Losing our effectiveness

I remember years ago, and I mean years ago these days, coming to a simple conclusion about what the devil was trying to do. I'd been reading 2 Peter and reflecting upon the list of things that he said would stop a believer becoming ineffective. It was then that this simple thought entered my mind:

If he can't have your soul, the next best thing is your effectiveness.

In other words, if by becoming a Christian the devil no longer has rights on your eternal destiny, the only thing he has left is to try to make sure you don't make a difference to anyone else. It's a damage limitation exercise for him from now on.

And so temptations come and failures come with the intention of bringing up to the point where we become undisciplined and eventually to the point where we quit trying. We give up on church because it doesn't work for us as if we're the centre of attention rather than a participant in something bigger. We stop seeking to live a God-honouring lifestyle because we want the freedom to run our own lives. We give in to temptation because it's easier than resisting it. And so it goes on.

All these things lead us to a discipleship that brings no change to our lives. Every challenge is not a temptation to overcome or an opportunity to grow but an example of how little God appears to care for us. We become happy to be heaven-bound but uninterested in becoming more like Jesus in the meantime.

Everyday we must make the choice to submit ourselves to God. To ask him to restore our effectiveness, the effectiveness that the devil has sought to take from us, but which ultimately he is powerless to do unless we give him the foothold to do so.

The missionary heart

The missionary heart:

Cares more than some think is wise
Risks more than some think is safe
Dreams more than some think is practical
Expects more than some think is possible

I've come across these words in several places, but can't remember where I first heard them. As far as I know the original phrases are attributed to Howard Shultz, the businessman who heads up Starbucks. I don't think he had "the missionary heart" in mind when he first made these observations!

But they remain an interesting overview and I wonder how well they ought or do describe my own heart. There are times when my caring has proved unwise, at least in some eyes, and there are times my dreams are beyond some definitions of practical.

While I'm not risk-averse I'm not sure I'm a big risk taker. Maybe it's more a case of trying to discern Holy Spirit inspired risks.

So how does your heart measure up?

Draw near

I was just thinking about the words of James when he says: "Draw near to God and he will draw near to you". It got me thinking about what it actually means to "draw near". We could all give the standard evangelical responses about prayer and Bible study (both of which are the first things I thought about too). But what does it actually mean?

You know as well as I do that we find it hard to do the prayer and Bible study things, possibly because we see them as tasks to complete in order to fulfil some regulation or requirement. But what if we think for a while about the process of drawing near.

What if you want to draw near to someone, anyone. Just to get to know them. What would you do? Well to start with you probably wouldn't begin with a long list of all your worries and problems. You wouldn't present them with a shopping list of how they can meet your needs and what it's like living your life.

No, you begin by trying to find about about them. You'd ask questions about what they do with their time, what they like and dislike. You'd explore common areas of interest to see if there are activities in which you could share. You might even ask how you can help them achieve their goals.

You see, prayer and Bible study are not ends in themselves but the means to the end of drawing closer to God. It becomes a matter of asking the right questions. As you read you're looking for things that will tell you who God is, what he's doing, what makes him smile and what might make him cry. You are searching out ways in which you can engage with his purposes and plans rather than trying to draw him into yours.

If you are finding praying and reading the Bible a chore, why not stop for a moment and think about what kind of conversation you would like to have with someone who wants to get to know you, then reverse the roles and apply it to getting to know God.

Morocco '78 (2)

Sunrise over what turned out to be a reservoir. We didn't know it at the time when we set up camp, but just around the corner on the damn were armed army personnel!

Morocco '78

Reminiscing about Morocco yesterday called for a review of some of the photographs. Maybe I'll scan more of them, but that's a project for another day.

Here's one from the early part of the journey. I'm guessing it's somewhere in France or Spain.

Standing at the back of the group on the left is Ian Groome. Ian was studying law at UWIST if I remember correctly. He was part of the Navigator group with which I was connected. In the checked shirt at the back of the group is Anne. Little did I know I'd be coming back from that trip with my future wife!

By the table is Chris Webster, another fellow student at UWIST, now a professor of Town Planning I'm told. Behind Chris you can just about see Annabel I think. Looks like she might be talking to Anne. In the red check shirt is Esther. I'm not sure, but the girl next to Esther might have been Esther's friend, but I can't remember.

Standing with her back to the bus might be Gail Dixon who went on to work for Horizons. I can't remember the name of the person standing next to Gail, (and if it's not Gail then it's Fran, a nurse who last I heard was in Australia).

