Reset Reflections

I have very recently published my latest book, ‘Reset Your Church Life: Whatever Happened To Plan A?’ and in this the first of a number of posts, I intend to reflect on some of the issues that both informed my writing of the book and my impressions since then, as we all continue to live through ‘interesting’ times.

For anyone who is wanting to address how their own Church family can maybe do better, I invite you to ask yourself, what are the most important things that such a community must pay attention to? This can lead on to a consideration about whether the time, energy, and money, that is invested by the group members is directed at those most important things? If not, is it possible that you have found yourself being distracted? With the very best of intentions, over time we can find ourselves doing things that are good, but they are not necessarily the best things that we could be doing.

To add a little spice as it were to the task of identifying what the most important things are, how about the discipline of limiting yourself to naming only the 4 most vital aspects of Church life? There might be all kinds of things that occur to you, perhaps even without you having to think very hard. Possibly they would include one or more of these, merely by way of example: worship; evangelism; prayer; preaching; pastoral care; social justice campaigning; feeding the hungry; housing the homeless; leadership; signs and wonders; and prophetic insight.

Whatever list you personally might develop, if you limit yourself to just, say, the 4 most important things this means you have to try to discern what is it, for you, that is of primary importance. Do you know what really matters to you? Does your faith community know what really matters to it?

A related and perhaps equally challenging issue is, what kind of value system are we using to assess what is truly vitally important? Is it a matter of what we almost by instinct believe to be true? Or would we say that our view is undergirded by Biblical truth?

It can be a fascinating journey if we are willing to embark upon it – the journey of looking critically at our own assumptions. Almost certainly, we assume that what we are doing in the world of Church life is based on what the Bible tells us. Perhaps inevitably, we can become so accustomed to what we as a Church do, and the way that we do it, that we simply assume that our Church life is indeed totally consistent with what the Bible tells us Church should be. However, I suggest that with the best will in the world, sometimes we lose our way.

One of the challenges in all of this is that we can look at things in a relatively superficial fashion. We can look at our activities, what it is that we are doing, and fall into a kind of trap of thinking that the activity says everything important there is to say about that subject.

Purely by way of example, let’s take worship as a focus. Lots of us would probably say that worship is bound to make it to the ‘top 4’ list of the most important things. But almost as soon as we begin to focus on worship, we probably think about worship in the sense of the way we as a community ‘do’ worship. It can be very difficult to extricate our thinking from being centred around the public, outward, visible, display of what worship has come to be in our own culture.

When pressed, probably many of us would quite easily say that worship is far more than what is lead from a platform and/or through a public address system. And yet, in our use of language, we can so casually talk about ‘worship music’ or about the ‘worship’ at a particular Church – almost implying that the sum total of what worship is can be identified by songs that are sung to – or at? – or with? – a congregation by a special group of talented people.

Especially if you are convinced that worship must definitely make it into the top 4 most important things, you could perhaps spend some time reflecting on both what the Biblical basis is for worship, and what worship in all its Biblical fulness truly is. Who knows, perhaps such a process might even lead you to conclude that it is time to ‘do’ worship a little differently?

multi colour moebius strip, infinity symbol, isolated on white background

The Uploaded Life, Part 2: Three Steps To Heaven

It was some months ago that I wrote about ‘The Uploaded Life’, and I have, I am sorry to say, been very late in following up that post as I had promised.

2020 has, of course, been quite a year. For all of its trials and sadnesses, and even horrors, it has presented people like me with an opportunity to examine ourselves and perhaps discover, as believers in Jesus, how ‘uploaded’ my life really is.

Last time, I looked at what struck me as 3 fundamental truths on which an uploaded life could be based. These were that any such believer: is a new creation; has access now to Heaven; and is a citizen of Heaven.

I also mentioned 3 possible courses of action that I felt were appropriate responses on our part to these truths. Those responses were that we should: change the way we think; focus on things above; and start investing now in Heaven. Here, again, is a graphic that I used to illustrate this:

What I now want to mention briefly is what kind of specific action we can take that helps us to make these responses real in our lives. Forgive if this is too corny, or perhaps reveals too much about my great age, but I like to think of these specific steps as ‘Three Steps To Heaven’ – it’s the title of an old song.

The first of these Three Steps To Heaven is meant to help us change the way that we think. Reading, re-reading, and meditating on the words of the Bible is surely a great way to help us have our minds renewed. God’s word is powerful – if we let it, it can shift the way that we think. My suggested step here is, find your emergency verse. I mean by this the kind of verse that you know you can turn to in a moment of crisis, including a moment of fear or weakness.

Some time ago, when I was asking God to help me with what I felt were some addictive and melancholic tendencies within me, I sensed the Holy Spirit directing me to make an effort to be thankful, and this would be, for me at least, an effective antidote. I felt drawn to what 1 Thessalonians 5:18 has to say about always giving thanks. Whilst I cannot claim to have been anything like an exemplary student, I have made a serious effort to treat 1 Thessalonians 5:18 as my daily medicine – and I can honestly say that it has made a real difference in my life.

That particular verse might not work for you. However, I encourage you to find at least one emergency verse that works for you.

The second of the Three Steps To Heaven is meant to help us focus on things above. My suggested step here might be surprising because it doesn’t seem to have anyting to do with visualising God in His glorious throneroom, which is what you might a charismatic evangelical like me to mention.

No, for me, the starting point is rather different, and it is this: connect with nature. I am not trying to say that we should all become avid tree huggers and forest bathers – but if that works for you, I see absolutely nothing wrong with that. But again, contrary to what might be seen as typical for a charismatic evangelical, I see positive merit in getting out into the natural world, on a daily basis.

It’s probably easy to accept that contact with the natural world is good for the soul. But beyond that, I suggest this contact can actually help us learn and experience more about the way Heaven works, and what Heaven is like. This seems perfectly consistent with what the Bible tells us – for example, Psalm 19 tells us that the natural world declare God’s glory, proclaim the work of His hands, and reveal knowledge.

The third and final step addresses ways in which we can live in a way that is consistent with the reality of our new citizenship, and puts flesh on the bones, as it were, of the idea of investing in God’s Kingdom. My suggestion here is a terribly simple one – start doing something new and different with your money by supporting a Third World Kingdom-oriented project.

I am not for one moment advocating you diverting your usual financial support away from your local Church, or anything else you are already giving to. The reason why I mention a project in the Third World is that I am looking for something where the giving is pretty much guaranteed to be altruistic – where there is no earthly side benefit for you in giving whatever you are giving. I also suggest this giving should be more than a mere token amount – it should be giving at a level that is noticeable – if you like, giving an amount that hurts, at least a little.

And I say the project should be a ‘Kingdom’ project because I want it to help you connect with the fact of your Heavenly citizenship. I am not in any way criticising or denigrating giving to good causes generally. However, the discipline of finding something we can support that is related to the Kingdom we belong to, but from which we will receive no discernible benefit at all, is very significant.

Here is an image that summarises all this: