On the move again

Does anyone still read Blogs? or is it all on Facebook these days?

Anyway - for the record - I am to become the Team Rector of Walkden with Little Hulton in the Manchester Diocese. It is an area in Salford near Bolton with lots of Gentiles (about 30,000 in total) so it is a real mission field. There are three churches in the team and each has a Victorian building for worship and a community hall close by. Lots of opportunities for Gossipping the Gospel.

Where am I now?

Blogging seems to have gone out of fashion! For those who stumble across this blog, I am now working in Kent for the Diocese of Rochester. My role has three main focii :
1) to encourage parish churches to reach out to the folk in areas of new housing (this part of my work is funded by the Church Commissioners)
2) to promote and support Fresh Expressions of church. I am doing this by running mission shaped intro courses across the Diocese and am on the team that teaches the mission shaped ministry course. I recently set up some meetings for Messy Church practioners.
3) parish support and development work mainly with churches that have participated in the Leading Your Church into Growth course.

Bluebells and a Mission Movement

I have just been to a Learning Community at St. Thomas, Philadelphia in Sheffield. We are learning how to be Missional Leaders who will lead our churches into greater fruitfulness. The challenging question being asked is how many Mission Shaped Communities will you plant in the next 2 years? What do you need to do in the next six months to move in that direction?

Most of the time we were focussing on what we could develop from the congregations as it is now, but once again I find myself wondering about the need to think in a more adventurous fashion. It is good to foster the growth of Missional Communities, and at St. Mark's we have just started 3 new Life Groups in a "Cafe Church Cluster". My hope is that this will multiply within 2 years to become 2 clusters with about 7 Life Groups.

When I say more adventurous I find myself coming back to the idea of Simple Organic Churches in homes based around the Person of Peace. My dream is that these churches could multiply rapidly in a mission movement to reach our nation.

The picture which the Lord gave me was Bluebells. Bluebells multiply and spread vigourously, so much so that I have been given two bags of them to plant in my garden by some people who found that they had taken up too much space in their garden.

I just pray that I will soon have time and energy to stop dreaming and start doing something about planting some of these Organic Churches.

Living in the Red Zone

I spent yesterday at a Church Planting consultation with George Lings and Claire Dalpra of the Sheffield Centre. It was good to catch up with some old friends and give some thought to how our Cafe Church might be transformed from an Alternative Service into a genuine "Fresh Expression of Church".

The thing that struck me most powerfully during the day was a diagram from a book called The Missional Leader: Equipping Your Church to Reach a Changing World by Alan Roxburgh and Fred Romanuk. The diagram describes 6 different stages in the life of the church and the style of leadership that is operating in each phase. The cycle begins in the middle of the green zone when there is the emergence of new ideas and fresh possibilities, some of which thrive. As growth happens organisation and structure are needed and the church enters the blue stable zone where performance and organisational leadership are appropriate.



The red zone is the danger zone. As the organisation starts to decline the leadership reacts to one crisis after another, often by trying to control and reorganise to recapture the calm happy days of the blue zone. The impact for clergy is that we have to work harder to even stand still! We have no quick solution and everyone blames us for the crisis, when actually we are living in a very different culture and missional climate.

The message for me is that I might need to learn how to do Bridging Leadership (whatever that is) inorder to help the church understand what is happening.

Looking at the diagram again today, I think I tried to jump straight from the Red Zone to the Green Zone and tried to build Cell Church without the rest of the church really understanding why we needed to be there. I also got frustrated by the lack of organisation in the inherited church life which is still needed as the base for our mission. We were and still are suffering due to falling numbers, elderly congregation, only a short history of basing life on what the bible says etc so at times I was and am operating in the red zone reacting to crisis.

In the last two years I have not given up my dream of seeing organic missional churches planted in this area, but I have been leading some of the people through the lower part of the blue zone. I think this is the "transitional leadership" mentioned on the diagram. We are growing a team of people who are disciples who know how to make disciples. We have been using leadership Huddles to do this.

We also have some activity in the green zone as we transition our Cafe Church from being an alternative service to growing an identity as a missionary community which will become a fresh expression of church. In preparation for this we have four people attending the Diocesan Mission Shaped Ministry training course.

Anyway, I have just ordered a copy of Roxburgh's book to see what he has to say about how you do Bridging Leadership. If there are any other sources that people have found helpful please let me know.

Revival?

I have been busy with life and got out of the habit of blogging.

It is now nearly two years since I started Huddles and these have been a real blessing. We now have a core group of leaders in the church with shared vision and values.

Last year we started holding monthly prayer days and we have just finished a 24/7 prayer week with the church open for prayer day and night with someone praying the whole time. There is a growing sense of God on the move in our midst.

Several of us went to the New Wine leaders conference last year and we have been impacted by Bill Johnson's teaching (from Bethel church in Redding California). We are looking to take the healing ministry out beyond the walls of the church and hope to do some healing on the streets.