I've be wracking by brain for the name of the guy standing at a distance from the rest of us. He was definitely part of the group.

Not in this picture then are Rowland, who lead the expedition, Robin, who I think had been serving as a missionary in Zaire as it was known then. If it's Gail in the picture then Fran and another nurse Sonia are not in the photograph and of course neither am I. Also missing is Jill (or was it Gill?) who also went to serve in Africa but who sadly died in the 1990's and Tim Morris, another Horizons worker.

Old Friends and good memories

Yesterday at church we finished off our series about the church. We looked at being a missionary people. The outline of what I said will be on the church blog later in case you want to read it!

The great part of yesterday was having Tim and Graham from World Horizons with us. Tim was a member of an expedition to Morocco that both Anne and I were part of in 1978. We haven't seen him since then, so it was a special day for us.

During that expedition we travelled overland through France and Spain into Morocco. For three weeks 16 people shared a 17 seater transit minibus. It took two long days to drive from Le Harve to Algeciras in Spain, but we all seemed to take in our stride.

From Algeciras we took the ferry to Ceuta in northern Morocco. For the next couple of weeks we visited Tangiers, Casablanca, Marrakesh and Fez. We met missionaries working among the Moroccan people and heard stories about the challenges and blessing they experienced.

That overland trip was a significant step along the way of my call to ministry. I'm not going to suggest that I wouldn't have entered ministry if I hadn't gone, I'm sure God would have used other means, but it was a valuable and important opportunity to listen to God's voice. It was as if being in a different culture opened your eyes to the possibilities.

Tim, who came yesterday, became a missionary in West Africa, Gail and Jill, two more members of that expedition spent time in Morocco. Perhaps it would be overstating things to suggest that our particular expedition was any more important than any other, but for those of us who made the trip it was a life-changing experience, at least for some.

So I'm excited about the possibility of some of the folk from church making some sort of expedition to the Gambia to deliver our crate of school supplies. Delivering the crate will be great, but the opportunity to hear God's call is just as exciting.

What's in the job title?

I've often baulked at being called pastor, mostly because of the connotations I believed it's generally carried in the church. Pastor has often been perceived as primarily a caring role. We talk about pastoral visiting as if it's focus is spending the afternoons checking on the sick and housebound. But the role of pastor is more than this.

Ed Stetzer recently blogged about addressing the question "What's a Pastor to do?" at his church as they prepared to call a new pastor. This is how he defined the role"

A pastor must be:

1. Unique Qualifications

a. True

b. Spiritual

2. Unique Responsibilities

a. Teach the Scriptures

b. Lead the Church

c. Equip Believers

All of these were drawn from the Timothy and Titus letters.

I found this outline helpful and interesting. For those who would like to understand the tensions with which most of us in pastoral ministry live on a daily basis, this might give you some insight. For those sensing God's call to this unique, privileged role within God's mission, it ought to give you something on which you can reflect.

The original post is here and includes a video with the text. There is one sentence that needs a little bit of clarification, well it needed clarifying for me! The sentence is this:

If pastors do for people what God calls them to do, they get the praise and the work of God gets hindered.

The 'them' refers to the people not the pastors, the 'they' refers to the pastors. So the sentence reads:

If pastors do for people what God calls the people to do, the pastors get the praise but the work of God gets hindered [because they are both doing the wrong things]. It's easily misread if you are not concentrating.

Everybody has to be somewhere

From the archives again.

Here’s the premise: Everyone is somewhere on a spiritual journey. They might be going around in circles, they might be moving away from God or they might be moving towards him, but they are somewhere on a journey. I understand my call from God to be to help people take a step in the right direction, a step towards faith in Jesus Christ.

Recognising where a person may be on this faith trail is an important part of my outward focussed journey as I seek simply to be there and to be available for God to use however he chooses. I remember John Wimber saying, “I’m just small change in God’s pocket to use how he wants.” I feel like that too.

As an idea it affects outreach because I’m no longer responsible for just helping people cross the line of faith, but I’m open to any involvement in the process at any point along it’s path. I become an evangelisitic nudger and encourager, nudging people towards Jesus and encouraging them to explore the possibilities faith offers. Rather than looking for the opening to share the gospel, I look for any opening to do anything that would nudge or encourage.

It affects the way we do church too, because church needs to be a safe place where people can come and ask questions. A place where they can arrive incomplete and not feel bad about it. A place where they can feel that they belong even if the don’t beleive the right things yet or behave in the right way either.

