A final thought before I take this project beyond the pages of my blog.

In his breakdown of the various typical stages of a pastoral tenure, Thom Rainer describes Years 4 and 5: Crossroads, Part 1 as follows:

“This period is one of the most critical in the relationship. If the conflict was severe, the pastor will likely leave or be forced out. Indeed, these years, four and five, are the most common years when a pastor leaves a church. On the other hand, if the pastor and the church manage the relationship well, they can often look forward to some of the best years ahead.” Autopsy of a Deceased Church; page 59 in the 2014 edition.

Of course the dynamics of the Church of England tend to lead to more protracted, less overt crunch points, but the theory still broadly holds – or so some of those ‘in the know’ tell us.

So what happens next for us?

Firstly, at least for now – and who knows how long ‘now’ is going to last – the plan is for the NTV and I to simply plod on. To plod on in God’s strength and by his grace faithfully and prayerfully doing what we can to make disciples right here where he has placed us. Preaching and teaching well, living holy lives and loving until it hurts.

Secondly, we are going to focus on the clear and loving communication of our diagnosis of the state of the churches’ spiritual health as a vital first step on which to (God willing) build a shared disciple-making strategy.

Thirdly we are going to see what the reaction is.

If there is either a refusal to undergo a health check or a failure to agree on what the health check reveals then we would be unwise not to seriously consider whether this is a place where we can fruitfully serve Christ’s glorious cause.

BUT, if a group of gospel partners emerges from the process with a united diagnosis of the key problems, and a united vision for the road to health and strength – then we can start to move forward into the years of fruit and harvest that Rainer describes next.

Questions of who holds the keys and how we can return them to the hook of Jesus’ authority can then be asked. Glass cabinets can be opened up and church life laid out for perusal. The pea-rl of the gospel can take centre stage once more. Who knows we may even face Rainer’s next stage, beyond fruit and harvest – Crossroads, Part 2 – but let’s not worry about that just yet!

So I’ll keep you posted!

I hope that, for some of you at least, Buzz Lightyear was the narrator as the you read the title for today’s post!

If you have read any of my recent posts you will have ‘heard’ me referring to Thom Rainer’s sobering book Autopsy of a Deceased Church: 12 ways to keep yours alive.

I don’t know about you, but this title really grabbed me. The NTV and I really like a good crime drama and the post-mortem is always a vital stage in uncovering the truth. No matter how well a criminal has covered his or her tracks the victim’s body can hold the clues that – given the right detective on the case of course – will be lead to their undoing.

Dr. Thom Rainer wants to show us the story told by churches that have died. As it says on the back of the book: “for more than twenty-five years, Dr. Thom Rainer has helped churches grow, reverse the trends of decline, and has autopsied those that have died. From his experience, he has discovered consistent themes among those churches that have died. Yet, it’s not doom and gloom because, from those themes, lessons on how to keep your church alive have emerged.”

So what has he uncovered? What are the common strands that Rainer has identified?

Please note: The main bullet points below are a brief summary of Dr. Rainer’s findings. The sub-points are simply my reflections and questions. They are not conclusive, or authoritative. They need to be looked at by the NTV and by our brothers and sisters in Christ alongside whom we serve.

• There has been Slow Erosion over a number of years, often going undetected. The result: a lack of ownership of the decline that is only just being seen.
  • A thought for us to consider: Have we been wrongly expecting our churches to grow, when it is fact necessary for us first to weep and repent?

• The Past is the Hero. Deceased churches were found to have been holding on to the past as the hero and wanting to keep things, or return things to, the way they used to be. The strength of the church in the past (whether real or perceived) is seen as the key to future strength. Nostalgia takes root and, as John James notes in Renewal, nostalgia doesn’t lead to growth, but to inertia. He also warns that nostalgia is not so much driven by a love of the way things were, as it is by a fear of the way things are today. Rainer puts it this way: “it is not just the past they revered. It was their personal good old days”. He compares this attitude to the attitudes of the heroes of faith in Hebrews 11: “The ‘good old days’ did not exist in their minds. The future held the best days. They understood that this life is not a time to get comfortable” (page 20 2014 edition)

  • Thoughts for us to consider: The past is not the villain of the piece. Clinging to the past, rather than to Jesus is the problem. Being guided by the way things have been done, or understood in the past rather than by the words of the Lord Jesus – that is the mistake we are in danger of making.

• The church refused to look like the community. In deceased churches the changes that had occurred in their local community were not reflected in appropriate changes to church culture and activities. Instead there was often a fear from the church as the community around them changed resulting in a protective entrenchment, and an inward focus. As a result the churches lost their heart and ministry for their communities. Even when they had made the effort to look more like their communities, the deceased churches had stopped actually ministering to those around them.
  • Thoughts for us to consider: We DO need to identify the cultural gaps between us and our community – the ways in which we just don’t fit well in our villages. NOT in terms of abandoning biblical truths that are becoming less and less acceptable in our communities, but in the areas of church life that are purely cultural expressions of those unchanging truths.
    • BUT I believe there is an even deeper and a more pressing question that needs to be asked. Many of the case studies looked at by both Rainer and James had at least started with a gospel view of their relationship with the community – however outdated and odd-looking their methods of sharing the gospel had become. In our case, I believe that Jesus’ command to go and make disciples has either: never taken root; got lost along the way; or been consciously rejected. It seems to me that the role of the church in our communities has been established (possibly without realising it) according to the viewpoints and preferences of certain members of the church. This has happened much as the founding members/current committee of a club would set the tone of any relationships they might have with those they come into contact with. As John James points out however “a church is not a club formed by a committee, but a community formed by Christ”.
    • And so I ask us to consider: is the above point a fair analysis and if so how do we establish a confidence in and a passion for God’s purposes for us in the community?
• The Budget Moved Inwardly. “Over time the funds of the church were used more to keep the machinery maintain the Will trust and generous partnership in funding the Great Commission and the Great Commandment”. (Page 36) Sadly many of the deceased churches had held onto their money so they that always have enough to keep going until they died.
  • Thoughts for us to consider: How can we learn to trust God to give us enough for us to carry out his purposed for us? Currently I feel that we are relying on self-preservation to keep our club going, rather than investing in the eternal work of the gospel, remembering that it is Christ who formed us and Christ who will preserve us.

