My name’s Fiona and I work for the
Canaan Project, the youth charity of Tower Hamlets Community Church. I’m from Cambridge but have been living and doing youth work in Tower Hamlets for nearly four years and have a degree in Youth and Community Work with Applied Theology.
My colleague James and I have been reflecting recently on the violence between local young people, which seems to be becoming more and more frequent or at least we’re more aware of it.
The use of weapons such as knives and even machetes is now common and the age of those using them getting increasingly younger. An event as small as a look or throw-away comment can escalate to extreme acts of violence as “justice” is sought through more and more serious responses. The original offence is forgotten and it becomes about maintaining reputation and respect and not being seen to be weak. Status is everything and to be seen as weak is social suicide.
Post codes or areas are also the cause of larger scale, longer-term feuds. The Teviot Estate where we work often finds itself on the frontline of area- related disputes as it lies between two areas with a notorious and long-standing rift. Many of the young people we encounter are afraid to go to other local estates as anyone who isn’t recognised can become a target. Young people's search for identity, significance and belonging leads them to develop strong allegiances to the areas that they are from which they will defend at any cost. The value of others' lives seems to diminish as they fight to establish the value of their own.
As Christians we believe in a God whose purpose for his creation is shalom or wholeness and well-being in every sphere of life. Working in the community with these values I am convinced that we have a significant role to play in restoring shalom but James and myself are left wondering what exactly that role is.
It is apparent to me that the the lack of shalom leading to youth violence is the result of a lack of shalom in the lives of the young people who inflict it.
These young people are turning to hardcore retributive forms of justice maybe because this is what they’ve seen or been shown themselves. In our interactions with young people we can show them a different way, a way of grace and forgiveness whose aim is to restore rather than apportion blame and punish.
The young people's search for significance and belonging is maybe a result of a lack of opportunity to fulfil their potential or build positive associations. We can offer young people alternative activities through which they can gain success and recognition and a different community or family to belong to with a different set of values to live by.
The lost sense of the sanctity and value of life is maybe a result of neglect or mistreatment. We are in a position to be able to communicate to these young people, through our words and actions, their innate value and the enormous worth their creator puts on them and others.
What an awesome role and challenge and what a difference it could make in our area.
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Keep your passion - use volunteers!
When I think about the commitment our team at THCC and Canaan
Project show, I realise that passion drives people to do things that money can't. The reason some of what we do is as effective as
it is, is that it is largely volunteer-driven.
There is always a danger
that by taking on employees, we can turn passionate people
into those content to merely do a job.
At the moment we are looking at setting up a church night shelter
project here between a number of churches in Tower Hamlets. Whilst we
may need one or perhaps two paid staff, we are determined to keep it
volunteer-driven. Having people do something purely because they desire
to, can make a huge difference. This is particularly true when dealing
with “street people” who are good at detecting those whose heart isn’t really in what they are doing.
Tied in with this can be a desire to “professionalise “things as we
start employing more people. I know this can be a tough line to walk.
It’s important to do things well and to a high standard, but it’s also
important to bear in mind that we need to first treat people as people
rather than just as “clients” or “service users”.
Last year I heard Tim Keller give a fantastic talk on the transactional
nature of love. He said that as we get involved with people whose lives are
messy and broken, they get some of our stability, peace and calm and we
take on some of their chaos and pain. His point was that you can only
manage so much of that without retreating behind fixed boundaries to
protect yourself. He then made the point that these boundaries also can
prevent us ministering to others. In other words getting involved with
people can be painful.
I think at times volunteers are able to engage
with people in a way in which paid, full time staff are not able to
maintain. I understand that this can be problematic, but the bottom line
remains - volunteers can often keep our projects passionate in ways that
we really need to maintain.
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Growth - a killer for passion and distinctiveness? April 28th
A couple of weeks ago I wrote a bit about the need for passion to be at the centre of Christian community work and how prayer fuels that passion. This week I want to look at something that can kill that passion. Growth. It might seem a bit strange to say that, but even a cursory look at a sector that I am familiar with, the homeless sector, reveals a number of large and “successful” charities that began as Christian ministries but which have now lost any real Christian distinctiveness. I believe the tipping point often came as a result of success and growth.