That’s a frightening thought really. If people are just allowed to come to church and “be” how will they every realise that they’re a sinner in need of saving? Well, I’m trusting God to do what he promises to do. He said that his Spirit would do the convicting and convincing, I’m just going to try cooperating with him.

I think that to be a truly outwardly focussed church we’ll need to accept a little spiritual mess in church. After all we’ve known for a long time that we’re not perfect, so why should anyone joining us have to perfect before they come in?

How do you read your Bible?

This is not a question about the practical way in which you read, in a comfortable chair, before going to bed, systematically from Genesis to Revelation. It's a question about the principles and prejudices that you bring to the text. It's what theologians call hermeneutics. We all have at least one framework or hermeneutic into which we fit the text of scripture. It's nothing of which to be fearful, but it's quite important that we realise it's what we do.

The current vocabulary of missional church has given or will give rise to a missional hermeneutic, but what does it look like? I came across this definition via my Google alert for missional church.

A missional interpretation of Scripture reads the Bible as a unified narrative that records God’s intention to reconcile the world to himself. This narrative reveals that God accomplishes this intention by commissioning the nation of Israel to reflect God’s image to the world; by sending God the Son to restore Israel and inaugurate God’s universal blessing to the Gentiles; by sending God the Spirit to form the church into a holy people who embody God’s coming kingdom; and by sending the church into the world to proclaim the gospel and engage the culture.

I think this is a good working definition. What I particularly like is the idea of a unified narrative about God's mission of reconciliation. This naturally puts the cross at the heart of the mission because this is how we understand God to have achieved the means for this reconciliation. In other words you can't avoid the gospel. Perhaps I'd make that more explicit in a definition. The key here is that one can adopt the label "missional" but you need to know what that means when it comes to reading and applying the Bible.

When I say that I believe that God is on a mission to bless the world he created and for which his Son gave his life to rescue and redeem, I read my Bible differently than if I say I believe that God sent his Son to save the elect and bless the church. I'm not sure anyone says that, but you get the point.

When I read the Bible as this unified narrative I see time and again instances when God works beyond the confines of the people of God. He heals foreigners, speaks through external sources and touches the "unclean".

Anyway, I thought this definition was helpful. You can read the whole post here.

In search of sunshine

The weather hasn't been great the last few days but finally Pip found a sunny spot in the lounge for his afternoon nap in preparation for his evening meal.

Pondering God's character

I decided to take up James Nicodem's (author of The Prayer Coach) idea of keeping a list of God's titles, attributes and names. I've added, by accident or default I'm not quite sure, the odd theological term like omnipresent to the list. Maybe it's because I think in theological terms, but it's really not that important.

The idea is to use these titles etc. as a launch point for adoration as part of your regular prayer times. He suggests you pick three and spend some time worshipping God as you prayerfully explore the meaning of the terms.

I decided to get a simple wire-bound A5 notebook and simply begin to keep a list. I started by writing down all the titles etc. that came to mind as I labelled every other page with a letter of the alphabet. I came up with 70 without really thinking too hard about it. At three a day, that's three weeks worth of attributes to ponder.

Of course the list will grow as I add words and phrases, and I suspect that I'm not going to find anything to put in the Q, X, or maybe Z part of the book, but we shall wait and see. It's not a race to compile the biggest list, it's an act of worship in itself to recall God's names and character and it definitely reminds me that God is worthy of all my praise.

Entertaining Angels Unaware

We were replacing a poster on the church noticeboard when a voice enquired about the location of the nearest cafe. Sadly our village doesn't have a nice little coffee shop. At this point we had a choice. We could simply say we don't have one in the village and point our enquirer towards the town or we could offer him hospitality ourselves. Without having to ask Ally, who was helping me with the poster, we both knew this was an opportunity to offer to put the kettle on and make some tea.

Our new friend it turned out, was walking from Essex to Snowdon to raise money for Help the Heroes. We sat and chatted for an hour at least about his journey and his life. We looked up campsites nearby that were on his route to his next major stop and gave directions to the nearest supermarket. As he left we offered to pray for him and he accepted our offer.

It's in these moments that I think about the story Jesus told about the king who blessed those who had fed him when he was hungry, given him something to drink when thirsty, visited him in prison etc. "When did we do this?" they asked, "When you did it for the least of these," was the answer. Was this such an occasion? Who knows, it just seemed to be the right thing to do.

What I do know is that we were in the right place at the right time to extend a blessing to someone who matters to God and who hopefully may be another step closer to the kingdom as a result.

Prayer Coach

I bought this book on the back of listening to one of the Willow Creek Association "Defining Moments" CD's. As I listened to the author describe how he "prays on the armour" and how he does the "body parts" prayer, I thought this might be a good book to have a look at.

