Monthly Archive for May, 2006Page 2 of 4

Mindset and mission!

Published
by
Graeme
on May 23, 2006
in old uksalvationist posts
. 2 Comments

We’ve had our Territorial Commander here in Latvia today, Commissioner Hasse Kjellgren, and he has spent the day with the corps and centre leaders, along with our cadets. This afternoon in particular he spoke about knowing what our roots are. I’m not going to repeat everything he said but two things really spoke to me!

Firstly, he reminded us that our historical mindset was one that was focussed on mission not members and kingdom not church! Our most important task is to get people saved not to build a denomination. Our place of worship. It reminded me of a quote that I read recently and that you might have seen in the random quotes under the blog name:

…transformation doesn’t stop until a sample of God’s new kingdom is on display throughout whole communities.” (Steven C Hawthorne in Perspectives on the World Christian Movement p113).

The place of the Salvationist is not inside the church building community from the outside in, but instead is outside the church building community from the inside out. Yes we can spend time in corporate worship together with our brothers and sisters in Christ, but this should not be our focus. Our lives should be worshipping God in everything we do and through that the love of Christ will shine out into an ever darkening world!

The second thing is in many ways a continuation of the first. To paraphrase the Commissioner, he said:

We are called to preach salvation from sin and save people from the sins of others!

We are called to drag people out of Hell and out of their ‘hell on earth’!”

There are some who are uncomfortable with one aspect or the other of the dual mission God has given The Salvation Army. However, if we want to see transformation in peoples’ lives then this balance must be met and if we ignore one aspect in preference to the other we will not be following God’s will!

Dispelling the numbers myth

Published
by
Graeme
on May 19, 2006
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As I wrote in my last post, yesterday I was at an NCD conference all day with Christian Schwarz. One of the things that struck me was his comments about church size and the relative effectiveness of big and small churches that their research has shown them. I’ll come to the actual comments after a few of my own!

In my opinion, there has become a growing obsession, over the last few years, within the church that “Big is beautful”! You see on the publicity for countless books that this author is the pastor of a church of 7000 members, or that another author has grown a church from 7 members to 5000 members! In itself there is nothing wrong with this and I congratulate these people on the successful ministry that God has given to them!

The problem though is that of the various corps I have belonged to the biggest average congregation of any of them would be around 130. At the same time the most ’successful’ corps I’ve been to had an average congregation of around 30, yet over the years I’ve known it has seen many people saved and many others grow to a point in their faith where they’ve moved on in their ministry to support other corps/churches.

In fact when I was Corps Secretary of an inner-city corps in London I remember being told that our congregation of 50-60 people each week made us one of the largest corps in the Division! At that time I was quite sad that the Army had reached such a sad state of affairs and was dismayed that only 3 or 4 corps in the UK had congregations of over 200 each Sunday!

The problem is that many people within small corps/churches are frustrated at the size of the church they attend. I suspect that a lot of this is because of the mentality that “Big is beautiful”. Numerical size is equated with quality. It’s automatically assumed that a big church is more successful! Where this attitude

However, according to NCD’s research this is simply not true. In a church of 1000 plus members 17% of the worshipping congregation use their gifts to help the church grow, whereas in churches of less than 100 members this percentage increases to 31%. [1] Yes the actual numbers are less in the small church, but their congregations are much more involved in the mission of the church!

What’s even more remarkable is that on average small churches grow 1600% more than large churches! In the NCD material the following illustration is used:

“When we compared all of the churches with less than 100 regular attenders (the average size being 51 worshippers) with all of the churches that have a regular attendance of more than 1,000 (the average being 2,856) the result was striking. We discovered that “small churches” grow 16 times more than megachurches.

“…On average, the small church category has a 1,600% higher growth rate. … Small churches really have no reason for a low self-esteem.” [2]

This is not an excuse for small corps to rest and put their feet up though! Being in a small congregation is actually a much harder commitment than being part of a big church. When someone falls by the wayside in a big congregation there is far more chance of someone being able to pick up their role. This possibility is far less likely in a small one!

