hangout with Alison and just enjoy being around alot
play and swim with the kids
catch fish with Liam
read something historical or biographical like Tyranicide brief
drive a really long way away from home like Noosa
listen to some cracking preaching with Ali whilst we drive and the kids watch DVD’s in the back.
explore places where I haven’t been before like Nambour markets.
visit old friends along the way and just hang and say hi like the Jarretts and the Batemans and the Grundys
fellowship in a different church like Point Community Church
cook lots of local produce like the fish I catch with Liam
eat lots of fresh fruit
drink good wine and cold beer .
walking by water and swimming in the sea
watch some quality movies
forgetting about emails, phone calls and GTD lists
enjoy spending time in God’s word for no other reason than He is my heavenly father, it is His word and I am His son.
when I feel low, frustrated, stressed etc I find myself habitually staring at the fridge.
What is happening I think is that I am seeking comfort in a good thing, but the danger is that I eat till I am full but whatever caused me to eat in the first place hasn’t been addressed. It’s just a quick fix to help me feel better. It’s an easy out and a functional pseudo saviour.
Some people go shopping and spend therapeutically , others look at pornagraphic images, others have a drink, still others go do something that makes them feel powerful or important. They’re all dirty saviours that don’t deliver. What makes you think that your eating is any less a prob than a drunk? You get a quick fix but you are never deeply satisfied, and you are always left longing for more.
It a bit like KFC regret. You have a craving, you think those sweet smells of the colonel will satisfy you, but very quickly you are left feel dirty and greasy and wishing you had never gone there.
Psalm 36: 7-9
…. You give them drink from the waters of your delight….
It’s so easy to be decieved into believng that his cup and his table won’t satisfy.
here’s what I am trying to read this month
Keller – The Reason for God ( reread in prep for an apologetic series)
Powlison – The Idols of the Heart and Vanity Fair
Bebbington – The Dominance of Evangelicalism
Robinson – The Tyrannicide Brief (Holiday read)
Borden – Direct Hit- Aiming Real Leaders at the Mission Field
when it comes to reading I am a bit of a dilettante, relatively ill disciplined and eclectic.
I’m interested to know how you approach your reading and the goals you set.
also open to suggestion for December
6.5 kgs in 2 weeks, but I had a lax weekend and lost discipline.
eating like a sparrow and dumping like an elephant.
the secret is low carbs, sweat, lots of steamed vegies and a serious cut back on lattes.
any hints?
with the help of a famine.
Luke 15. The lost younger son hit rock bottom. It was no doubt humbling. His recklessness had brought him to ruin. You would think that would be enough for him to be sensing what Heidegger called ” unheimlichkeite” – that eery and anxious sense of not being at home and longing for his father. Yet just in case that were not enough, the Lord allowed a famine in that distant country of self exile.
The Lord’s providence mercifully led him to repentance. But it wasn’t what we often expect God to provide for us. when was the last tyime you heard someone say thankyou God for my unemployment. Thankyou God for my cancer. Thankyou God for my chronic backpain. Thankyou Lord for doing what was necessary to humble me. It unsettles us to let God be God.
The lost young son’s suffering was not wasted, for it would seem that he received it as discipline. It brought a sober mind set that could savour the goodness of his father, and set him on a course home. His idols had delivered him exactly what they could – nothing – and he had finally realized what he’d had all along – a gracious father.
I like what CS Lewis says regarding this kind of suffering, it is God’s megaphone to a hurting world.
“God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks to us in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: It is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world”.
I wish more people would ‘hear’ that megaphone and often wonder why there is not more people “coming to their senses”.
…and for my friends who are yet to be convinced and who are suffering, despite what some brands of Christianity might tell you, Christianity is not a coke machine that exchanges a few coins of religion for a can of blessing. They put nails in his hands.
God has not promised to deliver you from suffering, but he has promised to delver you through it. He lifts up the humble … eventually.
here’s a problem for me as a blogger and why I need to be careful online.
My righteousness can only be by faith in Jesus Christ because he is my savior – not my effort, not my performance and not even my intellect or ideas.
