Christians feel ashamed

If you have seen the images of the Christians fighting in the Holy Sepulchre then like me you may well be feeling ashamed. This is not the kind of image that any Christian wants to present to the world and just adds fuel to the critics.

If you haven’t seen it yet then you can on youtube.

However this is an excellent example of the kind of behaviour that causes many Christians to leave the church. You won’t witness many fights within the Christian church but you will witness many conflicts and, it has to be said, over some very trivial matters.

I understand the fight in the Sepulchre broke out over who gets to stand where during a worship service. Satan must love this stuff.

When will the churches wake up to the wickedness of what they do and make an effort to change. It is the experience of many Christians that people outside the church are less aggressive and more tolerant than people within – surely this is the wrong way around.

What ever happened to turning the other cheek? and being salt and light to the world. I guess the world would probably want us to hide ourselves away at the moment so they can get on with stuff.

It’s time to stop pretending that everything is ok. It’s time to stop playing at being Christians. It’s time to stop this kind of thing ever being seen again.

May God have mercy on us and forgive us.

On behalf of Christians everywhere I apologise for what you had to witness.

Preoccupied with self

I was reading a blog entry the other day about someone who was getting very angry at the way people in the “New Age” movement are too self centered. They were trying to get people to care more for others. It all sounded very Christian to me, although it came from someone in the New Age movement.

Now preoccupation is not an exclusive club for New Agers only. It is too easy as a Christian to become preoccupied with your own faith and to forget about the needs of others. Jesus never called anyone to a life of preoccupation with their relationship with God. God calls us to be concerned with the world as well as with Him (Him first of course).

Jesus said that the first commandment is to love God and others as yourself. So we can love ourselves (in fact we should) and we should love others just as much, and of course we should love God. So no room for self preoccupation there.

I’ve often heard Christians argue that this is one of the reasons to belong to a church. It stops you becomming too self centered. I agree – a bit. You see belonging to a church doesn’t save you from preoccupation. Even insitutions can be preoccupied with themselves. I’ve come across plenty of churches that have a preoccupation with themselves.

I had a motto at College that everyone still remembers me for: “don’t take yourselves too seriously”. This ought to be every Christians motto as well. Don’t get preoccupied with self.

Being a Christian is easy

Sometimes when you speak with other Christians it feels as though being a Christian must be the hardest thing in the world to be. Everybody will hate you and nobody will want to be your friend. There will be a whole lot of rules to follow that are near to impossible to keep and you have to spend all day saying you are sorry for stuff that everyone else is doing anyway. It’s really tough for the Christian.

What issues do Christians without a church face?

It can be hard being a Christian. There are many things to distract you and give you a reason to neglect your spiritual life. More recently there have also been many TV programmes that challenge the traditional views of Christianity.

What are the issues that Christians outside the church particularly face?

Salt and Light

Overview

I’m going to be undertaking a series of bible studies related to the church. I want to know what the church should be about as Jesus saw it.

Matt 5: 13-16

In this passage (from the sermon on the mount) Jesus talks about his people being “salt” and “light”.

Both these things were very important in the ancient world – even more so that they are to us in the developed world today. No cupboard filled with fancy flavourings for food, no freezers for keeping meat fresh, no light bulbs or electricity to use.

Today we are always being encouraged to use less salt – and rightly so. But this is because it is so cheap and plentiful for us that it has become something that we take for granted and use too much of. Back then it was scarce and expensive, people were even paid a wage in salt at times.

Salt is also even more important in an area where the sun is hot and most work has to be done by hand.

So then when we talk of salt we should think of something that is wonderful. It adds taste to things, it makes life possible and even at times more pleasurable.

So then this is how God’s people should be to the world. We should make it a better place to be. We should add something that without us would be missing. We should even make sure we don’t lose our taste otherwise we become useless to the world and we will be rejected.

Isn’t this exactly was has happened in so many places to the church? It has lost it’s saltiness and is being rejected? Perhaps those of us who have chosen to live a Christian life outside of the regular church have discovered this truth earlier than some and so are just being more relaistic.

What does the church add to the world?

Then there is light. Now light of course is a guide. If you don’t need to know where something is you don’t need a light in the dark. Although for some people light is important for stopping fear – perhaps we can think about this another time.

If you have ever been camping you will know what a difference a little light can make to your experience. Ever tried finding your watch in a tent when its pitch black and you don’t have a torch to help? It’s a nightmare believe me (it was a luminous watch in case you were wondering why I wanted it without a light to see it by).

Does the church show the way?

The church  – and this is one of those reasons people often leave – is often accused of being hypercritical. We say something about how life should be lived but then do something as bad or worse in another situation.

I fear that the church has taken too often to shining the light only on itself and not as a beacon for the world. The church has shut the door and pulled the curtains before putting on the light – or to put it in Jesus’ words the light has been put under a bowl.

The church then should be sending out a signal to the world of where the world can find God. How sad the signal seems to be turning people away and they are glimpsing smaller lights and being attracted to them instead.

I believe that we may be outside the regular church but that does not make us outside of God’s church. As Christians – even if we are on our own – we still need to be living as we are light and salt to the world.

Christians judge me.

I was talking with a friend the other day who has made a lifestyle choice that is not consistent with Christian teaching (sorry to be a little vague here but I’m hiding the identity of the person concerned).

I was talking to them about church and wondering if they were going anyway at present. Their response was that they weren’t because they just couldn’t go through all that comment and judgement that church people do.

Now I might have defended the church at this point  – perhaps pointing out that the lifestyle they have chosen is in fact not what Jesus taught – but I think she was right.

I know that the bible teaches that this person has made a wrong choice. She knows this too. But she has made the choice to live as she does and she must be free to make that choice.

The problem now is that she feels excluded from the church – the very place she should be able to go to to help her make the right choices.

How does the church usually help people make choices? At best they will be patronising and whisper behind her back and at worst they will publically humiliate her.

What did Jesus do with sinners? Did he hold them up for public scorn? Did he whisper about them behind their back? Did he say “get away from me you are unclean!”? Of course not – he went and had a meal with them and called them his friends.

If the church was only for perfect people it would be empty and yet too often those who go see it as an exclusive club where some sins are ok (we just don’t mention those) and some sins are not allowed in here.

I’m not advocating a free for all where sin doesn’t matter – in truth I’m am very keen on personal holiness – but how do we get holy if the place we can meet with God and fellowship with others is barred to us because of a wrong choice we have made.

Sorry – I’m starting to rant.

Let’s get more serious about rejecting the sin but loving the sinner (with the emphasis on loving the sinner e.g. me – and you).

Perhaps if we put all the energy we expend on telling everyone how bad they are into telling people how much God loves them we might have full churches and I would be out of a ministry (good thing by they way).

Have you found a good place to Worship on the Internet

How do you help people worship on the Internet and is it possible to have a communal act of worship on the Internet?

I’ve seen many examples of churches who have tried to provide some kind of worship experience over the Internet. Some of them are better than others but just a few miss the mark completely (it seems to me).

The problem is that you can’t expect the Internet to do something that it is impossible for it to do (at the moment). We must of course allow for developments that will make something possible but I’m talking about how things are in April 2008.

You wouldn’t expect to be able to use a car as a toaster (I’m sure some bright spark would work out a way but most of us normal people wouldn’t expect to be able to do this). However some Christian web sites seems to want to be able to do something similar with the Internet.

The Internet for all its developments is still a text based medium. Yes there are videos and streaming and video conferencing and Internet phones etc but still the vast majority of it is about people sitting down and reading text or looking at pictures.

People like the Internet because it enables you to find things out at a time and place that is convenient to you.

Even with the rise of social networking the vast majority of this takes places at times and places that are convenient to the users.

So how do churches overcome this problem to help people worship?

Some sites think that the only way to worship is at the same time. So they try to persuade people to sit in front of a worship service at the set time the church has chosen.

It always seems to me that if you wanted to sit in worship at a set time you would probalby have gotten in your car and driven somewhere to do this. One of the problems that Christians who leave church find is that they cannot worship when the church expects them to and so they stop going. So why do churches try to get everyone to look at their website at a set time. Surely this is an opportunity to include people who can’t get to church by being far more flexible.

Of course there will be exceptions to this because some people will be housebound or not able to travel as far as is needed to participate in the worship.

Some sites think that they have to involve people in the worship (otherwise it isn’t real worship) and so they will get them to type some kind of affirmation or prayer while the worship is going on.

Why?????

Surely this makes it less like true worship which comes from the heart and not the fingers.

Churches need to get far more creative with their approach to Internet worship.

Try not to think along the lines of set times or physical audience participation. These are both nonsense when it comes to the Internet.