We also have a group of four ladies attending the Diocesan Mission Shaped Ministry training course with a view to helping our Cafe Church to have a missionary focus. We are going to try holding the service at 4pm on Sunday 15th June and on 13th July to see how it works at that time of day. It was always a source of irritation to some folk in the church when it was held at the same time as the service in the "Victorian" building.

The Kingdom of Heaven is Forcefully Advancing

Matthew 11:12

From the days of John the Baptist until now, the kingdom of heaven has been forcefully advancing, and forceful men lay hold of it. NIV

I am about to preach on this passage of scripture. I tend to use the NIV so I was about to preach "come on folks lets be forceful men who take hold of the kingdom and forcefully advance it."

But I have just read Carson's commentary on the verse in "The Expistor's Bible Commentary (1984)" which points us to an interpretation that says

"since the days of John the Baptist the Kingdom of heaven is being forcefully advanced, and violent men are pillaging it."

So that shoots my planned sermon in the foot. However, I sense that Carson's interpretation is right. I don't feel like a mighty warrior about to take hell by storm and the people who I preach to are by and large in the scared rabbit league.

So my revised interpretation is that Jesus in the power of the Holy Spirit is forcefully advancing the Kingdom of heaven every time he heals the sick, cleanses a leper or brings sight to the blind (Matt 11:5). Jesus clearly sees these as actions of spiritual warfare against the principality of darkness (cf 1 John 5:19).

This violence against the forces of evil is carried out by a child of God - a little one whose eyes and ears are open to the things revealed by the Father (verses 15 and 25).

The violent men are the people who oppose the Kingdom of heaven by persecuting the likes of John the Baptist, Jesus, James and countless other Martyrs.

The implications for me and my hearers is that although we are little children and not forceful men we can nevertheless join Jesus in his work of forcefully advancing the Kingdom of heaven as we operate in the power of the Spirit: doing good deeds that bless people and healing the sick.

What has been happening

If you have been a reader of my blog in the past you may remember that I posted a blog in August last year about the popping of my "super-ego" bubble:

Click here to read my post from August 2006

Sadly, the fact that this had happened didn't immediately filter through to everyone and I found the spiritual temperature of the church very cool in the Autumn:

Click here to read my post from September 2006

This made the grass look greener on the other side of the fence, and I gave serious thought to moving on. I even went to a couple of interviews, but it became very clear in mid December that the Lord had other plans for me.

Coming to terms with my disappointment with how things had turned out took a couple of weeks - hence the blogging silence. During this time I organised the sabbatical to give myself space to reevaluate etc. Then by New Year my weariness lifted and the church began to respond quite positively to my ministry. I was so busy throwing myself back into ministry that I didn't have time to blog. Then I just got out of the habit!

I have now returned from sabbatical to a warm welcome and there are many signs of life in the church and many good things happening.

I'm Back

I don't know if I will be blogging much in the future. I might, but I have not felt like doing so recently.

For those who might like to know, I have just been on sabbatical from Feb - April. During this time I put a new fireplace in the living room and decorated it. I also made a pond in the back garden. I went on holiday to Angelsey with Jane and spent a week in the Cambrian mountains with my mum.

The blog was helpful last year as I wrestled with my dissatisfaction with the dear of Church of England. I am now at peace with where I fit in. Maybe I will blog about this and how I believe God wants me to minister in the future.

In a nutshell, I still see myself a missionary to the unchurched folk of Britain, but I personally am going to concentrate on those in Bredbury and Woodley. As a base for this outreach I am working to strengthen the missionary community which calls itself St. Mark's Church.

To whom are we sent?

To whom are we sent? In Acts 1 Jesus tells his disciples that they will be witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and to the ends of the earth.

In his own ministry Jesus concentrated on Galilee, Judea, and Jerusalem preaching mainly to the "lost sheep of Israel" - his own people. He did not actively seek to preach to Gentiles. However, during this time he became aware that his Kingdom would bless the Samaritans (who were contaminated by syncretizing canaanite worship into Judaism) and the Gentiles (see Matt 15:21-28).

As I reflect on Jesus' ministry it seems that our context is drastically different. There are no crowds of basically religious people eagerly hoping for a Messiah. There are some who might be called "back to church" and we should try to win these back. The majority of the population in Britain, however, are more like the Samaritans: they are comfortable in their consumerism (Baal worship) and do not feel the need to worship the Living God.

I have been preaching recently on Luke's gospel. Nearly every week we see Jesus challenging the Pharisees. These super-religious people were the stalwarts of organised religion in their time, but they "rejected God's purpose for themselves, because they had not been baptised by John" (Luke 7:30). The ordinary Jewish people responded to John's preaching and were baptised. The Pharisees, who thought they were good enough already would not submit to John's baptism because of their arrogance and pride. They missed out on the joy of being in the Kingdom of God with Jesus.

