This might seem an odd blog title for me given that I work full time for the church and have been going to church all my life.
But we’re on a short break at the moment in Yorkshire, seeing some family and taking in some country as we rest and stop for a moment.
We have the use of an amazing cottage in a little hamlet in North Yorkshire, right next to the Moors, the kind of place where the smell of manure greets you as you open the front door and landlines suddenly become relevant again due to complete lack of signal. Perfect.
It’s also situated directly opposite the local church, in fact I can see it through the window right now. It’s a typical old stone village church with a grave yard and a little bell tower. I popped in there the other day to look around.
It was pretty bare besides a few small statues, a large font at the back and some dark wooden pews and a dark wooden pulpit, a bit dark all round actually.
I quickly discerned that this is not the type of church I am accustomed to worshiping in and from what I’ve heard and seen of the rural anglican community in general, it’s a fairly typical example of the state of the church… small, dark and mostly empty.
I’m sure that isn’t the only picture in the rural church in the UK, in fact I read only the other month of country churches bucking that trend… read it here http://www.premierchristianity.com/Past-Issues/2015/April-2015/Small-is-beautiful
We have a bad habit when we’re on holiday of skipping a Sunday service. Sometimes it’s just not possible, but mostly we favour a long lie in, and to be honest (as unhealthy as it is) missing a church service for me feels like a break from work (perhaps a topic for another time!).
Anyway, I had thought that as the church was literally 10 metres from our front door that I might actually get up and go this morning.
It turns out that the lure of staying in bed an extra hour was more powerful than the promise of what ever I would find in the building over the road.
Now I’m not going to be breaking any new ground here necessarily but my lack of commitment did make me think a few thoughts about myself and the church, what it’s about and how we ‘do it’.
For my reflections on myself, they mostly revolve around the battle between a potential lack of self discipline vs a desire to be kind to myself and give myself a ‘Sunday off’. I also have to consider that I had less of a desire to go because of my tradition and background. I like to think of myself as a thoughtful charismatic evangelical (some of this will mean nothing to some of you!). But I also like to think of myself as being at least a little beyond denominational and preferential differences in churchmanship. I never thought I’d find the richness I have in certain forms of liturgy and more contemplative forms of worship for example.
But I have to face the fact that if the church over the road had professional looking signs with an ‘alpha course’ logo on one side and an affiliation to New Wine or whatever I would be a whole lot more likely to cross the road.
If there was the sound of a worship band rehearsing before the service, that may have drawn me over.
That’s what I’m used to, that’s my background, that’s where I’m most comfortable.
So when I stopped to think about it, I decided not to go and worship God with the community of faith in this village because they didn’t have the write signs or the right instruments! how incredibly shallow and consumerist am I!?
Do the signs or the instruments somehow change God? Do they make him come alive? - If I’m honest some of the times when God has seemed most alive and active in my life have been when these things have not been present, in the silence and out in the ancientness of the natural world which does not move with the times or keep up to date.
But part of me was also thinking about what purpose this church has and what service it was providing.
I heard the church bell ring, but not a great many people flocking to it, a couple of hours later (I hadn’t been looking but…) I hadn’t noticed anyone leave the building. There’s a sense in these places (in general once again) that the church building is a heritage site that roots villages and communities in their history, they’re proud of them and people might come to look at them. Aside from that they are pretty much an irrelevancy.
Is this little church serving the purpose for which God imagined the church? is it playing a part in the in breaking of God’s kingdom in the lives of the people round here? Are people experiencing the love, grace and mercy of God in every aspect of their lives because of this church? (This is a challenge to every church of course whether rural, urban or suburban). Perhaps it is, and I am being a little hypocritical given that I didn’t actually go and see for myself. That’s kind of the point, the fact that I imagined that I would find a couple of aged regulars in the pews, doing what they did every week and a poor vicar who had all but given up hope, saying something half heartedly general about being nice and updating us on the latest leak in the roof kept me firmly in bed.
Maybe I’m wrong, but I’d probably bet money I’m not.
I’m not saying that God isn’t there because he is and he cares deeply about the tiny community that meets in this church, but that doesn’t mean he would necessarily want it to stay as it is.
Churches famously take about a billion years to acknowledge changing times and another billion to adapt and speak to those changes whilst working out how to stay true to Jesus at the same time.
It’s not easy to fulfil the calling to ‘preach Christ afresh to each generation’ - in fact it’s bloomin’ hard and so many give up and settle for the way we know, or what worked for me (I’m as guilty as anyone in this, just I’m not yet thirty so my settled ways of doing church and preaching Christ are still a bit newer than other’s.)
But… Can’t we see the potential of breaking that mould just a bit? especially in a tight knit community such as a North Yorkshire village where any change is noticed.
I’m not going to give an exhaustive list of recommendations here, mostly because I don’t have all the answers, and because as I mentioned this is all very hypocritical of me…
But I do believe that there is a fundamental shift of mindset that Jesus calls all of his church to that would be a start.
I’ll allow Gerard Kelly, the founder of the Bless community, missioner and poet, to explain better than I could…
‘There is a pattern to our worship and the life of our churches that has been normative to us for so many years, and is etched so deeply in our culture that it will take a huge effort to break it. It is the pattern of “in and up” worship. Unconsciously, we see church as an “in and up” experience - we “gather in” our time and energy, our resources and the fruits of our lives, and we “offer them up” to God. The “in and up” movement has its roots in genuine worship, and should indeed be part of our lives. But it is not the whole story. There is also, in the kingdom, a “down and out” movement. The blessings and gifts of God come down on us from heaven. They bless others as we are pushed out into the world. This is the original pattern of the church… We’ve lost the pattern. Our worship services, our ministry programmes, our plans and projects - all too often they conform to an “in and up” movement. We are called to be a “down and out” people: to participate in the coming of God’s kingdom by receiving and distributing his blessings’.
It’s disarmingly simple and seems like common sense to most of us, but our formats and even our intentions as church communities are often not working and sometimes just plain wrong.
Our mindsets are too often fixated on ‘getting people in’ as if that’s the reason the church exists.
Well I’m not sure it is.
The church is called to bless, to be where people are and demonstrate Jesus’ love to them.
Any church that opens up once a week to engage in rituals and use words that are frankly alien to people at large and does little else is going to dwindle and die before too long.
We like our villages to feel quaint and oldie worldie, but the people that live in them live in the 21st Century, and so if the church is still in oldie worldie 18th Century mode it is not preaching Christ afresh to this generation. Therefore is becomes stagnant and dies.
So all this was going through my head as a means to justify myself as I munched on my late breakfast.
Then, when I opened my Bible that day I found I was reading 1 Corinthians 12. This is basically a chapter about the church as a body, each person has a role to play, we need each other if the body is to function as it should.
Well, there’s a little slap in the face if I ever needed one. I may not go to this church, but I’m part of the body of Christ. Maybe there are others like me in and around this little village who claim to be committed to Jesus, and maybe wish the church was a bit different, a bit more relevant, a bit more ‘with it’, a bit more real.
I guess the answer to the problem isn’t moaning about it from the side lines or staying in bed the one time they meet. It means getting up, going and being part of the body, only then can the local church live and change and live out God’s calling afresh in this generation.
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