Dreaming ministry dreams for 2015

What are your dreams for 2015?  (I know I'm a bit late to the new year thing, that's what holidays do for you.)  I've been thinking about what our community needs, how the gospel could transform and minister to our community?  What are my gospel dreams for the area God has called me to serve?

Now I have two temptations here, one is to be cynical and barely dream at all, just stick to what I can do and control.  The other is to impose on a big dream my time scale, and I'm impatient and want it yesterday.

Over the last few weeks and months I've found myself dreaming about ways the gospel will transform our area.  Some of these dreams are big and long term none of them we can do in and of our own strength.

1. Creating community identity
Our area is one without an identity.  It used to be the RAF base and attached housing.  It is currently called Auckley, though local people refer to it either as Finningley or the former RAF base, or the camp.  It doesn't feel like Auckley which is a village a 10-15 minute walk away and has a totally different feel to it.

As a church one way we can serve our community is to help create a community identity.  There are things we can do to facilitate this, and we will be doing some of those - trying to get the council to carry out a Community Governance Review and rename the area Hayfield and maybe have our own Parish Council to serve the community.  Involving people from the community in serving and making decisions for the community they live in.  But we can't create community, we can try to facilitate it, but we need God to work to create community through the gospel.  By creating in our church family a heart that longs to serve not its own needs but the needs of the community we are called to serve.

2. Meeting community needs
This is an area with real needs, and we by God's grace and love in the hearts of the church family are meeting those needs.  My dream for this year is that that ministry is multiplied, that more and more grace flows outwards over the boundaries of the church into the hearts and lives of the broken and needy who are loved and see Jesus lived out.

The big dream is that we as a church can meet community needs.  there is no place to go, no neutral space.  No pub, no community centre or building.  We've been in contact with some organisations about facilitating the running of such a building, but there has been as of yet no response.  Only God can make that happen.  My big dream would be that God provides so that we could have a community use building that is more than just a building.  That contains a space where we can run toddlers and coffee mornings.  Where we can house counselling and debt services.  Where we could have attached to it a doctors surgery with a committed Christian GP or two who would serve the area in an almost old fashioned way.

That is a big dream, especially for a church with a monthly budget deficit that means we only have money for 1 more year of full time ministry.  But dreams are about looking at the community and thinking about how the gospel can serve.  That may not be God's will, God's will may be small scale and incremental.  But those kind of dreams are vital as we look at a community and imagine ways the gospel could bring transformation.

Dealing with Discouragement

Discouragement is part of parcel of ministry, so how do we deal with it?  1 Kings 19 is such a helpful passage when we are feeling either elated by ministry joys (its a helpful reminder) or discouraged by ministry hardships.  Here's a recent talk I gave on the issue:

I'm sure you’ve seen quiz shows where they stop the action and ask ‘What happens next?’ Sometimes it’s helpful to do that with the Bible.

In 1 Kings 19 God’s people are ruled by evil King Ahab, ignore God and worship idols. God has disciplined them by withholding rain for 3 years so they turn back to him. But Ahab and the people have refused. So God through Elijah calls for a show down on Mount Carmel. In one corner is Elijah representing Yahweh. In the other; 450 prophets of Baal. Each builds an altar, puts wood and an offering on it but mustn’t light it. They’re to pray to their God and the one who sends fire from heaven to consume the sacrifice is the real God.

The priests of Baal go first, they pray, plead, shout, cut themselves, and dance from morning till evening but nothing happens. Why? Because Baal isn’t God. Then it’s Elijah’s turn, he rebuilds God’s altar, sets up the wood, cuts up the bull, then has 12 large jars of water poured over it all. Then he prays to God. And fire falls on the offering burning up the sacrifice, wood, stones, soil, and water. Israel fall down and say “The LORD, he is God!” and put the prophets of Baal to death, then Elijah prays and for the first time in 3 years there’s rain.

What happens next? You’d expect everything to change wouldn’t you? Ahab and Israel will turn back to God and Elijah and Ahab lead God’s people to live enjoying his rule.

But that’s not what happens. Ch19 focuses on Elijah. In a one on one with God we see God’s love and plans for his people and in dealing with his servants when we’re discouraged.

Be Passionate about God and his People

A survey of pastors asked; ‘what the best thing about their job was?’ The results were put into a top ten. What do you think was number 1? Seeing people change. My hunch is that’s why you do what you do; we love to see people trust Jesus, we love seeing people go on and grow as they’re changed by the gospel. It’s thrilling.

That was Elijah’s big hope and what he expected as he left Mount Carmel. Israel will change, things will be different. It’s what he’s been longing for, preaching for, praying for. His name means ‘Yahweh is God’ and that’s what Israel have just declared. Surely now everything will change, God is going to be glorified as Israel live serving and praising him.

But look at(1-2). Ahab tells Jezebel everything that happened, but she isn’t repentant, she doesn’t weigh the evidence and think wow Baal isn’t God and Yahweh is I better change. No, she ignores the evidence and sets out to kill Elijah. And that’s not a one off in the Bible, some people just won’t accept that God is God. And will do anything to crush those who say he is. Just think of North Korea or part of India right now where Christians are being killed for exactly that reason. We mustn’t be surprised when some people just won’t accept or even look at the evidence but react to it with aggression.

