Finding God in the Mundane

If there’s one thing we as Christians do well it is criticise our church services. Not always negatively but we like to think about them, what was good, what was bad, and what was just downright bizarre!! If we’re being good with think in terms of what brought us nearer to God and what we didn’t find helpful in our walk. We greet the pastor at the door and thank him for a good sermon, which normally means that, for once, we agreed with what he said! We discuss the service over Sunday lunch and decide what we would have said or which hymns we would have chosen.

This is a little bit tongue in cheek but you get what I mean.

The more I have thought about church services and sermons and worship etc. I’ve discovered that it’s all about me! I used to believe that a good, well thought out, service would bring me closer to God. A poor sermon was the fault of the pastor and would, in no way, help me in my journey of faith. Now I believe it is all to do with my attitude, my openness, my level of concentration, my expectation, my focus, my willingness to listen and hear. I believe that God can speak to me through anything. I know he can speak to me through his creation. I know he can speak to me in the silence. He can speak to me in the mundane and in the normal. So, why can’t he speak to me through a dull sermon or a slow and plodding hymn?

If I go to church in the right way God will speak to me through anything. If I go to church in the wrong way the best sermon in the world could easily pass me by. It’s not about what the worship team or pastor puts into the service it’s about what I’m prepared to take out of it. I used to work for a church in Paris, France. It was an Anglican Church and during one of our AGMs someone became a Christian. There was no alter call and nobody preached the gospel but God spoke to that lady in the boring business of a church meeting. She was prepared to listen and had the right attitude. That day her life was changed. Can we find the right way to attend church? Are we prepared for God to speak to us in the normal and the mundane? Can we spend less time pulling the service apart and more time seeking God in the service? It’s not easy - some services are, for us, more conducive to drawing near to God. However, are we prepared to put the effort in during the times when it’s not so easy?

Don't put off the Big Stuff

I want to tell you about my best friend Rob. As best friends go he was at the top of the tree. We first met when we were about 12. We went to the local church youth group together and hit it off straight away. One of the most noticeable things about our friendship was that we had nothing in common. On the surface at least. We would go for months and months and see each other each day, we talked for hours, but I’m not sure what about. We never had an argument. We both went to church though I’m not too sure what our faith was like back then. In our late teens Rob started to drift away from church. We didn’t have too many deep conversations back than but I remember clearly one we had. It was a Sunday night as Rob collected me after church to go out for the evening. He said that church didn’t fit well into his lifestyle at the moment. When he wanted to be out drinking, sleeping with his girlfriend and so on the church was saying he was wrong. He went on to say that when he was in his mid thirties, settled down with a wife and a few kids he would come back to church. Then it would fit in with his lifestyle and things would be great.

I can see him saying it now, “when I’m in my mid thirties I will come back to church“. Rob died at the age of 34. He never came back to church, though who knows if he came back to God. Rob contracted MS and in what seemed like the blink of an eye he was gone.

There are decisions in life that need to be made. Yet we put them off and muddle through. If we got a letter from government to say we were owed £1millon in back taxes and other repayments we might find it difficult to believe. We might dream and convince ourselves that it’s true and think of all the things we’d spend the money on. We might put on our rational hat and say that it can’t possibly be true as we’ve never paid £100k in taxes let alone a £million. However until you pick up the phone and ask them you’ll never know for sure. Wouldn’t you want to do everything you could to see if it were true?

The Bible claims some incredible things. In the two thousand years since they were written none of it’s claims have been disproved. Doesn’t that say quite a lot? People try to discredit the Bible for they know if they can’t the claims of the Bible mean that they would seriously have to change their life. Man would no longer be the greatest force in the universe and perhaps we’d have to be a little less self orientated. If the Bible were no more than a self-help guide on how to live our lives it would still be a brilliant book. Surely most of us would agree that it is better to love than to hate, to give rather than receive, live in peace rather than go to war, to tell the truth rather than to lie, to forgive rather than harbour grudges, to put people first rather than be selfish, to be faithful rather than be faithless, to honour people rather than be disrespectful. These are great ideals by which to live your life and if more of us did the world would certainly be a better place. But what if there was more to the Bible than just a life instruction manual. What if what it claims actually was true? Don’t you think it might be worth checking out? What if the world was created, if we do need forgiveness, if Jesus has paid the price for us? What if there really is a heaven and hell, a right way to live and a wrong way? Don’t you think it might be worth looking into, asking friends who do believe to explain what they believe and why? Ask questions by commenting here or join an ALPHA group.

We could put all these questions off until tomorrow. But what if, like Rob, we never have the chance to come back and check it out? Don’t put off until tomorrow what you could start today.

