Class divides and Church, Part 4

Having looked at some of the reasons why our churches might be middle class or certainly more accessible to the middle class, the question is how do we change that?  I want to tentatively suggest some ways that might be helpful.

Develop a vision of a classless (gospel) church.  As you read Acts you can't help but be struck by the believers all encompassing vision of who both the gospel and church was for.  We need to do the same, to develop and cast a vision of a truly classless church.  We need to challenge the unwritten rules of church, to challenge the assumption that middle class values are gospel values, and preach a better, more biblical vision to our churches.

Perhaps churches ought to think about selling existing buildings and moving church to working class areas. Encouraging those who are willing to relocate too but asking the more middle class to commute on Sundays.  Because the middle classes operate by network not neighbourhood we can reach the middle class from a working class base location, we cannot do it the other way round.

We need to think about restructuring church so that all can access everything (e.g. home groups, things that cost, transport).  We need to make preaching accessible to all by painting pictures,  telling stories and making practical concrete applications not just preaching abstract ideas.  We need to make Sunday school a place where we teach to those with varied learning styles, where we disciple, invest in and pastor young people from difficult backgrounds.  We need to share meals not in homes but as a fellowship all together where everyone is welcome and where a range of food is available.

We need to ensure that as churches we value the skills of everyone not just those who are good with words. How can church enable those with practical gifts to serve?  How can it make the most of the God given practical skills those from working class occupations have.

We must recognise that right now is a time of unprecedented opportunity for middle class churches to reach the working class and deprived areas of the UK. Cuts have left these areas in greater need than ever, largely because they are easy targets. These communities have no voice and no connections to protest the loss of a children's centre or youth club or community resource, we can be their voice and serve and lead them to Christ. There is a great gospel opportunity and need to serve in working class areas without charging, providing services and support.  Not riding in as the white knights who will do the rescuing but getting alongside the community to empower it and enable it to flourish and develop.

But maybe that all feels a bit too extreme.  Sell buildings, relocate and so on.  Well there is another way there are churches already working in such areas but as you can imagine the needs always outweigh the resources to meet them.  As you read Acts you find wealthy churches giving generously to meet the needs of others.  Could our wealthier more middle class churches partner with a church in a working class or deprived area?  Could it part fund a worker there?  Could it encourage short term missions teams to help run holiday clubs, staff CAP centres and so on?  Could it partner in the gospel by praying regularly for such a church?

Class Divides and Church, Part 3

Yesterday we looked at a few possible reasons why church in the UK is perceived as and appeals to middle class people, today I want to suggest some more.

Middle class people generally value objectivity and rationality.  Our sermons reflect that tendency, partially because that is what our hearers value but also because that is the background of many pastors and preachers and that is certainly the way they are taught to preach.  However, people from working class areas judge authenticity by passionate engagement with truth rather than by detached logic.  It is not that they are illogical but rather that they want to see someone who passionate believes in what they are saying.  Discussion about truth will be passionate and at times heated in working class environments and that is not a sign of people falling out, or not listening to one another, it is them passionately sharing the truth and engaging with it.

Middle class people, and therefore, the vast majority of churches are ‘respectable’ and not forthright.   There are certain unwritten assumed rules about how we will interact, what we will speak about, how we will answer the question 'How are you?'  For those from working class background such interactions may be perceived as unreal or fake, because life just isn't like that.  We need instead to honestly reflect and lament the reality of living in a broken world in our service and in our conversation, and talk openly about the hope and transformation the gospel brings in those.

Our conversation is also another area where there is a stark contrast in approach to relationships.  Questioning is middle class, we ask one another how our weeks have been, how the family is, and so on in a series of questions.  However for someone who is working class that can seem like an inquisition, as if we are on the hunt for something, as if we don't believe them and are looking to catch them out.  By contrast in working class communities they communicate via storytelling, recounting their day, or an incident while the other listens before then sharing their stories.  If we want as churches to have a church that is cross classes we need to learn to story tell as well as ask and answer questions.

An issue I had been unaware of until we moved Grace Church to meet in Hayfield is the difference in the attitude towards use of homes.  Those churches of middle class background tend to utilise homes lots, we meet there for home groups, for leaders meetings, we rightly use it for hospitality etc...  And that is right.  However, that can also be barrier to those from the working class for whom entering someones home is hard.  We need as churches who want to be cross class to be finding ways of meeting people where they are at and where they find listening to the gospel comfortable, as well as gradually easing people into hospitality and making them feel comfortable with it.

