Who are you? (Part 1)

There must be little on earth as exciting as being part of a church that has a clear and shared understanding of why it exists and its part in God’s mission for the times in which it is living.  

It has been my privilege, during my many years of ministry, to be in such a church on three occasions.  The first was in an urban context, where I was part of a shared ministry and leadership team, and the others two occasions were in rural contexts, where I served as an ordained minister.  In all three churches I witnessed numerical and spiritual growth, and felt that I was on an exciting journey with God.  Sometimes we stumbled on that journey; at other times it felt as if we were running.

At the individual level, most Christians seem to have a sense that God has a particular purpose in calling us to become followers of Jesus Christ and part of his Church.  The apostle Paul’s teaching in 1Corinthians about the Body of Christ provides us with an excellent model for understanding what churches are, and what they are for.  Each person in the Church has a particular role that serves the whole.  Paul describes them as the various members of a body; some apparently more significant than others but actually, all are essential for the wellbeing of the whole.

What I have found exciting is what happens when we start to translate the purpose of God for individuals into what is God’s calling and purpose for a local church or congregation.  The individual parts of a body are not intended to be disparate and unrelated to the others but complementary, contributing to the nature and actions of their combined existence.  The failure to make that connection between the individual and the local church is one of the most disappointing characteristics of western Christianity today.  It is also, potentially, one of the exciting prospects, and not that difficult to discover.

Forty years ago, I set out on a journey to help rural churches become distinctively missional in ways that are particularly appropriate for each individual church within its own unique environment.  Along the way, the vision became clearer and the processes to achieve it became better understood.  One aspect of its embryonic development took place in the urban context.  I was part of a leadership team made up of three key members of an organisation that had been established to carry out rural evangelism in the UK.  

A struggling independent church in the town where the organisation was based believed that what was happening through the mission organisation in rural locations could also help them.  In responding to this call, the new shared leadership and ministry automatically brought a culture of mission.  The church quickly revived and, for many years, played a key part in the life of the town.  

Because the mission team was also committed to its work beyond the local church, and was frequently absent from it when engaged in outreach elsewhere, it was necessary for the other members of the church to take on much of the life and work in the town.  During this time, I was introduced to some church growth research which suggested that one Christian in ten had the gift of being an evangelist.  In order to explore this in our own church I took as the criterion for determining who had such a gift, a person who was always ready and comfortable sharing their testimony and the gospel story with other people.  We had more than ten percent.

Having identified the people who were the evangelists among the congregation, the  challenge was to help them to develop and find different ways of using their gift.  At the same time it raised the question, “So what are the other 90% supposed to do?” Some had already taken on pastoral and other ministries.  Sadly, the church never developed this into a structured concept, but the seed of a concept had been sown and was beginning to take shape.

A chance comment during an outreach, a question raised in a mini-conference on rural mission, and an opportunity to undertake a university course on management were to play their parts in developing the embryo into a fully formed and mature process.  But more of that another time.  There may be enough here to spark your own thinking about how your church might be shaped for mission.  What are the gifts and ministries, actual or still potential, discernable in your local church?  How might these then shape the missional role of your church within the local community?

Stay safe and stay blessed.
Barry
Rev Barry Osborne
CEO,Rural Mission Solutions
26th September 2020

The Father’s Love

This Sunday in the UK and many other countries, Father’s Day will be celebrated. For many it will be an opportunity to express appreciation for a good father, or an opportunity for some men to ponder that perhaps they didn’t do too bad a job.  Sadly for far too many it will not be a good day as their experience of a father was painful.  At times I have been aware of those who stayed away from church on Father's Day because of unhappy memories.

In my own life, Father's Day provides an opportunity for me to reflect on the love and support that our long-term foster son deserved, and still deserves as a middle aged man (we had no children of our own).  Could I have done better?  Wel, there is still a job to be done.  It also calls me to reflect on my own father, who came back from WW2 rather traumatised and finding it difficult to bond with my brother who had grown up without him, having been born just before my father was called up.

The impact of the war on my father’s health made him a rather angry man.  It was not until he experienced the baptism of the Holy Spirit, many years later, that he radically changed, and we developed a very special relationship.  His final words to me, as he lay dying in a hospital bed was, “Barry, commit me to the Lord.”  I took his hand and prayed with tears, giving thanks for all that God had done for him through his life, and praying for a deep sense of God’s presence and peace as he faced what were to be his last few hours.  He spoke once more, this time to my mother as he took her hand and told her all was well.

