Category Archives: Uncategorized

Evangelism

evangelism, mission, preaching, Uncategorized

The world is tired with words of the Church.

I think I may be too.

Words without actions are dead, I’m tempted to say. Cruel, possibly, too, if it comes to us arrogantly, without humility, a declaration of truth as a statement of power to which others must submit. This can be the case even when the truth being enunciated is ostensibly one of God’s grace in Christ.

But all we have are words. Is this not the case? The words of the Bible, the message of the Gospel. Is not God’s forgiveness a word.

But equally, I’m frightened of the alternative. If the communication of God’s grace in Christ is dependent on my ability to live a saint’s life, then this is all hopeless.

We can’t rightly talk about evangelism independently of the nature, character, attitude of those who witness to Christ and how this is formed by the Gospel.

Christians, and the Church, do not possess a truth that they are responsible for communicating to the world. (Yes, it can be seen that way, but it may not be helpful in this day.) Instead, we are those who have heard the Word of God and so found themselves to be guilty, proud, arrogant, possessive, fearful. In Christ we find ourselves to be both judged and acquitted at one and the next moment.

All we can do, all we should do, is live in the light of this, in humility and quietness and faithfulness. Our words as the church are empty. We have nothing to say, no position of power from which to argue and convince. On that basis we will realise our position is hopeless and we will be driven to prayer.

Does this mean we will say nothing? No, it just means that we must experience the knowledge of our state before Christ, judged and loved, before we can adequately witness to him before others.

Anything else will just be propaganda.

Where will they come from?

evangelism, NYNO is ..., planning, spirituality, Uncategorized

At this stage in the project, some questions haunt me.

Concerning the elderly, we’re probably wrongly complacent although I’m not going to fret about it unnecessarily.

No, the question that haunts is the one about the young, or even just those who aren’t elderly. Where will they come from? How will we attract them?

It’s part of the basis of the project, that we recognise that the elderly can find themselves segregated from the rest of society, from the rest of the church. But, why do we think our church will be different? If a handful of us locate a church in the context of the elderly, why would anyone join us, from the rest of society or from the rest of the church. We’re asking people to do something that is, apparently, unattractive to the majority of us.

One response might be to come up with lots of the schemes and plans to attract people,  to organise a grans, parents and toddlers morning, to try to bring in the local school. We could try to make our church attractive, enjoyable, surprisingly so. Things like this could prove useful, but not yet.

The primary problem with responding in this way is that it’s back to front. We need to attract people, not primarily because we’ve created something attractive (doubly difficult for us) but because there is an authenticity to what we do, who we are, who we understand ourselves to be. If we are the Church, if God is present amongst us, if we are connect by the Spirit to Christ we will therefore offer something that is unexpected, strange, weird, a genuine alternative to what is available in this world. If this proves to be the case, people will join us because they find Christ here and therefore the challenge of a church that is – in some respects – unappealing can be overcome.

In other words, the Word of God needs to be heard in this place, in this time, amongst these people. We need to be a community of witnesses to God’s Word and a community that this a witness to God’s Word.

Privilege or Patronize?

community, mission, NYNO is ..., Uncategorized

NYNO aims to privilege the elderly. We do this for two reasons.

Firstly, many of the elderly are segregated in society and the church. We could talk about this more, discuss the extent to which it is the case or not, and the reasons for it but perhaps not here and now. We’ll take it as a given.

Secondly, in the Kingdom of God, the poor, the oppressed, the underprivileged are to be blessed. In this time and in the place, because of our first point, some of the elderly should surely also find themselves blessed by the kingdom.

However, it’s the not Church’s job simply to serve or bless the underprivileged. To see things this way can lead to us patronizing others. It presupposes that we have something that others need, that we are in the position of power and that others need what we have. In the body of Christ, however, all have something to give.

It’s essential therefore, for NYNO, that while we seek to privilege the elderly in that we create congregations that are accessible to them, we don’t patronize them. These churches are not acts of service for the young and acts of reception for the elderly. They are places where all are equal.

Starting a New NYNO Congregation

community, planning, preaching, Uncategorized, worship

There will be heaps more to it than this, but one of the keys tasks will be forging a group’s own sense of its identity.

To this end, a standard worship service needs to be written. This is not necessarily a set liturgy in which the congregation takes part but rather a description of each part of the meeting in terms of its spiritual significance: what do we hope to happen here or there. This will also include set phrases and prayers that express this theology and that are used week in, week out.

As a whole, the service should encapsulate the theology of the group, which of course should be the Gospel. Every week we repeat the core statements of our understanding of the Gospel and why that makes us who we are.

Next, each week we take a portion of the service – a portion of what we do – and we preach on a Scripture that grounds this act.

Remember, whenever you think you’re repeating yourself you probably need to repeat it another two/three times before anyone will remember it!

A Few Thoughts on Singing to Get Us Started

Uncategorized

Singing is an odd thing to do. At least, it is in this day and age.

Of course we sing lots in private, or vicariously through our pop stars, and some people enjoy choirs but they are a minority. But these activities just make it all the more apparent that only the skilled are really allowed to sing in public. Most of us would dream of singing in the presence of others and would be embarrassed if someone did it in ours.

When it comes to the church, we’re in another one of those funny positions. Many’s the time I’ve read the comment that Christianity was birthed in song and that this was a distinguishing mark of Christianity, its inherent freedom and joy. Rarely do you hear any question raised in Christian circles about the place or value of music and signing.

Given all of this, several things occurred to me yesterday. Firstly, the modern worship service has evolved from the same sense of modern embarrassment noted about singing above. This could be partly why the contemporary worship looks so much like a rock concert. A rock concert is one of the few places where we feel freed to sing – partly because the music is so loud you can’t hear yourself or anyone else singing. Oddly enough, this makes the modern worship service individualistic because your singing is essentially for your own pleasure and affects minimally those around you. Of course, a rock concert is a great community event, as is a contemporary worship service, and in many concerts the microphone is turned on the audience for the great sing-along moment. But this is an exception: you’re not going to the concert to sing to each other and listen to each other – you’re going to listen to the artist.

But, secondly, here’s the thing. Granted we still have this sense of the oddness of singing, would it still not be better for singing to be genuinely corporate, where your participation matters – following the 1 Corinthians 12 paradigm to which we keep coming back. If this is true, then we need to hear each other sing and we need to realise that this is more important than the professionalism or quality of our worship leaders. This is because we sing as a body – at every point we remember that we are a community and not merely a gathering of individuals.

Even now more thoughts are popping into my head: if we listening to each other when we sing, how does that relate to God. Are we ever properly singing to God or each other. Are our songs prayers (individual or corporate?) or more akin to teaching where we tell each other truths? Perhaps we need a study of the variety of the Psalms, but that needs a discussion of the connection between Old Testament worship language – easily used – and language that would be appropriate for us as the body of Christ.

But that’s enough for starters.