I’m going to start using this blog again to post the thoughts I’m thinking at the minute, so there will be a lot more appearing over the next few months. I’ve got about a year of a backlog to work through.

The first thought is a simple one.

Any organisation, business, charity, or group of purposeful people has a mission statement, and end goal that they are working towards.

The Church is no different. We have an end goal. A purpose. A calling. Something we are working towards. Something we all agree on. Something we can build upon. Something we work out in action.

But I’ve never come across a mission statement, nobody gave me one when I became a Christian! Is part of the reason we seem so disorganised because we don’t have a common goal?

So what should it be?

To get to heaven?
To become more like Jesus?
To do good things in the world?
To tell others about him?

All those things are true, but they aren’t the mission - they miss something of the dream that God has for His church; they don’t capture the whole story.

I came across this in 1 John 3:8: “For this purpose the Son of God became man - to destroy the works of the devil”.

That sounds good to me. We’re supposed to be like Jesus, this what He was about so it makes sense that its also what I’m about -  I’m almost sold on it. So much so, that it made it onto my wall (real wall, not Facebook).

But then I came across this in a book recently and it just sealed the deal for me. Inspired by 1st Corinthians 15, with a bit of the verse above thrown in; the purpose of Christianity is:

“To defeat sin and death, and liberate the whole cosmos”.

Wow.

Now thats a movement I want to be part of. Thats something I would gladly sign my life up to.

To defeat sin and death? To liberate the whole cosmos? Thats sounds more like the Church I read about in the Bible, that sounds more like the people God was wanting.

So there you have it, a mission statement for the Church.

Now - lets start to figure out how that looks.

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…