A Vision for the Local Church (Remix)

Originally I wrote most of this piece nine years ago for a parish church magazine. As my current church comes together to discuss the future this coming Saturday, I have remixed it and updated it as a personal vision for what our local church could be like.

I have been thinking a lot recently about the church. Not so much the church worldwide or nationally, but our local church. I’ve been thinking about and asking myself a lot of questions about us. Hard questions, like why don’t more people want to come and worship with us, or even better, join us and become part of the church family. We give thanks for those who do come with all our hearts. But why don’t more people come?

After all, I think we are a welcoming and friendly congregation and I know how eager we are to see more people coming along to our services and other events. We are a strong and committed congregation – strong in our faith and committed to doing God’s work in our part of the city. And I believe we are a loving and caring church too.

But there’s a hard fact that we have to face. In the past three years we have been shrinking as a congregation. Recently some have left because they do not want to stay in the Church of Scotland. I believe many others left before that because they were not happy with the ministry of our soon to be departed minister. Most of us stayed put and wait upon the Lord's leading for the next part of our story to be written. 

I know full well that if God wills it, he can send a revival and save a thousand souls. He can fill our church with new life and new Christians by the hundreds if he wants to. And we pray that he will! But, what if God is waiting until we show our willingness to change and go further as a congregation to bring people to Christ? God has always also worked through the work and witness of his people. Sometimes he waits until we give our lives to his service and to mission. He might be waiting to act until we decide what our priority is as a church, until we decide we are willing to change ourselves and the way we do things, so that he can then do a new thing through us. As he said to the prophet Isaiah:

“Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the desert and streams in the wasteland.“ (Isaiah 43:18-19, NIV)

The question we all have to face is whether we are ready and willing to change, to give up certain things, to have “dead wood” cut away from the stump of the tree so that new growth can flourish?
What things do I have in mind? Well I don’t have all the answers. I think this is a discussion we need to have with each other within our congregation. We all need to be willing to give and take, learn from each other, and take up different ideas. Here are just a few ideas to get the discussion started.

Faith. Unless we have a real, living faith in Jesus Christ ourselves, unless we know Christ as our Saviour and Lord, brother and friend, how can we really tell other people about him? Unless we understand the gospel, believe it and live it out in our lives, how can we really tell anyone outside the church that we have good news for them? This means that opening up the Scriptures, whether in Sunday preaching or midweek Bible study, must be at the heart of what we do.

Worship. We need to worship God in accordance with God’s word. But are there parts of our worship that people from outside the church would find hard to understand, or difficult to engage with? Do we have things that are merely our traditions rather than God’s commands? Could we do worship differently at some of our services if this would be more interesting or easy to understand for people who are not used to going to church? Is it a good use of our resources to have two Sunday services following almost exactly the same format?

Communication. Those of us who have been going to church for years are comfortable with church language that we use all the time. Do we need to take time to consider that not everyone knows what our church language means or how our church works? Can we find ways of communicating the truth of God’s word in ways that are more meaningful to people who are not used to reading the Bible or going to church? Should we better at explaining how our church is governed and what decisions have been made?

Prayer. Prayer has always been central to our congregation life and we need to go on in prayer if we want to become a growing congregation again. The apostles were constantly telling Christians in New Testament times to pray for one another. Do we need any new systems to enable us to pray for each other and for what we need as a congregation? Do we need to think of ways to boost our prayer life beyond the traditional prayer meeting?

Fellowship. If the churches in the New Testament were anything they were communities. We are God’s family and we need to be as close to each other as any blood family. Are we ready to share our lives with each other, allowing each other to see and to share in our joys and sorrows? Or are we too proud to let our guard down? Too scared of what people will think of us, to be really honest with each other when we have problems, doubts, sadness, or pain? If we don’t live as a family, as God’s community, really loving each other and showing it, how can we convince anyone outside the church that we really love them?

