There are days when I get so frustrated and even angry about things to do with church!
Zoe, the girls and I spent part of the day out shopping and had a really good time. It basically reminded us that for all the bad things that are reported about London the overwhelming majority of people are nice and friendly and shop staff are keen to help!
As part of our trip popped into a café connected to a fairly well known church in southeast London. We were quite impressed by the set up and how the church seemed to want to attract people into their services in a non-threatening way! Then Zoe went to the counter to let them know that Abigail had spilt some water! Unfortunately the response was not very understanding to the antics of a 16 month old child.
At the end of our coffee, Zoe took Sian to the bathroom and the person at the counter went over to clean up the table. Then, staring right at me whilst talking to a colleague sarcastically retold her comment loud enough for the whole café to hear! When she was alone I went over and quietly said how I felt her manner had not really reflected on the church very well and she response showed that she simply didn’t care and neither did the Assistant Manager who came over! She was far more worried by Health and Safety standards than the rude behaviour of her employee/volunteer.
We left, quite badly affected by the whole saga, thinking that once again the Church had been badly let down by the attitudes of people who are supposed to be reflecting the light of the world into the lives of others! All I can think of is what would be a non-Christian mother’s feeling about the way she had been treated because her two children dropped a few crumbs and spilt some water?
The saddest thing of all is that it ruined what was really a very nice day, simply because one or two people made no allowances for what is quite normal for a 4 1/2 year old and a 16 month old.
Yesterday was, of course, Palm Sunday which means that I gave my first ever Palm Sunday message. I seem to be doing a lot of firsts when it comes to preaching this year! As is always the case I wrestled with the text that I had chosen and tried to come up with something that would speak to the congregation and what occurred to me was the unexpectedness of everything that happened during that particular day, if not the whole of Holy week.
This in turn led me to think about my own Christian walk and to consider how often I’d let the Holy Spirit move in my life in such a way as to give him free reign. How many times have I allowed him to do a surprising work in me? You see I believe that the Holy Spirit will only work in our lives in the ways that we allow Him to. This means that we can actually suppress the work of the Holy Spirit, and by doing so we lose out on so much that is on offer to the follower of Jesus.
Last night, as I finished the latest book I’ve been reading, I read this:
Too many churches have wanted to domesticate the Holy Spirit, keeping [him] caged and ’safe’ by imposing rigid and controlling worship styles on our Sunday worship, trapping our meetings with bureaucracy and endless reports, and feeding our people with tragically low expectations of what God can do in and through them.
pg.166 - Restoring the Woven Cord
For so long have we undervalued the power of the Holy Spirit that we now see the fruit of our labours. Too many Christians do not believe in the power that is available to us and precious few have ever been surprised by allowing the Spirit to work in and through them. I left my fellowship with a challenge for Holy week yesterday; to allow themselves to look beyond their own thoughts and their own ways, and instead allow God’s ways and God’s thoughts to control their lives. I pray that I can do this as well!
Over the last month my life has been touched by a young man I’ve never met and who died two months ago, and today his life has been a real challenge to me.
A month ago I received an e-mail that was requesting a Salvation Army band to take part in a Memorial Service for a young man who had died in December aged just 30. Along with his family, he had been involved in The Salvation Army as a child and his mother has maintained a link with the officers who were commanding the corps at the time. Due to this link they wanted us to supply a band for the occasion, something we were more than happy to do. So along with members of the bands from my corps plus 2 others we went along to the service and played for the 4 hymns.
The preparation for this has involved a little of my time and I’ve been interested to get to know something about this man as I’ve been preparing. Today, I was able to sit in the church and listen to some of the tributes that were given in his honour. During one tribute his brother said something along these lines:
My brother seemed to have a profound effect on everyone who met him.
I couldn’t help but think about my own life. What sort of effect do I have as a follower of Jesus on those I meet?
Every day in my Google Reader I receive a quote from the Inward/Outward blog. Today’s offering was timely as it’s something that has been on my mind over the last few days! It’s a quote from Archbishop Oscar Romero, assassinated Roman Catholic Archbishop of San Salvador:
A church that doesn’t provoke any crises, a gospel that doesn’t unsettle, a word of God that doesn’t get under anyone’s skin, a word of God that doesn’t touch the real sin of the society in which it is being proclaimed - what gospel is that? Very nice, pious considerations that don’t bother anyone, that’s the way many would like preaching to be. Those preachers who avoid every thorny matter so as not to be harassed, so as not to have conflicts and difficulties, do not light up the world they live in.
What a challenge to anyone who finds themselves in the position of regularly preaching. Whilst Romero was talking about the responsibility to preach to society as a whole, a position into which he found himself thrust because of the situation in El Salvador during his life, it is surely just as important for us to seek to constantly challenge those who we try to teach. We should not be seeking to give lead people to a comfortable experience, but instead to one that leaves them feeling uncomfortable because they have been challenged to dig deeper into faith and consequently be a better disciple.
Let it be so for me!
Apparently the Bishop of Bath and Wells, the Rt Rev Peter Price, has condemned Christians Cupcake Christians avoid all that is difficult and challengingwho ignore the difficult and challenging aspects of Christianity. Dubbing them ‘cupcake’ Christians he describes them as:
… those who have their own individual Jesus neatly packaged, separated from all others, covered in sweetness, avoiding all that is difficult and challenging. And, with the cherry of personal salvation on the top.”
Speaking at the launch event of Christian Aid week in the UK, he went on to quote Amos saying:
‘… to let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever flowing stream.’ True Christian aid today calls for a radical change of heart.
“It demands that we ‘cupcake Christians’ remove the wrappers that separate us from one another; pick away at the sticky sweetness that prevents us from radical loving; and become the people of God united to the poor, denouncing from their place the injustice against them.”
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