Constant change is here to stay

Over the last seven days those who use the social network site Facebook have seen some changes to their profile pages. These changes have caused some ripples and waves as people switch on and without any prior warning have had to come to grips with a total new outlay and in some minor ways totally different ways of seeing information and communicating. People’s profile statements were full of negative comments of not liking the changes and wanting to go back to how things were before. Although I never got to the place of publicly writing about how I didn’t like what I was seeing I too felt as if my personal page had been invaded without invitation and that things were too different now to get to grips with. I think the fact that these changes came without warning also added to the discomfort of the experience. One day it was as it had been, the next it looked completely different. How dare the people who own the site do this to us. There were people even threatening to leave and join other network sites (isn’t that in reality creating even bigger upheavel and change?). Then a thought came to me, in the past I would have called it a Word of the Lord, but it popped into my head and yes was probably inspired by Him. ‘Strange that even all the change makers don’t really like making changes.’ As I thought about it I realised how true this statement was, I love initiating change. I love having ideas on how to do something differently. I love doing things for the first time when I choose what to do. When I had the tag of ‘pastor’ I loved messing with the furniture, sometimes literally as I put chairs in circles instead of having rows. Moved the ‘holy’ table that was used for the bread and wine of communion. Took down the ancient plaques for long gone dead people and replaced them with banners. Just like the Facebook owners much of this I just did without consultation. One week the people sat in rows, the next time they opened the doors the chairs were in a circle. I was comfortable because I initiated it, but everyone else! When change is forced on us we feel unprepaired and uncomfortable. No wonder I made so many people angry because that was only the furniture I changed, I also fiddled with meeting times, worship styles, meeting content, leadership structure etc. None of this went down well. As someone used to joke, how many Pentecostals does it take to change a light bulb? Change? Yet one thing I am grasping on this journey outside the walls is that change is inevitable. It has to be embraced. Not the change I want to enforce on others but the change around me. Often coming without warning. Many times I am unprepared for it and yet to embrace the life and breath of God is to embrace the ever shifting landscape around me. Just like embracing the changes that have taken place on Facebook. I am not in charge of it so what right have I got to complain when changes come, I need to try and adapt and embrace what is there. The same with life, I am not in charge of it so any shifts and changes that come need to be worked through and embraced as much as possible. Or I may end up missing the true reason for the shifts that are going on.

Four year maker point

This month four years ago my life took on an incredible shift. I started working for Asda in September 2007. I had resigned from paid ‘pastoral’ work in church life and went in a completely different direction. At the time it was almost thrust upon me as I virtually turned my back away from church due to hurt, disillusionment and the situation I had found myself in. And yet in reality I was turning towards the life that God desired at the time. Change!!! My life wasn’t just turned upside down, it was turned inside out, thrown against a wall, stepped on, twisted and made totally unrecognisable almost over-night. And what made it worse was that I had not planned for this type of change. I had no plans. I had no direction or vision. There were no prophecies or Words to hold onto. Here I was in Asda angry with the world, the church and with God. The life I had known for nearly 20 years had disappeared without trace. ‘Friends’ no longer were around. The comfort of the circle of life that I had known was gone. The stage for my sermons and messages had gone. My life was buzzing with activity and people one minute, now I felt alone and isolated. I lived every day to bring vision and direction and live freely in God, now I had to work for someone else. I could take time off when I wanted to, now I had to book holidays and work at Christmas and work to the shift pattern I was given. No wonder I nearly blew a fuse, thought I was breaking down, cracking up, depressed, rejected. My life was shaken, my marriage was rocking, my faith was dwindling, my outlook was bleak. It was all falling apart and I had no control over it. But hang on, isn’t that the key word in all this business about change. CONTROL. Change is fine as long as we control it. But then surely if we are in control of our changes then we don’t need a reliance on God. It is to do with the self inside us all. A self that has no trust outside of themselves. I had to experience an awakening while I was alone in a hotel room, come to my senses, to discover God inside the mess. As David discovered ‘even if I lay my bed in the depths you are there’. He was there. The signal was a bit faint but He was there. The preacher who preached about shape shifting to the ‘church’ had to embrace the great Shape Shifter. The change maker had to embrace the concept of making changes. Life would never be the same again. There was no longer any Plan A or B, just trust, faith, light, love, freedom, embrace, intimacy.

