I was invited along to one of the leaders’ worship times during the Bodybuilders weeks this year to share a little bit and sing a little too. I ended up sharing something that seems to have kept on coming up since, so I want to put it up here and ‘get it out’. Its long, but don’t let that put you off.

I think I’ve spent most of the last year being pretty frustrated.

I keep going round in circles, hoping for what could be but constantly being reminded of what is. Sometimes over the space of weeks, sometimes over the space of seconds.

I’ve ended up in a place where I’ve decided that if what we call Christianity is all we have to offer to the world - then I don’t want it, and I completely understand why the world doesn’t either.

Now this isn’t me recanting, its just a realisation that the version of Christianity that we peddle and tentatively offer to people is a dismal imitation of what I read in the Bible. Its completely incomparable to what I read in the gospels, in Acts, in the letters. And thats not right. In fact, it makes me angry.

I want to know how the Christianity I read can become the Christianity I see. I want to know how the fullness of the Kingdom of God starts to work its way out in my day-to-day life. I’m determined that it will, and I’m wrestling with how that happens.

Romans 12:2 says this: “Do not be conformed any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.”

The word transformed in this verse is identical to the word used to describe Jesus on the top of the mountain as He met with Elijah and Moses in a moment we call the Transfiguration (Matthew 17). In other words, Paul is saying “Don’t be like the world, but become transfigured by the renewing of your mind”.

As He was transfigured, Jesus shone with the presence of God - so much so that the clothes He was wearing started to shine too. Moses had a similar experience after spending time with God - his face started to shine so much that the people asked him to cover it up. A book I’ve read described this as becoming “Radiant with the Glory of God”. I love that. So “Don’t be like the world, but become radiant with the Glory of God by the renewing of your mind”.

A word that I’ve struggled with for a long time is “repent”. It has too many associations with sandwich boards, street corners and megaphones for me to be comfortable with it.

Recently someone shed some light on the word that has started the process of me falling in love with it.

Re - pent. Pent being like a penthouse. The top of the building. The highest point. Re meaning go back.

Repent - going back to the highest point, going back to God’s perspective.

This fits so naturally into that verse - “Don’t be like the world, but become radiant with the Glory of God by getting back to God’s perspective.”

Still with me? Good. Lean a little closer - there’s more.

In Exodus 32 we find the moment when the 12 tribes are crossing the river, and going into the promised land - the land they had heard about for generations, the culmination of the promises God has spoken of for so long.

Except its not 12 tribes. Its 10.

2 tribes decided to stay on their side of the river. The wrong side of the river. They didn’t want to live in the promised land.

I can’t help but feel that we’re like these 2 tribes.

God can and wants to do more than we can ask or imagine - but will we let Him? Will we step across to the other side of the river? Will we leave the safety of what we know and take the risk in hope of what could be waiting for us in the place we haven’t been?

Crossing the river means getting God’s perspective, renewing our mind, so that we can become radiant with His Glory and experience the fullness of relationship with Him. The overflow of that relationship, the things that result from that closeness to Him - thats when the world around us changes. I’m already starting to see glimpses of it - things I’ve prayed for, things other people have prayed for have started happening almost accidentally of late. Its amazing. And I know its happening because myself and others have been trying to regain God’s perspective.

Hopefully by now I’ve convinced you of the need - so how do you go about renewing you mind?

The only place to start is to begin to realise how God sees us. Isaiah 55 v 11 says that every word sent down from heaven won’t return to Him until it has fulfilled what God send it to do. Each of us is a word from heaven - spoken by the mouth of God. We need to realise that when God looks at us, when He thinks about us all He feels is love. Love. Love. Love. Love. Love. Get it yet? Love. Love. Love. Love. Love. Read 1 John 3:1 if you want something to back this up.

Whatever we think about ourselves, no matter how bad we think we are, God loves us. Its overwhelming, its completely undeserved but He doesn’t care, He just wants to love us, and we need to learn to realise it. We need to learn to accept it. We don’t need to earn it, or prove ourselves for it, His love is given to us freely.

When we begin to doubt His love, when we create reasons why He shouldn’t, were believing lies that are intended to deceive us from the truth. And these lies keep us from having the renewed mind that God intended for us. We need to refuse to believe these lies.

When we accept His love, our mind comes into line with His.

Another way we get God’s perspective is to begin to ask for the things He wants - which is pretty much summed up as heaven on earth. Its there in the prayer He gave us to pray - Your Kingdom come, Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. That is God’s great desire, for His rule to come over the earth.

We need to read the Bible and listen carefully to what it says about heaven, and about the Kingdom of God (I think the two are interchangeable) - some of the things it says are hard to believe at first, but if we hold onto them they start to seem more and more possible - no more sickness, pain, death, disease - these things are God’s desire, and we need to stop creating excuses for them happening. We need to believe that God hates them, and wants no part of them. We need to believe He will do something about them.

We need to listen to the stories of what God is doing with other people and other places, and learn how to rejoice in those stories. To allow ourselves to become excited by what God is doing elsewhere, and for that to stir up hope in us for our situations.

Finally, I’ve made it my constant conscious thought to ask God for more of Him. Every time I think to do it, I do - first thing in the morning, last thing at night and at every opportunity I remember. I don’t even know what it looks like but I know I need to ask for it, or it will never happen. I need God to know how desperate I am, how committed I am, I need to see things shift and change, and I will keep asking until they do.

1 John 3:8 says: “For this purpose the Son of God became man - to destroy the works of the devil”. We are meant to follow in His footsteps. We are meant for more than we currently are - we have an amazing destiny - we need to start fulfilling it, we need to start living it. We have the mind of Christ, we need to start using it.

Over the last few year, Adidas have run a great ad campaign, with a great strapline. They tell stories of famous sports people, showing their journey to the top of their profession, and they finish each with the line “Impossible is nothing”.

That phrase should be on the lips of every Christian, it should be the battle cry of the Church. With God - nothing is impossible, but we go through life believing that so much is. As we renew our minds, we begin to think and act like “impossible is nothing” - we need to show the world the truth of that.

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.

Kind of forgot about this blog. Sorry.

Christina and I got back from a lovely couple of weeks in Germany last Tuesday to a letter telling us we have to move to a new house. So we’ve been searching around trying to find a new house, and yesterday we settled on one a little further up the road.

All in all it feels like we’re on the brink of a fresh start, a reset, a chance to try again.

We’ll see what the next few months will bring. Prayers appreciated. I’ll do better at updates in future. I promise.

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…