And it is.

It's a book full of practical insights about how to kick start and maintain a healthy prayer life. It isn't overly spiritualised, but simple, down to earth stuff. I often think that too many of us want clever or complex solutions to our praylessness, perhaps in order to justify our lack of time well spent on our knees (even if we don't actually kneel). In many ways this book blows those old excuses right out of the water.

There's enough here for the experienced Christian and the new believer too. The list of names and attributes of God to use to open up adoration is great and the challenge to plan, to have patterns and to choose a place are all helpful to those starting out or who might have grown a little weary over time. If some books seem to set the bar too high, this book raises the bar and then shows you and encourages you to reach new heights, or maybe that should be depths, in prayer.

Having just recently preached on the six key elements of a worshipping people, all of which related in some way to prayer, I'll be pointing my congregation towards this book.

When buzzards attack!

There are days when a story pops into the news and quite amuses me. Now given that no lasting damage appears to have been done, I feel it is safe to share with you the shocking story of the jogger attacked by a buzzard in Cornwall.

According to the BBC news website Stuart Urquhart was swooped upon as he jogged along a quite lane in Cornwall. He suffered three 6cm gashes to his head. Apparently this is not the first time it's happened. Cyclists have also come under attack from large birds in and around Devon and Cornwall.

I love Mr Urquhart's observation that maybe the buzzard mistook him for a slow moving rabbit. He bought a sun hat, presumably to confuse the bird on future runs.

Apparently experts believe, "buzzards which attack may be protecting a nest or have once been in captivity and are used to people." Not that used to them then!

Having been swooped on when walking and followed, as against chased, by cattle, and having my lunch investigated by a curious horse, I can empathise with Mr Urquhart. I do hope the perils of being stalked by wild animals doesn't put him off!

Ten things you didn't know

Here's an interesting survey about leadership in larger churches. Although it's drawn from research in America, I think some of the characteristics are quite revealing.

Ten Things You didn't Know About Senior Pastors of Large Churches

In the process of moving I happened to mention that it can take up to 20 hours to prepare properly for a Sunday morning. This was greeted with some concern given that it represents half a typical working week for the average person. But in this survey at number five in the top ten list we read this:

In a 53-hour work week, megachurch senior pastors spend a full 19 hours in and preparing for preaching, teaching and worship, 9 hours in meetings--and 5 hours in intentional prayer and meditation.

I'm not saying it's not fair that I don't get to do this, but I wonder why it is that some parts of the church are afraid that their leaders might spend a significant proportion of their time in preparation.

It was also interesting to read that they are actively involved in sports and not thinking about quitting!

The copier saga continues

Well the story of my photocopier goes on. I'm still making 'phone calls and I'm still not getting the copier fixed. Yesterday I did two things. First I called the company again and second I spent an hour looking for the firmware on the internet to no avail. Can it be any more complicated than installing a printer driver? Can it not be made "doable" in this way? Some big companies just seem to make things more difficult than they need to be. I suspect that once an engineer comes it will be a very short visit, if only they will come.

The telephone conversation was an interesting exchange. Calmly I explained one again the problem. Apparently although the internet is awash with people suffering the same issue, particularly with Canon products, it's very rare to everyone in the copier supply industry. That aside, I do feel as though we're getting somewhere even if that has more to do with hope that anything else.

What was interesting to me was both the honesty of the person to whom I spoke and their appreciation of my situation. They even thanked me for being gracious. Of course if this doesn't precipitate action, then the promises are empty and the expression of thanks meaningless. But let's hope that graciousness pays dividends and that I'm not simply being fobbed off with excuses.

We will wait and see what happens.

Slow to anger but great in power

The Lord is slow to anger but great in power.

I was struck by this phrase in Nahum (1:3) because I'm more used to reading, "slow to anger, abounding in love." In fact a quick search for slow to anger reveals that in 8 out of 9 occurrences, all in the Old Testament, the link is with some expression of love. A few times it is even extended to include forgiveness and faithfulness.

So what's the point in Nahum then? Well it seems to me that at the very least Nahum is reminding us that God's slowness to get angry is not to be misinterpreted as either an unwillingness to discipline or a powerlessness to do so.

It's always good to remember the grace and mercy of God, but we should never forget his power to act either. He is an awesome God, a jealous God and we'd do well not to mistake slowness to anger for any lack of authority.