The larger an organisation gets, the greater the pressure on it to be funding-driven, and funding often means dancing to someone else's tune.
For Christian projects that can mean losing Christian values and the sidelining of any meaningful sense of the Gospel being at the heart of the project. Growth means that organisations employ more staff, have to become more “secure” and so less willing to take risks. Somewhere in that process, being up front about being Gospel-driven becomes too big a risk. The consequence of this is that passionate Christian staff leave or become marginalised and the nature of the project changes radically.
At our Church community youth work, The Canaan Project, we have some fantastic volunteers and two very able and capable staff. They are fantastic at what they do, but one of the things I most admire, is that rather than being career-driven, James and Fiona want to build a fantastic community project bringing real change to the young people who use it.
Part of this has meant a conscious and well thought-out decision not to make the Canaan Project become as “big” as it could be, but rather to make it the “best” that it can be whilst staying true its values.
The motivating factor is that they care deeply about what they are doing and consequently as a project, we have decided not to chase growth. We would rather be a smaller values driven project than a larger one that sells its values out to “success”
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How much for an arm? April 21st
Sounds like a strange question but it’s one that I’ve been thinking about since a young man had his arm hacked with a machete about five minutes walk from our church this week. That’s extreme by any standards, but more so when you realise that this incident happened as a result of an argument over a £20 drug debt.
The brutality of this attack may be shocking, but unfortunately violent incidents involving young people in Tower Hamlets are anything but rare. In one sense this is the backdrop to our ministry here in the East End but also to many other churches, faithfully serving God in inner city areas. Here as in other contexts, some of the best and most innovative projects amongst young people are lead by Christians. In so many of these places, it’s the Church that IS making a difference in the lives of hurting people.
It's frustrating therefore to read newspaper columns this week, written by secularists lambasting Christians for having “absurd” views or criticising churches for their stance on issues of sexuality or family life. As our nation turns further away from Christian values and principles, it is very often churches that are at the sharp end of dealing with the subsequent problems, despite the fact that some people are keen to use legislation to make it difficult for them to do so in a meaningful way.
Let's make sure that we take the time to pray for our nation. It certainly needs it and If you haven’t already done so, I’d encourage you to sign the
The Westminster Declaration.
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Where did the passion go? April 14th
I've been thinking recently about what drives 'successful' (and yes I know that many don’t like the term, and we could have a big fight about what it means!) Christian community work. The more I think about it , the more convinced I am that however you define the word success, the answer is likely to centre around two things. Firstly, doing something that is relevent, accessible and meets a need. In short it needs to be a good idea, not just to you, but to those it is designed to benefit. I’ll write more about this another time.
Secondly, and I feel really strongly about this, is that the project needs to be staffed by passionate people. People who love doing what they are doing and when there times they don’t
feel they love it, they choose to carry on doing what they’re doing anyway, because they know that faithfulness doesn’t always feel
good.
I really believe that what often distinguishes Christian community work is that sense of passion. Poeple do it because they want to. They do it because they know that God loves people and they do too. The fact that this motivates them means that they will do extraordinary things. This is at the heart of some of the amazing things that Christians do in their communities.
The sad thing is that its absence is also the reason why so much community work (including Christian-based stuff) is ineffective. So how do we end up losing our passion? I think the biggest thing is when our devotional lives become dry. It’s easy to focus more on the needs of people rather than the grace of God. As soon as we take our eyes off God and put them on to people, passion begins to ebb away. It’s that moment where we get so busy serving God that we soon forget about Him. I’m often shocked by the prayerlessness of some Christian community work. I’m convinced that for a work to be truly Christian, it needs to be birthed in and sustained by prayer. That fuels passion and it stops us just becoming another social service.
