Is there really a connection between godliness and reading?

Let me preface this post by saying that I love reading.  At the moment I have four books on the go ranging from Chris Wright's 'The Mission of God' (an excellent read), through  J I Packer's 'Knowing God', and Dever and Dunlop's 'The Compelling Community' to David Baldacci's 'Split Second'.  That's pretty normal, the heavy book I tend to take slowly, the others I skip through at a fair pace.  And I always have at least one fiction book on the go.  But here's what I want to challenge, the idea that there is a connection between godliness and reading and godliness and literacy.

Now books are tremendously helpful, they stimulate ideas, confront issues, spur us on to change but that doesn't mean that books are the only way to do that.  I can't help wondering sometimes if we pass someone a book, or recommend one to them to buy if we're stingy with our books, rather than challenge or encourage someone face to face.  I wonder sometimes if they are a cheap replacement for vulnerability, openness, and real relationship.  But I'll leave you with that thought because that's not what I have in my cross hairs in this post.

Here's my problem with conflating reading with godliness or a stimulus to godliness.  What about those who cannot read?  Or who have been put off reading by scarring school experience, or who have dyslexia or other reading barriers?  Are we saying they cannot be godly, or that it will be harder for them to be godly?  What about those who live in parts of the world where books are not readily available?

The advent of the printing press is an historically recent phenomenon, what of the early church and the church between then and the advent of the printing press?  Oral tradition mattered, teaching was passed on by word of mouth and remembered and relayed to others.  Who learnt that teaching so that they could pass it on to others.  I can't help thinking about the enormous benefit that would be to us, because sometimes the welter of new ideas that comes from reading book after book after book means we skip the benefit of properly chewing on and meditating on what we have read.  Anyway that's another
 digression.

Books are a tremendous gift to the church but they are not the barometer of someones godliness.    We need to think long and hard about how we teach truth to those with a non-literary lifestyle, to those for who a book is not an opportunity but a barrier.  Yes we need to address that barrier over time.  But how do we flex and become all things to all men, how do we become as a non-reader to reach the non-reader with the gospel.  How do we adapt our church services to be less reading required but still remain word centred?  How do we change home groups so that we grapple with the word whilst not making those who struggle with words feel awkward and incapable?

The Community Project Problem

Compassion is a great thing, it is a natural response to the brokenness we see in the world, it is human and to lack it makes us less than human, but beyond that it is also Christian.  Given that our Father is the Father of compassion, that Jesus responded to need and suffering with compassion, how can we not be people who are compassionate?  But there is a problem with compassion when it leads us into unthinking action, when we respond in a knee jerk fashion to the problems that have stirred up that compassion in us.  Or when we simply act in ways that sustain patterns of suffering.  We want to help, we see a need, we see something we can do and so we act.  But we are also called to act wisely, to steward our compassion so that it produces the best outcome.  Compassion that leads to wrong action can in the longer term do more harm than good.

Mixed in with that is the desire we have as churches (I'm presuming there is one) to alleviate suffering and love our fellow man.  We want to do so in a way that clearly demonstrates our love for people and whereby we become channels of God's love to others.  I wonder if this co-mingling of compassion that longs to just act and the desire to do so in a way that shows God's love causes us a problem when it comes to community action.

Does it lead us to set up projects rather than serve people?  Does it result in us establishing models with clear recipients and givers, where the power imbalance is clear and self sustaining?  Does it stop us from establishing sustainable community developing projects rather than church led dependence inducing acts of service?

Here's my internal struggle as I'm thinking and wrestling through this.  As a church we want to love and serve our community in ways that lead people to see God's love for them and that creates in them a hunger to come and meet Jesus.  But we need to do so in ways that build community, that shows the gospel truth that we are all broken, that we aren't in any way lording anything over anyone.  We want to help in ways that equip and enable the community to do for itself what it needs to, supporting and training individuals and providing initial impetus and possibly capitol but which ultimately leads to self sustaining, community creating, need serving long term projects.  But my natural fear in doing so is that as the community is involved and takes ownership of such things our gospel motivations may somehow be lost to others.  Whilst partly that battle is with the inner control freak, above all it reminds me how quick I am to forget the relational nature of sharing the gospel, as people from church in the community serve alongside other community members that gospel will be seen and spoken.  As we serve in this way it is a demonstration of the equalising and uniting power of the gospel to break down class barriers so prevalent in our community.

My hunch is that struggle will continue to raise its head as we look to take this forward.

Is there a problem with the way we think of helping the poor?

I'm in the middle of reading Robert Lupton's 'Toxic Charity' and as read it I've found it full of challenges to my thinking and instinctive reactions but also lots of things which chime with our experience here at Grace Church.  The area we serve is mixed, there are some affluent parts, but there are larger parts that are deprived (though that mix is changing thanks (?!?) to some new developments).  As we've engaged in serving in this community it is striking how getting to know people challenges our preconceived notions of what such help will look like.

It is easy to come breezing in with an attitude that effectively looks to dish out help, advice, money, and support as if from someone who is sorted to someone in need.  But the longer I spend with families in the community, the longer I look into the eyes of those we serve the more wrong our often glib view of what 'help' looks like seems.

As those who have gospel values; who believe that every ones greatest need is their eternal need and that they need to come to know Jesus, who value people as made in God's image, who want to love our neighbour, who believe we have been given much to give lavishly to the world, we want to serve others.  But so often the way we do so is clumsy and can end up doing more harm than good.  Lupton's book has solidified some of the things I've been seeing in and around our community as well as providing the stimulus to sit down and try and draw some conclusions about how we help those in need.  Whilst these are preliminary and blurry around the edges, at best, I thought they'd be worth noting down here.