The Bible assumes churches will be bridging divides, reaching groups unlike themselves, being multicultural and multi-class united around the gospel (see Acts 6, 1 Corinthians 11, James 2).  The Bible assumes churches will bridge economic and class divides, not that we will be planting separate churches in such areas for such people but church that bridge the divides.  So if we aren't, are we really gospel churches?  Is this our Jew Gentile issue, where just as the early church and its leaders had to be confronted and challenged to move beyond their comfort and their prejudices we do too? 

Class Divides and Church, Part 2

We need to stop and ask the question why are our churches so middle class in nature?  Here are some the contributory factors:

Our church are situated (planted) in middle class areas, or are in working class areas but are commuter churches.  Many of the churches situated in working class and deprived areas are struggling or have closed and been sold for other uses.  Many new plants are started in middle class areas because they are the people we know and the need we see because they are part of our network. And often those churches that are in working class or deprived areas are still middle class churches where people drive into the church building because that historically is where they meet but few if any live within walking distance of the church.

We operate in networks through work, education or hobbies which span a town or city or wider afield. The working class, by contrast, operate in neighbourhoods.  This means that middle class christians have little contact with those from working class or deprived backgrounds.  We spend our days with those in our work places our communities and our networks.  We will rarely if ever meet someone from a working class area within them partly because of a lack of social mobility but also because they live life based around the neighbourhood.  That means if we want to reach such areas and communities we need to live in them and serve in them and commit to them.

We put on events with middle class appeal.  Think about the last 3 evangelistic events your church has run and my hunch is that they would be for people like those already in the church.  In other words we put on events that appeal to people like us, therefore limiting their appeal to those different from us.

Because churches aren't in or connected to working class and deprived communities our Churches don’t play key roles in working class areas.  This means working class and deprived people cannot see the gospel tangibly lived out in front of them.

We have a class prejudice (we like/value people like us).  Everyone of us suffers from this bias, we valued those most like us, we naturally find them easier to relate with and therefore have fewer issues and conflicts and misunderstandings.  Until we recognise this and face up to it not just individually but corporately as churches large swathes of Britain will remain unreached.

We wrongly assume middle class values are gospel values.  In Tim Chester's Unreached there is a helpful table which provides a list of hidden class rules which determine how each class operates.  The tragedy is that some of these we have confused in our churches with gospel values.  Therefore what we preach is sometimes a mishmash of middle class values masquerading as gospel values.  This is a huge topic which I've blogged on before and will come back to again.  But let me give one quick example - in the application to read the Bible - we assume that a middle class value - reading/formal education - is a gospel value.  Actually we would be better to talk of listening to and obeying the Bible because that is a more biblical application.  The bible looks not for us to read God's word, but to hear God's word and put it into practise in tangible ways.  Speaking of it and applying it in such a way is more working class than middle class.

Easter Encouragements

It's nearly a year since we moved where we meet as a church to Hayfield Lane Primary School.  It has not been at times an easy year, change is never easy as a church and it is often costly.  The area we have moved to is not an easy area to do church in, there is lots of hostility to 'church' because of deep seated events in the past and wrong perceptions of what church is and who can and can't go.  At times the last year has been among the hardest I have ever known in ministry.

Yet Sunday was one of my favourite Sundays in ministry and not just because it was Easter Sunday but because of the evidence that gradual progress is being made for the gospel in the community we love.  It was with a sense of nervousness and hope that we set church out on Sunday morning for about 80.  The toddler group and coffee morning we have started have begun to see us reach a very needy community and provide opportunities for us to love those around us.  Football club has helped us begin to get to know some of the dads of families around about us.  And as we had invited people quite a few had said they would come.

Imagine our joy when as the service started we had nearly 30 visitors from the community we believe God has called us to, and we were putting out extra chairs.  God had answered all our prayers and broken down some of the barriers people had to coming to church.  I'd love to be able to tell of 30 people repenting and turning to Jesus but that hasn't happened yet.  But what we did see was people hearing the gospel for the first time, people experiencing a church which loved them and their children and an opportunity to connect church with community.

God was so good and gracious to us in bringing people to hear the gospel, in the service of church members who loved and welcomed others very different from them, in the bravery of one giving her testimony, in the hard work of others to BBQ and plan egg hunts, and in God's provision of good weather.  We are praying that God would continue to work to water gospel seeds so these people come to faith.