I do believe that when Christian community work lacks passion it begins to die in some way (even if the statistics are still looking good) and the thing is that dead things stink. Death isn’t pleasant to be around and Christian projects that have lost their passion can end up doing the Kingdom of God a dis–service. When this happens it's easy to avoid the issue by simply claiming that we are wanting to be “professional” or pointing to statistics and outcomes that justify what we’re doing. The simple truth is that when the passion goes , the rot begins. It wasn’t just Elvis that left the building!
There's lots more about passion buzzing around my head so I'll be coming back to this topic over the next few weeks. Watch this space!
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Liberation not limitation - April 7th
Easter Sunday was a great day. Talked to our church about the resurrected Jesus and all that He is doing in people's lives today. During the service someone shared a word about breaking out of the confines of our lives using an illustration relating to training elephants. Apparently, when the elephant is small, it is chained to a big stake hammered into the ground. Try as it might, the elephant can't break free because it isn't strong enough and so it learns to live within the limits of the chain. When the elephant is bigger, it still believes that it cannot uproot the post, despite the fact that it could now rip it from the ground without much effort at all.
It strikes me that the lives of many people we come into contact with are like that. They remain restricted by limitations they could be free of. The frustrating thing is that Jesus conquered death and specialises in breaking chains. I really believe that we need to encourage people to trust that He is not only willing but also able to set them free. I think one of the things that stops us from doing that is our own sense of disappointment. There are things that we have hoped for, expected even, that did not happen and so we get disillusioned. We then become reluctant to encourage others to trust that God will set them free because of our own experience. It may come from a caring place but that attitude can be deeply destructive.
Easter Sunday evening brought this home to me. I went along to a service that Teen Challenge run alongside the
Good Shepherd Mission in Bethnal Green. The Good Shepherd are doing a tremendous job of reaching out to marginalised people, they’ve developed a loving and compassion-filled ministry amongst people who are addicted, homeless or living in squats. I love the fact that they are meeting people's practical needs through food, clothes and help with housing etc, but also that they are really clear in presenting the Gospel, encouraging people that God is able not just to “save “ them but to transform their lives and set them free.
Looking around the room that night, it was clear that Jesus can, and wants to, break chains of addiction and despair. Some of the people in that room are walking proof of that. The thing is that the guys at the Good Shepherd are up front about proclaiming that. How about you? Are you going to let the limitations you have learned to live with hold you - and others - back? Or are you going to encourage people to expect God to do something in their lives?
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Meeting the risen Jesus - April 1st
I really love Easter time. I love it because we focus on all that Jesus has done for us, specifically his death and resurrection. This week, I’ve been moved by a few words that we read in John 20 which says that “he (Jesus) showed them his hands and side. The disciples were overjoyed when they saw the Lord.” That phrase keeps resounding in my mind, that the disciples were “overjoyed”. Why? because they saw the Lord.
Throughout the Gospels I am struck by the fact that people were changed by an encounter with the risen Jesus. That is the power of the resurrection. Put simply, the resurrection changes everything. We are forgiven through the atoning sacrifice of a dying saviour, but we are empowered by the resurrected Jesus. Life in all its fullness is available to us.
This week has been busy and tough, with lots of frustration. A couple of situations I have been dealing with started to get me down, but in the midst of that, my week was changed by those words from John 20. I needed to take my eyes off the situations and see afresh the risen Jesus. In doing so, I not only got some perspective, but, like the disciples I received a fresh joy.
Leading an inner city church can be difficult. I am constantly surrounded by brokenness and an acute awareness of other people's needs but I also recognise my inability (or anyone else's) to meet those needs. However I am more convinced than ever that the risen Jesus IS able to meet those needs, that the risen Jesus does bring change, and that my role is to encourage others to meet with Him themselves.
Today I spent some time counselling a woman who has gone through some tremendous challenges in her life. I have at times felt saddened that we have not done as much as we could to help her. However, I came away from our time today thrilled by the fact that in the middle of some really tough situations, her life is being changed by the risen Jesus. In one sense our failings have forced her to look to the risen Jesus rather than just to us. As she has done so, she too has found a joy that goes beyond her circumstances.
