Phil.1: 12

Now I want you know that what has happened to me has really served to advance the gospel.

It’s amazing to think that Paul is able to look at his circumstances and see them as serving God’s purposes rather than ruining his life. I’m not sure I’ve always been able to do that and maybe even Paul had his dark days when he questioned God’s purposes.

If you are facing difficult or challenging times, take some time to acknowledge that God can turn even these times into something that will honour his name and further his mission.

March 11: Phil 1:9-11

And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless until the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ—to the glory and praise of God.

Interesting phrase isn't it–that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight. It is quite a contrast to the usual available options for love. Paul's purpose of love is different too. Instead of self-appreciation or deeper attraction, it's about knowing and understanding. Perhaps those are characteristics of love towards which we all ought to strive.

And this deeper love, this more discerning love, leads us into maturity as followers of Jesus Christ.

As you pray for others, ho does this prayer change what you pray for them?

Where does the future lie?

This is a great line from Roxburgh and Boren's book Introducing the Missional Church as it is adapted on the website:

God's future is among God's people

Here's a fuller explanation from the book itself:

The Spirit of God is among the people of God, not in the experts and the ordained, but right in the midst of all the ordinary men, women, and children who comprise this faith community. Therefore God's imagination and God's future is among these ordinary local men and women who gather to worship, who confess their confusion, who know their church is messed up and needs to change, and who confess that they don't have a clue what might be involved in this change or how to go about it. This is where the Spirit is at work. How dare anyone write off the church! This means that the answer to the question, "What is God calling us to be in the communities where we live and work?" is among the people, not in the experts or outside consultants or even in some program that worked somewhere else. And therefore, the job of the leadership is not to come up with grand plans for the congregation but to cultivate an environment in which the missional imagination of the people of God is called forth in lived action and lives.

Chew on that for a while!

March 10th: Phil. 1:4

In all my prayers for all of you, I always pray with joy

It's not rocket science to see what gives Paul great joy: Partnership in the gospel, a shared experience of grace and confidence in God's ongoing redemptive work in the lives of others. But wait a second, let's rewind for a minute.

When I pray for others, particularly other Christians do I look for such shared experience or such signs of God's work that it give rise to joy? Perhaps, if we learnt to celebrate a bit more, we would more naturally see these things. But I do think it's also a choice we make.

So maybe the lesson from Paul is a simple one, the next time you pray for fellow Christians, begin by giving thanks that we are on the same team, that we share a common purpose and that God is at work in all of us.

March 9th: Phil. 1:7

It is right for me to feel this way about all of you, since I have you in my heart

Although an evangelist a church planter and an apostle, Paul was a pastor at heart. He carries all the people in his heart all the time. It is no exaggeration when Paul says that he prays for all of them all of the time. It was his passion for the local church that would consistently drive him to his knees.

We too can share that passion as we commit ourselves to pray regularly for the local church. Paul's reason for carrying them in his heart is their shared experience of God's grace. This shared experience causes Paul to long all of you with the affection of Christ Jesus.

Ask God to give you a passion for the local church that you too might share the affection of Jesus for the people whom he loves. Find a way to carry them in your heart through a journal or index cards or a bookmark or whatever works for you.

March 8th: Phil. 1:3

I thank my God ever time I remember you

I thought I might try to write a short "thought for the day" based on something from Philippians as we study it at church. Whether it follows logically through the letter or not I don't know. It's just an experiment.

This phrase stands out in the early verses of chapter one. We could so easily look at the content of Paul's prayer or focus on the nature of the gospel in which they, and we, partner. But it's good to stop and ask ourselves a simple question: Do we give thanks often enough for the people with whom God has surrounded us? Be honest now, are you able to say that you give thanks every time you remember everyone?

Giving thanks is an act of the will, sometimes more difficult than others. Some people are just difficult and giving thanks for them and the challenges they bring is hard and we don't want to do it. But do it we ought, do it we must.