When preaching on the one another's isn't enough!

We have all heard sermons on the one another's of the New Testament - bear with, love, and so on.  My hunch is we have all heard more than one of those.  yet let's be honest it so often remains a theoretical rather than a practical reality.  We've all heard talks on every member ministry.  We know and we know our pastors know we know that they are not paid to do ministry but to equip us to do ministry.  But so often we still sit back and wait for someone else to do it.

So what do we do when preaching on the one another's isn't enough?  What do we do when people ascent to the idea of enquiring after one another's spiritual well being but the ascent never gets traction in the conversations they have with one another.

We have to model it.  Pastors, elders, deacons must not be Pharisees and tell the church to do something they are not doing.  We have a responsibility to be modelling one another-ness.  Our people should realise that we will be asking them how they are?  How they are finding prayer at the moment, where the gospel is changing them, what sin they are battling with, who we can pray for them to bear with?  And we will be sharing with them how we are doing too (nothing like a leader confessing their struggle and their joys to ensure we aren't put on a pedestal).  Not once a year but regularly, if not weekly then certainly monthly.  It helps to get this started if as a leadership team you take a chunk of your monthly meeting to ask those questions of each other and pray about the responses.

And if they see us modelling this pastoral care, this spiritual oversight just maybe it will become the norm.  But we also need to give other opportunities, more formal opportunities, so that we facilitating this.  What about in the prayer meeting, how about having people break of into twos or threes and share the answer to those questions with each other?  We did it last night and it created a real buzz, not for the first time and it certainly won't be the last.  How about in Gospel or Home Groups?  Could you start with small groups prayer for one another?

At the end of the day this will only become to norm if we make it the norm, if we as leaders model its norm-ness.  And just imagine the impact more people praying for one another, rejoicing with one another, mourning with one another.  More people coming open and aware of their needs and joys to the word of God on a Sunday morning.  More people readily able to discuss and apply the Gospel to one another's lives in real tangible ways.  More loving open honest community and communication.  And all for getting over a little social awkwardness!

Loving the Church as God Does: A Loving Family (1 John 4:7-12)

Here are the notes and discussion questions from yesterday:

What are the blockers that stop us loving one another?

1 John is written to a church riddled with doubts. False teachers have been active (2:26) teaching and leading people to leave the church and follow them. Leaving the rest of the church confused and bewildered. Are we saved or not? Do we have the truth or not? Did Jesus come, was he the Messiah, was he God made flesh? How do we know if we are saved or not? What does following Jesus look like? What should we believe? What does that look like lived out? Do Christians sin? Does it matter? How should we react when we do? What should a church look like?

John writes to clear up confusion and strengthen the weak and battered. He explains that false teachers were always coming, that naturally light and darkness cannot co-exist together so those influenced by false teachers left the church. He explains that following Jesus means living distinctively from the world, being different. And as John strengths the weak, comforts the doubting, and teaches the confused. The truth of the gospel isn’t rebuilding individual it is actively rebuilding a community.

As he does so we see some distinctive marks of the Church, not just this church but every church, our Church. A church that is distinctive from the culture around it, a church which is built on knowing Jesus as the Messiah and having experienced God’s love in Jesus by the Spirit loves one another. Truth and love are the two pillars upon which John seeks to rebuild this church. Truth about who Jesus is and how that calls us to live alive in the truth. And love for others seen in 1001 little everyday actions and reactions.

We are going to focus tonight on love, how we as a church are called to love each other and how we can grow in this love, and express this love to others.

Twice in these verses (7, 11)John calls the church to love one another. But notice something he isn’t calling them to do something he isn’t. How does he start both verses? “Dear friends,” the word he actually uses means dearly loved, or beloved. John isn’t saying you need to do it, John writes to a people he loves to encourage them to love one another just as he loves them. John models this love. It’s one of the contrasts the Bible makes again and again between false teachers who don’t love anyone but themselves and are out for what they can get and genuine bible teachers who love and serve as Christ did.

But we need to stop and ask what is this love? When we talk about love we instantly filter it through social lenses – family love, romantic love and so on. What love is this?

The word used comes from the root word ‘agape’, and it’s a distinctly Christian love. It is the love which God has for his Son and his people which is active, and it’s the love which God’s people return to him and show to one another. It isn’t an emotion, though it isn’t emotional less. But it isn’t a love that depends upon how we feel, it’s not to be a love flickers on and off depending on how I feel. It is a love which is determined, decisive, active and takes the initiative.

