Church?

Opening Prayers

Loving God,

It's all in the touch,

the touch of love,

the touch of healing,

the touch of compassion,

the touch of reassurance,

the touch that says,

'You are special, wanted,

held in high regard'.

It's all in that touch,

that very special touch,

the touch you give through us

who reach out to those in need,

to those who need to know.

Help us to be channels of your touch

in this dark world,

to bring your love,

healing,

compassion,

and reassurance,

to a world that knows

none of these

 

Bible verse (Amos 5:4-5)

For thus says the Lord to the house of Israel:

Seek me and live;

but do not seek Bethel,

and do not enter into Gilgal

 

Thought for the day

The perennial conversation in Church is what is the Church? The discussions will range from the Church as the bride of Christ, through to the Church being the people of God rather than the buildings. And yet as much as we like to think that the Church is the people of God we invest heavily

in our buildings. And don’t get me wrong, we have some amazing buildings but so much of what we call Christianity has evolved around and because of those places of worship we call churches, chapels, cathedrals etc. So much so that for those people who are not Christians, when they think about Christianity they see churches. The three places Amos mentions in today’s verse were three of the holiest places in Ancient Israel. And yet God is telling Amos’ readers that the life they seek is in God, not in those holy places. Don’t get me wrong Churches and places of worship are important, but we can worship God anywhere. But when our desire to see holy places outweighs our desire to see God we have a problem.

Rest? What rest?

Rest? What rest

Bible verse (Ezekiel 20:12)

I gave them my Sabbaths as a sign between us, so they would know that I the Lord made them holy.

Thought for the day

How have you found being in lockdown, if you’re in lockdown? What has been the biggest challenge you have faced. For me, the challenge has been to make sure I have a day off.

You see like many people, I have to work from home. No big difference there but when I look back over the last 6 weeks of lockdown in the UK, I can count on two fingers the number of actual days off I have had. When I haven’t had to answer the phone, or reply to an email, or prepare a service.

I have to ask myself, how is that honoring God. Today’s verse in Ezekiel talks about the Sabbath day of rest as a sign. A sign that we have been made holy, put aside for God. In a way observing the Sabbath, whenever that may be, indicates our trust in God. The Sabbath requires us to trust God that the world won’t fall apart while we rest. My not taking a day to rest and recuperate shows me that I don’t really trust God. That’s a hard thing to admit but I feel for myself at least it’s true.

So how about you? How is your day of rest going? Do you keep it or like me has it become a concept rather than a reality because my challenge to us all today is to take the time to simply rest. Rest in God’s goodness and do not worry about anything.

Whose authority?

Bible verse (1 Peter 2:13)

For the sake of the Lord submit yourselves to every human authority: to the Emperor, who is the supreme authority,

Thought for the day

This isn’t what I had in mind for today’s episode of Walking the Way, but it’s something that has been on my mind for a few days now. I read an article over the Easter weekend about church ministers that were refusing to close their churches during this period of lockdown that we’re all experiencing. And I’ll admit as a church minister I was torn about closing when the COVID-19 crisis broke here in the UK. In the end that decision was taken away from by those higher up the liturgical candle than me. But there is still a part of me that wants to open my churchs not for worship but for sanctuary.

Today’s verse from 1 Peter came to mind. ‘For the sake of the Lord submit yourself to every human authority…’ Our submission to the authorities over us is both for our ‘peaceful and quiet life’ to quote Paul and a sacrificial act according to Peter. It is to be done for the sake of the Lord.

I’m not suggesting we don’t confront abuses of power I’m just saying we need to pick our battles. Those churches that insist on staying open are fighting a battle with the authorities that will no doubt sour the relationships between those churches and their local authorities. And I find that rather short-sighted. This pandemic will pass and we will be left with the consequences of our actions.

A simple faith?