Give them their due, big churches have their place and many, many people get saved through them and for many “Big is beautiful”, but in my eyes “Small is sensational!”

Source:

[1] Christian A Schwarz, Color Your World with Natural Church Development, p. 35

[2] as above, p. 34

Commercialism and the Church [w.add]

Published
by
Graeme
on May 18, 2006
in old uksalvationist posts
. 4 Comments

In Latvia today we’ve had a seminar from Christian Schwarz who is the founder(?) of Natural Church Development. Now having heard a significant amount about NCD over the last 4 years of being in Latvia it was interesting to hear it from the guy who has been so heavily involved in the research that has gone into it! In fact listening to Christian made me realise that the concepts that underpin the teaching has a lot to give to the church as it struggles to fulfil its mission. I’ll probably blog more on this over the coming days!

However, in reading through one of the books I saw that they are aiming to publish 1 book on each of the 8 Quality Characteristics. If the book “3 Colours of Love” is anything to go by it seems that there will then be at least 3 different resource books that the church can buy to supplement the main text. It’s that aspect that concerns me!

It makes me think of the “Prayer of Jabez” which seemed to become a self-fulfilling prophecy as far as Dr Wilkinson is concerned, with several million copies of the original book sold, with countless spin off merchandise aimed at all different types of people. Then I think of the wonderful “Purpose Driven Life Book” which has spawned an album, journals and so Amazon.com tells me a “Commuters Audio CD set”.

It seems to me that so many tools that have been a blessing for many people end up being twisted into a commercial activity that has little to do with edifying the Church and helping it reach the lost, and more to do with lining the pockets of the Publishing companies and authors.

Added: 19th May 2006
In the light of the conversation on this post I feel I should just clarify one thing! I am not saying that the aim of the publishers of the NCD material are out to line their own pockets. There is though in any activity that touches on the commercial world a danger of the money making aspect taking on a life of its own! NCD is extremely successful at avoiding this trap at present and from what Christian said yesterday, they are guarding against it!

change of theme

Published
by
Graeme
on May 17, 2006
in old uksalvationist posts
. 4 Comments

For the last few days I’ve been really struggling with the way this blog was looking. It was far too dark, even though that was the look I though I was looking for!

So I’ve changed it to a much fresher, cleaner looking template and I’d be interested in knowing what you think! Any really good points may even result in change!

Eco-friendly Church

Published
by
Graeme
on May 15, 2006
in old uksalvationist posts
. 3 Comments

I’ve been writing this entry for a few days following an article I read on the BBC News wesbite. I decided to post today following an interesting discussion that has started over at Martin’s blog, Missiome, called Ecology.

Last year I spent several months studying to obtain a Open University Diploma in International Development and Environment which means that I spent quite a bit of time on the subject. Although the course did not give me the opportunity to express my thoughts I did spend sometime looking into the subject from a Christian perspective. These are some of my ideas on the subject:

The usual line that is taken by people thinking about the Christian’s role in the environment is that God gave mankind sovereignty over all of creation (Genesis 1:26-30Open Link in New Window, Genesis 2:15Open Link in New Window and Genesis 9:1-3Open Link in New Window) and that means one of two things! Those Christians on the environmental lobby stress that this gives us an obligation to protect the environment so that everyone can enjoy God’s creation. On the other hand however, there are many Christians who say that having dominion over God’s creation means that we have the right to use the resources He has put at our disposal anyway we see fit.

The World Council of Churches recognised this duality when it made the following affirmation in 1990:

“We affirm the creation as beloved of God.

“We affirm that the world, as God’s handiwork, has its own inherent integrity; that land, waters, air, forests, mountains and all creatures, including all humanity, are ‘good’ in God’s sight. The integrity of creation has a social aspect which we recognise as peace with justice, and an ecological aspect which we recognise in the self-renewing, sustainable character of natural ecosystems.