It is far easier to moan than to give thanks, the words come far more easily. We're all pretty good at pointing out what's wrong and who's to blame. So try giving thanks, even for the critics and the problem causers, the difficult and the demanding. Give thanks that it matters enough to them to raise the questions. Give thanks that they too can know freedom and release. Whatever you do when you remember them, pray God's blessing upon them.

Finding inspiration

I wonder if someone was praying for me this morning? I just felt a burst of energy and desire to pray for the local church. I think in truth it all began yesterday as we prayed before the morning celebration. I found myself asking God to bless all the local churches as they met to worship and honour him. This followed through into our worship and my part in the day.

Then we began to look at Philippians, taking the first 11 verses as our text for the day. I found myself asking the question over and over again in my head, "How can we have God's people in our hearts?" I think I even asked it out loud at least twice!

Then, this morning, I wanted to make a note of a couple of verses from Romans, one of which was shred the previous Sunday at the end of our month of prayer by Harry, one of our older members. It was particularly relevant in the context of having previously been praying about being "son's and daughters of encouragement." This is the verse Harry shared:

May the God who gives endurance and encouragement give you a spirit of unity among yourselves as you follow Christ Jesus, so that with one heart and mouth you may glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. (15:5-6)

But the verse I was actually looking for, because of its link to our theme of joy in Philippians, was 14:7, which says:

For the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking, but of righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit

But in looking for that one on Thursday to share with the worship group I came across this:

May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit. (15:13)

These verses just inspire me. Hope, overflowing with the power of the Spirit, full of joy and peace, endurance and encouragement in unity. Powerful stuff when you let it percolate the dry layers of a weary spirit.

What is church?

This phrase from Tim Chester's blog caught my eye. He's talking about church as life lived out as a family rather than a meeting which we attend. He describes it this way:

doing ordinary life with gospel intentionality.

That strikes me as an almost insignificant phrase that we could pass over as being a theological soundbite. But it is far from that. It needs careful reflection, especially around the idea of "gospel intentionality".

He goes on to say this:

The church will never out perform TV shows and music videos. But there is nothing like the community life of the church. There is nowhere else where diverse people come together. There is nowhere else were broken people find a home. There is nowhere else when grace is experienced. There is nowhere else where God is present by his Spirit.

So, what are our chances of transitioning established churches towards this model?

As my brain continues to process...

There is still a lot of reflecting to do on my few days at seminars, but some things have been running around my head that I just need to get out of my head and written down somewhere. So, in no particular order....

Some of the people who use the term missional leadership, don't seem to understand it quite the way I do! Not a criticism, but just an observation. One speaker kept talking about missional leadership but I wasn't convinced that we shared a common understanding in the room about what that meant. The danger is that it becomes a two word description of something that only needs one word. Leadership!

If a growing, missional (it's okay, I know what I mean!) church is the by-product, what is the original product? Missional is about life not programmes, it's about "being" more than it is about "doing". So how do we sustain the argument that the primary purpose of the church is mission, partnering with God in what he is doing, without turning everything into an evangelistic opportunity. what should we be focussing upon?

I think there is a real need to refocus our attention on the simple idea that we are meant to be in a relationship with God. Perhaps if we helped people to stay connected with God more clearly and more consistently, the other stuff would naturally flow from that.

Maybe my job is more about helping people do that than anything else. Maybe.

If the speed of the team is determined by the speed of the leader, how are we doing as leaders? Are we slowing down any progress? What are we doing to facilitate spiritual growth? What are we doing to model spiritual growth?

How come most of our leadership structures revolve around getting stuff done and not around setting an example of what it means to be a wholehearted follower of Jesus Christ.

And there are more questions than that running relay races through my busy mind. But at least I've got some of it out of my brain and into something else so I can get on with some other things that need my attention. It's a busy life in my head!

Hope you brains are not addled by my ramblings!

Seminars and conferences

I'm a bit conferenced out at the moment. You see I spent Friday at a seminar, Saturday doing Child Protection training and the last two days at Holy Trinity Brompton at a Leadership event. It is the proverbial bus syndrome.

Friday was probably the best overall event, but that had a lot to do with the topic and the focused nature of the day. HTB' s conference was much broader, but no less valuable. The mornings were worth the time to attend by themselves.