Too often we seem to switch into charity mode when we see those in need, be it a homeless man begging on the street, or a family in need - we have, they don't, therefore we give.  But whilst the compassion behind it is right often our way of showing it is faulty.  Charity emasculates people, it stripes them of their dignity, it undermines an often already battered self confidence or self esteem, it embarrasses them in front of their families and friends.  What our deprived communities need are friends, people who will commit to knowing, loving, and staying.  Friends who are committed to long term transformation not hit and run help or charity dispensed from a distance.  We need to structure support in such a way that it enables people to change, to learn, to develop, teaching them to do for themselves so that they become thriving families and doing so in ways that reconnect community.

It has got me thinking about a few things and I'm aware I'm about to challenge some cherished ideas.  One of our plans was to establish a food bank but I'm wondering now if that is the best, most grace filled use of resources.  Would it not be better to establish some type of food cooperative where in return for a modest contribution we use the power of group buying to multiply the food we could then buy in bulk?  Food banks are doing an amazing job, and tragically are necessary even in Britain in 2015.  But they are also a symbol of having failed as a parent, of being unable to provide for your children.  How much better if instead we can provide a system that multiplies the value of the little they do have enabling children to see parents providing and the value of community?  Even better if we involve those in need in running such a scheme alongside church volunteers engendering a sense of community and pride.

Along similar lines I've been thinking about trying to establish a community allotment site.  Where families can have an area of land to work to grow fresh fruit and vegetables.  Giving them something to do together as a family project, but also enabling them to provide for their families much more cheaply than they can buy fresh produce.  Again the community nature of such a scheme also has value and would enable us to buy seed, tools etc in bulk.  The issue here for us is a piece of land on which to start such a scheme.

What we must avoid is charity which leaves the recipient unable to look us in the eye, or feeling indebted to us, or somehow lesser than the giver.  That as far as I can see is far short of what the bible calls us to when it calls us to love our neighbour.  There's loads more applications and implications of this and maybe I'll joy others down as thoughts and ideas solidify.

The problem of being a small church

I wonder how you would answer the question; what is the problem with a being a small church?

I guess there are lots of ways you could answer it.  We've had people say that there aren't enough people like them in the church so they want to go somewhere bigger.  That they find their encouragement in numbers so being in a small church is too hard.  That a small church can't do all the different types of ministry that a church needs to do.  That a small congregation doesn't provide appropriate role models for children across all age ranges.  That being small limits our ability to care appropriately for one another. That being small means we can't do worship with a music group and so on and so on and so on.

The problem is that when we hear those things often enough we begin to believe them.  Something clicks with what our culture tells us; that bigger is better, and we can find ourselves settling as a small church for what we are in peoples eyes; limited.  I can't help but wonder if that is why pastors and others often view a small church as a stepping stone to something bigger and by implication 'better' or 'more significant'.

But that is not how the Bible speaks about God's people.  I have to confess some of those little Trojan worms of thinking had begun to infect my thinking.  We can't do this because we don't have the resources, we can't do that because we are only so big and so on and so on.  But one theme has come out loud and clear in so many contexts over the last few months as God has patiently been teaching me and debugging my thinking about church.  Size is not an issue for the people of God.

In Judges when Gideon takes on the Midianites God decimates Gideon's army before he destroys the Midianite army.  Gideon starts off with 32,000 men, even then he is outnumbered by the Midianites and Amalekites and people of the East who are like locust in number.  But God says "The people with you are too many for me to give the Midianties into their hand, lest Israel boast over me, saying, 'My own hand saved me.'"  So God reduces the army to 300 men and dependent on God they win a great battle because God fights for them.

Fast forward a few hundred years to 1 Samuel 30 and David is in trouble, the Amalekites (again!) have kidnapped all his men's children and wives, so David assured of victory by God sets off with 600 men, but has to leave 200 behind.  The enemy he faces number far more than 400, because only 400 escape, yet David and his men win a great victory.  How?  Because God has preserved them and given them victory.  Later in Psalm 20 David can write "Some trust in chariots and some in horses, but we trust in the name of the Lord our God."

Then when you read 1 Corinthians 1v4-9 we read Paul's pray to the Corinthians, a church I guess we would  want to do due diligence on before we joined, and he writes this.  "I give thanks to my God always for you because of the grace of God that was given to you in Christ Jesus, that in every way you were enriched in him with all speech and all knowledge - even as the testimony about Christ was confirmed among you - so that you are not lacking in any spiritual gift, as you wait for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ..."  That is an astonishing thing to write, this church has been blessed in Christ with every gift, it has been enriched in Christ.  And it's not a one off Paul writes to the Ephesians of the blessings that are theirs in Christ, Peter writes to the churches in Asia reminding them they have everything they need for godliness, John writes to battered and discouraged churches and reminds them who they are in Christ.

So why do we think somehow that we are missing out in smaller churches?  God has given us everything we need it is just that our ministries will look different; different in scale, different in budget, and different in other ways.  The problem of being in a small church is often in our mindset that views us as limited by size rather than reliant on God.  God is the resource for our ministry and he promises abundant blessing and lavish provision, so don't limit your thinking.  There is no problem with being a small church because we have a great God.