Learn, Launch, Re-learn, Reform

Last week I had the privilege of sharing something of the story of Grace Church at Gospel Yorkshire's second annual conference.  I'm not going to rehash it all here.  But I did want to just share one key thing which I think has been hugely helpful at every step of our journey as a church so far and in thinking about the future.  It's not original, it's based on an idea in the Redeemer church planting manual which I have always found stimulating and thought provoking.

At the initial stage when we planted a lot of time was spent trying to learn as much as possible about the area and the people and the needs.  Speaking to key people, headteachers, doctors, local councillors etc is vital and insightful.

However, as the saying goes no battle plan survives first contact.  So as we launch we need to be ready to re-learn.  How do we do that?  By listening as we get to know others in the community and work alongside them.  By continuing to ask questions and have open eyes to observe the community and our interactions with them.  Are people wary and suspicious of a church?  Are there other things that clash with when we meet?  Are there needs that are now apparent that weren't when we first started meeting?

It's also important because areas change.  The area where we meet now was only 680 houses 10 years ago.  Now it's well over 1,000 and still growing and the nature of those houses has changed as a new estate of 4 and 5 bedroom houses is rapidly being built.  It's prompting me to ask new questions as I relearn about the area as it grows.  How are those moving in now different from established populations?  How will they get on with those established in the area?  How can church bridge the gaps?  How are their preconceptions and misconceptions about church and the gospel the same or different to those already here?  How ought we to adapt to reach them with the gospel whilst still reaching those we are already trying to reach?

The process is never ending.  It is not just one that is good for planters to be aware of but for all pastors and elders.  The social landscape around us is shifting all the time, the gospel does not change but barriers to it shift as populations do and so do opportunities.  If we are not engaged in our communities, asking questions, listening to responses and praying about and for our communities we will grow increasingly distant from them and so will the gospel and the way we present it.

Reflections on ill health

Last week was the first week since the final week in May that I have not suffered with any tiredness or illness, nausea or stomach pains.  I hadn't really realised just how normal it had become, until I felt back to 'normal' last week.  Sunday was the first Sunday when I felt the freedom to preach unconcerned about whether I would have a dizzy spell or need to conserve my energy to last the sermon.  It was also the first time I had led, spoken to the children and preached, and so far there has been no subsequent Monday collapse and 24 hours in bed.

I am incredibly grateful to God for my recovery.  It was refreshing to preach without feeling concerned about making it through, or conserving energy for later in the talk.  It has been a joy just to be able to do more with the boys and lift some of the burden of child care and housework that Lucy has patiently, willingly and uncomplainingly, had to bear for the last 6 months.  Thank you for your prayers and please join me in praising God our Father for a good week and pray for it to be a full recovery with no relapses.

I am also grateful to God for the illness, even the prolonged nature of it.  Whilst I haven't enjoyed it, it has given me time to reflect, it has made me stop and rest on my relationship with God, it has highlighted lots of undiscerned sin in my drivenness, my approach to ministry and my attitudes to others.  In short illness has been God's grace to me.

It also leads me to reflect that God knows me better than I know myself.  After my first month of feeling ill and being challenged a slight recovery led me to throw myself back into everything just as before, short term learning had no long term effect.  So, God graciously and lovingly, has kept on teaching me the same lessons over a longer period, drumming it into me so I don't forget (or at least that's my prayer).  Truly God is good.

Seven years in

On the first weekend in September it will be seven years since Grace Church was planted.  Over those seven years we've known ups and downs, joys and sorrows, but through it all can testify to the grace and goodness of God.  It has in many ways been the hardest seven years that I have ever known.  I had no grey hairs 7 years ago, and certainly more hair and fewer wrinkle!  If I had known then what we would face together as a church family I probably would have run a mile.  But my recent sabbatical has given me time to stop and think about some of the things I would do differently, some of the lessons we have learned and re-learned and relearned because God is a patient teacher.  I'm not sure these'll be of any use to anyone else but they have helped me as I think about them, here's some of them with more to follow:

1. God is great and gracious
I know that goes without saying.  But looking back I am amazed at where we are.  We began in one area and then moved to another.  We started with one leadership team and God has graciously brought us another as others have moved on or stood down.  We have grown and shrunk and grown and shrunk but we are still hear.  Above all God has time and again led the church to be patient and gracious with my leadership with all its flaws and failings.  And despite our imperfections and failings God has led people to new life in him and many others to hear the gospel.

