My Food

A few weeks ago while my son David was attending a Science Open Day at Leeds University I spend a few hours on Ilkley Moor (with my hat!). The day was good apart from the fact that I succumbed to the familiar smell of Fish and Chips and indulged in some of this traditional northern fodder. While in my younger days this would have been a highlight of the day, it made me feel rather queasy and sharply reminded me that I am growing old. I need to be more selective about what I eat.

When Jesus' disciples came back with a takeaway from Sychar in Samaria he wasn't very interested. At one level Jesus sounds irritatingly pious when he says "My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work" (John 4:34). However, since this is Jesus speaking and we are being called to be like him I want to say the same thing. I just don't have any appetite for anything that does not seem totally focussed on God's Kingdom.

More than that, I only want to do the things in God's Kingdom that he has specifically asked me to do. There are so many good things happening, but they are someonelse's calling, not mine.

Last week I was at the New Wine Leaders Conference. New Wine is doing a fantastic work. I am totally comfortable with the vision statement:
Our vision is to see the nation changed through Christians and churches being filled with the Spirit, alive with the joy of knowing and worshipping Jesus Christ, living out his Word, and doing the works of the Kingdom of God.

And yet I sense that I am called to do more than just lead a New Wine church. I have no appetite for "promotion" to a bigger New Wine church. That would (for me) feel like a worldly move, a desire for greater significance within a the New Wine Network driven by my old psychological and emotional wounds (which are nearly healed now).

I have a vision (or is it a dream?) that God wants the Good News of Jesus to reach the masses (the "Gentiles" mentioned in the title of this blog). New Wine churches are better at reaching middle class people than your average Church of England church, and this is good. Some churches like St. Mark's even reach some working class people, and this is good.

But good as these things are, I sense that their vision is not big enough. We need to infect the people outside the boxes with the Kingdom virus. They need to catch a proper, life transforming dose of the Holy Spirit, and they need to be helped to know how to live the life and pass on the Good News.

The Good News needs to be expressed without much reference to church as we know it, which has often been bad news to earlier generations of the Gentiles. The good news needs to be experienced in the form of better relationships where people know how to forgive and be reconciled, where parents know how to love their children and live unselfishly. The good news needs to be experienced as forgiveness and mercy and release from the guilt of a sinful past. The grace of God needs to be experienced as a present reality when faced with the temptation to meet present neds in sinful damaging ways. Healing of old wounds and the breaking of strongholds is essential so that tempations will lose their previous power.

Jesus seemed to believe that the masses want this Good News. "Open your eyes and look at the fields! They are ripe for harvest. Even now the reaper draws his wages, even now he harvests the crop for eternal life..." (John 4:35-36).

So what are we waiting for? Let's get out there amongst the people with our spiritual eyes open to see where the wind is blowing, our spiritual ears tuned to his voice, and our feet fitted with the readiness to take us into the house of the person of peace.

People are hungry for spiritual reality. Let's take it to them. Let's teach them how to sustain it and pass it on. There is no need for these folk to come to church. They can just become the church. This new wine needs to live in new wineskins. Even New Wine churches will be too churchy and too institutional for real Gentiles.