Last Sunday was my last in command of Godalming Corps and we had an amazing evening meeting! As often happens on these sorts of occasions we had a few extra people in the meeting which boosted numbers a little. The meeting itself was good and led by our good friend and sponsoring officer, Adrian Allman. I didn’t even get up to preach until the meeting was an hour old, and it usually only lasts one hour!
People said nice things about our ministry and we received a few presents, all of which was great but it shouldn’t be about us and what we’ve done, but what God has done through us!
So I get up to preach and I’ve known what I should say for weeks now, so I start and soon realise that something is happening. The Spirit is there and is touching people through the words I’m delivering on the Spirit’s behalf. The words are about having a big God! They are about allowing His glory to be seen through our everyday lives! And then the Spirit challenges them and me, and out of my small congregation of 25 people 13 make their way forward to surrender themselves to our awesome God, and the meeting becomes not about Zoe, the girls and me leaving, but about the God who we serve.
The scenes on Sunday night will stay with me a long time and I am glad to have served the Lord in Godalming and will miss this small group of Christians. I know though, that He has greater things in store in the future!
Our God is great!
Over the weekend at the Assessment Conference we had to do a book review about a book that touches upon issues such as church decline and how we need to respond. This is a subject close to my heart and would you believe I also had exactly the same question at last year’s conference! Rather than handing in the other paper I did actually write a new one, although it wasn’t as good as the one from last year unfortunately. I drifted too far from the text apparently!
After writing the new review I found the old one on my computer and I wish I had been able to submit this one again as it contained a couple of really good quotes. In looking at what the church was doing to respond to halt it’s decline in the west I suggested that:
It seems that the church is still trying to treat society as a naughty child who simply needs to be coaxed to behave and toe the line. However, the very authority that they are seeking to invoke, is the same authority that is no longer accepted by society.
There are some church-goers who lament the decline in Christian morals and values and in response they try to force the values of the church onto society as a whole. This in many ways is what was wrong about having a church that was so bound up with the political forces for centuries. By legislating our way to Christian morality it is hardly surprising that as Christianity has waned in popularity we have seen an abandonment of the laws that went along with it. If we try, from a position of irrelevancy to many, to impose our mindset on others then the old authority simply doesn’t wash. If we want to impose our views on others, and I’m not sure that this is what we should be doing, the authority we need is one of integrity; one of being seen to adhere to the values we are trying to impose.
Likewise, if we seek to influence society by showing them good Christian morals and values the authority we must invoke come from that self same position. If we are not living lives of integrity to our beliefs, then today’s western world will simply not be interested.
A fellow blogger asked the question a few months ago as to why we are seeing decline in the church, and what can be done about it. In response I wrote that nothing less than:
a radical rediscovery of our access to the transformational power of the Holy Spirit [will] bring us back…
In my mind this can be the only response to declining numbers. If the Spirit is at work in our lives then doors into the lives of others will open and we will eventually see a growth in the church again. What that church will look like remains to be seen.
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 at the ArmyBarmy blog (see Saturday 19th January 2008 entry) Captain Stephen Court says that we need to ensure that we:
assert a healthy SALVATIONIST culture and CHANGE the national culture
rather than adopting too much of a culture that is similar to the mainstream churches that most of the population have switched off to. I would tend to agree!
The problem is that too much of what many perceive to be Salvationist culture is actually a hindrance to the gospel in some places. We have fixated on certain early techniques and maintain them today, even when they are demonstratively ineffective today. There seems to be a belief, in some circles, that changing the way we do things in order to be more effective in today’s culture is tantamount to abandoning our cultural heritage.
Let’s think though what our true heritage is. Firstly, it is an openness to the leading of the Spirit. The reason that the early Salvation Army was so effective was that we were led by the Spirit. There was an openness that seems to have been replaced with a closed mind. The second aspect of our heritage was our openness to adopt things from the culture we were in and ‘redeem’ them. So we see people writing Christian lyrics to music hall songs, and those arriving in non-British cultures attempting to live in culturally relevant ways. There are more elements to our heritage of course, but these two are some of the main reasons we were so effective.
This is the wonder of the transformational power of the Gospel. If we are led by the Spirit and through him act in ways that redeem culture then the Kingdom will be seen at work in our lives, and that in turn will make our witness more attractive.
I’m down to the last few days of Maggi Dawn’s Beginnings and Endings now, and a couple of days ago I read the following:
The glory of God is revealed in those magic moments when we are touched by something beyond human achievement, when we see the presence of God break into the ordinary and there is a sense that life has been fulfilled. Heaven and earth collide pg146
As I pondered on this after reading it I couldn’t help but think that most of my experiences of God have been connected with worship. Whilst the presence of the Holy Spirit is always there, there have been some occasions when the presence has been almost like a physical presence there with me. These have been wonderful yet I have one concern. Why is it that I have found it so difficult to see the presence of God break into the ordinary?
One of my own personal hopes this year is that I can find God’s presence in ways that I have failed to do so in the past.
Reading today I found this quote:
Nothing is so likely permanently to stop soul-saving as the want of intense zeal on the part of our own people. How far are your soldiers’ meetings utilised for the development of the personal religion and fighting capacity of your people? Never mind the fewness of the numbers; if you can but get the few set on fire, the fire will attract others.
General Edward J Higgins
Being the leader of a corps with only a handful of people attending the meetings is not always easy. For starters the most obvious question is how the congregation has become so small. However, the important thing is not to focus on the negative, which can sometimes be all too easy, but instead it is essential to seek out the positive.
Today, I’ve started to see the glowing embers that are deep down inside some of the folk here. The real key now is to open a root to them for the Spirit to gently blow them back into life. Fewness doesn’t matter is those few are on fire!
Over the last few days I’ve been involved in an ongoing discussion over at a couple of places about cultural relevance. Part of the discussion has got onto how whether the early pioneers in the Army were totally reliant on the Spirit. As part of this reliance it’s been said that as they responded to the Spirit’s leading they naturally communicated in a way that was relevant to the people they dealt with.
I don’t doubt this for one instance, but the natural conclusion to draw from this line of argument is that those who do build a strategy are not relying on the Spirit’s leading. I struggle to accept this as it seems to limit the power of the Spirit who is at work in us. Whilst it isn’t anti-intellectualism it seems to restrict the use of our minds and suggests that the regeneration that comes through the Holy Spirit means a removal of our intellect.
I truly believe that God intends us to use the intellect that He gave us for the furtherance of His kingdom. I believe that there is a place for both an instinctive response and a intellectual response to the Spirit. There are dangers in both of these as they are open to failure should we start acting on our own, without listening to the Spirit’s leading. There are dangers in both even when we truly believe we are following the Spirit, because sometimes our humanity can creep in without our realisation.
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