see-through faith

During my first residential week at Cliff college more than a year ago now I met a Methodist Pastor (or two or three)* who helped me throw away the box that I’d previously used to define church.

Even today I’m wrestling with some of what I learnt and experienced last year – I mean how on earth did church get reduced to meeting for an hour or two on a Sunday and peering down the back of someone’s neck and hearing someone drone on about something that doesn’t even remotely relate to anything anyone in the congregation does? Ok – I admit – that’s a huge generalisation but you’ll catch my drift.

One of the things we did back in Cliff that first week during the ministry time was use duplo to describe where we were in minstry at that moment. I found it so hard.  That was – in part – because at that point it simply felt that every door was being closed to me back then. Ironically that situation hasn’t changed. I’m still not an accredited local pastor, I’m still in limbo-land as far as ordained ministry etc. etc. (and I’m tired of sounding like a broken record) … but in my heart I’m in a very different place to where I was back then. It’s all because of God of course – and the fact that He’s taught me so much about Him over the years – not head knowledge (though there’s some of that too) but also heart knowledge – and I’ve grown as a follower of Jesus because of it.

So where was I ? Ah yes, church.

Tell me, if six or so women meet together for coffee after dropping their kids off at school or scouts or swimming lessons, (or any other group who naturally meet) is that church? I don’t think so.

But what about if as well as drinking coffee, they share about their week, and start to pray for one another ? what then? Is that church? It might very well be.

What if they then notice that doing this is a good thing and start inviting other mums to join? Is that church? Is that taking the Great Commission seriously? I think it is. I think it’s valid and it’s exactly how the early church operated (in its own context and culture of course)

If God is brought in our natural meetings – week after week after week – I think it has to qualify as a fresh expression of church don’t you?

So tell me …. Why is it, then, that what we do from Monday to Saturday still seems to count for so much less than whether we show up on a Sunday morning or not? Why are we still so obsessed with counting how many people come in to a worship service on a Sunday or a carol service or any other clergy led meeting? Why is so much time and energy spent on preparing the service – the sermon in particular- rather than used in building relationships where people naturally are?

Remember right at the beginning of this post I spoke of a Methodist pastor who helped me begin to process some of these thoughts. Well today he wrote a post that spoke right into that again… go check out what Graham has to say for yourself over at digging a lot. You’ll be glad you did.

*There were also non-ordained folk of all kinds of denominations too (some of whom really spoke into my life)- and for the record not all clergy were of the Methodist variety – there were some pretty cool dissenting non-dissenters too as well as Pentecostals, Baptists and other odd bods

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 4th, 2009 at 6:37 pm and is filed under Cliff college, disciple of Jesus. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.