In other words I am ok only because of grace – i am a sinner saved by grace. any other basis for my righteousness and my acceptance will be false and will fail.
Now here’s my question, as much as i can can theorise this gospel , to what extent is it actually realised when it comes to something like blogging.
I think that on more occasions than I can remember, I have thought – maybe sub-consciously – that my worth and acceptance and status is bound up in what people think of my opinion about matters of truth.
Now you are probably thinking, truth matters. It does I assure you. But why does it matter to you?
You see, doctrinal Pharisees make an idol out of truth, in that they can articulate the doctrine of justification by faith and salvation in christ alone, yet in reality they operate with another functional saviour. They trust in the rightness of their beliefs.
Tim keller suggests that these are the people who are prone to mocking and scoffing. Because their identity and worth is bound up in the rightness of their ideas, they tend to be dogmatic, closed in mind and is always disrespectful of opponents. Their disdainfulness comes from their false sense of superiority. They are often reformed and evangelical like me, and say they are justified by faith in christ but their real trust and assurance – though subtle – Is in themselves, and in the righteousness of
their own ideas. It’s an idol because they love their doctrine about God more than God himself.
Here lies the danger, because the internet has the potential to breed scofffers and mockers, because let’s face it – your traffic increases with scoffing, disdain, sarcasm, mockery and bombastic quips.
so some strategies to guard my heart
1. Believe the gospel and keep praying that it is realised functionally when it comes to others acceptance and opinion
2. Make a practice of caring more for God and his glory and less for my place, status, worth and identity apart from him and his gospel.
3. Search my motive before I post, ensuring that I am being slow to scoff and quick to bless.
4. Sit it in the drafts and wait a while
5. Allow the word of grace to identify, expose and demolish the idols of my heart.
answer: it doesn’t address the idols of my heart, community or culture.
have you ever wonder why alot of preaching seems to fail to move people toward change or make a difference in a relatively indifferent world.
recently I was pointed to the response to the preaching of Paul in Acts 19.
there is a riot in response to Paul’s persuasive preaching, because the whole economy is threatened by what he proclaims.
interestingly there is no sermon recorded but rather a precis is given by his opponents.
Demetirus says: ‘ he says ” their gods are no gods at all”.
That got me thinking that its probably worth asking what our opponents think we are saying! e.g what does the average guy in my neighborhood think is the message that I am giving, is it accurate and does it have anything to do with true and false worship?
it would seem that real impact happens, with ensuing social upheaval and transformation, when the idols of the culture are demythologized. that is, we say “whatever you are giving your life to right now is an inordinate love, a good thing that has become a god thing that will not and cannot save you.”
further we show and demonstrate where are deepest love and desires cannot truly be satisfied and rewarded in the glory and grace of Jesus Christ.
our proclamation must identify, expose and demolish idols.
our personal relationships and gospel communities must demonstrate that the gods of our culture are no gods at all, and when that happens – the volume really gets turned up (as does the heat!) – and people really start listening.
what do you reckon?
there are times when you may have thought that if God is there than he is just like a mean kid who pulls wings of flies for fun. holy heroes of the bible have thought the same until they have reflected more on God’s character.
Psalm 56:8
“you have kept count of my tossings, put my tears in your bottle. Are they not in your book?” (ESV)
its a wonderful little snippet of God’s character. He knows you better than you know yourself, he knows your restlessness, your fears, your worries, your hopes.
its striking don’t you think that He does not miss one drop of a tear, one ounce of pain.
the singer is confident that his God is no longer against him as an enemy, but his God is faithfully FOR him, against the enemy – whether that be some foe, or his own sin, or death itself.
” for you have delivered my soul from death, yes my feet from falling, that I may walk befre God in the light of life.”
yesterdays sermon seemed to go OK
I preached on Paul’s prayer in Ephesians 1:15-23 as part of a series looking at what we would want for each other in our gospel community. We want for each other to know God more and more. God has given us everything we need in Christ, to the praise of his glorious grace.
1. We give thanks for the “trophies of grace” that we gather in community with each week, particularly their faith in Christ outworking in their love for the saints.
2. we pray for one antoher that we would know God better.