Instead allow for flexibility in the timing. Don’t make it out to be less of a worship experience if peopl enjoy it at a time that is convenient to them. Instead think that this is a way to get people worshipping God 24 hours a day 7 days a week.

Instead of thinking about how you can get people to participate in the worship understand that people participate by logging on to your websites worship area. They participate by opening their hearts to God not by typing responsive prayers etc. They might participate in some way but please find ways others than what would happen in a more ‘normal’ churchs service.

I have searched high and low for a good online worship experience but have not found one yet. Perhaps it just is not possible. However the only way we are going to make it possible is to stop thinking like clones of the ‘regular’ church and start getting creative. I have a feeling that we will discover online worship is possible only through the age old medium of art, music and the written word.

Let us all know by posting a comment below

Nice faith shame about the trousers

What is it with trendy Vicars/Ministers/Pastors?

I came across a site the other day (no url to save any embarassement) which was all about modernising the church – good subject. However on the front of the site was a picture of their modern and inspirational leader in his 1980’s waistcoat.

Now I’ve know a lot of clergy in my time and many (not all) have been kind and nice people who have had the best interests of others in their heart. However if there is anything to do with ‘alternative worship’ or ‘youth ministry’ you had better get your sunglasses ready.

So many of them make the effort to look more contemporary but end up looking like a fool. I’ve seen ties that were never in fashion but might have found their way into the Charity Shop just after Christmas. I’ve seen tank tops that mums probably knitted for them when they were in their teens. I’ve seen waistcoats that look like they were used to protect the TV when the decoraters were in. I’ve seen trousers that seem to levitate six inches off the floor and were either bought in a sale in a fit of daftness or were purchased by mum for their thirteenth birthday party.

Sorry if this sounds like a man thing because women clergy are just as bad. Why do so many women clergy think they have to dress like a man anyway?

I would like to say that this is unusual but sadly it isn’t. Perhaps what is even sadder is half the congregation also looks like this on their dress down family service day (only someone forgot to tell THE family to come – more of that on another day perhaps).

So often Christians are told to wear something bright when the ‘outsiders’ are coming to visit. Wear something bright? Why? Is church so boring that we think wearing a bright pink boa will someone make it exciting?

“Hey, won’t the outsiders and young people be impressed when we turn up with something bright on!”

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

When will we learn that to be contemporary is actually about being yourself?

By all means leave off the cassock but if you feeling comfortable wearing a shirt and tie then go for it. There is nothing more offputting than falsity and this is just what it feels like when the clergy turn out in their ‘trendy’ gear.

Of course there are exceptions to this rule and some clergy wear more contemporary clothes naturally. Good for them!

What we need to start doing is breaking down the old images of the church and putting in new better ones. This is not done by looking like a scarecrow.

Relax – be yourself – dress like you want to.

What came out when I prayed today

It’s not like me to rant. I don’t often get carried away with things but as I prayed today I felt compelled to write this. I doubt anyone will read it but I felt it needed to be published.

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I want a revolution!

It’s time for change in the UK Christian Church.

How often have I heard that said but does it ever happen? NO!

We have people who are Bible believing who call for revolution in the teaching.

We have people who are Bible doubting who call for revolution in the teaching.

We have people who like more modern music calling for revolution in worship.

We have people who don’t fit the ‘normal’ church calling for radical church.

We have people calling for house church because that’s what they like and it’s Biblical isn’t it?

Every group calls for something different in the church but what happens?

We get church made in our own image.

We get Christians breaking away to form ‘new’ churches.

But where is the revolution? WHERE O GOD IS THE REVOLUTION!!!!

Where are the generations lost to the church? Why don’t they come?

We’ve tried trendy services and new age thinking. We’ve tried everything but who comes?

People already connected to the church – that’s who comes. Very few ever come in from the outside.

Do they then hate Jesus? Do they think Jesus’ teachings are dead and gone?

No they don’t.

Why is every normal Christian ashamed to admit they go to church? Why are Christian ministers called names in the streets?

Why do people who don’t go to church hate the church?

Why do they believe that the church has highjacked the teachings of Christ and used them for their own ends?

Is it the Devil? Perhaps. Is it us? Yes.

Christian Revolution comes only when people are ready to repent.

Is the church ready?

Would we be prepared to go on national TV and say – sorry we got it wrong.