Truth and Relevance

Christianity must be relevant. I hear this so often nowadays. Our church won’t grow until it becomes relevant. People in our community won’t join us until we show them that Christianity is relevant to their lives. Do you hear this? Do you agree with it?

I agree with it. I believe that we need show that the church is relevant. We need to provide people with ways into the church ways to discover it‘s relevance. These things might be parenting courses or toddler groups or things of this sort. However, we need to be careful. Are we, in trying to make the church relevant, providing people with their pudding without providing them with their main course? In today’s society people believe that truth is found in the fact that something works for them, makes them feel good. If something makes you feel good it must be right. You go to yoga and you feel more relaxed and therefore you agree that the systems behind it holds some truth for you. You go to your doctor with a headache and he gives you some medicine and it works you therefore have trust in that medicine and in the doctor (even if all he gave you was a tic-tac). What if the church is doing this? We are providing things for people that make everything feel ok. We’ve looked after their children, we’ve taught them to be better parents and how to drug-proof their kids. We’ve made them feel relaxed and comfortable. They feel good about themselves, they feel there is truth for them in what they’ve been experiencing. The question is though, what have they been experiencing? It isn’t Christianity. It might be the love of Christians, it might be some life skills initiative, but where is the challenge of the gospel? Where is the connection between what Christians can offer and what they really believe.

The church has something that is relevant. Our job is to show people just how relevant it is to them. At present aren’t we acting like a company who finds a cure for HIV, Cancer and all other known diseases and markets it as a cure for a headache? People buy it thinking that it is relevant to them as they get headaches. It’s only years later that, in a bored moment, they read the little leaflet and find in the small print that it also cures everything else. Yet they’ve only been taking it twice a year to cure a headache. These people may have died because they were only shown a superficial aspect of the drug and therefore not put it’s saving powers to work.

If, as we believe, Christianity is true and the claims of the Bible and Jesus are true then Christianity is relevant. We need to celebrate it’s truth and relevance. Are we not moving towards putting the trimmings of Christianity on display and not showcasing it’s truth, relevance and main draw. We are trying to sell Christianity through offering parenting skills, children’s groups, youth entertainment and so on when Christianity has to offer the complete forgiveness of sins, eternal life, a relationship with our creator, help on earth and a hope for the future, being a part of the body of Christ and so much more. If that is not relevant to people’s lives I don’t know what is.


Footnote: Please don’t get me wrong I believe that such initiatives that reach out into the community such as parenting courses and toddler groups (I run one myself) are brilliant and I’d love to see more of them. However, I do believe that we need to look at the whole picture and see how these initiatives are used to move people from the fringes of faith to a full belief in the saving power of Jesus Christ. We have a huge responsibility to the people on the fringes of our church not to let them stay there.

People Follow People

Last year I read an excellent book by David Murrow called Why Men Hate Going to Church. I would recommend it to anyone, but especially those in church leadership, those who have the ability to change the way we do church. One of the excellent points he makes is that Men follow Men. If there are good male role models within a church then men will be drawn to that. I also think it’s true in general to say that people follow people. If you know someone who’s into football you are more likely to be drawn into watching and maybe eventually liking football.

I want you to think for a moment about your church and your leadership. What are they like? What do they spend their time doing (in work and out of work)? Do they inspire you to follow them?

When I was in my late teens I knew a lot of intelligent people. They went to Oxford and Cambridge and had high academic aspirations. Some of them wanted to gain their degree and then their Doctorate and then return to Oxford or Cambridge to teach. I always thought this was a bit of a shame. It felt to me that you had this section of academia that was stuck in this self perpetuating loop of learning and teaching and learning and teaching… Wonderful minds stuck in a circular movement of self-serving propagation.

Is it though any different within the church? Our leaders, on the whole are there to serve the church, they pastor and they preach and a few of the congregation move into leadership within the church and a very few go on to be pastors themselves. Pastors who preach and pastor and produce leaders and some pastor and so the church goes on. Does this really inspire us to follow?

Now, you’ve had a little think about what your pastor does. If he’s anything like the pastors I know and have known here is a little list of what I can see pastors doing…

1. Preaching
2. Leading Services
3. Leading Meetings
4. Taking Small Groups
5. A bit of Schools work
6. Pastoral Visiting
7. Administration
8. Preparation

Now, each pastor is different and has different priorities and callings, but on the whole can you see pastors that fit that list well? If I look at a pastor through the eyes of this list it’s not very inspiring is it. I don’t look at them and thing WOW!!! I wish I could be more like that!! The list above is a list that serves the church. It is self serving, inward looking, uninspiring.

