Mission in Action

The Local is still very much a church with “L” plates on.  We’re still coming to terms with what it means to try and do life together and be a community in mission.  The fact that most of us are all a little older with a few years of life/work/marriage behind us means that we have a little more to learn, or – more to the point –  to unlearn.

What things do I think we need to unlearn?  Here are two for starters.

1. My family is an island

This is sacrosanct in our culture.; perhaps no man is an island, but the family unit has taken its place.  The privatised suburban family takes precedence over everything.  Now we are not saying that the family unit is not important, but there is a tendency when we are busy and stressed with life to shut others out of our lives instead of allowing others to serve us in all of the busyness and see us “warts and all”.  We need to realise that St Paul didn’t pluck the metaphor of family out of the air to help people understand the church a little better, rather our human families are a shadow of which the family of God is the eternal reality. We really need to unlearn the culture’s obsession with the privatised individualistic family unit.

2. “Church” meetings make up for not spending time with each other during the week

When we are busy we think that  the “Sunday gig” will make up for not seeing each other during the week. It doesn’t.   It simply creates a situation where we try to cram relationships into a couple of hours.  Not only that, we come to view the “meeting” as somehow more spiritual than the rest of our times together.  In reality we should be “gospelling” each other all of the time in whatever context.  I have to say I am heartened by the way we are growing to realise this and we are making adjustments to our lives and starting to spend time together in unplanned and unstructured ways.

The New Testament communities are all in various stages of unlearning. Have a look at this passage from 1 Corinthians 6

⁹Do you not know that the wicked will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor male prostitutes nor homosexual offenders ¹⁰nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. ¹¹And that is what some of you were. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.

So much of 1 Corinthians is about Paul helping the Corinthians unlearn the culture/mores/social norms/sin of Corinth.  But notice what he grounds their unlearning in – their new identity.  The key words are “that is what some of you were.”  Unlearning by us is dependent on something happening to us. As the passage makes clear it is the new identity in Christ fuelled by the power of the Spirit that enables learning – indeed it is the only basis upon which Paul can call for change.  Now I am not about to compare the privatised family unit with the list of sins above. but perhaps that’s just the point.  Unlearning some of the apparently “good” stuff often requires more work as these may be our blindspots.

Can we unlearn things that are deeply ingrained in us culturally and socially?  The same power that raised Christ from the dead will enable us to do so.

written by Steve

We had cake with candles

written by Steve

YESTERDAY I MET A 92 YEAR OLD MAN WHO HAS BEEN A CHRISTIAN FOR THREE WEEKS!

written by Steve

It’s official: Frugal is the new black.  With the credit crunch in full swing all sorts of newspaper columnists are showing how we can sew our own clothes, make the most of what is in the back of the freezer, and gosh shock horror, holiday in the same country that we reside in.  I wish I had come up with the term “Frugal is the new black” but I read it in The Guardian.  The economy may have changed, but the self righteous writers of the world’s media have shifted their self-righteous gaze from exploring how we can be green to how we can be lean.

I use the term “self-righteous” for a reason.  Now that the times have changed and the bling boom has busted everyone is keen to be seen to be lean (hey that rhymes! – Ed).  For those who didn’t manage to have their snouts in the trough it’s all a bit amusing to be told how to live within a budget.  However what is most telling is that these sorts of articles were not being written by these sorts of people when the good times were rolling. Lifestyle mags were showing erstwhile travellers how to offset their carbon footprint through carbon credits when they were jetting around the world.  During those heady pre-GFC days the word “contented” was notably absent.  Which, funnily enough, it still is.  Frugal is the new black because it’s what everyone else is wearing.  When people stop wearing Frugal it will end up in the bargain bin just like everything else.

It’s all a long way from the Apostle Paul and his observation that godliness with contentment is great gain.  Paul also stated that he knew what it was like to have little and he knew what it was like to have plenty.  However in all of that he was content because he knew where his real treasure lay.  God’s people are able to display true contentment and to model it as a lifestyle well past its use-by-date in the rest of the culture.  Contentment will look like more than a surly acceptance that the good times have changed and we have to tighten our belts.  Contentment will look like holding onto things loosely because Jesus is our treasure and because we have an inheritance that is ready to be revealed that will show up the tinsel for what it is.

A great site to look at is www.ibreathe.org.uk which states:

If we’re already satisfied, amazed, delighted and fully engaged with life, how can anyone sell us something we don’t need?

Imagine the impact  a whole community of people would make who were completely satisfied, amazed, delighted and fully engaged with life because of the hope they have in the resurrected Jesus.

written by Steve