This is great:

Quote: We believe that the easiest way to change people’s behaviour for the better is by making it fun to do.

How can we use this thought pattern in Wells?

As we begin to rethink what a community of faith might look like, and what its value system is outside of the church of empire, we must revisit and question the things that we thought we knew from the previous ‘age’.

One such thing is the measure of success - the size of your community.

We’ve been brought up in a world of capitalism, where the most successful people are those with the most money, the most talent, the best looks. They are the ones who are put on a pedestal as the route to follow, and used as an example of how we should all be living.

By and large the church has done the same - we hero-worship leaders within the church as if they are the ones who have got it all figured out. The leaders with the biggest churches, the best worship bands, the most ministries must surely be the most successful - they must surely be the ones to follow?

I’m becoming more and more disillusioned with anything that is ‘big’.

You see, there is a mindset that builds up around groups with a small core at the centre. The wider congregation start to build their value system around the importance of being at the centre - they dream of being worship leaders and speakers, rather than the humble servant Jesus modeled. People value being at the centre more than they value being followers of Jesus. We start to idolise the ‘christian celebrities’ in our midst - making unrealistic expectations and examples of them.  We choose to attend churches that have the famous people in them, so that we can ‘be blessed’ by them.

We have created an idol.

Its easy to understand how. I mean the world around us does it 24/7.

But that doesn’t mean its ok. The church is meant to be different.

We are meant to model a different type of society, one that is renewed around who God is - where there is “no Jew, no Greek, no Gentile”, where everyone is equal, valued and important - as everyone is the image of God.

My conversations with Christians I’m talking to for the first time usually ends up with two questions:

“What church do you go to?”

“How many people go there?”

As if they are somehow trying to figure out whether I’m important by how big my church is. If we really had caught Jesus’ heart, surely a better second question would be:

“How does your church look after the poor, the widow and the orphan?”

You see, the more I read about Jesus, the more I encounter Him, the more I discover about Him, the more I realise we have got it so wrong. SO WRONG.

“Love the LORD your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength; and love your neighbour as yourself”.

In one amazing moment, Jesus sums up the core of the new covenant - the law that he promised through Isaiah to “write on our hearts”.

Call me a heretic, but I’m pretty sure Jesus’ isn’t that interested in massive worship services, with well formed talks and introspective worship songs. He wants us to love him with everything that we are (and not just sing about it) - then to show our love for him by loving our neighbour as we love ourself.

From the moment he set apart a people for himself, Jesus blessed them to be a blessing to the world.

Be honest - do you really use the blessing that God has given to you to be a blessing to others.

Or let me put it another way - when was the last time you spent serious time with someone who was poor, or who is a widow, or who is an orphan?

Back to the size thing.

Size takes energy, effort, money and time. Creating a regular worship service can be all consuming. Meeting the pastoral needs of a large group of people is emotionally and physically draining.

I take so much heart from Jesus. He didn’t even try.

He chose twelve, a small and manageable number. Then he invited that twelve to walk with Him as he lived a life meeting the needs of the poor and unveiling the Kingdom of God to those who had never encountered it.

Jesus didn’t do big - he concentrated his time, effort and energy on a small group of followers, disciple-ing them until they understood what it meant to be set apart by God.

So why are we trying to do something Jesus never tried to?

What if we stopped creating worship services.

Let that sink in.

What if we stopped creating worship services.

What would we use our church buildings for? What would our church leaders do? What would we do with all the money we suddenly had at our disposal? How would we express our faith and community? How much more time would we all have?

Challenging huh?

I think its time to free ourselves from the need to be big, to have big numbers, to feel successful - the new humanity doesn’t work in that way…

The first joint wells service of the new year is on Sunday, in our new home of Great Victoria Street Presbyterian. I’m really excited for it, I’ve got a real buzz about unpacking some of the empire/exodus/exile stuff more, and joining with my brothers and sisters in worshipping Jesus (He is so good!).

If you’re coming could I ask you to take some time over the next couple of days to ask God if He wants you to say anything to all of us and bring it with you if He does. Also take some time to prepare yourself for worshipping, to come expectant and ready for spending time with Him and responding to Him. And then pray, pray that God blows us away, pray that we get lost in His presence and wonder - I can’t make stuff happen, but together we can pray and believe that something amazing could happen.

Exciting.

See you there!!

Lets try a little experiment to see how inter-web aware Wells people are.