But how do we love like that? John begins by showing the church and us how we are loved.

See how you are loved
John doesn’t tell us to love and then explain the consequences if we fail to. What John does is tell us to love and then show us how loved we have been. In effect he’s trying to light a fire and uses two sources of fuel to set our hearts on fire with love.

a. God loved us(7-8)
This sort of love is distinctive and comes from God. God is love, God in Trinity has always loved, there has never been a time when God did not love, when the Father didn’t love the Son and the Spirit, and the Son love the Father and the Spirit, and the Spirit love the Father and the Son. God has always loved from eternity past to eternity future, love lies at the very core of his being, it is perfect it delights in the truth, in justice, in righteousness, in relationship.

And wanting to share that love and joy is what led Father, Son and Spirit to act in creation. God isn’t stingy, God didn’t need us to make himself complete, or because he wanted to be loved a little more. God is love and so he created to share love and so that he could give away of himself, to invite us to share in his love, to taste it, to enjoy it, and pass it on.

Do you see how you are loved! God is love! And we are able to love others this way because we know this love because we know God. In fact says John if we don’t love its the key indicator that we don’t love God, because you can’t know God and not know love. If you think you know God and yet don’t love then you only know a God of your imagination! Not the God of Trinity, of the bible, of love.

b. God’s love displayed (9-10)
But God doesn’t just write his love in creation around us and leave us to discover it for ourselves. God shows his love in God the one and only Son becoming human, coming into the world. God’s love is seen in the Father sending, and the Son coming, and the Spirit working as Jesus draws that first breath filling his lungs, as he cries when he experienced pain and sickness, when he wept as his heart broke at death, sickness, illness, rejection, fear. Every moment of Jesus life is God’s shout of God’s love.

And then (10) God the Son, back torn and bloodied, rejected, hated, spit dribbling down his head and beard mixing with blood and dust, hangs on a cross. By the Spirit offering himself to his Father crying out “Father forgive them, for they know not what they do.” Taking our sin, making us right with God, showing us his love not as some grand romantic gesture but as the most costly, but necessary, rescue ever.

God’s love is concrete, it’s his character, and is displayed in history, you can’t ever doubt it for long, at the cross God has shown once and for all decisively that he loves and the length to which his love would go. The empty cross strands as an eternal declaration of God’s love. That’s why when someone is struggling to see that God loves for them we supremely need to teach them the gospel, help them rediscover the wonder of the cross and the empty tomb for themselves, just as John does here.

John writes to this bruised and battered, confused and conflicted church and says you are loved. Don’t doubt it, look at God and his character, look at the cross. Feed, and feast on the love of God.

The most amazing thing of all: Called to love as God loves (7,11,12)
Having piled the fuel on the fire, or set up the banqueting table for this church to feast on. John shows them and us perhaps the most amazing thing of all. When the church meets together it’s never ordinary, it is never mundane, but always extraordinary. (12) “No-one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.”

Isn’t that a mind boggling statement? If we love each other as God has loved us two things happen; God is made visible through us to the world and his love is perfected and completed in us together. As we love one another like this, as we forgive, serve, and give of ourselves for others, as we live self-sacrificially, graciously, mercifully the unseen God lives in us and is seen.

As we love one another in the local church it’s as if the circuit board of God’s love is made complete and the neon lights can come on displaying God’s love to the world and beyond. And the church was designed by God for just that to happen, God’s love reaches its goal as united in the truth of the gospel and filled by the Spirit we love each other like this.

But notice that it is conditional, “if we love like this...” It is possible to meet together and fall short of this. In fact in a church bruised and battered, feeling raw and sore then this is a real challenge isn’t it? There’s George whose best friend has left the church having been lead away by false teaching, unsure if he wants to open up to run the risk of getting that hurt again. There’s Sam who feels so guilty that everyone knows she nearly lost her faith and was almost led away and isn’t sure she wants to open up in case she is judged and rejected. There’s the Smith family who actually think they may just be better off doing family devotions everyday than being with this church of basket cases, there is just too much rawness, won’t it just be too hard love such broken people. And finally, John who is unsure whether to stay because there are so many doctrinal truths that need the foundations relaying, so much confusion, wouldn’t he be better somewhere else?