(3)Elijah sees what’s happening and runs away to Beersheeba, and then goes a further day’s journey into the desert. There he sits under a broom tree and prays “I have had enough, LORD... Take my life; I am no better than my ancestors.” That ought to shock us! God’s prophets aren’t meant to pray like this, I’m done, I’m finished, Lord kill me now. What’s going on?

Elijah isn’t despairing because Jezebel wants to kill him, he’s not afraid of dying or why would he ask God to kill him? Elijah’s in despair because Israel haven’t turned back to God. After Carmel Israel should’ve turned back to God, Baal should be finished, God’s people should be God’s people, revival should have broken out. But, Jezebel has just ignored it and Ahab and therefore Israel are just going to be led back into idolatry. ‘God, my ministry is a failure, just like every other judge, leader and prophet of your people, nothing changes, take away my life.’

Don’t read this through the filter of psychology, some people do, looking for signs of depression and diagnosing Elijah with all sorts of disorders. He doesn’t have our self-esteem hang ups. His name is his mission, and he’s devastated because even when it’s blindingly obvious to everyone that Yahweh is God Israel aren’t going to change. He thought Carmel was the key turning point but it was just a temporary high, nothing and no-one has changed.

Elijah is passionate for God’s glory and for his people, that’s what we’re meant to see, and he feels like his whole ministry is a failure. If they didn’t change at Carmel when will they?

We need not just to see Elijah’s passion for God and his people but to share it, the danger is discouragment saps that passion.

Have you ever felt like this? You share the gospel with a friend and they begin to respond, to see Jesus, to recognise their sin and they can’t make themselves right with God. They’re amazed at Jesus love in dying for them. But then something or someone holds them back from trusting him.

Or you’re studying the bible with someone and they are grasping it, it’s exciting watching them grow and change. Then suddenly the shutters come down and they make excuses as to why they can’t meet, and grow cold.

Or someone in leadership begins to drift; they close up, get into an unhelpful relationship, become distant, then irregular, then just disappear.

Or maybe it’s a low after a high. The term looked so good and promising; there is growth, people are engaging, unbelievers hearing the gospel, but then comes your Jezebel moment – your opposition that threatens to derail everything, and it can come from an unusual source can’t it. It can be a church or a leader or a Christian organisation, or even internal.

In each case we find our hearts breaking, we find ourselves discouraged, and yes sometimes we can find ourselves like Elijah saying ‘that’s it Lord I’m done, that’s enough.’ We don’t go as far as take my life. In fact we often don’t verbalise it at all, we just withdraw from sharing the gospel with people, from discipling, from relationships. Every disappointment, every person that drifts, every contentious issue seems to take a scalpel to our heart and cut it open a little more and the danger is we wall off our hearts so we don’t get hurt, don’t feel the disappointment.

The danger is a slow bleed of gospel joy from our lives. We’ve got a small leak in our central heating system. It’s nothing major, you just lose a little bit of pressure every day. It’s barely even noticeable. But if you leave it then the system will break, there will be nothing to pump round to keep the system going. Disappointment and discouragement is like that small leak.

We need to realise this if we’re to be sustained in gospel ministry: God doesn’t rebuke Elijah for his discouragement, rather as we’ll see God lovingly, graciously ministers to him in it.

But before we get to that can I ask; do we share Elijah’s passion for God’s glory and his people? And have discouragement and disappointment begun to do their deadly work of hardening you one slow leak of joy at a time?

Trust God and his plans

(5-8)God doesn’t tell Elijah off for running away, twice God provides food and allows him to sleep. It’s vital we get this; God is concerned with Elijah’s physical needs. God doesn’t want Elijah burning the candle at both ends to try to right the situation! He mustn't develop a 'Mini-Messiah complex'.  God provides physical rest and refreshment. Notice the food is described in detail, why? Because the angel prepares the same food(6) the widow prepared when Elijah was on the run from Ahab and Jezebel before. God provides and has a track record of protecting Elijah. God’s previous faithfulness and protection is supposed to provide a positive feedback loop to fuel Elijah’s bold ministry. And (7-9)the Angel feeds Elijah enough for a journey to Mount Horeb, God provides for his physical needs and leads him to where he’ll teach him about his plans and purposes.

What did you dream serving God where you are would look like? For some of us where we are doesn’t look like we imagined. We rarely dream of serving God in the ordinary and the mundane, or in the small and slow to change, or in the difficult and the opposed. We long for significance, we don’t dream of the slow, the hard and the steady.

But God teaches Elijah to trust him and his plans even if they don’t look like he imagined.

Elijah is led to Mount Horeb, or Sinai, as it’s sometimes called, his journey of 40 days and nights mirrors Israel’s journey to the Mountain where the covenant was made. His experience there also mirrors Moses seeing God pass by. It’s a deliberate leading by God to the Mountain of the LORD. And when Elijah gets there God asks (9) “What are you doing here, Elijah?” It seems an odd question, some argue it’s a rebuke, but it can’t be if God has led him there can it. It’s not a rebuke it’s an invitation; ‘Elijah share with me your disappointment and despair.’ Isn’t that encouraging, the Almighty God of the universe who knows asks Elijah to share what is on his heart, he doesn’t want any less from us. That is gracious loving care.