3. we pray that the Lord would give our hearts insght so that:
a. we grasp our hope more deeply and live in light of it
b. we realise the possessions that are already ours in christ and stop pursuing what we don;t need
c. we experience God’s power in the risen Christ who rules us by his word and renovates us by his spirit
The more I have reflected upon this the more I realise the importance of not only praying this for others but wanting it for myself. Imagine if all of God’s people in your local area, just for a week or even a month, stopped fussing over “stuff” and fussed about knowing deeply and personally the supremacy or Christ and his power -imagine what a difference that might make.
I am a bit over blogging at the moment and am not at all confident that I have that much to say that is genuinely coming from me.
don’t take it personally, but I have found that I have been a lot happier and more useful in general by staying away from the computer and doing other things like reading books and focussing on the people in front of me rather than my iphone.
oh and I got back from Fiji recently. I had a great time teaching, building partnerships and mentoring a bunch of super keen young Christians. Despite the fact that I missed my family it was very rewarding and refreshing. For the first time in a long time I don’t feel like a spiritual sham, and my desire to learn and grow and walk in Christ and delight in the Lord’s grace has been renewed. One thing I learnt from a great sage called Mike was what he meant when he said ” I knew a lot more when I first left college than I do now”. (let he who has ears let him understand).
if you could pray for me and my family that would be great. especially that we would have one heart and mind in serving the Lord together, and that I would love them in the kind of way that Christ loves his church. Also that I would be faithful and diligent in my role as a pastor of the church, God’s flock.
and one final thing that I heard yesterday that was really refreshing
” Christianity is an anti- statistical proposition”
Paul Windsor of Langham partnership was making the point from Acts 8 that the Lord uses some of the most unusual people, in the most unusual timing and unusual places to effect his most unusual work of redemption and transformation. I so needed to hear that.
what have you needed to hear recently?
Seti and I were talking through things yesterday and spoke about really wanting to see 4 conversions happening for everyone we meet. Its another way of speaking about growing more and more wholehearted worshipers of the Lord Jesus.
we want to see
1. conversion to Jesus as the Son of God (God’s grace)
2. conversion to the bible as the word of God (God’s government)
3. conversion to the church as the community of God (God’s gathering)
4. conversion to the world as the mission of God (God’s scattering)
it seems to me you can work out in a person how well they have grasped the gospel of Jesus and are appropriately responding by these 4 areas. its helpful for me as I think about how I am going too.
have I grasped God grace in Christ?
do I greet the rule of God through his word?
am I committed to living and serving and learning in the community of his gathering?
having been called out of the world, and am I faithfully living as one sent into the world? am I a missional Christian in my local action and global concern?
the correlates are pretty confronting.
if you love Jesus and hate the church, then maybe you are not really converted.
or if you love community but avoid the word’s authority, you are not really converted.
or if you think you are a Jesus and bible guy but can’t cope with a community of grace, maybe you are not truly converted.
and just maybe, you are yet to embrace the world as the sphere where God’s glory is proclaimed and lived for – then again you haven’t quite got it yet.
hebrews 4:12 speaks of the thoughts and desires of the heart.
• there’s what we think (interpret believe and trust)
• there’s what we desire (worship want treasure)
Tim Chester helpfully points out we are always interpreting and always worshipping something. Part of our very humaness is our propensity to expalin things and treasure things … It’s hard wired into us.
There’s the problem with my heart too. What I think and what I desire, because sin is not trusting God nor desiring him above all else. It’s beliving lies and falsehood rather than his good word and worshipping created things rather than my creator.
Only the gospel can help hearts. Only the gospel gives me a true object of faith and a true object of repentance. Only the gospel satisfies my thoughts and desires, my trust and worship.
I wonder whether we have captured this well in our gospel presentatons?
It would seem that our desires, our wants, our treasures are key in getting to heart issues, and not just our thoughts, interpretations and explanations?
how can I preach to hearts in a way that hits thoughts and desires?
we get a mention in southern cross here
i stand by what i said there even if i don’t remember actually saying it
its because sometimes empty vessels make the loudest noises, and I am a little wary of myself in this regard.
but here’s what I am doing instead :
1 .I am working harder on having respect for the word of God, that I both live under and proclaim
2. I am trying to show more respect for the people of God by paying careful attention to how I communicate the word of God
3. I am reading Tim Chester’s ” you can change ” really slowly, for no other reason than I need to understand my Lord;s sanctifying power and be transformed by it.