The Embrace that brings Healing

Here I am four years later. Still not fully seeing what is ahead but clearer about where I am. Embracing the day for what it brings instead of trying to get it to fit in with my outlook. I struggled for a while with working the night shifts of Asda, thought God would open a fresh door of ministry that would pay the way outside of church life but still speaking, talking, writing etc. To my shame thought the manual work was below me. No wonder I was so angry and frustrated. I can honestly say as time has gone on I have learned to embrace where I am. I am content. Allison asked me just last night, am I happy where I am right now? Is this it for me now? I am happy to be where I am. I am open to change but I truly believe where I am is where God wants me to be. I have no ambition to be doing anything else other than discovering God where I am. The embracing has brought healing. I am no longer angry with anyone. I love God more now than ever. I love people of this world with a passion. I love the church, even the parts of it that I thought were out to hurt me, because I realise now that most of the hurt is because people are only reacting to what we all react to, change! Does that mean I never feel pain or hurt or rejection? Of course not, I’m only human. But instead of embracing the thoughts and feelings I walk through them as much as I can. Does that mean I embrace all change all the time? If only. Change will always rock the status quo and boy do we all have more status quo in us than we realise. Yet I have learned that change is my friend and not something to keep contending with. As I said at the start, constant change is here to stay, so I may as well love it, live it, embrace it, work through it. Who knows where it may lead me next. Here’s to the next four years.

Public Arena

Much of the Christian life seems to be about gathering and meeting together. Just this week I was speaking to a friend in work that attends a ‘church’ in Porth and he was saying how he had received a stinking text from his mother because he missed the Sunday morning service, that he should have been there to have heard the awesome message, that he needs to show commitment. His problem? He works nights five nights a week and this week for the first time he went back to bed on Sunday morning and fell asleep. Missed the gathering. Why such a guilt trip? Is this really what Sunday’s were made for? To look around and see who is there and who is not there? Afraid so because I’ve done it. Travelling home on a Sunday after the service and talking about so and so who wasn’t there today and surprise at so and so who was. Thingy hasn’t been there for about a month now so we must have lost them. This is such pressure and uncalled for guilt making. As if we have not already heard enough sermons to last us a lifetime. If we never heard another one we would have enough to work out from for the rest of our lives. But we must worship together, pray together, fellowship together, and of course all in one accord because then we might get an Holy Spirit break out together. Were we really called to live out so much faith in the public arena of ‘church’ life? To be accountable and under a certain covering of a pastor and leadership team? To be part of a local body, a local expression of the ‘church’? After all we are told not to neglect the gathering together. To be part of a family.

The Secret Place

Surely all this gathering, for some people up to 4-5 times a week on average, causes us to neglect the most important place. I think we need to invest in and redeem the secret place. The art of walking our own walk. Having a private faith lived out publicly and a public faith lived out privately. To the church at Philippi Paul wrote that they obeyed not only in his presence but in his absence. He called them to work out their own salvation in fear and trembling. I think this is talking about in awe rather than because we are scared of the consequences. But the message is live your own life. Stop relying on others to live out your salvation for you. A huge problem with Christianity today is people are equipped and trained to do things for the gathering and when they are together, but there is no equipping for doing it yourself. To rely on God alone and not people or the next sermon or the leaders. It is time to stand on your own two feet. The gatherings that take place will be an expression of the life lived daily rather than being the place where we are filled up to last seven days like at a petrol station. That is why we can then come with psalms, hymns and spiritual songs because in the secret place we have connected with God and then can express that together. We are not relying on the professional trained clergy to tell us what things mean and how to adapt them into our lives. It is time to grow up. It is time to live. It is time to go solo. if we do not learn to work out our own salvation the gatherings will never fulfil anything in our lives.