Most of us move into adult life realising how little we understood of all that our parents have done for us.  Being a parent brings joys but also many challenges.  Jesus understood this, as is evident in the parable of the prodigal son (or should that be the parable of the loving father?).

How hard it must have been for the father to accede to the younger son's persistent badgering to get his hands on that for which he considered he was entitled.  I suspect that, while he may have done some chores, he never really laboured with his father and older brother to grow the family’s wealth.  But he was ready to spend it on ‘having a good time’.  His father must have realised that it would be a terrible waste of hard earned money but, in accordance with the usual practise, one third of all that he had was turned into cash and he bade his sone farewell.

Clearly, he was not happy to see him go as Jesus informs us that the father saw his returning son even when he was some distance away,  I get the feeling that he searched that horizon every day.  But the alternative - forcing his son to stay home - would not have helped either of them.  Love is costly.  So it would have been in the heavens.  Have you ever stopped to think how the heavenly Father felt as he watched over his Son through 33 years of life on earth. How did he feel as his Son pleaded with him to take away that cup of suffering, knowing that he could not do so if we were to be saved.  While Jesus seems to have felt abandoned on the cross, I think that the hymn writer has got it wrong when he penned, “the Father turns his face away”.

And when the prodigal’s father saw his son coming home he ran to meet him. Words of regret and remorse were cut short by the father’s delight at his son’s return.  He called for shoes, a robe and a ring.  They were not a reward for coming back home; they were tokens of the father’s unconditional love. Doesn’t that make you want to weep and share in the hug that must have lasted a long time.

“This son of yours” was how the older son defined his brother.  Not much love there for the moment!  But there is no hint of anger at his elder son’s shortsightedness. Instead he reminds him that “all I have is yours”.  This father just keeps on giving.  This time giving words of loving assurance and gentle correction.

Our Online Bible Study on Tuesday evenings has been working through Ephesians.  Last week we came to chapter 3: 14-24.  Here, Paul prays for the Christians in Ephesus to experience and engage with God’s love.  The language is extravagant, but he makes his request to a heavenly Father who has great riches of love and extraordinary generosity. Almost as a passing comment Paul states that to understand what family life is meant to be we need to understand the nature of the fatherhood of God. Now, that’s something to celebrate this Father’s Day.

Why not take 5 minutes to listen to this Graham Kendrick song.

Barry

Caring or Careless

No doubt, recent development regarding the Covid-19 pandemic will have left you wondering how long this will go on and whether you could find yourself under further restrictions in the coming weeks.  One of the aspects that has caused me concern is the attitude of some churches, which I find not that much different to that of the teenagers that have been walking around the streets in large boisterous groups.

Someone recently told me of a train journey where all the adults sat quietly wearing face masks to comply with the regulations, while a hoard of teenagers ran up and down the carriages without masks.  The wearing of face masks is both to protect the wearer from infection and also to protect others.  It is possible to have the virus without being aware of it and therefore becoming contagious.  Clearly there are some people who just do not care.

This blase attitude reminds me of the story of the man who fell from a very tall building and who, as he passed successive floors, was heard saying, “So far, so good!”  Covid-19 is highly contagious and its outcome can be fatal.  But the attitude common among teenagers is not very different from that shown by some churches.  Desperate to get back to ‘normal’ churches have been bending the rules and pushing the boundaries as if the virus has nothing to do with us.  There is a “What can we get away with” attitude that I find sad and scary.

When the Rule of Six was introduced I had presumed that would have included places of worship, but we were exempted.  However, it is all too easy to take advantage of this leniency as if it implied that we exist outside the other restrictions. The exemption is for the act of worship, but does not include illegal social gatherings inside or outside the building, before or after the service.  It is tempting to stay and socialise, but if we are more than 6 people in an individual group or the total number in the building  exceeds six, we are pushing the boundary.

‘Now the snake was more crafty than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, ‘Did God really say, “You must not eat from any tree in the garden”?’  And we all know where that led!  Many years later, concern for individual welfare and the reputation of the church at Thessalonica,  led Paul to write urging them to steer clear of any kind of evil (1 Thessalonians 5:22)  Now, as then, it is all too easy to flirt with what is contrary to holiness.

We are living in the midst of a pandemic, so the fact that I might be clear of infection (or at least think so) will not justify my being careless and uncaring of others.  Being careless not only puts me at risk, it puts others at risk and creates a care-free culture.  What if I infected a person, who infected another person, who infected a person who died from Covid-19?  The same is true when it comes to sin.  How we live morally puts others at risk.  If we care then let us be careful.