When it works

Church is family. We had that illustrated to us this morning as we had a dedication of two youngsters and then afterwards a baptismal service of two ladies, followed by a family lunch. It was amazing to see the church full of toddlers running around standing at the front playing along to some children's songs, doing the actions to our God is a great big God and then being taught by believers who had worked hard to make the gospel accessible. It was a privilege to see our own young people some as young as 4 working hard to make those who don't normally go to church, or to our church feel at home. To watch the church family serve others.

Then to see a fantastic team effort of service as the church set up and packed up two venues, held a normal service and a separate baptism service and then catered with a cooked turkey lunch for 80+ people was amazing. It was a great example of the church at work serving one another and God so that people could invite friends and family to come and hear the gospel.

Its days like today that give us a glimpse of the church's power and place in God's plan as it works to bring his living word to the world. Praise God.

Interesting reactions

We tried something new yesterday, it is not groundbreaking but it was new for us and I was surprised by the reactions. Every Sunday two local boys football teams play on the school field of the building where we meet. Yesterday we took coffee out to the parents, not ground breaking, not stepping into the lions den, but trying to be what we are a community church. A Church that loves the community and ultimately wants to love them by sharing the gospel and our lives with them.

This was a small step in hopeful growing some relationships and gradual showing the relevance of Christianity in serving others. It is part of an overall strategy of impacting the community and we hope to make it a regular event, if not weekly then fortnightly.

The interesting thing was the reactions; most people were surprised, some tried to give us money for it (after all whenever a church does something it must need money - seemed to be the automatic thought process) others were just very grateful. I think we gave out some 40-45 cups of coffee. As we look to do it long term we hope it may see some come to out Saturday night carol concert or some of the boys to Duke of Edinburgh or it may just get some people thinking.

But the big thing that struck me was people's surprise. They were almost without exception genuinely surprised and pleased to think that a church would care for them enough to take them out a hot coffee on a rainy, cold November morning. It was as if they had never been shown the slightest bit of care by a church - this was all new!

Such a perception of the church is tragic and maybe explains why people are so resistant to the gospel. You don't listen to people who haven't showed that they care for you or that they are different. Now our challenge is to keep up this small ministry and find other ways to build on it so that we can build relationships and eventually share the great news that we love them because Jesus does and explain to them how he shows his love to them and the response such love requires.

How we view life?

Do you have a sacred secular divide? We all instantly say no, but how do you answer the following questions?

1. Have any of your work colleagues ever been into your home for a meal?
2. Have any of your work colleagues ever been into your home for a meal with friends from church?
3. How about your friends?
4. Do I talk about church, the church family, the Bible and Jesus as part of my every day conversations with my work colleagues and my friends?
5. Do you pray as regularly about your witness and issues you face at work as you do about other things?
6. In church is news from the canteen, or staff room as valued as news from the mission field?
7. How do I think of my work/daily life? Is it something I just do or is it a way of serving God?
8. Do I see myself as a missionary to my work place, gym, club?

If the answer to any of those questions is no then we have a sacred secular divide in the way we live. The Bible says that is not the way to live life. In fact in John 17 Jesus prays that his disciples would be in the world not of it. It is only as people see our faith expressed in all of life, as they get to rub shoulders with the community of faith that they will realise it is not just us, that there are lots of people who believe as we do and that will make them think about the gospel.

Authority

How did that word make you feel? According to post modern commentators on the world that we live in authority is not a feel good word. It is a negative, it is the antithesis of freedom, and freedom is the buzz word.

The big question is how does this affect those around me every minute of every day? And perhaps as pertinently if not more so how does it affect us and our churches?

We assume that we are free. Ask someone if they are free and they are most likely to say that they are, after all we live in a democracy, we can choose who to vote for, what to believe, whether to go to a religious service or not, how to bring up our children, what to watch on TV, what job to have, what hobbies to have, even what socks to wear! But actually are we really free or are those choices an illusion of freedom?

What is it that actually motivates me to do all those things? What motivates so much of it is the tyranny of approval. And that is not freedom I am enslaved to others. I wear what I wear because it is fashionable and fashion says... Or I do this because thereby I gain the approval of my peers or colleagues or family or whoever. When you actually examine our choices they are not choices made by free people. And the root of all of our choices is self, my need of approval, my need of acceptance, my need of popularity, my need to feel good about myself, my need to feel loved, valued, to feel worth it.

Now the follower of Jesus has been set free from this, but sometimes we find ourselves attracted back into living that way again however subtly. We struggle to live set free from self. But the Christian is not freed to live in a vacuum. Romans 6:18 says "You have been set free from sin and have become slaves to righteousness." We are freed from sin to live under God's rule, a rule of righteousness, of right relationship with God.

In our churches we need to reassert the authority of the word of God and teach that we are not free to live for self but to live as slaves of righteousness because only as such do we experience true freedom and life! Churches and Christians must live by revelation not experience. As David Wells says in Above all earthly powers people today are on a spiritual quest, it is personalised, individualised and eclectic. It is focused on making life happy, satisfying, fulfilled and meaningful.

The danger in the church is that we take the very real opportunity that brings and mishandle it. There is a tremendous opportunity there to explain the gospel but we must state that this is the Truth as God revealed, not a truth the we have worked out, or formulated, or have amended to feel comfortable with. We have experienced God but our experience of God is not something we determine but that is revealed in the Bible.