Let's make sure that we point people towards the risen Jesus!!! Only he can truly meet people’s deepest needs.
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Church as family - 24 March
One of the things I love about our church is that our people have an incredible ability to serve others and make them welcome. I noticed that recently when a new girl started coming to church who has just moved to Britain from India.
The move to the UK for a young single woman from India is quite a daunting one. London can be an incredibly unfriendly place to be , particularly if you come from a culture that centres around community and extended family. This girl has no relatives in this country and in trying to find a job quickly became aware of the fact that there are many people who are ready to exploit the vulnerable.
It's been encouraging to see how people in the church have made an effort to make her welcome, looking out for her and trying to include her in things that they are doing. This week I received a text from her saying just how much , amidst the difficulty of moving to London, she had really appreciated that the Church had acted like a family towards her. She made the point that she felt that she had people in Church who were like brothers, sisters and mothers to her.
It reminded me of of Psalm 68 v6 which says that “God puts the lonely into families..” In the midst of a big impersonal city there are many that feel isolated and unwanted, the fact that they are constantly surrounded by people must also make the sting of that isolation even worse. The called out community of believers that share life together ( which is exactly what Church ought to be ) can and should bring a sense of family to those who have no family around them. That text this week made me appreciate that but also spurred me to thinking that I want us to be consistent in being that way. I want us to make sure that we’re not just that way with newcomers but with those that have been around for a while as well because it’s very easy to stop seeing the needs of those that we are familiar with.
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Transformation and change - 17 March
I’ve been thinking a lot this week about the way that God brings tremendous change in people’s lives. Sometimes, as I look around the room on Sunday I am absolutely astounded at seeing what God has done in people’s lives. It's incredible for me to know what some of the people in our church have been through and to see how much change He has brought.
I’ve just recently been talking with Carol. Carol has had a horrible life, she worked as a sex worker for many years, has endured violent relationships, has been assaulted on numerous occasions and has suffered from serious psychiatric illness, which has resulted in her being hospitalised many times. This is the kind of devastation that many people would say it's impossible to recover from.
The amazing thing is that God has completely turned her life around. She became a Christian about eight years ago and over this time God has continually changed her to the point where she is unrecognisable. At the heart of this change has been a desire to see others find the grace that she has found, and to this end she is helping to run mental health support groups and has recently received a qualification in counselling.
By her own admission, she has always had a fiery temper and her background has meant that she is certainly not one to suffer fools gladly. One of the greatest changes I have seen is that God has given her a real desire to be at peace with others. This was demonstrated recently when someone was extremely rude to her - the old Carol would have probably exploded both verbally and phyisically. As it was, she dealt with the situation in a firm but gracious way.
In Christ we are new creations, the old has passed and all things are made new (2 Cor 5 v17). Looking at Carol, I’m struck again by the reality of that. Only God can turn someone around like that. The key thing is though, that for all this change, the thing that strikes me most is not how much she has changed but how deeply she desires to go on being changed and is not prepared to settle for things as they are now, I think that desire is something many of us can learn from.
When I first wrote this I hadn’t planned to use Carol's real name, but when we talked it through she was very clear that she felt that God had dealt with her past and therefore wanted to be open about what God had done
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Don't complain - pray! 10th March
Last week channel 4 ran a programme about Tower Hamlets - where I live and work. It was called “Britain's Islamic republic” and centred around how a controversial muslim group seems to be exerting an undue influence over political and civic life in the borough. On the whole I think the programme was thought-provoking and raised some valid concerns that the local council and mainstream political parties have shied away from addressing.
What should our response to things like this be? It's very easy to take a carnal worldview that sees people and organisations as a threat or a problem. Talking to a few people over the past few days I can see how this happens. However I'm convinced that our first response needs to be to pray - and not necessarily against the rise of such organisiations. I think we need to be stirred to pray FOR Muslims. We need to be stirred by the fact that these are people that God loves and he sent Jesus to die for. Any response we have needs to be born out of a loving and compassionate heart for Muslims and that this come from spending time praying for them.