Service. One of the most effective ways of touching the lives of those outside the church is by helping and caring for them in practical ways. In this Jesus is our prime example. As well as teaching people, Christ helped people in very practical ways. He cured the sick, he fed the hungry, he comforted the broken. How can we find ways of doing that for people that we want to reach and bring into God’s kingdom?  Equally how can we serve those who have limited or no material needs? How do we ensure that everyones gifts for service are recognised, encouraged and developed to their maximum potential?

For a long time it has seemed to me that small groups is a biblical and practical way to cover several of these issues in one solution, particularly fellowship, prayer and studying the Bible. But I am aware that for others the current large midweek prayer meeting and Bible study for the whole church is also a valuable and important part of our church life. Perhaps we need to move beyond an either/or mindset to a both/and mindset?

Coming up with ideas is a human skill. Coming to agreement and moving forward together as congregation is the work of the Holy Spirit. Let us pray for his guidance in the days ahead.

A Fellowship of Differents

A Fellowship of Differents
Scot McKnight
Zondervan, 2014

I have read a number of books by the American New Testament scholar, Scot McKnight, and have never found one that wasn't both interesting and useful. His book A Fellowship of Differents was no exception. As the title might suggest, the theme of the book is that the Christian Church is supposed to be a fellowship of people who are all very different from one another. Different sexes, races, nationalities, social classes and temperaments all coming together in a shared life as God's new community and new humanity through faith in Jesus Christ.

The book's subtitle is "Showing the World God's Design for Life Together" and that captures one of the book's key themes - the importance of sharing life together as Christians. As the author makes clear, God's church is intended to show the world a new way of being human and form a new community composed of followers of Jesus, and most importantly, that this isn't some high-flying spiritual theory - it is meant to be lived out in practice at each local gathering or congregation of Christ's people, namely at the local church where you go on Sunday morning or to events during the week.

Somehow, McKnight manages to make this a practical look at what church should really be like and a theological reflection on why this should be so. Above all, it is realistic about what our expectations of our local church should be.

At a time when my own local church is facing issues of people leaving because the denomination to which we belong is deemed by them to be unworthy of their continued membership and support, I was particularly struck by a profound quote in the book from Dietrich Bonhoeffer: "Those who love their dream of a Christian community more than the Christian community itself become destroyers of that Christian community though their personal intentions may be ever so honest, earnest, and sacrificial" (p.112, from Life Together). McKnight's point is that we cannot desert the real churches that we find down the street from where we live in pursuit of an imaginary church where everything is perfect: perfect doctrines, perfect worship, perfect people. Such a quest is not only delusional, but damaging to the real church. 

I was also fascinated and moved by a passage where McKnight describes a "typical" church service in New Testament times, maybe in a Roman city like Rome or Pompeii. The passage is too long to quote (pp. 100-102), but it describes a Roman woman going along to a church meeting in a rich person's house, seeing people from all different Roman classes sitting together and sharing in a meal together (in these times communion was taken as part of an actual meal, not in the ritualised form of "meal" we find in most modern churches). Such an act was revolutionary in Roman society where it was unthinkable for wealthy patricians and common slaves to sit at a table for a meal which celebrates God's grace for people through the death of the Messiah on the cross, and they take the bread and wine as equals and—perhaps even more amazingly—as a family gathering together.

Throughout the book, the author blends teaching with examples of real people in real churches, which also help to keep the book grounded in practical realities as the discussion moves through a number of different subjects including grace, love, communion, holiness, new life and the Holy Spirit—and there are useful insights on each of these subjects along the way.

This book would be great for anyone interested in the importance of their local church, maybe especially for anyone who is a bit jaded and needs to be reminded that the events in that building you go to, and the interactions you have with the people there (yes, even the odd ones, the strange ones, the ones who are as unlike you as you can imagine), despite how it might seem, are actually God's chosen mechanism for changing the world and making a new humanity. Think about that next Sunday and every Sunday in your local church.