1 Corinthians 2:1-16

Recently I did a preaching series here was about how we as Methodists do our theology or to put it more simple language how we understand God. I talked about the Wesley Quadrilateral and how we draw on four things – Scripture, Reason, tradition, and experience to help us understand God, the world and our place in that world. Just what parts of the Quadrilateral we prioritize is up to us. As someone who is more evangelical in their theology, I tend to prioritize Scripture followed by our tradition and then reason and finally experience. Others may rearrange things to fit their understanding of God.

This is really helpful for those Christians who really want to think about how their faith relates to the world. It means very little to those who are happy to keep their faith simple. And both sides of the fence of valid. Sometimes those who have decided that a simple faith is enough, are those who have the strongest faith. In fact, the times when I wanted to jack in everything about the church and faith have been when I have studied theology. And I find myself thinking far too much about theology and philosophy.

Paul’s approach was deliberately not to be complicated. It would not have fit him anyway. He knew the emptiness of philosophy. Philosophy occupies us for a while but then the next philosophy shows how foolish it ultimately is. It’s a bit like the health surveys we get. Don’t eat processed meat it’s bad for you and the go-ahead it’s okay.

Philosophy, and theology to a lesser extent, claims to answer the great questions about life, but in the end, it ends in frustration and disillusionment. The only thing that is constant is the message of the cross, of Jesus Christ and Him crucified. This is the message that has power to transform the world. That message of love and grace and power is revealed to us, not through clever philosophical arguments or deep theological reflections, but is revealed to us by the Holy Spirit.

And I think we as members of the Church have become very good at tuning out the Holy Spirit. There have been times when I’ve looked at some of the material coming out of the Church and I’ve asked myself, where is God in all of this? We have had an article in our Connexion magazine recently that was well written about our priorities as Christians, but not once did it talk about God and worship. It may be they assumed we’d know this was a priority but it’s a big assumption. And Paul highlights in a later verse of the chapter when he writes: ‘This is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit, explaining spiritual realities with Spirit-taught words. The person without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God but considers them foolishness, and cannot understand them because they are discerned only through the Spirit.’

In the letter to the Romans Paul writes: ‘I am not ashamed of the Gospel of Jesus Christ because it is the power of God unto Salvation.’ That is the purpose of the Gospel. To bring people to a knowledge of Jesus Christ and the redemption we are offered through Christ. What we do with it after that is up to those who hear it. And this where the Spirit comes in.

It is the Spirit that convicts and challenges and demonstrates the love of God, not our clever arguments and theories. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not suggesting we don’t study Scripture or think about what we believe. Peter tells us to always be ready to give a reason for your faith. But Jesus promised us that when we stand up to speak to people about him it would be the Spirit that would give us the words to speak.

If we think about all the millions and millions of books that have been written about what we believe, they can be all summarized by this sentence: ‘God loves you.’ That’s it. And maybe this week as we go about our week and we are given the opportunity to share the Gospel maybe just tell someone that God loves them and trust the Spirit to do the rest.

Worship and Glory

Bible Verse (2 Chronicles 7:14)

So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God.

 

Thought for the day

A common question that gets asked regularly in church circles is what is worship? And to some extent it’s the driving force behind this podcast and if you’ve been listening for a while you’ll have heard me talk about a regular rhythm of worship.

 

When I was growing up worship was something you did. We were active participants in worship. We went to church to worship. When I came to the UK and got back into a more mainstream church I came up against worship as something was attended. Worship for many people was something they attend rather than something we were active participants in. And I’ll be honest I find that model of worship…problematic.

 

It may be that it’s cultural or regional thing and certainly in the past, people went to worship because they were expected to. I live in an area with amazing historical church buildings built for huge congregation by amazingly wealthy business owners, who expected their workers to go to church and felt it their Christian duty to provide places for people to worship. So they built these huge buildings to bring glory to God. The churches became their act of worship,

 

The thing is we don’t actually need to go to church to worship God. I’m a big believer in whole life worship. Worship is something we exude from our lives whether it’s standing up in a pulpit or changing a nappy because when we do things to the best of our ability it brings glory to God. And that is the very definition of worship: bringing glory to God. So today what ever you are doing remember that everything we do becomes the opportunity to worship and know that God enjoys every moment of it.