An address for a church anniversary

Often we spend too much time reflecting on the future or worrying too much about the past. We look back with regrets we look forward and are anxious. Sometimes we never ever get to be living in the present.

When a was a school I remember being told that when you're running a race a most important thing you must do is keep your eyes focused on the finishing line and not look back.  If you look back it slows you down for two reasons: 

1. you are spending time and energy looking at where you have been and not where you are going 
2. you lose sight of the finish line

Both of these things make you lose focus which in turn causes you to to lose valuable time in a race.  Of course when I was running any race at school this didn't apply to me as I was at the back anyway!

The Apostle Paul says this very thing in the letter to Phillipians chapter three he says "Not that I have already attained or become already perfected but I press on that I may lay hold of that for which Christ Jesus has also laid hold of me.  Brethren I count myself not to have apprehended but this one thing I do. Forgetting those things which are behind and reaching for  those things which are before I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Jesus Christ."

The Christian Life is not a marathon; it's a relay race.  Somebody hands the baton to you.  You run as fast as you can and then you hand over to the next generation.  We've been given the mighty Baton, the heritage of Gods faithfulness.  Now let's run as fast as we can to hand on to the next generation.  Let's do it so that someday the lord will say to us "you kept the faith. Well done my good and faithful servant." Those in the future will say look what has been passed on to us..

Christians have to look three ways.
First of all we look backwards.  We do it so that we can learn from it.  We do not want to live back in the past but remember the good things that have happened that we might learn from them and take those good things with us into our present day.  We can also learn from the mistakes that we made so that we did not repeat those again.  If we ignore the past then we are likely to continue to make the same mistakes over and over again.

We will remember where we've come from. We remember the history of the church and we remember the many people have played important part in our lives and in the life of the church.  We sometimes look back with regret as the past was not perfect but also  we look back with pride and we are grateful to God for what he has done. That's the sort of backward looking that we engage in on our anniversary Sunday as we think about the good things God has done in this church and for this community over the years.

The second direction we look is we look forward and this church has spent the last five years looking forward as we have moved from demolishing the building to living in temporary building to developing plans and planning. We have worked out precisely why we need a new building what we want to use the building for, thinking about how our mission can be enhanced by having a new building. We look forward in faith confident that God has still work for us to do here. We look forward in hope and faith not with fear and anxiety like many people in the world but with faith because we know that God who has been faithful in the past will continue to be faithful in the future.

And the other way we look is we look upward. Christians never stop stop looking up. We look up to see more of the Glory of the lord. As it says in the psalms "I lift my own eyes unto the hills from whence cometh my help."  There is so much of the Glory of God,  the Glory of Jesus, that we haven't seen yet. We long for it. We long for the new world. We long for what god has promised us. We keep looking upwards as well as looking backwards and looking forwards

We haven't got three eyes as we glance in these 3 directions.  However the most important thing is that though we do spend time glancing backwards, forward and upwards - we need to keep our eyes fixed on what's immediately in front of us.  The most important part of the Christian Life is living in the present moment and fullness of life is found when we lived their present moment to the full potential for God has created us for.  Looking back to the story of Moses and the burning bush God's voice came to Moses from the burning bush and God said unto Moses "I am who I am". He didn't say "I am who I was or I am who I will be". That phrase is foundational for me because that emphasises the fact that God wants us to be fully present in our present moment for him.  In the present moment is where we can love another person. Only in the present moment we can share the gospel. Only in the present moment can do something intentional for for the kingdom of God.  There is a Latin motto "carpe diem" which means seize the day we need to seize every day there because God made it and gave it to us, as he gave us life and breath.  "This is the day that the lord has made let us rejoice and be glad in it."

On this anniversary Sunday we look back with thanksgiving we look forward in hope we look upwards in anticipation of the riches that God has yet to pour upon us. But we also look around where we are and pray that God will continue to use each one of us in the little ways with our neighbours and friends as God uses all his people to build the kingdom. 

12th May 2013

Evangelism and community

A couple of days ago I was reading a book called "Barefoot Christianity: the rough road" written by Ricky May.  The book aims to show what it means to be an active follower of Jesus in the current age by allowing yourself to be vulnerable as you follow in his footsteps.  One particular chapter in that book caught my attention as he dealt with evangelism and community.  
It was really just one sentence that stood out for me and this is what the sentence said.  "We come up with the Christian terms such a mission, ministry or evangelism because we just don't have relationships with the community around us."  This is quite a damning indictment of the churches because so much is being invested in ministry, mission and evangelism through all sorts of programs aimed at making Christianity relevant, useful and acceptable to people who are without the church.  What he seems to suggest is that it would be far more effective if in a community setting Christianity could be shared by the normal processes of social interaction.  I've heard this called gossiping the gospel.  
This sounds great but I think there is a flaw in what he's saying.  The problem with the approach of leaving evangelism to a community to spread the message by itself is the definition of what is a community.  Sociologists have been telling us for a long time the people belong to many different communities all at the same time.  Many communities may be communities of interest where people sharing like interests gather together to follow their hobbies, sports or perhaps their political beliefs.  Such communities are a very real communities for those people yet many of them may not require any sort of physical proximity or may not even require people ever to meet each other.  Sometimes the idea of community is mixed up with the term social networking however social networking only refers to a technology that makes certain interactions possible. 
Research on effective evangelism quite clearly shows that people talking to friends and encouraging them to join a church is one of the most effective means of outreach.  Does this mean then that churches should concentrate their efforts into community development instead of spending vast sums of money on evangelistic programmes?  Perhaps what is most needed is a programme to develop the confidence and skills of ordinary church members so they feel happy in sharing why church, Jesus, and the Christian faith play an important part in their life.
Another quotation from later in the same paragraph.  "Instead of loving we call it being Christ like and instead of serving we call it outreach." What the author is objecting to is that these special churchy activities have often be become a substitute for doing what should be a natural friendly activity.  He is essentially calling for us to show radical love that would no longer love others from a distance but develop a compassionate involvement.  In this way we'll really want to help them and part of that will involve sharing our faith with them.
I haven't yet finished the book, and to be honest,  I'm finding some of it not very good, however, if there are any further nuggets offering insight or which provoke me to think deeply I will share them on the blog.