2. Local context is key
Before and as we started out I visited many planters and many church plants as well as reading many books.  It was helpful up to a point but I was slow in recognising those limitations.  When we read of a great model we tend to want to put it into practice.  Here is the problem with most of the literature on Church planting: it is either American or if it is from the UK it tends to be focused on University cities.  That isn't to say there's nothing we can learn from these but rather that we need to work hard at differentiating between the principles that are transferable and the other things that are not.  There are very few churches planted into a context like ours - most of our young people will leave and go to university and not come back.  We will not have many young twenties, people in our community aren't asking questions that young twenties ask.  We will not have the man power that a student/young twenties church has and that is God's will for us because he has called us to this context.  Our growth will be slow not spectacular, our funding will likely have to be part external for a long time.

That context needs to colour the lessons we learn.  I've found it helpful to think carefully about our area in the following ways:
County - we are ministering in Yorkshire and that means we need to be a church that is for people from Yorkshire with all their God given uniqueness!  Yorkshire is a unique county with a unique people and history, that must be reflected in the way we do church and share the gospel.  City churches are more cosmopolitan than we will be, with people from across the country in more of a melting pot than our local area will be.  We need to be a Yorkshire church for Yorkshire people in everything we do.

Town - What is unique about our town?  What does it celebrate?  What does it do well?  What are its aspirations?  What is its history?  How does it feel about church?  What barriers are there to hearing the gospel and following Jesus?  Answering these questions has been immensely helpful and insightful.  It has also helped me to love where God has put me.

Community - We minister in a community, it is a smallish community with a unique history even within Doncaster.  That history is important to understand in order to connect with people.  For us where we are the days of the area being an RAF base still has huge influence.  It influences where people live and how those areas are thought of.  It influences many of those who live here who have some past connection with the forces.  Involvement in the community has been key for us, listening to peoples stories, building friendships, defeating defeater beliefs one at a time over years, serving people without strings, committing for the long haul, and loving the community not bad mouthing it have all been important lessons we have learnt.

3. Love tenaciously
To be tenacious is to cling tightly to something, to refuse to let go of it, to steadfastly resolve not to give up.  Peter writes this: "Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins".  We are a broken people and we make mistakes, we sin and others bear the consequences, others are broken and they sin and we bear the consequences.  In that context ministry tales place, in that context a tenacious love is essential.  A love that doesn't cut and run at the first, second, third, fourth or seventy seventh sign of trouble or sin.  Love that forgives and welcomes.  Love that keeps building relationships even with those who initially want nothing to do with the gospel.  Love that humbly enables us to recognise and repent of our mistakes and to receive forgiveness for them.  Love that motivates us to visit, to rebuke, to challenge, to comfort, to rejoice, to mourn, to act.

There are times we have got this right as a church and times we have got it wrong.  There are times I have got this right and others when I have gotten it wrong.  But tenacious love doesn't allow itself to be shunted aside by past failure.  It doesn't say I got it wrong then so I can never do it again.  Tenacious love doesn't allow us to say I was hurt then so I'm not doing this now, or I'm not loving them now because of the past.  What enables us to love tenaciously?  Because that is how we have been loved:

"In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus:
who, being in very nature God,
did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage;
rather, he made himself nothing
by taking the very nature of a servant,
being made in human likeness.

And being found in appearance as a man,
he humbled himself
by becoming obedient to death –
even death on a cross!"