But John says see how, just as you are, you are loved, just feast on the love God has for you, kneel again in amazement at the cross, know that God loves you and cares for you. Know that he isn’t done with you. Be amazed, have your heart warmed and fed by the sheer scale, cost and majesty of God’s love and out of the overflow you will love others.

So how do we love like this?
a. See God rightly – we must fight in a culture that sees God as killjoy, as boring, as harsh and judgemental, or senile and irrelevant, to see God as he really is. We must fight in a national church context where there is so much legalism and so many misunderstandings about God’s holiness and love to know God as he really is. If we don’t see and know God as loving we won’t joyfully live and love others, because God will never be more than a tyrant and his love will never thrill and warm and overfill our hearts.

In CS Lewis’ Screwtape Letters a senior demon writes to a junior demon: “One must face the fact that all the talk about his [God’s] love for man and His service being perfect freedom, is not mere propaganda, but an appalling truth. He really does want to fill the universe with lots of loathsome little replica’s of Himself – creatures, whose life, on its miniature scale, will be qualitatively like his own, not because he has absorbed them but because their will freely conform to His. We want cattle who can finally become food; He wants servants who can finally become sons. We want to suck in, He wants to give out. We are empty and would be filled; He is full and flows over.”

That’s why the bible must be taught in a way that leads us back again and again to the truth of the gospel.

b. We can’t manufacture this love only catch it – This is God’s love spilling out of our hearts to others, that means we can’t simply whip ourselves up to love like this. Instead as we feed on the love of God for us we will then be enabled to love others. As we understand how unlovely we were and yet how loved, how we broke God’s heart and yet he healed ours we will be able to love and forgive others even when they have broken our hearts. And it is maximising the flow of this gospel of grace in the church that will enable us to love.

c. This is a community love – You can’t love yourself like this, you can only love others like this. That means we need to commit to be together, not just in the good times but the hard. We need others to love actively, to serve, to grow alongside of, who will love us enough to want to see Christ formed in us as a community together.

Discussion Questions:
What does not loving others say about us?  How can we help one another love?

Think really practically about our context, how can we better love one another?

Loving the Church as God does: One Body (1 Cor 12:12-26)

Here are the notes from last nights LightHouse:

Is church an optional extra, a necessary evil, or something else (if so what) and why?

Our generation has two huge problems in our thinking about church, both are values we absorb from our culture; individualism and uniformity. We’re taught to be individuals from a young age, to be independent and stand on our own two feet. But we also prize uniformity, we mix most often with people who are like us in age, education, back ground, life stage, thinking, approach and so on. Why? Because it is easier, less effort, there are fewer misunderstandings and problems with communication, more shared values and assumptions, less need to forgive and to work hard to love.
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The problem is that they limit our joy in the gospel and stop us getting God’s intention for us as his church. Part of the aim of this series is to look at God’s view of what the church is, not the church universal but our local church, Grace Church. To have our eyes lifted to see what God says we’re doing as we do life together centred on the gospel. God creates the church as an essential for our good and joy in him and to declare and bring him glory.

Both individualism and uniformity pervert God’s design for church and leave us short changed. If we find ourselves frustrated and longing for more from church we need to look at our hearts and thinking first and ask if the problem is the music or the structure or the programme or if it is in us. Because individualism will ensure we keep people at arm’s length, not revealing our hearts, or asking people to speak the gospel to us either as encouragement or rebuke, not committing to community, it will leave us with a shallow experience of church as event. And a desire for uniformity will lead to us to form cliques and stage/age/outlook groups and rob us of true joy in the gospel and the growth in love that brings.

In effect that means we pervert the glory of God’s design and purpose of the church. We take what was a masterpiece and smear paint over it, like a clumsy restoration artist who tries to improve the perfect picture, but in so doing simply adds layers of paint that make it hard to see the masters true brushstrokes.

As we turn to Corinthians there is a danger in thinking that it was ok for the early church, they had the Apostles, they had it easy compared to us, the early churches were the ideal, if only we were more like them. Corinth was a church divided by individualism and the cult of uniformity. In Ch1 they’re divided over leaders, Ch10-11 over whether they can or can’t eat food sacrificed to idols, Ch11 over wealth and the Lord’s Supper, and Ch11/12 over their use of spiritual gifts. Individualism ruled in Corinth and led to a church divided, full of cliques based on have/have not, gifted/less gifted. Paul writes to correct this wrong culturally infected view of church.

