Puzzled from Tonypandy.
Why is this journey such an affront to people inside the building? What is so difficult to handle and come to terms with just because I have chosen to walk a different path? In a place that preaches grace why do I have to bow down to law and be the same as everybody else? Is it really so difficult to grasp that there might actually be another perspective? Why so offended by a life so free? Of course I could go into all the good radical Christian answers and throw in words like religious spirits, Pharisees, people need to be open to God, but I find none of these phrases really that helpful because they are just words of the offence in my heart that people see it differently to me. I don’t want to be offended. I want to make a choice to not even be offended with other people’s offence. And that is tough because you know it questions the whole ethos and being of who you are or who you are trying to rediscover in the mess of the detox from the construct. That does not mean I cannot question why? Why do Christians get all touchy about certain things that are not even personal? Why do they get upset when you laugh at some of the stuff you yourself have been locked up in? When you use humour to reveal the sacred cows of places we once stood in? Some people who enjoy a good laugh seem to lose a sense of humour and get really defensive about traditions and buildings and keeping Sunday special. Why does a statement about being church rather than going to church get the shackles up in some when really they know it is true? As you can see this week I have alot of questions but the offence of this journey never ceases to amaze me.
Grit in the Eye.
Is it because I am like an irritant that won’t go away? Like a bit of grit that gets stuck in the eye? I really believe I would be easier to handle and suss out if I came out and said I am backslidden, I want nothing more to do with God. That could be comprehended on their chart of saved (committed to local church) or backslidden (away from God/church) or unsaved. At least then they could pray for me when they see me, believe for conviction to rise up within me so I put my life right with God or see how rebellious and disobedient I have become. How I have hardened my heart to God and His people. But to keep walking with God, still loving Him wholeheartedly, still worshipping, still loving people, and yes that is people inside as well as outside the established church, this is a puzzle to them, off their chart. That is why this walk cannot be right. You cannot love God and not want to worship with His people every Sunday. You cannot connect with God the same way in the aisles of Asda as you do in singing worship songs and hearing the Word. They want to right you off as backslidden but you keep appearing on the page. You are still in the story. You are a part of the picture of what God is doing. Loving, sharing, praying, sharing Christ, worshipping, walking in grace and joy and peace. This is annoying when you love things to be sown up and fenced in. People have unfriended me on Facebook for talking about life in Christ. Not unbelievers but believers. Unbelievers seem strangely drawn to such a life. These people are unoffended reading status’ about drinking at the weekend and getting wasted (and I don’t mean Sloshfest either), yet tell them you walked with God through the valleys on a Sunday and they go mad with you. A fence of offence has been built. As I said I think they would have stayed my friend if I said I leave everything and just want to go and get wasted.
Walking Grace.
This is where I believe we need to be different. We have to walk grace with people who see things differently or who may never see things as we see them. We do only see through a glass dimly. We have only got a perspective. We have to choose to walk unoffended. Love those on a different path or journey. Understand why people do not see as we see it. It helps me to realise that there was a time when I was sitting the other side of the fence judging people outside the four walls. I could not understand people like me. For those of you who resonate with my meanderings and journey I love you all to pieces but even we have to accept that our journeys and out-workings of that journey will be different. To understand how these people feel it would be like me announcing this week that I am going back to pastoring a local church (which I am not I hasten to add 
). If we are not careful that could be offensive to us and we no longer want to be a friend of the one journeying outside of where we are. Instead of walking freedom we have created our own box and parameters of where God is at work today. We have to be so careful that grace is the way we walk. How do we show people there is a different way? Not by arguing or trying to convince but by walking grace and love. This may not get answers to all of our questions, and I have many in another week where I have lost friends, but grace and love are great disarmers. Disarms me of anger and offence at their offence, and hopefully begins to disarm others of their judgement of where we stand and walk. I choose to walk grace.
Appendix.
There will be no blog next Thursday as I am flying on Sunday to Latvia to visit Jo and Ian Storie. Will be accompanied again by my great friend Geoff Reed from Cramlington. Appreciate your prayers as we go to encourage and stand with this couple in their call. Joining some dots to see what picture emerges. A new form of mission, not going for meetings or preaching, but just to connect and encourage and stand with someone in their field (literally looking at the pictures). We return next Friday (the 1st June) so will write a report over the w/e of 2nd/3rd.
Brilliant stuff Paul. So true that grace and love are the answer – I’m trying!
Justin has just videoblogged on that from Romans…
Reading from a similar book you are, I think!
Bless.
J x
Looking forward to hearing what you see while stood in the fields here in Latvia.
Bless you Paul. Following your Facebook journey I am aware of the ‘offences’ at times but be blessed mate, there are lots of us out here that love you and can identify with the journey you are on and indeed, dare I say, travelling similar ones. Grace, and love, grace and love, grace and love….the only way to survive this journey. At the end of the day, and I know full well that this is at times easier said than done, if we have Father God’s approval………it don’t matter what others think of us! Be greatly blessed Paul, have a great time in Latvia, and lets hear all about it when you get back. xx
So true. I have to keep reminding myself that a few years ago I used to think and say things exactly the same when I was in the church contruct. To choose to walk unoffended takes much grace and love and yes there comes many questions with all this.