The other thing that struck me is that the bringing of religion into civic life provides us with opportunities as Christians. For all the problems and difficulties, God is very much on the agenda in Tower Hamlets. This is an opportunity for us as Christians not to try and exert civil or political control (history teaches us that when the church tries this, things go badly wrong) but to use the fact that God is not taboo in the borough to proclaim and demonstrate the good news of the kingdom of God. It's very easy for Christians to become like Statler and Waldorf, the two grumpy old guys from the Muppet Show, who used to sit in the balcony complaining about everything. We complain about secularisation and then we complain about religion (when it's other religions) invading public space. We need to realise that if God is on the agenda here in Tower Hamlets, Christians can and should make sure that we are not shy about making the most of any opportunities this provides us with to be salt and light to those around us.
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The encouragement of transformed lives! 3rd March 2010
One of the things I love about my walk to work in the morning is that even though it's short (exactly 15 minutes) I nearly always bump into people I know. This is partly because our church does lots in the community and our building is a real hive of activity. There are always familiar faces out and about!
A couple of days ago on the way to work I bumped into one of the young lads who has been involved with our church over the last few years. I hadn’t seen him for a while and so was keen to see how he was. I only chatted with him for about 5 or 10 minutes as we were headed in the same direction, but I came away really encouraged.
He initially came to church through the youthwork. He got to know some people from our church who work at City Gateway, a Christian community organisation that’s one of our church's main partners and is doing some amazing work with NEET (Not in Education Employment or Training) young people. They helped him to get on some training courses and eventually took him on as an apprentice. Over the past few years he’s done really well there and now has a permanent job with them. During this same period of time he also came along to the Life Course ( similar to Alpha but targeted towards unchurched youth) and through this became a Christian.
For him being a Christian has not been easy and he has had some significant struggles, but chatting to him I came away with a real sense that God was definitely at work in his life - he was enthusiastic about the changes he's seen in his life and crucially there was a sense of thankfulness about him. As I reflected on this it made me realise once again that by doing what we are doing, being faithful and working alongside other organisations, God is bringing lasting change in people's lives and those changes are not just spiritual, they have a significant practical impact too.
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Peacemaking begins at home -17th February 2010
Last week in church, I taught on Matthew 5v9 - the beatitude that reads, “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called the sons of God.” It’s a challenging verse!
What does it mean to be a peacemaker living in Tower Hamlets in 2010? Partly I think it means being used by God to bring a divided community together. There is certainly lots of scope for that - particularly as church is one of the very few places locally where people from divided communities mix.
On another level, it speaks to our need to be an evangelistic community, recognising that peace is more than simply the absence of conflict. For people to ultimately know peace, I believe they need to come to a saving knowledge of Jesus - he alone can truly bring peace to their lives.
However, the more I read the Sermon on the Mount, the more I am convinced that Jesus is speaking far closer to home.
At the heart of being a peacemaker is the willingness to face the need for peace in our own relationships. Let's not work for peace, whilst leaving a trail of wreckage in our own personal lives. I had a friend who was very much into being a peacemaker, who campaigned vociferously for peace in local and global situations - even managing to get arrested a few times in the process! But it was sad to see the unresolved conflicts in his life. In one sense he demanded peace from others, but couldn’t find it for himself.
It got me thinking about a guy in our church who got in to a destructive lifestyle. This led to him stealing things from people at church, and from the church itself. As he sought help, he realised he needed to put that right.
He's made a list, is confessing to anyone he has stolen from and is asking how he can make restitution. To me, dealing with those situations makes him a peacemaker. It's hard and has been really difficult for him and his victims - who feel hurt and let down. But it's peacemaking. This kind of thing may not change the world, but I think it does more to bring peace than going on a demo somewhere. It's certainly more costly.