Phil 2v5-8

God and Illness

I hate being ill.  Let's get that confession out of the way, I know it's not startling but I am beginning to realise that God is using illness to teach me specifically why I hate being ill.  At half term I was laid up for about 7 days with what at the time was diagnosed as a stomach virus, rest was the remedy, after blood tests showed everything else to be fine.  It took weeks to get back up to speed with lethargy and tiredness remaining a problem.  Finally last week I started feeling back to my old self again until the weekend when the same thing hit again, I managed to preach Sunday but pretty much spent the rest of the time in bed, where I have largely been ever since.  The new working diagnosis is a stress related IBS with accompanying medication which has yet to really start working, though that seems a little like a best guess.

God has been using this time laid aside and a little frustrated to teach me a number of things, which I'm hoping are lessons I won't forget when I'm recovered:

My identity is too often formed around what I do.  I know the theology that my identity is secure in Christ, but functionally I tend to live as if my identity is in my role; father, husband, pastor, teacher, governor.  Without being able to fulfil any of those other roles it is easy to see how I have tended to confuse the two functionally.  They are each roles but they are not my identity, my identity is that I am God's child wonderfully and gracious saved in Christ.

I have not been good at rest.  I am a 'yes' man in the worst possible way, not in terms of agreeing to everything someone says but in terms of saying 'yes' to almost every invitation to do something or speaking at something.  Why?  I'm not sure I've fully untangled that one yet, but it will be a mixture of wanting to please, wanting to serve, wanting to be recognised.  When I am back to health I think it is time I sat with good friends and godly leaders as we prayed through what I should and can be saying yes to and what to say no to.  I need to build rest in as part of my ongoing ministry.

Ignoring God's command not to be anxious. “Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble."  Matt 6v34.  I've read it, I've used it pastorally with others but I haven't really rubbed it into my heart and put it into practice in my ministry.  I take things to God but then tend to do all I can to solve them, especially when it is people with problems, which is when the anxiety kicks in that my efforts aren't enough.  It's not that I'm a gibbering wreck, it probably isn't even particularly noticeable to others, but I can now see that as an underlying issue.  It is something I have had to confess to God and repent of and ask his help not to repeat.

I'm sure there are more lessons God is going to teach me either as he heals me of the problem or as I learn to live with it.  But having seen those three things so clearly I am praying that I will learn the lessons and practically do something about them.

Loving as God loves

We are about to take a break from our preaching through Luke's gospel for the next couple of months. So I have been reviewing what God has been teaching me and hopefully the church from chapters 4-6 of Luke.

You cannot read these chapters and not marvel at God's love for sinners. Jesus gave up heaven, glory and eternal worship, all that he was due and deserved and came to earth and then we see him calling fishermen and tax collectors to come into God's kingdom. Not holding their sin against them but lovingly engaging with them and presenting to them the good news that the kingdom of God is here. The contrast is with the Pharisees who are judgemental and keep sinners in quarantine, never thinking of introducing them to God.

Jesus knows the seriousness of sin, he describes himself as the doctor come for the sick, as the one come for the sinners, he does not minimise judgement or the nature of the commitment he is asking for. He shows us God's great love for people, God's concern for the lost, and then he calls these sinners that he is changing to come and be part of God's salvation plan, to buy into God's big vision of a redeemed humanity, a new grace bought community.

And these chapters challenge me asking the question; have I bought into that vision? Do I share Jesus concern for people? Or do I judge them like the Pharisees? Do I view them as lost people whom God loves in need of salvation or as mission impossible? Chapter 6 of Luke ends with a call to love our enemies in the context of gospel persecution, to value people not our rights or things, to be merciful, to be self examining, to be fruitful and to be active in applying Jesus words to our lives.

Luke 4-6 has been a treasure house as I have studied it and preached it along with others. I am to bear the family likeness as Jesus shows and as God eternally is, merciful, loving engaging with and offering salvation to all.