People follow people!!

What if the list looked a little like this…

1. Feeding the hungry
2. Healing the sick
3. Seeking the lost
4. Visiting the lonely
5. Supporting the addicts
6. Preaching the Good News
7. Teaching Kingdom Values to the community
8. Cleaning the graffiti
9. Preaching the Great Commission
10. Delegating responsibility

What if we encouraged and empowered our pastors to follow this sort of list?

Would you want to follow someone who lived by this list? Let me ask you a question. When was the last time your Pastor brought someone to Christ? When was the last time they went and spent time with the homeless, making them feel special and loved and feeding them?

These are hard questions. They are hard questions for our pastors but they should also be very hard questions for us as people in the pews. What have we required of our pastors? What have we employed them to do? Are we secretly wanting them to serve us or to serve Christ? Are we wanting them to seek and save the lost or build us up?

I have come across people who believe that their pastor is there to serve them, to visit them when they are sick, to guide them etc. I have even heard people say that the church doesn’t care for them as only an elder and two house group members have been to see them when sick and not the main pastor. Have we created pastors who are now simply serving the church. Have we created a group of people who are so far removed from what they should be that we’ve created people even we don’t want to follow let alone people from outside the church? Let us think about who we want to follow and allow, encourage and empower our pastors to be that person.

When did church become so different?

When you look at the western church today what do you see? Well, I don’t know about you but this is what I see both personally and when trying to look at it from a non-church-attendee’s point of view.

1. A building
2. Services on a Sunday
3. House groups - attended by about
10-20percent of attendees
4. The odd prayer meeting
5. Some social action
6. A cluster of peripheral groups
7. Occasional meals together
8. Some youth work

Now this isn’t, of course, the whole picture. Churches differ but the majority would have something of the list above about them. So then I look at the early church, a church started by Jesus and build upon Peter and I see.

1. Devotion to the apostles teaching
2. Devotion to the fellowship
3. Devotion to prayer
4. Devotion to the breaking of bread
5. All believers were together
6. All believers had everything in common
7. Together they met the needs of the fellowship
8. They met together every day
9. They met in public
10. They met in each others homes
11. They ate together
12. They praised God
13. They enjoyed the favour of all the people

And the result… The Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.

When you look at the two lists they are poles apart. So it begs the question when did the church change so much? To my mind the 13 points of the early church should be our basis for church today. After all it certainly worked as the Lord added to their number EVERY DAY! When was the last time we had even two consecutive days when the Lord added to our church those who were being saved? (don’t stop and try and work it out - you’ll be there far too long). We can look at the list and find some things that we are doing - I guess praising God would be the obvious one. However, I’d also guess that the first 9 are pretty far from what most churches are doing today. The word devotion would defeat most of our churches in the first four items, Yes, we pray as churches but could we honestly say that as a church we are devoted to prayer? In reality most of us pay prayer a bit of lip service and wonder why we don’t get answers.

When you look at that second list, don’t you just pray that we could capture something of that list in our lives and in our churches? Just think for a minute what it would feel like to be a part of such a church? Just think what it would feel like and how encouraging it would be to have people added to your church everyday not just once in a blue moon? To be apart of something that is vibrant and moving and united and encompassing and driven must be a wonderful feeling. The church has changed from a movement to a stop. When did the idea that a church had to be housed in a grand building separating it from the rest of the community come from?

When I look through the early church list something in my spirit yearns to get back to that. Do you feel the same? I’ve thought of a few ways that I might start - though most of the ideas I have hinge on finding likeminded people (it’s pretty hard doing church on my own). I’d love to find a couple or couples (or families) where we could meet each week and have a meal together and talk about Godly stuff. Where we can build such a depth of relationship that prayer, sharing, devotion to one another, praising God and learning from each other becomes natural, becomes the norm. I believe that God would use such a gathering powerfully. I’d challenge you to have a think about how you could implement an early church ideal in your life. I’d love to hear your ideas and any progress you make.

Don't stop meeting together...

If I’m honest I’ve never really been much of a fan of going to church. Don’t get me wrong, I’m passionate about God and Jesus and worship and other Christians etc. but it’s just church I struggle with. The church is filled with human beings and will therefore never be perfect, I accept that and also know that I am as bad as the worst of them. I’ve recently read an excellent book by David Murrow called Why Men Hate Going to Church. I would recommend it to anyone, both male and female. Having read it I now understand a little better why I don’t love attending church and have been given some good ideas on how churches could change in order to better accommodate men. However, it doesn’t give me all the answers and doesn’t help me cope until those changes are made (and let‘s face it some of the changes will never be made). Yet, I’m commanded to attend church and therefore that is what I do. I’d be interested to hear if others feel the same.