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Encouraging yourself in the Lord - 10th February 2010
During the past week I’ve spent time talking to people who are doing some amazing things and giving themselves deeply to God by serving the poor. No, I haven’t been at a conference hearing about the latest “new “ way to “do” church. I’ve simply had the privilege of being able to spend time with people from our church, catching up with what God is doing in them and through them. It's been totally inspiring!
I’ve been struck by how many are going through a difficult time, yet are refusing to give up. As I’ve listened to them I’ve been reminded that serving God is costly. Living where we do can be hard, and being committed to seeing it changed comes at a price. But these people are prepared to pay that price.
What has inspired me most is seeing people who have every reason to be discouraged find ways to be encouraged in God.
In church on Sunday we saw one lady who has had very painful back problems praying joyful prayers of thanksgiving. God is using her to bring other women to faith and she is determined not allow her health to interfere with that. Those prayers, directed toward God, were a great encouragement for me and for others who know what she had been going through. The telling thing is that those prayers were prayed from a place of pain. Things have not changed (yet!!) for her.
It's tough, but sometimes we need to simply stand, even when our circumstances show no signs of changing.
It reminded me of the passage from 1 Samuel 30 v6 which says simply, “David encouraged himself in the Lord.” It's great when others encourage us, but
I think to be effective in the midst of personal difficulty, we need to learn to encourage ourselves in God and remind ourselves of the example of Jesus.
If you are going through a season of struggle, I want to encourage you to stand firm. Fix your eyes on Jesus and don't give up. As I write this, I’m moved to tears thinking about another lady whose husband had left church and seemed to have given up on his faith. She went through incredible struggles but remained faithful in serving both God and others. Thankfully, over the past year God has turned that man's life around, but it took a long time and God continues to work in his life. If you're in a tough place right now, find ways to encourage yourself in God and stand firm.
Hebrews 12 v 1-3 says
Therefore, since we have so great a cloud of witnesses surrounding us, let us also lay aside every encumbrance, and the sin which so easily entangles us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us,
fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.
For consider Him who has endured such hostility by sinners against Himself, so that you may not grow weary and lose heart.
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This week I’ve been thinking about what it means for us to be a community of people who live differently; who are loving and welcoming to others. I think that this is particularly important given that one of the things that constantly strikes me is the level of isolation that exists in London. In one sense living in Tower Hamlets you are absolutely surrounded by people, but despite the fact that it is among the most densely populated areas of the country, many are extremely lonely. It's kind of perverse to be unable to escape from other people and yet to feel completely unconnected to them.
One of the biggest attractions of a church like ours is the sense of community that we have.
I love that church on a Sunday has a real buzz about it. People are excited to be there and an hour or so after service has finished, there are still lots of people around, in fact we end up having to throw people out so that the caretaker (we meet in a school building) can get home to his family. I’m also grateful for the fact that we tend to be very welcoming. One of the consistent bits of feedback we get is that people stay because they were made to feel welcome and at home. In fact, those aged 18-35 visiting the church for the first or second time are extremely likely to be invited out to lunch after church. People are on the whole very welcoming and inclusive of new people.
The problem is that for many people going to a church service is completely out of the realms of what they would consider doing. It's just not on the horizon.
So how do we enable people to see and experience a welcoming Christian community first hand? In one sense they can do that through our projects and community work, which all have a strong inclusive and relational tone to them. However, once again there are many who don’t want, or need, to come along to one of these projects.
I really believe that even people who are sceptical about Christianity and may disregard and even despise its claims, are often very struck by the love displayed in a church like ours. It runs so counter to most people’s experience of life, that I think it can result in them taking a closer look at the Gospel, simply because of what they see between u
s. To quote an unbelieving friend of mine, “I’m not convinced by your ideas but I envy the relationships that you Christians have."
