
Amen.
Sunday 23 January 2011
Jars of clay
Today I went to the Churches Together Service for Unity held at my church. There were about 50 people there, I was one of the youngest by about 20 years. We sang some nice songs, and heard some news of what was going on in the area. One man shared about the symbol of the churches together, which shows an arch of little people all different colours. He said they were a rainbow, and that our different colours (gifts, talents etc) come together to make the pure white of Jesus. Everybody nodded sagely at this lovely illustration, what a nice idea. The whole thing was nice: we laughed politely at the jokes; we talked politely over tea and biscuits; we sang "We are an Army of ordinary people" politely. It was all very christian.
We are the Church - Christ's bride, The Body that operates in this world to bring the gospel to all nations. God's Plan A. That is a concept that is far from polite, or nice. It is mindblowing, shocking, overwhelming, incredible and terrifyingly exciting. I don't know about you, but I am not sure I would choose myself for Plan A anything. And certainly not for something as important as eternity. Because that's what we are talking about here: eternity, creation, Creator, death, Love, life - the biggies.
But there it is. God has sent us, called us to tell all the nations of his love for them, his incredible overwhelming love for all people. In 2 Corinthians 4 Paul considers this responsibility and the importance of "setting forth the truth plainly" when we speak of God's love.
This truth that we are speaking of, showing through our actions and through our smiling faces is the most important truth that has ever been: God, who made the world, loves YOU.
And God's communication plan is the church. Us lot. The man who sings loudly and out of tune at the back; the ladies in wheelchairs; the teenagers who wear hoodies and grunt; the exhausted mothers on the school run; the teachers, the nurses, the hardworking office bods sitting at their desks for 8 hours a day. This is the hope for the nations - us lot. I don't know about you, but I'm not sure this is the best plan...
But there is good, no great news! 2 Corinthians 4 reminds us that "We have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us. 8 We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; 9 persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed. 10 We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body.
This good news we have within us to share has "all surpassing power" that is God's power not ours - so we might only be normal humans, with issues, problems, flaws and faults but God knows that, and has given us all we need to do this task. Through us God speaks to people, he helps people, he moves into people's lives and changes them.
The news that we shared today at the churches together was about just that: the Broomfields Youth Project where hundreds of young people come along every friday night to play football, watch movies, pray and be prayed for and talk to people about God. It's made a radical impact on the ASBO statistics in the local area, and young people are hearing - for the first time in some cases - that there is a God who LOVES THEM! Hallelujah! The work of God, through the agent of His Church is changing our community and changing people's lives forever. How is that nice and polite? It isn't it's amazing, it's wonderful, it's newsworthy!
Our job, as jars of clay, is to reflect out to our community the "all-surpassing glory" that is within us - this incredible news of God's love. How can you do that? What does that look like in your life?
What did it look like for Jesus? For Jesus, showing the world how much God loves it required death. On a cross, in agony and alone. What might God be asking us to do to show people how much God loves them? How can this Jar of Clay serve you God? How can I show your glory to the world? How can you? How can we all? And when we do, it might not be polite, or nice, or low-key. It will be life changing, scarey, different, and fantastic because God is in it, right at the heart of it, shaking things up through His Church.
Amen.
We are the Church - Christ's bride, The Body that operates in this world to bring the gospel to all nations. God's Plan A. That is a concept that is far from polite, or nice. It is mindblowing, shocking, overwhelming, incredible and terrifyingly exciting. I don't know about you, but I am not sure I would choose myself for Plan A anything. And certainly not for something as important as eternity. Because that's what we are talking about here: eternity, creation, Creator, death, Love, life - the biggies.
But there it is. God has sent us, called us to tell all the nations of his love for them, his incredible overwhelming love for all people. In 2 Corinthians 4 Paul considers this responsibility and the importance of "setting forth the truth plainly" when we speak of God's love.
This truth that we are speaking of, showing through our actions and through our smiling faces is the most important truth that has ever been: God, who made the world, loves YOU.
And God's communication plan is the church. Us lot. The man who sings loudly and out of tune at the back; the ladies in wheelchairs; the teenagers who wear hoodies and grunt; the exhausted mothers on the school run; the teachers, the nurses, the hardworking office bods sitting at their desks for 8 hours a day. This is the hope for the nations - us lot. I don't know about you, but I'm not sure this is the best plan...
But there is good, no great news! 2 Corinthians 4 reminds us that "We have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us. 8 We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; 9 persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed. 10 We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body.
This good news we have within us to share has "all surpassing power" that is God's power not ours - so we might only be normal humans, with issues, problems, flaws and faults but God knows that, and has given us all we need to do this task. Through us God speaks to people, he helps people, he moves into people's lives and changes them.
The news that we shared today at the churches together was about just that: the Broomfields Youth Project where hundreds of young people come along every friday night to play football, watch movies, pray and be prayed for and talk to people about God. It's made a radical impact on the ASBO statistics in the local area, and young people are hearing - for the first time in some cases - that there is a God who LOVES THEM! Hallelujah! The work of God, through the agent of His Church is changing our community and changing people's lives forever. How is that nice and polite? It isn't it's amazing, it's wonderful, it's newsworthy!
Our job, as jars of clay, is to reflect out to our community the "all-surpassing glory" that is within us - this incredible news of God's love. How can you do that? What does that look like in your life?
What did it look like for Jesus? For Jesus, showing the world how much God loves it required death. On a cross, in agony and alone. What might God be asking us to do to show people how much God loves them? How can this Jar of Clay serve you God? How can I show your glory to the world? How can you? How can we all? And when we do, it might not be polite, or nice, or low-key. It will be life changing, scarey, different, and fantastic because God is in it, right at the heart of it, shaking things up through His Church.
Amen.
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