“We will resist the claim that anything in creation is merely a resource for human exploitation. We will resist species extinction for human benefit; consumerism and harmful mass production; pollution of land, air and waters; all human activities which are now leading to probable rapid climate change; and the policies and plans which contribute to the disintegration of creation.

“Therefore we commit ourselves to be members both of the living community of creation in which we are but one species, and of the covenant community of Christ; to be full co-workers with God, with moral responsibility to respect the rights of future generations; and to conserve and work for the integrity of creation both for its inherent value to God and in order that justice may be achieved and sustained.” [1]

There is however a third reaction! All too often Christian’s just don’t think about their obligation to the environment at all. We really can’t be bothered to seperate our rubbish into the different types and then recycle it. We are more than happy to drive our big petrol/diesel consuming cars around on the school run, or down to the shops when it is just as easy (although less convenient) to catch the bus.

We have fallen into the traps set by the modern lifestyle and don’t want to give them up!

But for me whilst the stewardship of the world is the most important element to our role as Christian’s in creation, there is another one. Martin in his blog mentioned it! It is the issue of justice!

Humanity has quite simply failed miserably in its stewardship role. However, it is almost always the poor who suffer from the effects of this failing. Therefore in our role as God’s appointed advocates for the poor and oppressed we should also speak out to both our fellow Christian as well as to society as a whole.

We are obliged to react to God’s creation:

“in ways that sustain life on the planet, provide for the needs of all humankind, and increase justice.” [2] (emphasis added)

Millions of people are dying every year as a direct result of issues relating to climate change. We as Christians should be at the forefront of the debate, not taking a backseat!
Sources:

[1] quoted in The World Bank Group Faith in Conservation: New Approaches to Religions and the Environment 2003, p. 85
[2] American Baptist Policy Statement on Ecology, 1989, p. 2

Websites:

Christian Ecology Link

European Christian Environmental Network

Eco-congregation (hat-tip to Martin)

some updates

Published
by
Graeme
on May 15, 2006
in old uksalvationist posts
. 0 Comments

Over the last couple of weeks I’ve blogged on a couple of issues that I think are worth repeating:

Firstly, I highlighted the Care not Killing campaign which is fighting Lord Joffe’s Assisted Dying Bill in the House of Lords. The vote was last Friday and the Bill was rejected by 48 votes. However, Lord Joffe has pledged to present the Bill again in 6 months time. A total of 102,363 people signed the petition. CNK aim to continue to raise public awareness over the issues so you can find out more at their website.

The second issue is the Worldwide weekend of Prayer for Children at Risk. For the first time the resources are available in Latvian (translated by The Salvation Army) and I am encouraging our corps to get involved on the Sunday. There is lots of material available that is in all sorts of languages including English and Swahili. The resources can be found here and there is a list of events that might be near to you! I feel very strongly about this one so I doubt this is the last time you will hear about it before June!

First things …

Published
by
Graeme
on May 14, 2006
in old uksalvationist posts
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Yesterday was a day that started and finished with a first! Sian is now almost 2½ and gets funnier, smarter and cheekier by the day. However, yesterday was a special day!

She is something of an art freak and loves scribbling, gluing, sticking stickers and desperately wants to paint! Normally her artist talent is firmly in the impressionist art-form as I have no idea what she is drawing, but yesterday morning she drew a picture of her grandma & grandad. Whilst her grandad was initially a face she scribbled and scribbled all over it (he has a beard!) but it her picture of her grandma that was fantastic as it was clearly a person with head and body and arms and legs! This was a first and we are very proud!

The other first though was even more special. We were having our dinner, just the 3 of us and Sian decided she had had enough. She came over to me and gave me a big hug and I told her I loved her! She said something and then I passed her to Zoe whispering to tell her mummy that she loved her! As I gave her to Zoe she said “lubber you” which we suddenly realised was what she had said to me as well! Only those of you who have children can possibly understand what that felt like as it is the first time she has ever said “I love you”! We are still talking about it and she said it a couple of times today as well! Parenthood is so wonderful!