On My Own

We are told baptism is a public confession of our faith. Then why did did Phillip allow the Ethiopian Eunuch to get baptised privately in the middle of nowhere. Surely he needed to invite his friends and tell his parents or master. When I was in Lutterworth there were these twins that wanted to get baptised but not in church, they wanted to get baptised in the local swimming pool but with no song or dance or shouted prayers, just their dad and me while we were swimming. It was a precious time. Those guys are still going on with God. And anyway there was no such thing as a baptistry in Scripture. I have a friend who baptised people in a bath while at University. Sounds good to me.

We love to sing songs together and worship together. Yet we always see David the greatest worshipper as one who sang for an audience of one in the sheep field. There was no audience for him, just a few bleeting sheep and his God. The greatest songs of worship were written in this place. Even in the temple and tabernacle the music and singing was never for public consumption, it was for God alone. It always makes me smile that we can come back to heart of worship, it is all about you. The music has faded, all is stripped and I simply come. But hey I’ll write a song about it anyway so we can all sing together about being alone. I’ll strum my guitar while we sing about having no instruments. Where did it all go wrong? I keep hearing the words we need to be as professional as possible, why? Have the best music, musicians etc, why? We say it is all about a joyful noise and then criticise the man who sings off key or claps off beat.

Jesus talked about giving and praying in secret in Matthew 6. Don’t let your left hand know what your right hand is doing. But we must tithe to a local church! Who said? Bring your tithe to the storehouse it says. So the church is a storehouse for the poor is it, full of grain and food for times of famine? My giving really is none of your business. Once heard a pastor say that on his membership role he had everyone’s income so that he knew what their tithe should be. If they stopped tithing he would go see them because they lacked commitment and something must be wrong. That man should not be in a pulpit. Passing the bag around or the plate. Even come out to the front to give. Don’t we realise how embarrasing this can be for the unprepared or the poor. I know because sometimes I have had nothing to give and have had to suffer the feeling of having a bag waved under my nose and the guilt of saying I have nothing. I believe in giving but surely that is all anyone needs to know, the rest is for the secret place. And praying! Those good old prayer meetings or times of prayer. The time when professional prayer people can ask blessing for everyone around the world. Use all the right words and expressions. At Bible college once a lecturer told us how we were often incorrect in our prayers, we needed to pray to the Father in the Spirit  through the name of Jesus. Does God really give that much of a jot how we pray? The greatest prayer I ever heard in ‘church’ was from a man struggling with alcoholism who just stood up and said ‘God this is f***ing fantastic.’ One of the first honest prayers I had ever heard. Although at the time I pooped my pants, lol. Jesus said prayer is not a show, it is about the secret place. Close the door. What is it to others what is going  on there. It is an intimate act of sharing love together. A precious place. The words and what takes place are of no consequence to anyone else other tha you and God.

The Performer in me.

I used to live a performance rated Christianity. Now I’ve decided to go solo. Not that I don’t want people around, but the connection and fellowship will be an extension of what I live out with Him daily. I have no one to impress anymore, no attendance records, no prayer ratings, no giving meter, just me and God. My faith really is just about me and Him. Then my faith really is about others. I loved nothing better than a pulpit and a congregation, now I’m learning to love the secret place. I could easily impress a gathering with my sermons and prophecy while I struggled to connect with God on a daily basis. Now I have learned to connect in my struggle and don’t have to prove anything to anyone. I’m going solo…but that is the best thing that could happen for my connectivity with people and the world around me.

Future church

How many times have you heard that statement; the children are the church of tomorrow? Where on earth does that kind of thought come from? It certainly is not Scriptural. It is the kind of belief that leads to ageing church leaders and only giving anyone roles of responsibility when they come of age. I remember looking around the room when I sat in an Assemblies of God regional meeting at the age of 35-40 and realising that I was the youngest person in the room by quite a way. Many were of retirement age but still holding the reins of some ‘local’ church. Church elders were always interpreted as older men in the norm (women never seemed to get a look in) and everyone else had to be of maturity. That is unless you were the young radical youth leader or kids worker. You had the job of building up the church of tomorrow and the main responsibility was to make them regular church attenders as that would be the key sign to success. One ‘local’ church here in the Rhondda had a Sunday school of over an hundred children when I moved here 15 years ago. They do not even have a kids or youth work today. They would see that as failure. Where is the future? They keep telling us that young people are pouring out of the church. When we think about it can we blame them? What is there to keep them? Is there anything to hold their attention span? Many adults are bored if they are honest so we have no chance of keeping young people who want to be involved while they have the interest and the energy. They have to become mature. The problem is as the average age for ‘ministry’ keeps going up the chances for young people to get involved gets less and less. It seems to strange to me that to me doctors and teachers look like kids but church leaders still look like my grandfather and father (sorry this looks sexist but the church still is on the whole). We seem to be the only place where young people do not have a role and a responsible one at that. If I was young I would want to get out too.