They say that confession is good for the soul. Well I think I'd suggest that it is only good when it is linked to disciplined choices ad actions that lead to a life that honours God and seeks to become more like Jesus. When we fail, we have God's grace and mercy on which to fall, but that doesn't mean that failure should be our default position. That we will fail is inevitable, that we don't care about our faults and failures is unacceptable.

Does the world deserve a better church?

The odd thing about preaching is that what you prepare is never all that you might say, at least not in my experience. And because of this, every so often, you say something that catches even your attention. So it was one Sunday as we worked through a series of four big themes for church life.

This post originally appeared on the Eyes Turned Outwards blog.

It hit me like the proverbial ton of bricks. Just a little phrase, but a powerful one.

The world deserves a better church.

I’ve been tossing this over in my mind ever since it slipped out on Sunday as I was preaching about The Community. We’re currently thinking about four big themes for the church and The Community was all about how we relate to the wider community beyond the church. And this phrase just slipped out from somewhere.

Anyway, I’ve been turning it over in my mind and with at least one other person from church. And it seems to me that it’s a powerful phrase. It’s powerful because it’s a bit counter cultural to the way I see a lot of churches doing their thinking about the community.

If we’re honest, a lot of our churches don’t actually think the world deserves anything except judgement and punishment. That the church can be better is something we’re probably agreed upon, but that world deserves the church, well that’s another thing altogether. We look out from our safe structures and despair at the state of the world beyond our doors. But this is the world God made, the world he loves, the world over which he agonises, in fact the world for which he shed his own blood.

And if God loves the world so much that he’s willing to do whatever it takes to redeem it, then where should the church be? If we, the church, are God’s chosen mechanism for spreading his grace through our communities then what kind of church does the world deserve?

I think it deserves better than it’s getting.

I’m not criticising for the sake of it. I love the church, I believe in the church and I want to see the church be the church that the world deserves.

iBank and me

I have to take back my previous comments about ibank, I actually don't find it that easy to use. I'm getting the hang of it, but the learning curve seems to run in a counter-intuitive direction for my thinking patterns. Here's where I'm struggling.

When it comes to paying a credit card from a bank account, there doesn't seem to be a simple, efficient way to do this. I can see the transfer option, but I'm not entirely sure it always does what I think I've asked it to do. Secondly the software seems to add balancing transaction if it thinks I've done something wrong. This does not help me get it right, it just covers up a possible mistake. At least that is what it looks like it is doing.

But the biggest headache has been the bank reconciliation process. I think I've finally begun to understand it, but I'm not at all confident that the bottom line number is telling me what I need to know or not. That confidence for me comes directly from the simple ability to see all my payments and incomes checked off against the bank statement and receiving a nice affirming "finished" message. A message I'm struggling to achieve most of the time.

It is also thoroughly confusing to see a credit card statement sometimes showing a positive cleared and statement balance and sometimes a negative one. I think I understand this now. In fact the penny (well we are talking about accounts here) dropped as I lay awake in bed not ten minutes ago.

What I think is happening is that the software is comparing the balances from consecutive statements. If you spent less this month on the credit card than the previous month, this balance will be positive, if you've spent more it will be negative. Now what I actually want to see is a figure that represents what I've spent and what I need to pay, not the difference between what I've spent month on month.

If this is true for the credit card reconciliations then I guess it's true for the current account too. Which means that the numbers I see in the reconciliation window don't actually tell me what I want to know. So I feel more relaxed now about my abject failure to reconcile my bank accounts in a way that makes sense to me, but at least I may be getting it right more than I thought I was getting it wrong.

I still might have a look at Quicken 2007, or worse still, I might just install Parallels and go back to Microsoft Money, perish the thought!

Our own big conversation

Today we had lunch together as members and non-members, followed by a conversation about membership. We asked some simple questions:

• What kind of members/followers does God want us to produce in this place?
• What kind of experiences do we need to become those kind of followers/members?
• What would you put in a covenant style promise?

It was a good conversation. About 30 or so people came and we had a good mix of members and non-members.

I think that it's high time we began a process of re-imagining church for the 21st century. There's something about formal membership and the often internally focused responsibilities and expectation that doesn't sit well with a missional, incarnational view of church.

Interestingly one of the reasons given for non-membership was a desire not to have responsibility for decision-making. I didn't hear this as saying they were not interested in the decision-making process, it was more a case of let others get on with making the decisions and I'll get on with what I do as a result of those decisions.

It was certainly worth doing and I wonder how I can implement a similar process in my new setting later this year. I think the questions need refining, but the idea of sitting down and talking about what all of see as the key issues and process and promises could be very worthwhile.