4. I am encouraging other guys like me who are interesting in the kind of ministry that is clearly Reformed (theological convictions) Urban (ministry context) and Missional (ministry philosophy). I am calling it the R.U.M corps. (cool heh!). A few of us pray together each week for one another and the Marrickville LGA in particular.
5. other people’s ideas are way more original and interesting then my own
6. we have a 4th child called Declan (it Gaelic and means “full of goodness” – the Lord anyway!) – my wife and kids are far more worth the time that I have often spent indulging myslef in blogging.
back soon. 
next month I will be in Fiji for a few weeks and I have been asked to do some workshops on approaching the bible and teaching
I was thinking of something that helps them to put the bible in its biblical theological context. something like :
the Kingdom pattern, perished, promised, partial, prophesied, present, proclaimed and perfected.
I only have a couple of hours and importantly, I want to model reading the bible for them.
what would you do ?
I read Don Carson recently on the memoirs of his father, whom he painted as a fairly ordinary pastor in an incredibly difficult context of Quebec back in the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s. Tom Carson was faithful, prayerful,steadfast and not flashy.
The Don’s dad had a big impact on his life, in fact the Don is one of those great leaders and theologians we’ll probably remember long after he’s gone. But his dad – Tom Carson – will be remembered mostly as Don’s dad, if at all sadly.
Don’s dad is a spiritual legend because there was no sham.
High spiritual pretense with low spiritual reality kills christian family.
Low spiritual pretense with high spiritual reality envigorates family.
It’s about applying the gospel to family really.
God’s grace toward spirirtual failures like me brings a humility which means we’re liberated from the crushing demands to perform. I don’t have to try and be something or someome who clearly I’m not.
Just humbled, thankful, full of grace.
And much better to be that at home, then to somehow pretend to be something other… No one will spot sham better than your own family, and no one will benefit more from your genuine spiritual reality then they will.
its is an Anglican School after all.
Tim Chester is a co author of Total Church.
Tim Chester Ordinary Hero has now been publish through IVP. its about everyday Christian living from a reformed and missional perspective.
Can’t wait to get my copy.
Recently I listened to Steve Timmis speaking at mars hill church on gospel communities. Well worth a listen, in fact we have begun using the talks In one of our community groups.
Importantly he shares what he understand the gospel is, because it is this that will centre shape and direct our understaning of community ( which in turn holds up and lives out God’s message – 1 tim 3:16).
So what is the gospel?
Steve puts it this way:
The gospel is…
Jesus, God’s promised rescuer and ruler,
lived our life, died our death,
raised again in victorious triumphant vindication
as the first fruits of the new creation
to bring forgiven sinners together under his gracious reign.
So what do you think? Do he capture it, and if so why?
And if anything, what’s missing?
aka “value statements” often end up being totally meaningless whilst the better ones can be deeply frustrating.
1 .the meaningless ones don’t really tell you anything about a gospel centred community or its culture but more about what they prefer or like, the problem being it may have little bearing in relation to the gospel.
for example, I came across one core value that said : we value excellence in all things.
well good for you but what exactly do you mean by that, and what does it have to do with Jesus his rescue and rule? No doubt it may, but exactly how it is hard to say. excellence in servanthood or excellence in the lines for the car spaces in the car park, or excellence in being excellent.
or another: we value creativity. again I would want to say whose creativity and for what purpose, expressed in what ways. its all too value because it doesn’t define the good in the currency of the gospel which is what gives things worth.
value statements must be more than what we like, and more than vague aphorisms; they must signify the very dna of what it means to be a gospel community – they must paint some kind of picture for what is essential to our life together in Christ.
