The Power Of a Passing Thought

The Power of a Passing Thought
It’s Saturday morning, and I woke a full hour earlier than I intended and felt that I needed.  But already my head was buzzing with things that had to be done today.  Various jobs had been piling up through the week, and some, like writing Praise & Prayer News, seemed challenging.  Usually, I have a clear sense of what I would write by the middle of the week.  But not this week.  Then, as my mind was juggling with how to plan the day and get important tasks completed on time, two things happened almost simultaneously.

The first was reading the words that a ministry colleague had written as part of a series the Congregational Federation has been publishing entitled”A Secluded Place”.  Various authors contributed to the series, and some I had appreciated more than others.  I sat on the edge of the bed, and without much enthusiasm, scrolled through the short piece that Elaine had written about a worship song in Spanish that another colleague had brought back from one of her trips abroad.  I identified with her comments about the difficulty of learning worship songs in foreign languages and how often they fail to engage and inspire in the way intended.

Clearly Elaine and her husband had not allowed the difficulty to cause the simple song to be cast aside.  She wrote about how she sang the song “to herself” (or did she mean to God as a personal act of worship?).  She had included a YouTube link so, by then intrigued to hear the words in Spanish and English, I clicked the link.  As I listened to the long forgotten tune I found myself singing along in an act of quiet worship, sensing God’s presence, and realising that in a busy day not finding time to spend in worship is foolish.

What might have been no more than a passing thought (and I had certainly not expected to give it much time) had taken hold and claimed its rightful place front and centre. 

My other passing thought was a phrase in one of Paul’s letters to Timothy.  The second letter to Timothy is full of encouragement and exhortation to be faithful in his ministry as time when many had proved unfaithful, and some in Ephesus were actually opposing the gospel Paul had faithfully taught.  While there are some verses in this letter that have found universal application, there is much that seems so specific to Timothy that it only comes to our attention at times such as the induction of a new priest or minister.

Tucked among this list of important things that Timothy was to ‘get on and do’ are the words, “... do the work of an evangelist…”.  It is one of only three references to the ministry of an evangelist that we find in the New Testament.  To me, it seems like a passing thought, a “by the way” comment.  But perhaps among all the other duties and responsibility\s to be borne by the younger man (and also by us), care was needed not to forget something that was essential.

In busy times, when there is much that is needed to be done, some things are too important to be left as passing thoughts.  To press on working through our ‘to do’ list without making time first to be still and consciously spend time enjoying and worshipping God is both wrong and foolish.  Time so spent is an investment in our lives.  At the same time to allow all that we have to do today to squeeze out our responsibility to say something about our faith and who is at its centre, is to treat lightly all that Christ suffered for us and our salvation.  The story is not ours to keep it is God’s and he wants us to share it with others.

Just a thought… but don’t let it pass.

Microsoft Backs Evangelists

Microsoft Promotes Evangelism

If this is something new to you then you are likely to be surprised as much as I was when I heard this.  However, before you get too excited, please read on. Like other biblical terms the word “evangelist” has been hijacked to describe a secular activity.  Here is a description of this kind of role from Wikipedia:

“A [technology] evangelist promotes the use of a particular product  or technology through talks, articles, blogging, user demonstrations, recorded demonstrations, or the creation of sample projects. The word evangelism is taken from the context of religious evangelism due to the similarity of relaying information about a particularset of beliefs with the intention of converting the recipient.”

So how do you feel about the use of the word being adapted in this way.  Personally, I am wondering whether it could prove positive.  The “E-word” began to become unpopular in many churches at the start of the 1980s.  For this reason, the last major Billy Graham Mission in the UK was called Mission England avoiding terms like evangelism, crusade or campaign.  Could the term now become rehabilitated by its use in a secular context?

The word, evangelist, simply means someone who has good news to share.  It is not the word that is the problem but the image.  Take this cartoon, for example, which I use in order to help people articulate negative feelings about evangelism (I own the rights to the cartoon).  Certain TV evangelists have also helped to create a poor and unhelpful image of what evangelism is really about.  My opinion is that if something labelled evangelism does not come across as good news then it cannot be evangelism.

The secular word has been misusing the term evangelical for some time, in my opinion.  They have used it to describe someone who is passionate about something, so perhaps they would have done better to have said, evangelistic.  Again, sadly, the term evangelical has sometimes been used negatively as defining a rather extreme and unattractive kind of Christian.  For me, and evangelical is someone whose faith has the good news or gospel at its heart, and who has particular respect for scripture. 19^th Century evangelicals were world-changers campaigning against slavery and promoting much social good.  They were not aggressive bigots.

While I am happy for biblical terms to be used appropriately in a secular context, and am excited by the use of evangelist by Microsoft, I don’t wish to give away the use of these words within a Christian context.  I want to see them recovered correctly.  Perhaps what we need to do is to take a hard look at who we are, what we believe, how we live and what we say and ask, “Is all of this GOOD News?” But the adjective, good, should be from the perspective of those observing or hearing us, rather than how we define ourselves.

Last year I began running a programme entitled “Friendship Evangelism”. An introduction to the programme is one of our free online seminars (webinars) and it is also available as a one-day course for churches.  The aim is to encourage ordinary Christians to be good news and confidently and lovingly seek to help those they care about to come to know Jesus Christ as a personal Saviour.  Please note that we are running the introductory online seminar again later this month.  Whether or not you are comfortable about sharing your faith the opportunity to watch this on your computer could prove a valuable investment of 45 minutes.

If the term evangelist is not to be lost to the world we need many more ordinary Christians who can become comfortable sharing the good news in gentle and winsome ways.  Do you need to become one of these?  If so, please sign up for the free webinar.  Or you might be a church leader with people who are less than confident in sharing their faith; then you too should find this webinar helpful

Click here for more details.

Click here now to register for either seminar.

For praise and prayer this week

We thank God for his blessing at the burial and subsequent Thanksgiving Service for the life of John Bradley, a former trustee and long-term supporter of Rural Mission Solutions.  John was a greatly loved Methodist Minister with a heart of the wider church.  He wrote his own “last words” which were read at the Thanksgiving Service.  Do please read them.

Over recent months I have lost three former colleagues who have gone to be with the Lord.  Please remember those closest to them at this time.

This Saturday, 9^th January, members of Yelvertoft Congregational Church meet to reflect on the implications from my plan to retire as their Minister later this year.  Join me in thanking God for this church and its work in the village and surrounding area.  Pray for wisdom.

Please pray for Doreen (my wife) as she undergoes further tests this weekend to discover the cause for chronic gastric problems.

Please pray for the work on Obambo, Kenya and for Nigel Lindsay who will be travelling to there on 13^th January.  The loss of my colleague, Monica Cook, is keenly felt both in Kenya and in the UK Friends of Obambo team.

Give thanks for continued prayer and financial support for the Children’s Department of Sunrise Ministries and put your prayers behind finding a competent person with a heart for rural ministry to head up this work.

Give thanks for the completion of important work required for Action for Christ.  This took up much time during December and we now await an important communication from a government department.  Once this has been received, the trustees of AFC (which includes me) will start to take prayerful steps regarding the future of that rural ministry.

Tuesday 12^th January I will take a school assembly followed by regular ministry at HMP Gartree.

Saturday 16^th January “Get Messy” (Messy Church) at Yelvertoft with an all-age service on the following day.

Give thanks for the encouragement from those who attended the online seminars in 2015.  These were held on Saturday morning and we are experimenting to find the day and time most suitable for those who could benefit from these webinars.  Please pray as these need to be scheduled throughout 2016.

Thank you for your friendship, fellowship and support.

Barry