Are we prepared to admit to the world that we have not always followed Jesus?

Are we prepared to say that there is a problem with power hungry people in God’s own house?

Will we admit that instead of washing feet we have often been driven by greed?

Then when we have repented can we be converted?

Can we convert to foot washing and service?

Can we change our worship so the focus is on Jesus?

Can we listen to those who have a different view and then sensitively give ours – as equals.

We seek the broken and miss the lost.

We seek out the worst but have no time for the best.

It is right to help the drunk and the homeless – God expects nothing less than this.

But we pat ourselves on the back while every week we drive past houses full of lost souls who don’t suit us because they are not bad enough yet.

One street full of people in a Town would fill a church with hundreds. People of all ages squeezing through the doors.

Are not most church buildings in a street? Yet they are fit only for carpet warehouses and New Age Healers.

O God when will we change? When will you bring the revolution?

O God how long must we wait? How long must I wait to see this?

My heart is broken waiting for your deliverance.

My heart loves your idea of the church but it is broken as the man made systems fall.

O God bring your new church soon.

Please Lord release me from feeling this way. Let me rest and not feel the pain. I love your church so much yet my heart is broken over it.

Your will be done. Your will be done! YouR WILL BE DONE!!!!

Is it ever right to leave the church?

My first response to my own question is to say that this is not really possible. A Christian can no more leave the church that any of us could stop being part of the family to which we belong. When you become a Christian you automatically become part of the church or ‘the body of Christ’ as it’s often called in the Bible.

However once you become a Christian you must then choose to meet with other Christians or not and you can choose which group of Christians you want to meet with.

All this talk of choosing will be frowned upon by many Christians. They will point out that this is not our choice because God will put us somewhere and we should work within that gathering to do what God wants us to do. I have great sympathy for that viewpoint.

However what if it becomes obvious to you that despite your best efforts this group of Christians has moved away from following God? What if you actually have no clear message from God that this is the group you should be meeting with? What if you discover that instead of helping your Christian life you discover that meeting with these people is actually having a bad effect on your Christian life?

I’ve never really believed that church should be the most amazing place to be. Sometimes it can be but not always. Sometimes being part of a local church will be a struggle and its right that you struggle so you can do what God wants you to do in that place. However if a local church is pushing you away from God is this right?

I don’t find anywhere in the Bible where it says that church is supposed to make your walk with God tougher. In fact if you read the book of Revelation you will see that Jesus condemns churches who have lost their way.

Surely it’s not right to insist that people suffer in such churches? Just having the name “church” over the door does not make it a Christian church. If there is one thing Jesus went on about more than any other it was that being a follower is about what is inside and not what external trappings you employ to prove your devotion.

Sometimes then to be faithful to God a choice must be made about which church you feel is following Jesus.

But what if you find yourself in a situation where you just don’t seem to fit in anywhere? Are you personally to blame for there not being a church in your area that is following Christ? I don’t think so. Of course we could then ask whether this is actually true or you are just looking for an excuse not to go.

I find myself in this very position at the moment. I have searched for a church to which I can belong but in my area I just can’t find one. There are plenty of churches and some of them are in fact doing God’s work but the people in the churches are so different to myself that it makes it difficult to belong. Now if the difficulty was just mine I might just suffer through it but I have an added problem – family.

I have young children who I am trying to bring up as Christians. We talk a great deal about Jesus and what his life means. I have tried to get them involved in several churches but after a few weeks they end up either bored or being seriously mislead by people who should never have been teaching children about God in the first place. I don’t mean this to sound as bad as it does but just that the level of Christian teaching in some churches is so poor that they end up struggling to help children understand anything about the Christian faith.

I’m afraid that my children will be put off by the very people who should be helping them.

So my options end up limited. I can teach them myself (I am an ordained Christian minister so this is possible for me) or do I let them drift away from God by forcing them to struggle in offputting churches?

If I teach them myself then they don’t go to church – other than the one that meets as a family in my home.

I am listening for guidance from God on this issue and continue to look for a place to belong. If you are someone struggling with the same issues and would welcome some fellowship with others in the same situation then please let me know by either emailing me or joining up to this blog (just click to leave a comment).

Perhaps you are a Christian and have a friend in this situation – why not encourage them to contact me through this blog.

I’m sure there are many Christians without a church for many good reasons. Please contact me – I want to help.

God is so wonderful I want others – especially my children – to know just how wonderful He is.