2. the other problem with churches values statements is that they are aspirational – that is even if they are good ones – they are things we are moving towards therefore dangerously under realised. this can be deeply frustrating when the church at its core is a community of spiritual failures and screw ups.
don’t get me wrong, clearly articulated values, well defined and understood, can be immensely valuable, they shape culture or at least tell us something about the kind of culture of church that we would like to be , yet they can be terribly disappointing when we talk the talk but do not walk the walk.
values statements have value – because rightly informed shaped and centered by the gospel, they tell us something of the kind of people we would like to be , or more importantly , what God would like us to be – but we must be diligent in seeing them being realised without being crushed by the weight of the aspiration.
so please help me in thinking through core values for a gospel community.
if you had to name 5 aspects of gospel community that were to shape us and we were to deeply cherish – what would they be ?
first not on you, you’re not as important as you might think. Jesus and his supremacy is far greater.
second, you could look around for some people who are keen on starting something new that helps people to know Jesus like a church plant and invest in them. I like this idea and think its necessary – but to be honest it not how I’d spend my first $250k, but defintely my second $250k. with the right guy, who has the the right message & the right mission in the right context – its a potentially high return – but its also a high risk – and having joined a body of people who in the past decade have blown half a million this way – I think there may be something that is lower risk and higher return as as first measure.
so third – this is what I’d do first
Find those who are already in place, doing mission with existing reources – and spend the money helping them to do mission better. they’re there, they just not always sure what they are doing.
you won’t improve everyone this way, but most churches I know have good guys, with the right message and mission but the wrong resources. I’d help them to get simple and clear about what they are doing, realise the potential of the resources they already have at their disposal, and give them the supports for putting in a place a growth orientated process in their churches.
so what would $250 k buy?
two things.
1. leadership consultancy that actually helps churches to be missionally strategic and effective.
2. leadership consultancy that helps churches to create new capital to fund there new improved mission strategies.
in my context this will mean
1. we stopped giving church grants where they throw good money into bad strategies and structures
2. we plant churches only out of healthy missionally effective and growing structures that can support them.
3. we reources leaders in existing churches by helping them to mangae their existing captial better whilst creating new captial and structures that will orientate for growth.
4. when we do give churches grants for new projects, we will be confident that the money will be better spent because there will be better leaders with better structure in place.
5. overseers will have a clear focus, pastoral care of their leaders and facilitating the right consultants for growth.
in the majority of post Christian ministry contexts, ministry is
low key,
long term ,
hard labour,
highly relational,
gospel intentional.
we would love to see heaps of new ministries popping up that help people to be wholehearted worshippers of the Lord Jesus. We want to grow more and more of them becasue we beleive thats what God wants. and we have a denomination – who are on the whole a group of like minded Jesus lovers who share a common history, theology and resources – who want to help us do this through grants.
in my context if you went to our denomination and asked them to invest in new ministry, they’d say tell us about the person and tell us about the project. If they like the person and the project then they give you a reducing grant over three years. 29k, 19k, 11k. or something like that ( at least that’s what happened before we lost all are money through bad gearing and the GFC).
here’s the problem. I can’t think of anywhere in our urban missional context where a new ministry could get up and running enough to pay its leadership in that time. where I live the money wouldn’t even make the rent.
frankly its not a model for pioneering new ministry, but only tacking onto existing ones.
for new ministries – either our models of ministry have got to change – like have more part time and bi-vocational pastors and evangelists – or the way we fund things must change – so that the goals of funding and the resources that accompany them actually reflect the nature of ministry which is low key., long term. hard labour, highly relational and gospel intentional.
Recently in my reading and preaching I have been struck by a number of things in Luke’s gospel, with two in particular that I would like to take the liberty of sharing with you. it has uncovered a heart problem for me.
first it struck me that before Jesus selected his apostloic band and descended onto the plain to teach the masses ,he spent a whole night in prayer and communiion with his father. have you ever thought about that? it was only after a night in prayer, only then did he make what I would consider a significant ministry decision, and only then did he did the teach the people on what it meant to be a radical community of grace. Jesus’ power in ministry was an outworking of his deep dependance on and communiion with his heavenly father it would seem.
Just maybe I lack power in ministry because I do so much out of my own strength and ability rather than out of a humble dependance on God through prayer.