Have I learnt anything? Well yes I have. Quite a lot actually, but it all needs processing and I just hope I get the time to do that. Okay, so I intend to make time to do that, honest I do! A good conference or seminar should inspire and I think I've been inspired.

I was wondering this morning if some of the things that we think should be our focus as church are in fact the by-product of where we ought to be focusing. For example, if we think that mission ought to be our focus, and why wouldn't we think that, might it be that mission is actually the result of focusing on say spiritual development? When I read Acts one thing strikes. Almost everything the early church did resulted in mission. And that included a church meeting!

So I wonder what really are the core things to which we should give our fullest attention? I have a few ideas but they need work.

Reggie McNeal on missional church

My Spiritual Journey (2)

So I got to 1976 and my discovering that all the time I’d been chasing after God, he’d been chasing me and now I was caught. Some people have dramatic conversion stories, mine almost passed me by. I didn’t realise what I’d done until I was talking with some other guys at college and they could see that I was changed.

Very quickly I became a challenging member of my Christian subculture. I wasn’t about to conform to some imposed pattern that made me just like every other well-behaved member of the small group. I was, and still am, a little bit of a maverick. So I asked awkward questions and sought out deeper conversations.

In 1977, six months after coming to faith, I found myself in Germany at the European Congress on Disciple-making, run by the Navigators. I still have great admiration for this interdenominational organisation. I soaked up a lot of ideas over the few days we were there and it was at that conference that I first felt the gentle nudge of God’s Spirit to enter the bigger picture of God’s plan and purposes in the world. I didn’t know what it would mean, but I wanted to be part of whatever he was doing.

The following year I found myself in a 17-seat minibus travelling through North Africa with 15 other people. It was a trip organised by British Mission, later to become World Horizons. Two significant things happened on that trip. One, I got nudged more clearly by the Spirit to think about full-time ministry in the context of the UK church. Second, I finally connected meaningfully with the woman I would marry! Anne never could tell right from left and that left her at a disadvantage when trying to cross the road in Casablanca. I seized the opportunity and took her hand. We married two years later, which makes this year our 30th wedding anniversary.

Coming back from Africa we wrote to a number of colleges to enquire about possible training. BBI (Birmingham Bible Institute) very wisely encouraged us to find jobs, settle into being married and learn about life outside of the cloistered world of university and education. So we did. For seven years I worked for British Gas in R&D until I finally entered college to study theology.

During those years the call grew and I grew in fits and starts as I struggled to work out my faith amidst the questions and challenges of a church that generally wasn’t working. That’s not a criticism of any of the churches with whom we connected, but just a general feeling of unease that things were not as they should be and that all was not well among God’s people. Neither is it a precursor to my prescription for fixing anything. Even after 20 years of ministry I still haven’t worked that out.

In college I found out that my paternal grandfather had spent some of his life as a missionary in Gambia, and I began to wonder if I was part of a bigger story even within my own family.
College was great and it gave me the chance to explore things in new ways. One of those things was the place of the church in God’s mission. Something I tried to wrestle with in an essay.

More of that next time.

A Contrast Society

In Roxburgh and Boren’s Introducing the Missional Church, they talk about the need for the church to become a contrast society. The church is called to be a sign, witness, and foretaste of God’s dream (p103) for the redemption of all creation. To be this foretaste we must become a people shaped by an alternative story, living by a set of distinctly Christian practices. (103) How each individual church does this will reflect its local community. In other words there is no one size fits all plan, but a pattern of principles that Roxburgh and Boren divide into three sets of missional practices–presence, love and engaging the neighbourhood.

It’s interesting to me that one of the things they pick up on is the practice of hospitality, something that’s recently caught my attention because I was asked to preach about it!
One of the interesting questions then is to ask ourselves what would a contrast society or community look like in my neighbourhood. Before Christmas, sometime in October now I think about it, we did a little experiment in hospitality. We invited our neighbours three either side and five or six opposite to come and meet us. We’d only been in the house for a month or so, and just wanted to get to know them.