Postmodern society and people have been described as being 'allergic to truth claims' and we cannot surrender this idea of truth without losing the power of the gospel.

Can I trust the Bible?

In 1979 Charles Templeton wrote a book called "Act of God" in which the fictional archaeologist says this: "The church basis its claims almost entirely on the teaching of an obscure young Jew with messianic pretensions who, lets face it, didn’t make much of an impression in his lifetime. There isn’t a single word about him in secular history. Not a word. Not a mention of him by the Romans. Not so much as a reference by Josephus."

More recently Dan Brown's Da Vinci Code has made similar claims about the reliability of the Bible. As one of his characters says: "What happens if persuasive scientific evidence comes out that the church's version of the Christ story is inaccurate, and the greatest story ever told is, in fact, the greatest story ever sold."

It raises the question can I trust the Bible? A set of documents written thousands of years ago, and passed on through the ages? Surely they'll be biased or corrupted?

When it comes to ancient documents there are a number of ways of testing their reliability. Are there a significant number of copies, the more copies the more likely they are to be reliable. Are those copies accurate when compared to each other, the more similar they are the more likely they are to be genuine. What is the interval between the original and the surviving copies? The smaller the gap the more reliable the documents.

Historical The New Testament surpasses other documents we accept as fact:

The gospels also pass the tests on other key areas where documents are scrutinised for reliability.

Eyewitnesses to the events – John, Matthew, Mark is Peters account, Luke tells us he interviewed eyewitnesses.

Bias – they report the good and the bad, it reports failures as well as successes of the disciples.

These facts have led to some startlingly conclusions about the New Testament:
“The New Testament [is] unrivalled among ancient writings in the purity of its text as actually transmitted and kept in use.”
B Warfield, Introduction to Textual criticism of the New Testament.

“Those who know the facts now recognise that the New Testament must be accepted as a remarkably accurate source book.”
Clifford Wilson, Rocks, relics and Biblical reliability.

The New Testament is reliable contrary to what many say and if we want to find out about Jesus – what he did how he lived, what he taught then the Gospels are the place to go.

Heroes

Have you ever wished that you were incredibly strong, or could fly, or had some power that made you stand out? I guess most of us have that comic book fantasy at some point in our lives.
In Heroes that comic book fantasy is played out for real, as characters struggle to work out what is happening to them and why they are changing and whether there is a bigger purpose to it all.
One of the major themes throughout the series is the idea that the heroes must save New York City from an explosion that will decimate it and kill millions.

Saving the world, not just New York, is a thread that keeps re-emerging from episode to episode; it appears to be their destiny.

The series poses some interesting questions: Does the world need saving, and if so from what? And to what end, isn’t the world safe just until the next time it is in danger? What would saving the world really look like and how would you go about it?

Jesus said; “For the Son of Man came to seek and to save what was lost.” (Luke 19:10)

The tragedy of the school shooting

The YouTube killer, that’s what the newspapers are dubbing Pekka-Eric Auvinen, the young man who walked into his high school and shot dead 7 students, and the headmistress before finally turning the gun on himself. Pekka-Eric regarded himself as a ‘social Darwinist’ and on a home made video said “I, as a natural selector, will eliminate all who I see as unfit.”

Today sees Finland hold a day of national mourning for the dead with their Prime Minister calling it a “great tragedy”. One distraught relative said “This is the end of our world - the end of Finland.”

Our heart goes out to the families and relatives of those caught up in such a horrifying ordeal. An act made all the more horrifying by its perpetrator, a young man of just 18. Yet this is not an isolated incident, in April 32 were killed at Virginia Tech not to mention other teen sprees.
What would lead young men to such acts of violence? What would leave them feeling so bereft of hope and to place so little value on life?

The tragedy that has unfolded in Finland reminds us of the worlds needs seen in individuals who are hurting and bereft of hope. It reminds us that the local church is the hope of world because it is God’s mean of calling people to experience his grace. It also confronts us with the awful consequences of leaving God out of life.

The battle with the pragmatist within

Its one of the first questions people ask about anything isn't it; does it work? We are always looking for the quick fix, or if not the quick fix for something that definitely yields results and behind the question is the unspoken mantra that if it works it must be right.

But how do we take apply that to the church? Is it fair to ask if it works? And if it does, is it fair to then assume that if it works it is right?

I think it is always worth asking if it works. In fact I think its a necessary of church ministry. When the Apostles can't heal the boy in Matt 17, they want to know why. When in Acts 6 the churches ministry is off balance they ask whether it works and take the step of appointing the 7 to ensure that it does what it should do and they can do what they should be doing - praying and being witnesses. So asking if something works, evaluating it is always worth doing.

But we also need to always evaluate on the basis of what the Bible says. Are our evangelistic events being attended by peoples friends and family? What changes can we make, well we can change venue, we can change activity, we can adjust our overall strategy and look to build bridges and show the relevance of the gospel. But what we cannot do is change the gospel!!! And it can seem subtly attractive to do so, to leave out judgement, to soft soap sin, to talk of forgiveness and love, not why you need forgiveness and the danger of opposing God.

When we evaluate what we do we must not given in to the inner pragmatist who wants numbers at any cost. And its not just in evangelism. What about what we teach about divorce or any other moral issue, the Bibles teaching is not populist. Evaluation is good, in fact it is right but only as we sit under the authority of God's word as it evaluates us and our actions.