Second it struck me that the bookends of Luke 7 are two models of faith. Two unworthy and unlikely people who honour Jesus quite profoundly.
The first instance is the centurian whose faith Jesus commends because he recognises as a man under authority that Jesus is a commander who must be listened to. so he says to Jesus, you say it and I’ll do it.
That’s radical obedience of faith that Jesus is looking for. Too often I have heard the command to come , go or do and ignored it because of sin and the dullness of my heart.
The second is a shady lady who lavishly honours Jesus in one of the most socially awkward, intimate and emotionally charged scenes in the the wole gospel. its affectionate devotion that is uncaring of others opinions if ever there was. her deep debt, encountered grace and welled over in deep love. again leaves me looking a little cold.
here’s the rub
Whilst I am no enthusiast, I can see much centurian like faith being called for within the camps where I belong yet little expression of the affection and deeply intimate faith of the women we meet in the end of Luke 7. Her wholehearted devotion was a costly, intimate, emotional effusion of wholehearted worship that welled up out of an intense appreciation of the greatness of sin and the greatness of the saviour. yet my fear is that we too often call for duty without joy, and where we do speak of sin and forgiveness – it seems to leave the heart untouched and unmoved. we lack her tears.
It seems to me that we are good are calling for obedient servants who ‘go’ ‘come’ and ‘do’, yet it doesn’t strike me that we do so with the joyful devotion that breaks all convention becasue of the supremacy of Christ. I don’t want to manufacture some emotional experientialism. I just want heart felt, warm, reformed piety that has a healthy place for the affections.
the whole point of chapter 7 in Luke’s gospel in that we must graps who Jesus is. The gospel indicative must show forth in the gosple imperiative of love which in reposnse to the Lorship and Grace of Christ is both obedient and affectionate. and so I pray it would be so for me.
Among the many reasons assignable for the sad decay of true Christianity, perhaps the neglecting to assemble ourselves together, in religious societies, may not be one of the least.
the pyro’s have a great little piece by Spurgeon here – some might saying dripping with irony – but I think he was saying , as useful as the methodology of the messenger might be, the power is always in the message – and we must never rely on the method – always the message.
pia desideria means the ” the piety we desire “. Its the title of a small book that was a large preface to another book and was written by Jacob Spener in 1675. Mark Noll mentions him in his book “the Rise of Evangelicalism – the age of Edwards, Whitefield and the Wesleys” .
Spener was addressing an analysis of Germanys spiritual problems where despite a stack of church activity, he lamented that there were few who really knew and practiced true Christianity. There was a deep concern that an arid orthodoxy and formal religion had not stimulated the true faith which is awakened through the word of God , by the illumination, witness and sealing of the Holy Spirit .
Spener proposed six remedies.What he advocates seems to have been a bedrock for the spiritual awakening which followed inthe next century.
Amidst all the recent talk of ministry strategy and organization, its refreshing to read something as timeless and timely as this. it strikes me that if we were to ask ” what does the church needs today” there are few tracts , prefaces, books or conference offering piety as a remedy.
here’s what Spener suggested:
1. there must be a return to the word of God, for only there do we hear good news and are shown good living.
2. lay people (non professional Christians) must again take an active role in religious life. interestingly he thought it vital that the ‘ancient and apostolic kind of church meetings’ where men and women gathered through the week for bible study and spiritual encouragement was urgently needed ( what we would call gospel commiuntiy groups)
3. there must be a movement beyond correct beliefs to active godliness. The gospel indicative of love must be worked out in the gosple imperative of love.
4. Harsh religious controversies must be stopped and replaced with a practice of heartfelt love toward unbelievers and heretics.
5. the eldership/ pastorate of the church must be kept for men who are true Chrsitans and not place servers who are eager for prestige and power.