In winning back those who are the lost sheep, we need to embrace Jesus' understanding of the Kingdom of God. Grace and mercy, healing and forgiveness are more important than rules and status. I am concerned that many inside the churches at present are like the Pharisees - full of themselves and what they want, rather than getting excited about joining with Jesus in his mission to bring home the lost sheep. We need to be with Jesus praying for more workers to become active in the harvest (Luke 10:2).

Jesus' mission to the Samaritans was unsuccessful in Luke 9:51-56, but in John 4 when he exercised his prophetic gifting with the woman at the well there was a positive response. In Acts we see the Samaritans accepting the gospel when it was accompanied with miraculous signs and healing miracles (Acts 8:6-8).

We need to be out and about amongst the Samaritans of Britain with the power and gifts of the Holy Spirit. We cannot expect them to come to us. Maybe as we get a few more lost sheep back in the fold some of them will become the missionaries amongst the Samaritans of our land?

Who are these Samaritans? I think they are the ordinary people of Britain who are in employment, who own their own home, drive everywhere, drink more wine than they used to, sort of believe in God, used to be in the brownies or the cubs, but have never been active church members as adults. These are people I meet when I baptise their children, or officiate at their weddings. These are the people who want Dad to have a christian funeral and who might describe themselves as "spiritual but not religious."

The Gentiles are an even tougher nut to crack. The initial cross-cultural missionaries were Jews. Paul and Barnabas were living in a gentile city, worshipping with Jewish christians and those who had converted to Judaism. As Gentiles came to faith the church grew in its understand that the good news of Jesus was the gospel for the whole world.

When Paul and his friends went out on their missionary journeys to gentile cities it is interesting to note that they always started with the Synagogue. They looked for religious people who would respond to the message of Jesus and form the basis of a missional community in the city they were trying to reach.

What or who are the equivalent people today in Britain who will be at the heart of mission to the Gentiles?

I don't know the answer to this question. And at the moment I find myself drawn more to mission amongst the "Samaritans". This is where I am seeing fruitfulness. These "samaritans" are the "people of peace" that I am finding at the MCFC supporters club. These are the the bulk of the people living in my parish. As we do our Alpha courses and establish our "new wineskins" (Cafe Church, cell groups, praise services etc) these are the people who we are able to integrate into church life. Most of them don't want traditional Anglicanism just as the Samaritans in Jesus' time did not want to worship at the Temple. But they know when they are worshipping "in Spirit and in Truth."

Maybe I should change the title of my blog to be "to-the-Samaritans" ??

Teamwork

Andrew has taken up rowing. His team, Teddy Hall C, is the third novice crew (not expected to be participating in the next Olympic games). Nevertheless, they put in a superb performance yesterday at the Christchurch regatta, winning their first race by a huge margin against Balliol B team and then holding off Trinity's A Team in the second round until the finish line. Watch it here in larger size or in the box below. I think Andrew is the first oarsman (bow) in the nearest boat.

Cowboy Evangelism

I have done plenty of cowboy evangelism in my time. Lots of “yee-haa” but not much harvesting. We learned how to present the gospel with a little booklet. We went out on the streets of Westminster with tracts written by Arthur Blessit who led a training day in London in 1981. We tried to fill coaches with people from Hackney to go and hear Eric Delve preach in Walthamstow. We trained with Douglas McBain’s Mustard Seed to preach in the open air. We did sketchboard presentations at the local community fun day. Much energy expended. Few disciples.

When I led the “News Team” in Hackney we went out every week knocking on doors chatting to people about Jesus, inviting them to church etc. We would nearly always find someone welcoming who wanted to talk. I found myself offering lots of pastoral care and comfort to these lost sheep who never came near the church. We discovered after a while that about 1 in 7 households were receptive to visitors from the local church, but we did not spend enough time with these people. We kept trying to get them to come to us and got discouraged when they did not.

It is a shame that we did not hear the message of Luke 10:7 at this time. Stay in the house of the person of peace. ie spend enough time with this household that they catch the message of the Kingdom of God. Our vicar at the time had the best approach: he would go back week after week to his contacts with a beginners course in Christianity (similar to Good News Down Your Street). I remember thinking that we might learn from his example and do the same, but it never seemed to happen. I personally grew weary of seeing little fruit from the door to door ministry, and at about the same time I joined the FGBMFI which held evangelistic dinners. We saw lots of people get saved and healed at these events so I moved my energies into these instead.

Looking back I would say that the opportunities were there. Maybe we should have persevered in spending more time with those who were open. Maybe we needed to be less busy doing other church things in order to have the time and energy to go out and spend time with these people. After all Jesus did say "do not greet anyone along the road". A curious phrase that I interpret to mean we should be single minded and dedicated to the task.