Some came, more didn’t. Why was that? Maybe they thought we were the religious nuts that had just moved in and it wasn’t worth the risk of not being able to escape. Maybe they were actually as busy as they said they were. Bt at least we asked, and we will ask again. This is part of being a contrast society in our neck of the woods.

The more I think about being a contrast society, the more it seems to call me to live faith out in full view of others. Not preaching at every opportunity, but of sharing a different life, shaped by a different story, the story of God’s redemptive plan at work in my life.

In the warmer weather I hope we can begin to extend our hospitality through being outside more often than we’re inside. Spending time in the park simply doing life with others, playing games, sharing picnics, hearing stories.

There’s bound to be more to being a contrast society than this, but at least it’s a place to start.

My Spiritual Journey (1)

I thought I might write about my spiritual journey, not because it's particularly exciting or even inspiring. It's just my story and it might help me understand me a bit more.

To find a starting point for one's spiritual journey is always difficult. How far back do you go? For me I suppose I'd have to start with the day I decided not to go to Sunday School. My parents were not church goers, but we were sent to Sunday School. After two weeks I declared it to be boring and that it wasn't for me. Little did I know at the tender age of 4 that I would spend the larger part of my life serving the very institution I appeared to be rejecting that day. Perhaps even then the established church was not a great fit for me!

I also remember asking, at one family meal, why I had to believe in God. Because the adults told me so simply didn't satisfy my young mind, and so at 4 years of age I was already asking deep questions that were getting me into trouble.

I don't remember much about the next 10 years or so. I know that by the time I was 15 or so my questions had become more focused on life's meaning. More specifically about who could give meaning to my life, who had the authority to do that. Existential philosophy appeared to suggest that you do the truth thing for yourself, but that didn't satisfy me.

As I travelled to and from school one thing always caught my eye, an illuminate cross on a church. At the time I didn't understand why or what it represented. It wasn't until I arrived at University that I found someone who helped me understand how to begin a relationship with God.

So there I was, sitting in my room on the last Sunday of the first term in 1976 asking God to do for me what I needed. To forgive me and to give meaning to my life.

Questions, then, have always been a major part of my mental tapestry. Sometimes I ask too many questions, and that paralyses action. Sometimes the questions are a launching point for deeper study and learning. I still ask questions, and for some people I still ask too many as I try to understand what it means to know God and make him known.

In conversation, in the pub

I had my first outing to a local pub the other evening. It was very quiet and I'd arranged to meet someone there for a chat. This is pastoral care, this is conversation, this is just being church, this is just being. For those who might be worrying, I had fruit juice. Actually, as I told my conversation partner, I decided when I was 18 that it was okay not to like beer and to tell other people I didn't like it! So I drink what I like and I like fruit juice.

Back to the story.

The place we went was not busy. Maybe because it was Monday night, maybe because it as cold, or maybe it just isn't busy on Mondays! So we met and we sat and we talked. We talked about all sorts of things. Nothing we talked about was a secret, it didn't need to be said behind the closed doors of an office or study. It was just two people doing life together.

I'm not about to suggest that we convene a small group and all turn up with Bibles next week, but why don't we meet and have conversations more often than we do? Why is it that we find it so hard to spend time together when one of the hallmarks of community is time spent together?

We had a great meal with friends from church the other Friday. I laughed so much at one particular story that I thought I was going to turn inside out! Isn't it time we invited our neighbours and friends into our lives more often? To share our stories with them and hear their stories from them. No evangelistic agenda, just doing life. Could we possibly reimagine church more in the contexts of these relationship than in the context of filling a building once a week?

A few weeks ago someone said to me that they thought the problem with our building is that it was designed to be closed most of the time! Reimagining it to be open most of the time might be a good place to start, but it's not the only shift in imagination we need. More needs to change. Stud walls and paint, extensions and new buildings won't make us more engaged with our community.

If we can't see what God is doing in the space we share with the missing, it's unlikely that we'll fix that without a new imagination. I wonder if there's room for a housegroup for people who don't like housegroups and that doesn't meet in a house?