I’m sure you’ll have a great time with Jo and Ian in Latvia. Can’t wait to read about your experience when you get back.
Meant to write church ‘construct’.
Reminds me of a Brasilian pastor friend who once said ” No fence, therefore no defence, therefore no offence”.
Thanks Paul for this one.
Loved this and have a great time with Joanna and Ian.
And thanks for reminding us all that no matter where we stand we must not take offence at others who are in a different place. X
i found this article really interesting. i love “church” (please assume inverted commas round the word “church” throughout). i love lots and lots of different expressions of church. but through no choice of my own i’ve been experiencing no-church. and for a while it really was that – with very little contact with christians even on internet or anywhere i have really felt i have met with God wonderfully through it . but that doesn’t make church wrong, or undesirable. just opens up even further the possibilities of how we can meet with God and with each other. i expect you agree with this. i feel as if i’m reading a knee jerk reaction cos some people have not been open to understand your path, maybe even actively critical. maybe even hurtful in how they have expressed themselves. i’m very sorry about that.
i think maybe my cautious reservations about recommending the no-church situation can best be expressed via that quote – ” No fence, therefore no defence, therefore no offence”. but sometimes fences are very useful. when i was a child another child in my class died having run off the edge of a cliff with no fence. and on joanna’s blog there is a picture of a rather vicious looking fence contraption with spikes (!) to keep wild boar out.
the people who seem to be enjoying and really making the most of “no-church” seem to be people who have invested hugely in church in the past and who need a break from some of the drain of what church can become. they are those that already have a fairly substantial network of support of one sort or another, and a very very substantial stock of bible understanding and experience of God at work. maybe you too, like the very earliest monks needed to be able to establish a bit of distance from what the established church was becoming in order to be able to pray, study, live with a bit of perspective, and thus be able to speak out in a freer way. maybe the establishment of “The Universal Church” in Rome felt threatened by them and tried to tie them down too.
but i can see how hard it is for “church leaders” to handle this. in being part of new church over the years we have seen our fair share of free spirits who have given the same reasoning but only a proportion have kept any accountability somewhere, and have not veered off into a closed off reasoning that can actually end up damaging to the church. here in france all sorts of itinerant ministries, hailed as visiting prophets and healers, wander in and out of the churches that so hungry to hear from God. they arrive with stories of wonderful meetings and loads of healings and prophecies . the vast majority those responses in our situations were at best a desire to please and encourage this “man of god”. more often than not he left emotional and theological confusion and damage in his wake. even legitimate prophets and evangelists went beyond what God was telling them to do and ended up damaging the very fruit they had created. without checks and balances, without teams and accountability we end up with very new testament pickles.
i can guess from reading you that you’re not like that. but this is the caution i have with in any way recommending a no-church stance.
have you seen the research in the back of the book closing the back door of the church, i’ve lent my copy and cant remember who wrote it. the main people in new zealand who had left church were experienced and mature like you. i think church definitely has a lot of issues to deal with. i wonder how we can express that in constructive ways? it makes me so sad that some of those who are “doing” church in it’s established sense arent secure enough to accept that some questions need to be asked. some assumptions need to be challenged. how can we who are in the situation of being outside church as they know it contribute in a healthy way in the debate without being reduced to just having to defend the paths we’ve taken (or been pushed into). maybe we’re not saying “no fences at all” but it’s more a the campaign to have better thought out fences. in some, more extreme but all too common situations, it reminds me of wanting to free battery chickens. free farm chickens need fences too, but not ones that leave them sick and weak from lack of air and exercise. just ones that keep out foxes. they still need feeding, but not by machines, they still need to peck. humans will still set up pecking orders and chopping off their beaks is not the way to stop this, more like teaching them to control their beaks, and of course if men reduce themselves to behaving like cockerels and cant tolerate any one they percieve as a rival ….
may you know God’s blessing and joy as you pursue the path that he has shown you, and may you have much wisdom and grace how to communicate with, or when to avoid, those who are not on that same track..
hope this makes sense, not writing very well at the mo.
Liz,
Thanks for your good comments and many points I want to agree with. Just to clarify my ‘no fences’ quote. I am not suggesting that the Christian community has no boundaries or points of relational accountability. Rather I am suggesting that we do not build walls around our ideas and convictions so that they are not open to adjustment by others. It is when we become defensive (maybe like I am over my lovely quote that I want to justify!) that we become liable to offend. It is very difficult to fellowship with brothers and sisters of any view who are going to make their convictions a hill to die on. Of course in our Christian faith there are basic non-negotiables but surely the way in which we outwork our love for Jesus, i.e shape of church, is not one of them.
thanks. i agree. i’m aware i’m coming in half way on a story already explained to the others who have been walking with you longer so you dont need to explain everything every time.