6. bible college students must understand the practice of godliness ( we would say actually doing biblical ethics )and not merely trained to parrot theories of theological and spiritual life.
tasty remedies – I say bring on pia desideria. timely?
well here’s the thing i am praying and planning for.
twenty guys and their families who love Jesus, leave sin , learn from his word and live for his glory
growing gatherings of twenty people who are committed to the dual fidelities of the gospel and community in the Marrickville LGA
in a partnership of twenty like minded groups who want to work together for the sake of Jesus being known and glorified in this sin sick city.
imagine that – 20 gospel communities of 20 people - 400 people knowing loving and serving Jesus in the our local area!
it almost sounds achievable under God!
but there are 80 000 in my Local Government Area – so if we are to see a genuine spiritual awakening to begin to happen – we need to seek the Lord’s blesing on our prayer and proclamation 20 times over again.
20 twenty 20
in the previous posts I was looking at ethically emaciated Christians and what might help to beef them up.
Stuart Heath gave a wonderful description of a week in the life of his church.
it raise the question of how would things be different if we restructured church to beef up ethically trained disciples of the Lord Jesus who are also missionally effective.
here it is:
In the church I’m in now (part of The Crowded House network in Sheffield), our primary locus of church is not a Sunday gathering, but small groups (15–20 people, though we’re looking at ways to make these smaller). The key differences I see between this and most of my church experience in Sydney is:
(a) it facilitates church as community, rather than event;
(b) it helps me know which Christians to love in deeper ways (i.e. I focus on building relationships and serving the people in my small group, rather than being overwhelmed by having a hundred people to ‘really get to know’), and it facilitates a level of trust which allows us to be open with one another about our sins and struggles (because we’re committed to one another in a concrete way);
(c) it gives an easy context for doing mission together. That is, in Sydney, my worlds were sealed off from one another — church friends, uni friends, work friends, family. In this church, the idea is to get those worlds colliding, so that people who don’t know Jesus get to see his people living together (serving one another, serving others together, resolving conflict in godly ways, raising children, discussing life decisions, and so on).
This is highly aspirational: our prayer is that it be rare for us to meet *without* unbelievers present, but we’re a long way from that so far! But we seem to be headed in the right direction. The geography of Sheffield makes it easier than Sydney — most of us live within ten minutes’ walk of one another; people don’t commute an hour to work. Having said that, a few people do live further away, and it’s not unusual for some of them to have ’sleepovers’ if we’re having dinner late, or something.
We have no regular times when the whole small group meets all together, though we put a Sunday lunch in diary for every 4–6 weeks where most people will be present. There are two fixed meetings that people come to if they’re available — every Wednesday morning we pray for half an hour before work; every other Monday evening we meet to read the Bible.
Our only ‘formal ministry’ is running a conversation class on Saturday mornings for asylum seekers and refugees. Our hope and prayer is to develop relationships with those people outside the conversation class, and this has been slow so far.
All other ‘meetings’ are ad hoc. Living close means lots of low-key contact (cups of tea and so on). The idea is not to do ‘extra events’, but just to include people in what you’re normally doing. For example, we’re planning to go to a jazz night at a pub on Wednesday; we’ve invited our non-Christian neighbour and some people from our small group to come along. I’ll give you an outline below of what the last week looked like for me. Other people were doing other things; we don’t have any children at this stage so we’re freer to be involved in a range of activities:
Sunday: church meeting in the morning, followed by lunch. Also had dinner together, where we discussed holiday plans/budgets. Out of that, a few of us are going on holiday together in June.
Monday: met after dinner to read the Bible; spoke about repentance; that conversation has been picked up throughout the week.
Tuesday: dinner with Indian (Hindu) friends, who’ve invited us to their place for dinner tonight
Wednesday: prayer/breakfast before work
Thursday: whole church network AGM in the evening
Friday: lunch with a Muslim asylum seeker newly arrived in Sheffield. Then birthday dinner together.
Saturday: conversation class, followed by lunch. Some people went on to an outdoor gig. Then dinner and film at our place (with one non-Christian friend, F). At dinner, we also discussed doing a charity auction for F. We’ll use the church building and people will donate stuff to auction.
Sunday: church meeting in the morning (I picked up someone else’s non-Christian friend on the way), followed by lunch. Two families in our group have twelve-year-old boys who aren’t interested in ‘Sunday school’. So during the church meeting, men from our group mentor them
Today: it’s a public holiday, so a few people are going out into the countryside for a ramble. There’ll be three non-Christian friends, including an asylum seeker
discuss?