In some ways this is how it ought to be, since Jesus said in John 13 v35, 'It is by your love for one another, that everyone will recognise you as my disciples'. This week as I sat in my office with a couple from our church chewing over with them how they could witness to friends who would find our Sunday service irrelevant, I was once again struck by this. Whilst bringing someone to church on a Sunday might not always be the right thing, introducing those same people to our Christian friends and letting them get a first hand glimpse of the way that we share life together is often I believe, utterly compelling.
Somehow, getting them to see redeemed relationships and Christian community, speaks very loudly of the risen Jesus. I don’t think that we make enough of this. We are so used to it that we fail to see how our sense of community and love for one another is so different to most people's experience. Let's look for ways in which we can let others experience this first hand. It may just challenge some of their assumptions about Jesus.
I think one of the things I find hardest about leading an inner city church is saying goodbye to people. Areas like ours tend to be quite transitory. New people arrive frequently which can be a tremendous blessing, but they also leave as well. And in an area like this, many people are just passing through. Often the reasons for this are positive - people get a new job, meaning they have to move elsewhere, or else they are able to scrape together enough money to buy a place of their own, meaning that because of the high property prices they have to move out of the area.
One of the hurdles that many of the churches in Tower Hamlets face is that when families have children approaching secondary school age there is a strong pressure to move out to more suburban areas with better schools. The difficulty is that these are exactly the kind of families that we as church want to hang on to, as they are key to building something that is sustainable in the long term. More specifically areas like ours need strong Christian families.
I understand the need for people to prioritise their children’s well being, and the desire to move to a “nicer” area but find it sad that this contributes to a situation whereby so many inner city areas are deserted by Christians.
At times it can be striking that so many Christians feel “led” to the suburbs. I often wonder where the leading of God is. Does God really lead so many people out of areas where there are masses of unreached people and whole realm of complicated social problems? Is He leading some king of modern day exodus to the promised land of suburbia? Have His maths really gone so awry that He is sending the majority of Christians away from populated areas to less populated areas?
I think that the answer is that for all sorts of reasons; some valid, some understandable and through a good measure of just plain disobedience, some Christians do choose the easier option. It’s sad but it’s true.
In his Sermon on the Mount teaching, the thing that strikes me continually is that Jesus demands actions and reactions that run completely counter to what comes naturally and this demonstrates the difference that the presence of God should make. Sadly, many Christians are choosing comfort and security etc over obedience and in many ways we are often guilty of chasing exactly the same things that this world chases.
In 1 Samuel 6 v7-9 the Philistines have captured the Ark but are keen to send it back. They devise a plan and decide to load it on to a couple of cows and see if these cows act like any other dumb beasts and just wander off, or if the Ark will cause them to act supernaturally and take it back to where it belongs. In other words they were looking to see if the God of Israel really was powerful. Was he able to change the behaviour of a dumb animal? I have to say that I see quite a funny parallel.
If even a plain old cow can have its behaviour changed by God, what about us? I don’t mean to be rude (well maybe just a little bit!!) or compare people to cows, but I wonder what people see of the power of God when they look at how we make our choices? Does the presence of God in our lives make us behave any differently?
In the past three weeks or so two young people have been murdered in our local area. I think sometimes it’s possible to read something like that and just carry on to the next bit of news. It's easy to just have a short-lived emotional response and then carry on as normal. The fact is that we are surrounded with so much bad news that we soon become immune to it.
The media have reported widely that one of the young people murdered seems to have been attacked in response to comments left on a facebook page. Recently a number of local young people have been the victims of quite extreme violence because of the fact that they were in a different area to the one that they live in, and therefore were in the “wrong postcode.”
One young person who regularly comes along to some of the events that we hold for unchurched youth was indeed recently attacked simply for being in the wrong area. I think that as Christians it’s important to let things like this stir our hearts. These things should affect us.
On Sundays at the moment we are looking at the Sermon on the Mount. Last week I talked about the fact that when Jesus spoke the words “blessed are those who mourn,” it’s important that we realise that this is primarily about mourning over sin.