I think I'm rambling again!

Dealing with confusion

Life can be confusing to say the very least. Just when you think it's going really well, something pops up and send you into a tailspin and just when you think the world is about to crash in on your head, God steps in and does something quite remarkable. It is all very confusing at times.

At the moment it has to be said that life is a little disorienting. nothing that can't be handled if approached properly, and by that I mean with bags of grace and prayer and by keeping jerking knees under strict control!

And so it is that I turn to by daily reading and Blackaby's devotional guide. Here's an extract from today's reflection from Luke's gospel:

God reads the heart and knows the honest pursuit of His will by His children. Jesus drew near to these men [the two on the Emmaus road], walked with them, and opened their minds to what the Scriptures said about Him and about the events of their day. As Jesus was speaking, their hearts burned within them! As they listened to Jesus relate the Scriptures to what they were experiencing, they knew in their hearts that they were hearing God’s truth. Their doubts vanished, excitement overcame them, and they raced back to share the truth with their friends!

If you become bewildered by circumstances in your life, Jesus can reorient you to Himself through the Scriptures just as He did for these two men. From your human perspective, the situation may be confusing and discouraging. It takes the presence of Christ to open your eyes to the truth of the Scriptures. Have your circumstances confused you? You need Jesus to give you His perspective. Once you’ve heard from Him, you’ll be like these two men, excited to join God in what He is doing around you and eager to include others in the experience.

So, if life is a little confusing you know where to turn. Don't turn to the self-help guides, turn to the Bible and walk in the ways of God. It will do wonders for your soul. Trust me, I'm a pastor!

Real Church

Brad Brisco at Missisonal Church Network has posted a great quote from Henri Nouwen. Go read it!

Thinking about Church

A couple of things I've read recently are helping me think about church. The first is from Bill Hybels book Axiom. It's about DNA, but the point that stirred my thoughts was the need to discover a church's DNA and plot the course to a new DNA carefully. As we face the challenge of change, we need to be careful about identifying the DNA of what is ahead of us and about how we become DNA carriers amongst the leadership team and the wider church.

And then I was reading Ed Stetzer's blog and was reminded that fundamental to the church is the call to conversion. This is part of our DNA. The gospel changes lives. It doesn't replace one set of principles with another, it doesn't overlay an extra set of faith values or offer an alternative lifestyle.

The gospel calls for a radical loss of self in order to discover our truest identity. We die to live. We take up our cross every day, we lose our lives to find them. This is not a gospel of self-realisation but a gospel of self-denial. I am not the centre of the universe.

Putting the two together means that if the transforming power of the gospel and a strong expectation of seeing lives transformed, souls saved or won, however you want to phrase it, is not part of the DNa then whatever is formed by that DNA will not be the church. This is not at odds with a desire to see a new expression of biblical community.

Preface it with what you like: attractional, missional, traditional, contemporary, emergent, it doesn't matter, it won't be the church. The church is God's chosen vehicle for his missionary activity in the world. Take that away and you've taken the heart out of the church.

Pastoral Care Training Day

On Saturday I had the great pleasure of spending the day with some great folk from ARC. You can find out more about the church from their website. I met Peter, the senior pastor, at a one-day seminar last March. We began to talk and from there we developed a relationship that led to me leading a training day for them. We talked about pastoral care.

The day broke down into four sessions: An overview; the health-check; how we listen; and developing good practice. The health-check is a simple questionnaire used to identify areas of personal spiritual growth and ministry. We covered a lot of ground, but it was a lot of fun. The group was wonderfully responsive and made me feel wonderfully welcome. And the food was brilliant!

I ended the day shattered but having been inspired and challenged. Surely that's not a bad outcome, to be challenged by your own seminar!

Having not done anything quite like this before, it was a opportunity for me to explore how to plan and deliver something that would stimulate and keep people engaged through a whole day. We did some group activities, but we probably needed more process time. To do that would mean either cutting down the content or lengthening the day. I think we probably got the balance about right.

Missional Church Video

This came via one of the regular feeds I check.