This week we will be looking at how generous we are as a church. We will be taking a look at the miracle of Jesus turning water into wine at Cana and what that can teach us about God’s love for all.
Without power…
When it came to recruiting disciples, Jesus’ standards seemed pretty harsh. He wasn’t so much bothered about what was on people’s CV, or whether they’d got grade A*-C in your GCSEs. What was more important to him was the level of their commitment. This was a hard road he was calling people to, so they had to be up to it.
We read in Luke 9 that Jesus said to a guy, ‘Follow me’. When he replied he first needed to go and bury his father, Jesus said, ‘Let the dead bury their own dead, but you go and proclaim the kingdom of God.’ He even rejected someone who wanted to say goodbye to his family.
Seemingly unimpressed with some of those he came across, we’re told that Jesus appointed 72 others and sent them in pairs into the towns and villages to proclaim the Kingdom.
This Sunday we’ll be looking at how they were to go about it, without security props, ‘like lambs among wolves’, at the mercy of the people they’d meet. If you’d like to have a story to tell about how God came through for you, this week you might just see how that could happen. But be warned, Jesus requires commitment.
God chose the weak things of the world …
There was a time when the Church was powerful: it was wealthy; it held political sway; it determined what people thought; it directed how they should behave. For hundreds of years, the Church was feared; to step out of line was dangerous.
Those times are long gone, in most cases probably for the best.
Ann Morisy: ‘the new environment to which the Church has to adapt is characterized more by our powerlessness than by our power. This loss of power and influence by churches enables us to move closer to the poor, and with this, our understanding of the Gospel has been transformed’.
Q In what ways do you think the church has lost its power?
Q Do you agree that the church’s lack of power enables it to move closer to the poor?
“If following Jesus does not lead you to the poor – then you are not a church!” (Rev Malcolm Duncan)
Q Do you agree with him?
Q What kind of things can SBC do to move nearer to the poor in our community?
Q How might we use the ‘Olive Branch’ to advantage the community?
Liberation theology, which came to the fore in South America in the 20th century, makes the case that where we are in the pecking order affects the way in which we see and understand the Gospel.
Q What do you understand by this?
Q Can you think of examples close to home where this is borne out?
How do we speak in our present age?
For 1600 years, during the Christendom era, Western Europeans were deemed Christian by birth. The Church was at the centre of society, a key part of the state. There was no need for home mission, since everyone was ‘a Christian’. In recent times, and particularly the last 50 years, all that has changed, and the ‘habits of our churches have been marooned on a tiny island of the faithful.’ (Ann Morisy)
While at one time the man on the street would have understood Christian language, symbols, ideas and doctrine, now they are ‘obscure to the vast majority outside the denomination.’
Q Do you think this is true among your friends outside church?
Ann Morisy says: Traditional evangelism has been about encouraging and helping people to relate to God. The task now is one step removed from this. It is to enable people to embrace the possibility of God… awakening within people the capacity to be astonished and be surprised by the more in life.
Q What do you understand by what she is saying
Q How might SBC help in ‘awakening’ people outside the church?
Q How can we BE the good news before we can preach the good news?
“The further the outward journey takes you, the deeper the inward journey needs to be” (Henri Nouwen)
Q How can we ensure that we retain the right balance between serving others in outreach ministries and spending time nurturing our inner spiritual gardens?
On the margins
In its first few hundred years, the church was a minority sect, an irritant to the Roman empire, and an easy target for persecution. It was on the margins of society, and was seen as radical, subversive and dangerous.
In the 4th century, that all changed. Christianity became the state religion, and over a short period of time it became the only safe option. The church had moved from the margins to the centre of society…
Michael Frost says, ‘The church is still hoping and praying that the ground will shift back and our society will embrace once again the values that it once shared with the Christian community….but this hoping and praying is a lost cause….the epoch of history (Christendom) that shaped the contemporary church has crashed like a wave on a shore and left the church high and dry.’
Q What do you think of Michael Frost’s analysis? Do you recognise what he’s getting at?
The death of Christendom removes the final props that have supported the culturally respectable, mainstream, suburban version of Christianity…Our present predicament leaves the faithful to rediscover the Christian experience as it was intended: a radical, subversive, compassionate community of followers of Jesus (Frost).
Q How do you feel about Frost’s bold statement?
Q How might it look for SBC to be more ‘radical, subversive and compassionate followers of Jesus?’
“The righteous (Tsaddiq) are those who are willing to disadvantage themselves in order to advantage the community”
Q Are you willing to disadvantage yourself for the sake of the community? What might this mean to you ?
All change….
The second of our five discussions on Sunday considered the massive changes in Western culture that affect all our lives, and that impact the church….
For 1600 years the church in Europe and beyond sat at the centre of power. It was a central pillar of the state, and the voice of authority in the lives of the people. This political-religious power base is often called ‘Christendom’.
In recent years, particularly in the last 50, all that has changed, the church has lost this dominant position and finds itself on the margins of society, as was the case in the early years of the church.
Is this a disaster? Has the church lost its way? Or is this perhaps where the church was meant to be all along?
Q Do you recognise this change?
Q Can you think of specific ways this is shown – maybe think of the place of church when you were a child compared to now
Two opposite assessments have been made of the Christendom era:
- That this was a God-given opportunity which the church rightly seized and which ensured the triumph of the church and of Christianity in Europe;
- That this was a disaster that perverted the church, compromised its calling and hindered its mission. That this was not the triumph of the church over the empire but the triumph of the empire over the church.