I’ve never been entirely convinced of the analogy of the church being a fire and when a coal is removed it survives for a while but then goes out. I was thinking about the whole church issue and coals dying when removed whilst I was gardening the other day. In one of those moments of clarity I believe God gave me a new analogy that for me made far more sense and also brought with it a challenge.
I was studying a group of sunflowers that are in desperate need of attention. They like us are growing towards the sun (son), reaching heavenwards, growing and flourishing. They’ve been planted and watered and with the heat from the sun have grown to their present height. However, as I previously stated, they now need attention. If they are not staked and tethered the wind will snap their stalks. If they are not watered the will shrivel and die. It the soil around them is not weeded the weeds will over-take them and crowd out their light. If they are not fed they will grow weak and feeble and may not reach maturity. If their seeds are not gathered in there will be no future sunflowers from this line.

And so it is with us Christians. We can survive on our own, at least for a little while. As we look heavenwards and lean towards the Son we need to be tended and cared for. We need to be encouraged to grow and enabled to flourish. We need to be pruned and shaped, fed and watered. We may be able to feed and water ourselves through on-line sermons and private devotionals. However, the weeds creep up un-noticed and we’re not brave enough to prune ourselves. It is in meeting with each other that we provide support against the storms of life. We feed off each other and lead each other to water. It is together that our fruit is recognised and harvested and that our gifts are recognised and honed and used.

I love Proverbs 27: 17 which states that As iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another. As we meet together we sharpen one another, we help to bring each other into focus. We help give each other that edge that we need to grow as Christians.
So the challenge!! I see the challenge as two-fold. Firstly, are we being supported by our church, are we being fed and watered? Are our gifts being identified, practised, honed and used? Are we supported and are we being anchored to the stake which is Jesus? Are people helping us in clearing the weeds out of our lives and are we being pruned and disciplined? If not why not? Are we allowing people that freedom in our lives to help us? So what happens if we find ourselves in churches where this isn’t happening? Well I believe that we need to be proactive. I reckon most Pastors or Vicars would be thrilled if you sat down with them and said that you would like more personal discipling or discipline or want to discover your gifts and start to put them into practise. Pastors are surely longing for their congregations to be taking radical steps to move forward with God. If you take this step and your pastor doesn’t respond it is then that you need to seriously question why you are going to that particular church. The pastor won’t always have the time themselves to explore with you in the depth that you would like, but he should have the time to find someone to get alongside you.

Secondly, are we being all theses things for those around us? Are we encouraging others to grow and giving them all we can to enable that growth? Are we being a weed in anybody’s life that is stunting their growth?

This analogy has certainly helped me in thinking through lots of different issues, I hope you’ll find it useful also.

Being a Missionary

I think many of us have at one time or another considered missionary work to be undertaken by pith helmeted men in deepest darkest Africa. It was certainly the idea I was brought up with. Over the years though I have come to see each Christian as a missionary wherever they may be, whether sent overseas by their church or working in Tescos in the town where they were born. All Christians are on a mission, sent by God, with goals, weapons and a purpose. We might not be financially supported by our church, we might not even be prayerfully supported by our church, but we are God’s missionaries. Having understood this it has really helped me in my everyday activities. I am no longer having to work for a difficult boss, I’m working for God. God has sent me in to certain situations and he will therefore equip me for the task, which may involve courage or just patience to carry through a mundane job. My pay packet is not the be all and end all of my working month because I am on a mission and though the taxman takes a bite at my earthly wages my heavenly wages as safe, secure and soaring.

However, in recent weeks, I’m now thinking that God is calling me to be a missionary somewhere I never thought he’d ask me to go. Although it is not a place foreign to me and holds no fear it is not a place where I’d ever considered myself living out the role of missionary. I believe this role may not just be for me, but for many others as well. I believe that God is calling us to become missionaries in our very own churches. Now this may seem a very strange idea – surely churches send out missionaries – they don’t need missionaries in they’re midst. Well, let’s have a very little look at what a missionary is or what a missionary does.

A missionary tells people about the Good News or the God News. A missionary may show others the love of God through their actions. A missionary may translate the word of God into a language others can understand. A missionary brings alive the word of God in whichever way possible. A missionary undertakes any mission to which they feel God is calling them.

Now tell me that we couldn’t use more if these types of people in our church here and now.

