Have
you ever noticed how growth and change don’t happen evenly? Often things seem
to be plodding along with the status quo and then wallop, everything changes. Culture
changes a bit like this, like a growing teenager it creaks, and then bang
something new emerges. Hence the 60’s brought pop culture and now I think more
cultural change is being birthed around us. Certainly this is the case for the
church. In reality not much changed in churches for a few generations… we sing
slightly different songs perhaps but the basics were much the same. We were also a Christian country with good albeit
sometimes suspicious, relations between different denominations. Most people
knew the Christian story and were at worst polite towards us. Then suddenly we
are surrounded by militant atheists, the government is talking about regulating
our “radical” Sunday schools and no one seems to have the first clue about what
Christianity really means. In effect I am saying to you that Christendom, where
the church had a cosy and well understood relationship with the society around
us has died, or at very least is dying! There is no longer a sense that because
you are a Christian and I am a fully accredited church minister we should be
afforded any particular respect or status. The title Reverend almost never
appears on any forms anymore!
Personally
I am delighted that the change has finally come. I prefer the honesty of where
we are now to the cynicism of a society that for all my life time at least has
been pretending to be Christian. The question for us is how we should respond?
Loads of Christians have responded very simply. They have decided that they will at best
hibernate their faith and just get on with the world. One key reason for this
that I have heard is summed up in the phrase: ‘the church doesn’t make sense to
me anymore.’ Funny thing is, I agree. Much of the church that I encounter
simply makes no sense. The reason for this is that we have been tricked into
becoming indistinct from the world. By which I don’t mean all of our front
rooms are now stocked with pews and slightly dampening heating systems. I mean
we have created church for consumers. You go to the shops (or online!) to buy
things to be served. You come to church to be told what to believe to be served
up, often with certainty. Church is where you sit and watch the minister or
some other ‘wise’ person tell you how or what you should believe, or worse
still tell you that you are alright while the rest of the world is all wrong! In
effect our whole understanding of church is pointing in the wrong direction. We
talk about going to church or think about somehow doing the church things. When
in reality we need a big wakeup call to remind us that we are the church. God
wants our lives to be the living, outward expression of his love in the world. The
only thing that will make church relevant again is when we realise God’s love
is relevant to us and all the things we are part of.
I am hoping that the new course,
Fruitfulness on the Frontline, that we are starting this year will help us in
this transformation. My job, indeed the
place of the church as a whole body is not to encourage you to come and watch some
show, but to constantly think of ways that we can equip one another and form
one another as living expressions of God’s love wherever we find ourselves. Our
‘frontlines’, are the places and the people that we spend time with: our
families our friends, our work colleagues and our fellow volunteers or
neighbours. I am not suggesting that our task is to somehow ram some truth
about God down these poor unsuspecting folk’s throats. Rather that we should
realise that God cares about everything that we do, and wants to bring his love
and his joy and his healing into every part of life. His chosen method is to be alive in the world,
his chosen instrument is very often us! GULP!
Please don’t misunderstand me I am
not suggesting that God’s brilliant idea of forming a church in his image is irrelevant.
We need one another now more than ever. But not so that we can rejoice that we
are part of a big church! Rather so that we can really help one another to
become more distinctively like Jesus in everything we are. I suggest by way of
illustration, that it is vital to me that I worship God with all my heart. Not
because God somehow needs me to worship, although he does delight in our friendship
and relationship. Rather as I worship and love God his love refreshes my
innermost being and helps me to carry that love back out to the frontline. To
refresh, I need to be refreshed!
The Oh so very REVEREND Stephen Newell!! J