Q How do you see it?
Q How does this affect the way the church engages with those outside the church?
Q Do you think SBC is called to engage with people with a ‘post Christendom’ view of church? If so, how do we juggle their needs with the needs of those who are more comfortable in ‘Christendom’ mode in terms of the Sunday service, worship, mission, etc.
Outward focus
This morning, SBC looked in groups at aspects of post-Christendom, and how it affects different aspects of life and church. If you were part of this, you would only have looked at one of the five perspectives (collective sigh of relief over Stockport!) Over the next few days, we’ll be posting the statements and questions from all five groups for you to reflect on.
First up, Outward Focus……
Barbara Brown Taylor talks about her ‘spiritual map’ which, like any map, has both a centre and an edge. ‘At the centre stands the Church, where good women bake communion bread and iron altar linens…youth group leaders plan pizza parties …and the choir rehearse from 6.30 to 8.00…These people at the centre kept the map from blowing away.
‘As it turned out, the edge of the map was not all that far from the centre. All we had to do was step outside the Church and walk to where the lights from the sanctuary did not pierce the darkness anymore. There were no signs to the restroom out there, no printed programmes or friendly ushers. There was just the unscripted encounter with the undomesticated God whose name was unpronouncable – that, and a bunch of flimsy tents lit up by lanterns inside…These people at the edge kept the map from becoming redundant.’
Q What do you think she is talking about?
Q Can you place yourself on this ‘map’, and are you happy to be there?
‘Faith in God has both a centre and an edge and each is necessary for the soul’s health’….my complaint is that ‘Mother church lavishes so much more attention on those at the centre than those at the edge.’ (Taylor)
Q Do you think she is right?
Q Where does SBC spend most its time and resources? Does we have the right balance?
Q How might SBC juggle the needs of those at the centre of the map with the needs of those who are more comfortable on the edge?
Post-Christen…what?
On Sunday, Steve introduced us to some ideas and words that may be new for some, at least in terms of how they are used: ‘Christendom’ and ‘post-Christendom’.
It so happens that Steve and I went along to a group on Monday evening, frequented by Steve Langton, that is working through a workbook called ‘After Christendom: following Jesus on the margins’.
If all this is new to you, and you’re thinking this is just some new jargon that’s largely irrelevant to life as we know it, you may wish to think again. And just so you can nod sagely when your neighbour or the checkout assistant next start talking about post-Christendom, here are some thoughts.
Christendom, broadly defined, is that period in European history, beginning in the 4th century and reaching right into the 20th century, when the Church occupied a privileged role in society, and when those born in Britain (or other Western European country) were considered Christian by birth (most being quickly baptised into the Church thereafter). During this period the Church was a central pillar of state, and held enormous political power; and particularly during the Middle Ages, it pretty well governed people’s thought life. At the height of Christendom, any thought of secular culture would have seemed nonsensical.
Following the Enlightenment, and the rise of rational, scientific thinking during the 17th – 20th century that power began to wane, largely because people began to see that there were other ways of understanding the world than that promoted by the Church; the Church had not always used its power well; and whereas the Church had previously been at the centre of all aspects of life and learning, Western society increasingly set aside the Church’s influence from key areas of public life.
Now, in 2015, we are said to be in a post-Christendom world. A world in which the church occupies the margins of society. It’s power, in terms of influencing how people think and understand life and the cosmos, and how they live, has mostly gone. Bishops still have a seat in the House of Lords, but one wonders for how much longer, and can this be justified?
This Sunday, 25 Jan, we’ll be exploring this further, considering how the post-Christendom age impacts the church and its mission.
See you there.
Some Quotes from yesterdays Message
“we cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we we created them – we need to discover new paradigms”
Albert Einstein
“If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got”
Henry Ford
“The further the outward journey takes you, the deeper the inward journey needs to be”
Henri Nouwen
‘Taste and See that the Lord is good, in all His ways’
Psalm 34
What you said about being outward- focused
This week’s Mark of a Healthy Church is having an outward-looking focus. Here are your comments following this morning’s message. Do you agree, or not, with what’s being said? Add your comments below.
Questions
How do we get the right balance between a pastoral church and a missional church?
How practically, can we change our focus from ‘church maintenance’ to ‘church mission’?
Does SBC have the right balance: church-based activity vs resourcing/supporting each other in daily lives (110 hours per week)
Is exile bad? Or was it always meant to be that way?
Words of exhortation /challenge
Prayer is the backbone of mission
‘God doesn’t have a mission for his church; he has a church for his mission.’ (source forgotten)
Keep in touch with God first then keep in touch with others next
The community needs us because we ‘have the words of eternal life – we need to put those ‘words’ into action
We need to ‘do’ and ‘be’ (‘come’ and ‘go’): Come to Jesus, Go in Jesus name; Do, as Jesus would do, Be Jesus to others (Loving Edgeley through acts of kindness)
To know our local culture we have to spend time in it. Jesus spent time with tax collectors and people of ill repute. He gives us the courage to step outside of our comfort zone.
To listen to God, not just ask
We don’t need God to send the fire – he did that at Pentecost. We need to recognise and welcome Him.
We need to let go of the old prejudices, to look outwards, not continually be inward looking, treating the church as a selective group with its old ways of thinking and doing, and refusing to embrace the new.
Over to you…
Stockport Baptist Church, Thomson Street, Edgeley 