We’re at the beginning of a new year of Big joints at well’s and I have my own ideas of where I want the singing times to go and how I imagine they can look. But I’d love to know what other people’s expectations are, and what they want to happen…

So lets use the comments area below to have a little discussion on it…

Man’s chief end

I’ve been thinking a little about the phrase from the Westminster Catechism that says “Man’s chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy him forever”. Not that I’m trying to disagree with a well formed statement, but I’m not sure it quite says everything it needs to.

In the beginning there was nothing but God. All three parts of Him. The Father, source of wisdom, power, knowledge and love; the Word - the spoken expression of who God is, declaring His greatness, His wonder, His majesty; and the Spirit - the guide, the conscience, the breath of God.

Who knows how long the trinity existed before they decided to create everything - it probably can’t even be measured as time was yet to exist! Together the three members of the God head existed as a perfect, beautiful community - each displaying love to the others, and submitting in beautiful reverence to the other roles within the community. Some use the word ‘perikinesis’ to describe this communion - the dance of the Godhead. What a beautiful representation of how community is to work - a dance, a free flowing creative expression of life.

At some point the Godhead decided that the love they had for each other, the community they shared, was overflowing. It is in God’s nature to express creativity, and so using that creativity they created the universe. Out of the very mouth of God all that we know and see - all that we can’t yet see even with our technology and science - was created.

At the pinnacle of creation, after 5 days of God creating and seeing that “it was good” - God formed some dust into a body, breathed life into it and created man. No longer was “good” enough to express creation, no no. Creation was now “very good”. The creation of one man, one life, one flesh took creation from “good” to “very good”. The Godhead had created the purpose of creation - mankind.

But why?

Simple. God wanted to express his love.

Man’s chief end is not just to enjoy God and glorify Him. That is far too one sided. That discounts the entire purpose of creation. Yes we are to bring Him Glory. Yes we are to enjoy Him. But those are side effects - not the core reason.

The purpose of creation was… so that He could love us. Let that sink in.

God created

everything

so that He

could love

You.

How does that make you feel? Does that change how you look at yourself? It should!

Don’t get bogged down in all the wrong, all the sin, all the imperfection you see in yourself. Those things are there, those things are real and need to be said sorry for. But…

God created everything so that He could love you.

So don’t you think he can get past the other stuff, which is pretty small in comparison to the universe, to still love You despite your sin, your wrongdoing, your imperfection?

It gets better still… stay with me.

The Hebrew writers of the Old Testament had no concept of the word perfection. It wasn’t a thought that even existed in their mindset. The progression of God saying things were good, until man came and it became very good was meant to continue. There is no doubt in Hebrew scolars’ mind that things could have become very very good, or very very very good. God’s intention was that in community with man, as he already expressed in the trinity, creation would get even better. So you could say that…

God created everything so that He could love you, and be in communion with you.

That’s why heaven isn’t going to just be a worship party. If we’re going to get back to the restoration of the original plan for humanity, then God has so much more in mind. We’re going to create an ever increasingly more wonderful, more God worshipping, more mind-blowing creation through the expression of our communion with God.

Amazing.

God wants relationship with you. He wants you to be part of his trinity-community. You could say when you join in it becomes a quad-rinity - isn’t that amazing?

He wants this so much, that one of the God-head chose to be human, chose to take upon himself all the frailty and fragility that came with the sinful path chosen by Adam, chose to succumb to death despite living a perfect life, so that He could say sorry for our sin and become the sacrifice that means God no longer sees any sin in us. If we believe in him and what he has done for us, then we are ‘in Christ’ - meaning God looks at us and sees Christ in our place. He sees perfection instead of sin. He sees obedience instead of disobedience. He sees love instead of hate. He sees acceptance rather than rejection…

Jesus didn’t become human for a season, he chose it for eternity. When we see him in heaven we will see the scars that he bore for us, we will see his humanity. God scarred himself forever, so that we can be part of his community. That is how much he loves us. That is how much he wants us to be in communion with him.

God created everything, became human, chose pain and death for himself, so that He could love you, and to be in communion with you.

Please receive that truth. Please let it sink it.

It is freeing. It is liberating. Its is something worth rejoicing over and living for.

God wants to be in relationship with you. Whatever excuse you can think of to argue against that is meaningless in the light of what he has done for you. Nothing you can ever do can take away from the sacrifice he made just to be available to you.

It is totally unfair, it is totally one sided, but that is the expression of God’s love for you.

Your part is to just say yes, accept him - that really is all it takes…