Small church struggles in reaching a needy community

Every church has it's pressures, no church is ideal, no church is perfect.  But I wonder if small churches who are active in reaching their communities feel particular pressures.  That is certainly the way it feels at the moment.

Praise God Grace Church has grown, if everyone was there on Sunday mornings we'd be 70ish, but 30 of those are under 13.  Some mornings Sunday school is bigger than the remaining congregation.  And the encouragement is that it's not just church kids, or even children of families who come to church, but some children come on their own.  But the pressure is in staffing a Sunday school of 30, especially as one group now numbers 13-15.  We'd love to split it into two but we simply don't have the people.  7 years of praying for more workers because the harvest field is ripe has seen some come join us but we desperately need more!

One of the biggest frustrations is the open doors we just don't have the man power or money to make the most of.  We were asked again yesterday to run a CU or after school Christian club in a local school where we are involved.  But we simply don't have the man power to do it, people in church are caring for one another, working hard at community involvement, and pastoral care of existing members and we simply can't meet this great gospel opportunity now.  Oh for more gospel workers.

And the community, thanks to God's grace, now seem to regard Grace Church as one of the go to places for help when in crisis, which is brilliant but we are having to place strict limits on what we can and can't do, again simply because of manpower.

And now a new issue is increasingly presenting itself.  We are visible on a Sunday but not during the week.  We've been asked if we would set up a food back but have no space in which to do so.  We'd love to run parenting courses and CAP courses but entering homes is a threshold too far for many in the community.  Whereas a neutral space, or non-home space would open up all sorts of possibilities. The dream would be to buy a house on the estate and have offices upstairs for organisations to use and a larger space downstairs for groups to meet in, other services to use and a space where we could store and give out food as a food bank.  But again the resources aren't there, with a budget deficit we can't afford even to look into property.

In the midst of so many encouragements and opportunities the frustrations are coming thick and fast, which is why God has graciously led us to study Acts.  To remind me it is God's mission, he loves this community more than I do, he wants to show them and speak to them of the healing power of the gospel of Jesus Christ more than I do.  And he is sovereign, so every frustration I need to turn into prayer.  Prayer for more workers, prayer for more money to use to reach the community, prayer for the lost to be found, prayer for God to be glorified in us.

When isn't Christian maturity Christian maturity?

The discussion of what a mature christian is can be either helpful or unhelpful depending on the baggage people come with.  There is no doubting that the bible calls us to grow in maturity.  Ephesians 4:12-14, Philippians 3:15, Col 1:28, Col 4:12, Heb 5:14, James 1:4 are just a few of the passages that aim at or talk about christian maturity.  Christian maturity is vital, it is what enables us not to run from one set of teaching to another set of teaching, it is becoming more like Christ.

But one thing christian maturity is not is impatient or judgmental of others who it feels are not maturing quickly enough.  Because christian maturity does not happen apart from the fruits of the spirit; "But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control."  The mature follower of Jesus will lovingly want people to change and understand more of what it means to be in Jesus but will joyfully, patiently, faithfully and gently encourage that change in others.  Praying for it, discussing it, building others up and so on.

Yet we are naturally impatient people, we long to see people change and become more like Christ.  But our thoughts on christian maturity must not be divorced from the fruit of the Spirit, they are the fruit of the mature.  If we don't have them we are not mature!

That doesn't mean that we don't encourage people to change, that doesn't mean that we accept that life is the way it is and will never change and give up aiming for change, or that we just allow people to coast.  But it does mean we patiently wait as we aim for change as we teach the bible and apply it to others and ourselves.  It means we model change in light of God's word, we talk about what God is teaching us and how we are struggling to apply it to ours lives as enabled and empowered by the Spirit.

It's interesting how often we are impatient with others because we forget how long change has taken in us.  We expect others to grasp ideas the first time they hear them forgetting that God has graciously, lovingly and slowly taught us, shown us our need and repeatedly prompted us to change at a pace at which we could handle.  We expect people to grasp the big idea of a talk and apply it in their lives when they first hear it whereas we have taken hours in the study thinking it and its implications through.

We need to long for change, to aim for change, to teach for a realisation of the gospel in practice whilst praying that God would work in his time.  We need to do everything we can to foster and encourage growing christian maturity whilst not becoming frustrated at the way in which God works that change.

God's strange sovereignty

This morning was one of those mornings when you stand back afterwards and say I am so glad that preaching doesn't depend on me but on God.  It started with an early morning text message saying the person who was due to preach was too ill, I promptly set to work with the bible and Isaiah 9v6 and some arrow prayers as I went, and was almost finished when my laptop decided to shut down, and yes, you guessed it for some reason auto-save hadn't worked.  On boot up there was just a menacingly white screen and cursor blinking mockingly at me, taunting me.  And so I started all over again at 9.20am, for a service starting at 10.30am.

This side of the tension I can say its good that God works as he did.  It reminded me again that preaching is God speaking through man's (my) foolishness.  That he was sovereign over every illness, every computer glitch and this was in his purpose, once I had that perspective it was less frustrating, exploring again what God wanted me to learn from the passage and from his divinely ordained circumstances.  God is good, his word is powerful, I must trust him and his way even when it is not the way I would choose, and as one who preaches his word I am only ever reliant on him to open my eyes to see his truth, and open my lips to have anything worthwhile to say.

Dealing with disappointment

I don't know about you but I always find disappointment difficult to deal with, when I have planned and planned something and then it just doesn't work out as I had hoped I find myself getting frustrated and annoyed.

I have found the last two weeks as I have been preparing talks on Daniel 1 and 2 to be immensely helpful, encouraging and yet at the same time challenging. Encouraging because God knows about the disappointment I am experiencing before I experience it and more amazingly he is going to take it and use it to achieve his purposes. Helpful because I can get too bogged down in what I can see which means when things don't work out the only way I can see I am tempted to dwell on it and become down hearted and yet God knows and is already working even it in the disappointment. Challenging because if that is the case then my disappointment and frustration shows that yet again I have failed to grasp that God is Sovereign, that it hasn't taken him by surprise and that he works through these things.

Daniel calls me to get my perspective right on my plans and planning, it calls me to seek God and to continually relearn to trust him who alone is sovereign and whose kingdom is not shaken and will rule eternally.

Dealing with disappointment

Sometimes things just don't go as we want do they. People say or do things that surprise us, or perhaps react in such a way that it leaves us feeling bemused and angry, or leaves us feeling let down.

A couple of years ago someone said that in such situations we should repeat the following to ourselves "I'm not God and it's not my world." To remind ourselves that the world does not revolve around me and my needs. The world is God's and he is working his purposes out, the best place for me to be is in the place where God wants me no matter how hard or frustrating that may be.

At root I guess the question in such situations is 'Do I believe God has my best interests at heart?' When we hear of a friends terminal illness, or a family member dies, or the things we thought God has planned for us just don't seem to be as plain sailing as we had thought they would be. I need to ask myself again 'Do I believe God has my best interests at heart?'

If God gave his Son for us at measureless cost then the answer has to be yes. God is working to knock off my rough edges, to mould me, to get me into the place he has for me no matter how hard the process may be to get there. I guess that's why one of the most common phrases in the New Testament is 'Stand firm'.