I believe that we need to be people who mourn over our own sin but also the sin of the culture around us. Hearing about the kinds of things that I’ve written about above does cause me to mourn. I think that we have to be broken over those things which break God’s heart.
I’ve been reading through Jeremiah recently and am struck by the fact that here was a prophet broken over the sin he saw around him. Like the society that Jeremiah prophesied to, we have likewise strayed into such depravity that we have “forgotten how to blush.” (Jeremiah 6:15)
I think that as well as being stirred to action we need to be stirred to mourning. We need to be stirred to tears and to cry out to the Lord for our nation. As we do so, God will show us the things that we as the Church need to repent of. The fact is that if we want to affect change to a society in need, we have to allow the Lord to change our hearts too.
At THCC we do a lot of youth work, particularly among unchurched youth. These are the kind of young people whose lives are being devastated. However I believe in the midst of all that we do, we have a desperate need to learn how to weep and mourn. This is the place where change begins.
Christmas was a busy time for us as Church. It provided us with a great opportunity to bring together some of the disparate threads of what we do, enabling us to gauge how we are doing not only at serving our community through community projects , but also how much people are able to recognise that it is the Church that is serving them not just any voluntary sector agency.
I think that’s important. In the area where we work there are so many community development agencies, charities, grass roots projects, etc that I think it's easy for them to blur into one in the minds of lots of people who use those services. That can often be the case for Christian projects as well, meaning that we can become “just another service provider.” To put it in stronger terms, theologically we could end up as salt that has lost its saltiness.
For me keeping a distinctly Christian identity in what we do is vital. Specifically that has to be about more that just the fact that we are a church or say we are a Christian project. It needs to mean that what we do is different and in a very real sense, leads people toward a faith in Jesus as Lord and Saviour.
In line with this it was exciting on one of the Saturdays before Christmas to be doing outreach in the market as we do every week. Come rain or shine, Lucy and her team are there with a stall, giving out books, tracts, DVD, sweets, being ready to chat to people and offer a listening ear. I really love what they do and the faithfulness they show in it and it’s great as a church to have a presence in the heart of the market.
Anyway, as we were handing out hot grape juice and mince pies, and inviting people to our events (community Christmas meal, Kidz Klub Christmas event and our Carol service) I was really blessed by the fact that so many people I talked to were aware of the church or said their children go to Kids Klub or the Canaan Project, or that they go to the community projects in the church building.
The thing that struck me was that many of them really got it. They were aware of the different things that the church does in its various expressions, and more specifically, they like what we do and how we do it. Crucially, they got the Christian side to it. I think the point is that because we are clear about the Christian heart of what we do, so are they, and more specifically they are not worried about some hidden agenda. It's out there in public.
More and more I think that we need to be really intentional about being up front about our faith. Let's not relegate it to a paragraph in our values statement or merely rely on the the fact that people see that we are different because say we are a church or Christian ministry.
As you may be aware, I’ve been away for the past 5 or so weeks. Anni and
I have had time to reflect and relax and consider the things that are
really important to us. It always takes me a while to get used to doing
less. Generally speaking I don’t usually get much time for relaxing,
I’m the kind of person who bounces around quite a bit and find myself
constantly around people. Anni’s work is similar to mine in that as a
chaplain in Europe's largest women’s prison, she spends a lot of time
with people. These people are often troubled and in great need. It
means that she often spends whole days having one intense conversation
after another. The effect of this is, as you can imagine, draining.
This last week has been a bit like that, we came back feeling
refreshed and very soon had loads of things to deal with. One morning I
was really busy and got a text from one of the homeless guys that we
have known for years, saying that his accommodation had fallen through
and he was back on the streets again. I really didn’t feel like I had
the time or energy to follow him up, but realised that I needed to.
The funny thing is that after I spent time chatting to him I felt
really recharged and refreshed. It was fun.
I think the point is that as we give ourselves to God through serving others, He is the one that meets our needs. While
it is certainly possible to overdo things, sometimes I believe that God
refreshes us in the middle of busyness rather than delivering us from
it.