The Heroes of Scripture were Kids.

Just a flick through the pages of the Scriptures makes us realise that something went wrong. The clergy became professional. God loved including children and young people in His story. They had an integral part. They were central to everything that was going on. From Jacob to Moses, from David to Jeremiah, from Mary to James and John, the characters at the middle of the unfolding adventure were all children or teenagers. They had faith, they did crazy stuff, the lived for God, they made mistakes, yet their experiences are recorded for us and have been told through out the years. How have we jumped from this to where we are now? Even Jesus cried it is finished at the age of 33. Most people wanting to be involved in church leadership or gifted in God have not even started by then! Maybe if we really want to be like Jesus we should say no one over the age of 33 should be allowed to keep standing for leadership. How much would be left? The church of yesterday stepping aside for the church of tomorrow, making it the church of today. But they are not ready for the responsibility. Were the twelve? They still didn’t have a clue what was going on after Jesus rose from the dead. Yet Jesus still used them. He sent them out. He gave them authority. He gave them jobs to do even though He knew they would not do the job properly. This crazy strategy caused the church to grow daily. Letting the young one’s loose.

My past, my present, my future

I am so glad I was birthed in a ‘local’ church in Lakenheath, Suffolk that went against the grain. At the age of 15 I was allowed to preach on a Sunday. By 16 I was on the leadership team, taken to leaders gatherings and fraternals. At 19 went to Bible college, then at 22 became as assistant pastor in Lutterworth. At 23 the senior pastor stepped aside for me to take over his role while he became my support and assistant. At 28 I moved to South Wales. At 34 I was part of the Regional Leadership team. Of course I would not recommend this type of route and the type of positions and heirarchical games that can and are played for todays young people, but I am so glad that through my life God has given me parents that wanted to produce parents, as Martin has just shared in his latest blog entry. Characters that wanted to release me as a young person to be the person God has made me to be. Even with the immaturity and rough edges still there. If we are to keep the next generation they need to be given away. They need to become this generation. Nothing prepares any would be parent for the role of parenting. You can be advised by midwives and taught by experts as much as they like but when you have a child in your arms they are not the only one’s who poop their pants. Being a parent is learning as you go. It is also about letting them learn as they go. They are not our future but our present. There may be people reading this who have not got children or who cannot have their own children but the lesson is the same, make space in your lives for those younger than you. Give them the platform. Let them dictate the ebb and flow of life. My life used to be ruled by adults when I was a pastor and my children had to toe the line. My weekly schedule was the demands of the adults of church and the children had whatever was left. Now they dictate the flow of my weekly schedule. From being the taxi service to countless football and cricket matches mainly on Sundays when all good people should be in church. To running backwards and forwards to Swansea to visit my son in Uni. To getting involved as a school governor in one of my sons schools, to taking them to clubs and parties. Where as before I was always too busy as I had important adult stuff to do, the flow of the week is theirs. And when I stop and think, life is so much richer for it.

Children the church of tomorrow? If that is true the adults are simply past their sell by date.