And Elijah does, he pours out his heart about how Israel have broken the covenant on the Mountain where the covenant was made, and how his ministry is a failure. His words(10) are primarily about God’s glory and Israel’s breaking of the covenant – they’ve torn down God’s altar, put God’s prophets to death, and rejected God’s covenant. And we hear the pain and despair Elijah feels in each charge.

And God listens. God doesn’t tell him to ‘Man-up!’ God graciously, tenderly and lovingly teaches and encourages him to see God’s plan. God appears not in the hurricane force winds, or the earthquake or the fire. But in the gentle whisper.

And God invites him to repeat his charge against Israel again. And just as God was in the gentle whisper, the quiet word, so God reassures Elijah that he is at work through his word, and that change will come as he keeps his word(15-19). It won’t be the spectacular that sees Israel judged for breaking the covenant, it won’t be the spectacular that leads the people to repent. But as God’s word works in ordinary ways. God tells Elijah to appoint Hazael, Jehu and Elisha who will act in judgement. And promises that there will be a faithful remnant who follow him.

Israel may not have turned at Carmel but God isn’t done with them yet. Elijah be encouraged and trust me.

But I want you to notice something else too Elijah is told to go back to where ministry is hard and keep going, to be link in the chain in God’s gospel project to the world he has called him to be. The revival he longs for won’t come through his ministry but through Elisha’s – whose name means God saves. Elijah is to prepare the way for those who will lead Israel back to God.

Don’t despair, don’t think you care more about God’s glory than he does. Don’t think you know what your role in God’s kingdom looks like better than he does. God has put you where he has put you to serve him. Don’t mortgage the present by longing for something more significant in your eyes, be the link in the gospel chain God has called you to be.

Where you are may not be as you imagined it but God has put you there to serve his kingdom and is working his purposes out. It may not look glorious and significant as you dreamed it would. And the temptation is to despair in the unspectacular, slow, steady, and opposed or maybe even to think of going somewhere else. You long for God’s glory and salvation to be known and realised but it doesn’t seem to be. God knows your longing for what he longs for, but he is working. 

Elijah lived his whole life longing to see God bring salvation, to see his glory, he never did in his lifetime, the temporary high on Carmel was as good as it got. But years later at the transfiguration he saw Jesus – the word made flesh, the Saviour of the world who would bring millions from every nation back to him, he sees the importance of his link in the chain. And the wonder of God’s salvation plan through the ages. God will fulfil every longing one day, we will see his glory, we will see the significance of our ministry, our link in the chain, in hard places for his glory and it will all seem worth it.

But as we labour, God provides, he doesn’t want us to burn out but to take time to be refreshed, he wants us to trust in what he is doing, to serve trusting, to serve reliant, and to come and speak to him about how we feel. Be it that we are at the top of Mount Carmel, or feel like we’re running from or facing down a Jezebel.

What does a significant ministry look like?

I'm becoming a little bit worried by conversations, articles, tweets etc which seem to be advocating gospel ministry on a sliding scale of significance.  Now my issue isn't with the idea of significance in terms of strategy.  After all Paul ministers where it is strategically significant in terms of main cities which served as conduits through which the gospel could be heard and then carried to the surrounding towns and villages.  No, my issue with people talking about the significance of gospel ministry in terms of its value.  Discussions of some ministries being more significant, (i.e. valuable), than others because of the perceived value of who they are reaching (e.g. the more affluent, connected, wealthy, intelligent).

My worry is that we are aping the world and its techniques and values, effectively looking for celebrity endorsement, or often in our case the endorsement of intelligence or beauty or perceived value in society.  So what does significant ministry look like?

It's interesting when you take a quick survey of bible characters and think about how many would be valued as having a significant ministry by evangelicals today.  Elijah - great high but followed by a crashing low and still the king and people don't repent and change long term, Isaiah - sent with a message to a people who would not listen and change, Jeremiah - stuck in a pit in response to his words.  I could go on in the Old Testament but I won't.  In the New Testament fascinatingly we see the value placed on what today we would consider less significant ministry - Tabitha in Acts, the women who supported Jesus who are consistently recognised in the gospels, alongside the Paul's and the Peter's.

So today; is ministry among students more significant than among alcoholics or the illiterate?  Is ministry among London business people more significant than a toddler group with under 4s in Rotherham?  Possibly if we are talking about the potential strategic impact (thought I'd want to emphasis only possibly not certainly) but definitely not if we are talking about its value, whether it is worth doing.

We live in an age that is constantly seeking significance (value) but we must not seek a ministry which people perceive as of significant in terms of value simply to massage our fragile ego, neither must we defend our less well thought of ministry in order to bolster our ego.  The gospel values all people, it doesn't weigh their significance in terms of value.  We need to be more careful in the language we use so that we don't confuse the two.