It helps us see God’s wonderful vision for church, but also challenges us about how we do church.

God’s Church in God’s image
Paul uses the image of a body with his stress being on the oneness of the body in its diversity. (12)Our physical body is composed of different parts with different roles but all united and working together as one body, so it is with the church, Christ’s body. Straight away Paul lifts our eyes up from the physical and the mundane, from the chairs that need putting out, the piano, the Sunday School, the meeting to the spiritual reality and gives us God’s view of church. The church not just universal but local is Christ’s body.

But there is more, the church is united not by our decision but by the Holy Spirit(13), as we are baptised with the Holy Spirit at conversion and filled with the Holy Spirit. And that primarily defines our identity; we’re now Spirit filled members of Christ’s body not Jews or Gentiles, slave or free, and you could add poor or rich, middle class or working class, deprived or privileged, southern or northern, educated or not. The Spirit unites the many different parts of the body and works to keep us united as one body.

And (18, 24)God has placed the parts in the body together. God builds his church, God unites and calls together his people who are filled with the Spirit to form Christ’s body. That gives the church tremendous dignity.

We can look at church and feel it’s insignificant, we see what it’s missing; e.g. worship group, evangelist, leaders and so on... To keep with the body image we look and think we’re missing a hand, or afoot, or an eye, or a kidney. But God has placed our local church body together. And practically that ought to cause us to hold our tongues, there’s a danger that in listing churches short comings we criticise God, unthinkingly accusing him of failing to build the church right as if we could do it better.

It is arrogant to think we know better than God. So how do we deal with it when we feel there’s something missing in church? Pray about it, firstly looking into our hearts to see if uniformity and individualism are driving our thinking, do we just want church full of people like us, or church as we’d like it? We also need to thank God for what he’s put together, and then bring him our concern and leave it with him, not keep on about it or talk the church down to others. We mustn’t let it make us devalue what God has put together.

Diverse but not Divided (15-20)
The image painted in (15-17) has a hint of Frankenstein or Monsters Inc about it, with the whole body as an eye or ear. (18-20)We see the point of that illustration, God has put the church together with all its different gifts and characters and he has made us one. God hasn’t taken a divine iron to the church and ironed out all the differences, he hasn’t made everyone the same, but in the gospel by the Spirit he has made the many diverse parts into one body. That’s the glory of the Church, as we look round and see people who are different to us we must praise God for the power and wonder of the gospel.

One of the problems in Corinth was of people feeling inferior and unnecessary, they thought of themselves as not as gifted, or able, or as up-front and therefore less necessary. The danger is that leads them to want to be something they were not, and it distorts the body and means it doesn’t function properly.

That attitude is alive and well in church today, and it can be made worse by overemphasising one gift over another, one way of serving over others. It can lead to an inferiority complex which means people not gifted one way discount their gifting and become inactive, or even feeling it isn’t the church for me and leaving.

Particularly in our platform obsessed culture I think we tend to prize more highly positions of leadership and those that put you at the front of church, to the detriment of other gifts. As a church we must fight this culture, we must value and encourage everyone to serve with their gifts, providing opportunities and equipping as we do so that God’s church is seen in all its glory, and so that the church grows as a body, diverse but not divided.

United but not Uniform(21-26)
The other threat to the church is a desire for uniformity, for everyone to be like us. It evidences itself in cliques and groups forming in church which in are really about self love – as we love those who are like us we’re really loving ourselves – which in turn greats divisions and produce superior attitudes. We mustn’t let that happen because it rips, tears and divides God’s church. That superiority is seen (21)as the head looks down and says to the feet I don’t need you. That’s impossible says Paul, it can’t do that. There is no such thing as an appendix in the church, there is nothing our church body can manage without.

The church will be composed of stronger and weaker, more visible and less visible, protected and protector, but each part needs the other. And (24)God has designed it that way on purpose, that’s part of his plan for the church, why? (25)“so that there should be no division but that its parts should have equal concern for each other.” The church as each diverse part cares for each other diverse part is not divided but united, it displays the love of our good God.

Notice that the different parts have equal concern, we see what that looks like (26)“If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honoured, every part rejoices with it.” It is not the job of a few to care for the many, it is the job of all the body. It is not up to the hands to look after each other, or the toes to care for one another. Everyone in the body is to care for everyone in the body. We need to look honestly at our practical outworking of this – who in the church am I caring for, who am I not? Whose needs do I know instantly and who do I not know what to pray for, let alone how to care for them? Am I only caring for those like me or who I already know well?