Missionaries Overseas

Now don’t get me wrong I think it is good and right to send people abroad to spread the Gospel amongst different people groups around the world. After all we are commanded to go into all the world... However, what I find myself constantly questioning is how we send them and how we receive them back.

Now in writing this I know I’m lumping all missionaries from every church and mission agency into one basket and for that I apologise. These observations come from a limited experience but also from many conversations with those who have had much more experience that I. I also want to state that this in no way based on missionaries that I know or trying to call into question the call that missionaries have to go overseas.

The sending out of missionaries perplexes me. You take one person and dump them in the middle of a strange country and expect them to model the Christian life of community, fellowship and relationship. To me it makes no sense. Surely the ideal would be to send out teams and I know some mission organisations do. Yet still we send out these individuals . Even Paul took along companions. I would have thought it obvious that a team of missionaries would have far great an impact that a series of individuals, but perhaps that’s just me!!
So, let’s have a look at the people we send. My question here is if we are sending people to another country to share the Gospel shouldn’t these people be the very best we have to offer? Shouldn’t they have a wealth of experience, the best possible training and most complete support package that we can offer? After all if we were a business trying to sell a new service to another country we would send our best salesman or even the MD would go himself. However, what I’ve noticed is that churches send people as missionaries that are ill equipped, inexperienced and under supported. Time and time again I hear of people being sent abroad as evangelists and church planters. When I hear of church planters being sent I always ask the question of how many churches have they planted here. The answer always comes back as, you’ve guessed it, none. We’re sending out people to foreign climes to cut their teeth and make their mistakes and play with people’s lives. They then return to plant churches in this country? Well, not that I’ve ever heard of! Doesn’t this seem a bit topsy-turvy? I have also seen missionaries sent abroad where the sending church doesn’t believe in them enough to employ them themselves in the home church context. In fact when many return with all the experience of being a missionary they return to the pew rather than the pulpit. So, are these churches missing an opportunity in using these returning missionaries? I believe we have so much to learn from those who have been out on the mission field. So much is learnt there, experienced and encountered that it seems a waste not to use that resource within the home church. Now, of course many missionaries return and are well used in the local church or continue the good work they were doing overseas back in their home country but I think it is something that each sender needs to consider. It’s exciting to send people overseas to spread the Gospel but we need to bear in mind the very practical aspects of their return as well. This may include such things are culture readjustment, housing, employment, pensions and as mentioned putting that wealth of experience to good use.

Holy Communion

So what’s all this about? I was sitting through a communion service the other day when suddenly the thought hit me “is this really what Jesus meant?” It was a service much like any other. There was nothing out of the ordinary. There was little in the means of any interaction between members of the congregation, it was all very formal and kid of impersonal, we could all have been in little Perspex cubicles cut off from everyone else. The minister told us we were doing it as Jesus commanded us to in remembrance of him and still all I could think was - is this really what Jesus meant?

Let’s have a little think about what Jesus could have been asking of us.
He was sharing the Passover meal with his closest followers - closest friends. He was showing them more of who he was and what they should be like, especially after his departure from them. It was a lavish feast and as part of it, as with most meals at that time, there would have been bread and wine. So this was a time of fellowship, intimacy, sharing, familiarity, comfort. If a friend of theirs had walked in they would have understood the situation. It was a culturally normal thing to be doing. They would have recognised much of the symbology used in the context of the meal. The breaking of the bread and the drinking from the cup may have been new symbols but were created out of things found at every meal table.

Was Jesus not taking two very ordinary, everyday items to say, when you eat together, when you have fellowship with each other, remember me and what I mean in your lives. Remember the extraordinary when you do the very ordinary. When, each day, you eat bread and drink wine remember the sacrifice I have made for you. In this, the sacrifice of Christ is remembered in the ordinary everyday stuff that we do and especially in our time of fellowship together. It is not something set apart, formalised, done with great pomp and ritual. Wasn’t he saying, that just as we as Christians say grace at meal times, share this symbol to place me at the centre. Did Christ really mean that we should only specifically focus on his sacrificial death once a month in a formal, quite bizarre, ritual. Or was he taking the things of everyday life and saying - when you eat, when you drink, when you meet with fellow believers - I am there with you - remember me - acknowledge my presence - commune with me, let me in on your conversations, remember that the power that raised me from death is available to you now, here, today - use it. What I did, who I am, is relevant to your everyday lives. I want to be at the centre of everything you do. I want you to remember me, remember what I stand for in your lives, not now and then but as regularly as you eat and drink. So remember when you eat and drink just as you are being fed physically, remember, I want to feed you spiritually. As you remember me I want you to remember who you are through me. What I have called you to be. So, eat and drink and remember and go and do.