Kids Church and beyond

Have been so inspired, blessed, challenged by the videos/blogs from Paula and Al Coates. And having four boys myself their words are even more haunting and God inspired. They have caused me to think to my own shame the way we as the ‘church’ have treated our children. What we expect of them as CK’s (Christian’s Kids) and what we put them through. Because we interpret the Scriptures in such a warped way we end up with a lifestyle forced on someone from birth if they are lucky enough to be brought up in a Christian home, or from whatever age we become a Christian our children seemed to get dragged into lives filled with attempted indoctrination, comments thrown to create guilt over lifestyle choices and plenty of preaching at when the situation arises. No wonder when they get to an age of choice they chose to leave the church by the score. And those scenes from a Sunday, I know because I have been there a thousand times myself, and a friend wrote on their facebook page this week, ‘I hate Sunday mornings, the fights I have with the kids to get them into the car and get them to church’. How many of us have been there? The hassle, the sweat, the shouting, the complaining, the running late. They don’t want to go. We think they have to go, after all if we bring them up in the ways of the Lord it will go well with them all their lives. Does that really only mean take them to church? We shout all the way in the car. Then we arrive at church and that persona of perfection comes over us. The smile returns to match the nice clothes. Then when we finally get them in there they are in the way!!! We give them something to entertain them while the worship goes on, don’t want to interrupt my God time. Thank God for hand held Nintendo things, keeps them well quiet. Used to be colouring or reading, and before that sitting totally still!!! Any tiny baby cry is tutted at for breaking the anointed atmosphere, and if they cry too much there is a creche to take them out to. And if the church is really in the flow it has a window and loud speaker so you can still see and hear and feel a part of what is going on. The kids are not allowed to communicate with each other. I would often be shushing my boys feeling very embarrassed. And if a parent allowed their child to run around that was like so out of order. Don’t these people know their Scriptures about everything should be done decently and in order? This constantly interrupted worship time had one blessing ahead, after a certain amount of time the kids would be going out to their thing. Kids church, creche, youth church, something relevant for them. We drag them kicking and screaming to church and then send them out!!! But we are a real family church with something for everyone. That sigh of relief that is often communicated when the kids finally go out. The silence. Now we can really worship in freedom with no distractions. We can hear the Word without anyone nagging or talking or distracting. And they are getting taught something too at the same time, this is win, win. What are we doing? What are we really communicating to our children? That they are in the way. That God is really only into adult stuff. That church is about dividing families. That services are only to be understood by the mature or grown up. That adults love and accept boring and miraculously get blessed through it. If God is into turning the hearts of the fathers to the sons and the hearts of the sons to the fathers then what has any of this really got to do with God?

Time to re-engage.

If our worship times are not engaging with kids then maybe it is not true worship. And those dreadful family services!!! Adults doing silly things for the child in themselves rather than for the children. What about letting the children organise the family service? They might not want to do ‘holy’ things but at least we will begin to engage them into something. I find it interesting how many children do not want to join in the corporate singing bit, instead of trying to force them to do it maybe we should take some time to find out why. We don’t want to because it may put us out. How could they not like worshipping and praising God? They might not want to include a sermon. But they must have the Word!!! Maybe they could teach us about hearing God’s voice in other ways. Sunday school was originally about educating children who were not having that privilege at home. Teaching them to read and write. It now is the excuse for parents, even Christian ones, to not teach God stuff themselves. Why? They will learn about God in Sunday school, kids club etc. God always has and always will want to dwell amongst families. For the Jew the meal time was God time, worship time, teaching time. Chatting about God around food. Not having a fellowship time of buffet followed by the Word in rows of seats. Eating, feasting, talking, laughing, running about, crying babies, God. Like we now leave sex education to schools or the playground (no wonder we are in such a mess), we leave the God stuff to the Sunday school. The biggest concern I have heard from people leaving the construct of organised church is what about the children? That shows how far we miss the mark by that one concern. We are actually communicating that a future with God is dependant upon a church upbringing. We may actually have to become parents of our children. And sadly today we may also have to become models of parenting to the children in our streets and communities. I think our children will even have more secure upbringings and really discover a life in being brought up in the Lord without the church acting as an untrendy  parent replacement or babysitter  while we worship. We can actually talk to our kids. Spend time with them. Love them. Include them in our lives. Take them where they want to go on Sundays rather than where they do not want to go. What will impact a child more, forcing them to go to church or going to a zoo or football match or music concert with them? If what we are doing makes us feel that they are in the way then we are not doing the right stuff. It is time to re-connect with what should be most precious to us before we lose it all.

Will be continuing this important theme next week.