One of the ways we try to help this happen is through Gospel Groups, but they can also work against this, if we only care for those people in our group, if we only talk to those people on Sunday or only look out for them during the week.

When someone in church is suffering, grieving, struggling we should all feel it with them, compassion marks out the church and leads to practical action – we pop round, take a meal, take them out for coffee, listen, send a card, invite them over, pray with and for them. When someone disappears from church we ring them, or get in contact to see how they are and ask what we can pray for.

When someone is honoured we don’t envy them or their gifting but rejoice with them because God has gifted them for our good and the glory of his church.

Independence and uniformity will destroy, dislocate and dismember the body. The church is God’s glorious creation put together by him, united in the Spirit and with Christ as its head displaying his love, mercy, goodness and grace to a watching universe.

What a privilege to be called to be part of it, with the role God has assigned us with the gifts he has assigned us! What a tragedy if we allow individualism or anything else to create an attitude of superiority or inferiority that damages the body.

Discussion:
1.    How should we deal with a sense of dissatisfaction with, or longing for more from, church?

 

2.    How can we encourage and facilitate equal concern for one another?  What barriers are there to this and how do we overcome them?

Why our little gospel gap becomes a yawning chasm

Most of us as Christians live with a yawning chasm in our thinking which show itself in small fractures and gaps.  We know how the gospel has changed our past as we look back to our conversion, we know that it secures our future and we look forward (more or less) to Christ's return.  But we are a bit unsure how it affects the here and now, we are unsure what it looks like for the kingdom to be now and not yet.  We know it means we gather as believers and that gives us a small picture of what the realised kingdom will be like, but how else is it to affect the here and now?  What does or should the gospel mean for my approach to work, study, love, marriage, sex, shopping habits, self esteem?  How does the gospel shape and drive how I feel about societies issues; poverty, sexualisation, illiteracy, corruption, abuse, violence, rape, or crime?

One of the biggest causes of that gap is the pressure we are constantly under to divide our life into private and public.  We are pressurised and moulded by our society to keep our faith private.  And that pressure has caused us to reshape our thinking to avoid breaking that unwritten cultural rule, to avoid making people feel awkward by being opening Christian.  When was the last time we spoke during such a discussion in such a way that we winsomely, lovingly, relevantly but honestly answered in such a way that declared Jesus to be Lord.  In fact when did we last preach that way, sometimes we find ourselves almost hesitant to preach it in church, or say it to our brothers and sisters in Christ let alone outside the church.

Pietism has set in, not a good pietism, which is rightly about devoting time to getting to know good personally, but a twisted, evil, joy sucking life robbing pietism, that refuses to let the gospel be spoken in public.  But if the gospel doesn't connect with life then it is not the gospel of the risen reigning Lord of all Jesus Christ.  We shouldn't be surprised that as we have privatised our faith it is seen as being less and less relevant because that is exactly what we are making it.

How do we reverse this trend?  We need to begin discussing these things, we need to expose how this pressure has moulded our thinking, help one another see how that pressure has moulded and shaped and silenced our words and actions.  We need leaders to start speaking boldly inside the church the implications of the gospel for the now issues in our society, to help us see that there is no gap only the gospel, so that we know how to articulate them outside.  And we need to be people of action, in the past the church didn't just preach about the social ills but remedied them with compassionate action as it served the poor, abolished slavery, provided education, and lived out the grace, love and compassion of its head, Jesus Christ.

What makes us distinctive?

Its that time of year when we begin to plan for the next year.  What should we do?  What did we do that went well and why did it go well?  What didn't go so well and why?  What opportunities did we miss?  What new opportunities are there?

But there is a danger in that treadmill mentality we never look up and think big scale; what makes us as God's people distinctive?

It is not the quality of events we put on it is that we are God's people united by the gospel and given a message to live out and proclaim to a watching (often hostile) world around us.

So the question is not what events ought we to put on, but how can we enable people to best see what makes us distinctive?  How can we show them the new community which is a result of reconciliation to God in Christ and to one another?

This doesn't mean that events are wrong, but it must influence what events we put on.  Anything we do will not rival 'entertainment' available elsewhere, it will not be as slick as a music gig, or as epic in scale as a Hollywood blockbuster.  Instead our events should enable people to see the wonder of the gospel and the new community it creates.