An ordinary life

This is another old post from 2006 when I was reflecting on the the ideas surrounding outward focused living. I'm still asking some of the same questions.

An outward focused life in not an extraordinary life, it just makes room for the extraordinary.

As we dream the dream of becoming a more outwardly focused church, we’re beginning to think about church in new ways. I meet with a great partner at church and talk about all sorts of stuff as we try to put flesh and bone on the dreams and visions, the aims and objectives of being the church in our changing setting. It’s great for me because I get to share my crazy ideas with someone who can make sense of them!

I’m wired to dream, so it’s great to have an outlet for it. Here’s one of my crazy dreams.

In the UK it’s not uncommon to see a thermometer outside a church representing the state of the appeal for funds to restore the roof of an ancient building. I’ve mentioned this before, but today, as I thought and dreamt, I suddenly came up with the idea of an upside down thermometer. A thermometer that would represent what we giveaway to our community, rather than what we ask our community to give to us. What if, instead of asking them for money, we gave money away? What if we took some of the money we give week by week or month-by-month and set up a small grant-making fund? Members of the community could come to us and tell us what they are doing in the community and we could offer some small level of funding. We might even get involved and work alongside them!

Is that crazy?

I just wonder if an outward focused church would be characterised more by what it gave to the community that by anything else. Characterised by its desire to be blessing rather than to be blessed, characterised by a Christianity that was focused on others much more than upon itself.