• The Great Commission Becomes the Great Omission. Dying churches are good at remembering when they were full and new people joined them regularly but bad at correctly identifying the way Jesus commands us to grow his church and the manner of growth that he desires. Matthew 28:19-20 is full of action words: Go, make disciples, baptize disciples, teach disciples. The deceased churches had neglected these activities and neglected to depend totally upon the power of Christ to grow his church through them. They wanted a thriving church to just happen without prayer, without sacrifice, and without hard work. And the growth they desired was only the sort of growth that met their preferences and that allowed them stay comfortable.
  • Thoughts for us to consider: In what ways have we stopped going as Jesus’ commanded and stopped depending on his power to bring growth? Where do we GO to for growth and what do we RELY ON for power? What sort of growth do we really want?
• The Preference-Driven Church. Each of the deceased churches had shifted focus from others to themselves. A church cannot survive long-term where the members are focussed on their own preferences. That is: “MY music style, MY desired length and order of worship services, MY desired colour and design of buildings and rooms, MY activities nd programmes, MY need of ministers and staff, MY, My MY..” Membership in the church is not country club membership – paying your dues and getting perks. We do not exist to serve ourselves; instead, we exist for the greater good of the body.
  • Thoughts for us to consider: In what ways are we a preference-driven church and whose preferences are in the driving seat?
• Pastoral Tenure Decreases. In other words the length of time each successive minister stays gets shorter and shorter. Note: Although there is some ‘translation work’ that needs to be done in order to put this in a C of E context I still think the trend is a valid one to look out for.  Rainer looks at the various stages in the relationship between a minister and the church. He identifies the typical periods of conflict, and the resulting crossroads faced. In the churches that had died there had been few pastors who had stayed beyond the first conflict/crossroad period and therefore few that had reached the season of fruit and harvest that typically follows.
  • Thoughts for us to consider: Are we prepared to go through this time of crossroads and conflict together? Do we believe that there can be a time of fruit and harvest beyond it?
• The Church Rarely Prayed Together. As Rainer looked back at the death of a church with one of its members a light went on and the tears welled up. He admitted: “We stopped taking prayer seriously. And the church started dying.” Looking at the early church they were passionate, intense and fervent about prayer. It was their lifeblood.”They had no doubt that God was listening and responding. A failure to pray was tantamount to a failure to breathe”.
  • Thoughts for us to consider: How can we evaluate the lack of prayer in our churches without falling at the first hurdle: “It just isn’t the way we pray here, we don’t feel comfortable praying in a group, prayer is private.”
• The Church Had No Purpose. A church without a purpose is not really a church at all. As former members of churches that had died put it:
  • “We were playing a game called church. We had no idea what we were supposed to be doing”
  • “We became more attached to our ways of doing church than we did asking the Lord what he wanted us to do.”
  • “We stopped asking what we should be doing for fear that it would require too much effort to change.”
  • Thoughts for us to consider: What is our purpose? Are we willing to answer to answer this question and follow through on what we find? When a game is being played, even if there are many who don’t know what they are supposed to be doing there are generally some who do, the ones running the game. There must be people running things in our churches with a particular purpose in mind – we have to get those purposes out into the light of day – or rather the light of God’s word.
• The Church Obsessed Over the Facilities. Rainer sadly identified the frequency with which divisions and the death that followed them revolved around fabric issues. He helpfully concludes: “Being a good steward of those material things that God has given our churches is good. Becoming obsessed with any one item to the neglect of His mission is idolatry.”
  • Thoughts for us to consider: We have a particularly complicated arrangement with our buildings. To what extent has good stewardship tipped over into idolatry at the expense of God’s mission? Where does our responsibility lie? Where does the care of the buildings and the business of running a visited building need to be more clearly separated from the central purpose of the church – not neglecting that business, but disentangling it from and submitting it to our purpose of making disciples?

So those are the tools for THE DIAGNOSIS. As I apply them to our situation the signs seems to point to a serious, if not terminal illness. Of course the formal diagnosis does not rest with me, but in the meantime I have clarified what I want to bring to the table – if there ever is a table and if I am ever invited to it. I can also commit to pray for the church that I believe is so sick, and that I love so much. To make that really easy there are even brilliant prayer committments linked to each symptom that Rainer identifies.

And what about BEYOND a diagnosis? Well if my application of the diagnostic tools is correct and according to the research done by Thom Rainer the chances of our churches surviving long-term, and thriving into the future are not very high. The prognosis is bad.

However, Thom Rainer does have some hope for very sick churches such as ours. He believes that there can be a return to health if:

1. God is working to preserve his people’s witness in the Barony. Nothing is impossible with God!
2. God has given the churches a willing leader committed to intentionally lead them through a process of recovering their call to make disciples of Jesus.
3. God has opened the hearts of people in the church to humbly examine the need for repentance for the loss of focus, to take ownership for the decline of the church, and to adopt a clear gospel vision and plan for our churches.

And that gives me a huge sense of excitement about what may lie in the beyond God has for us as Jesus’ people and for the people he is calling us to reach with the amazing news of the gospel.

PS Please forgive the poor spacing in this post – I tried putting gaps between the main points and the thoughts to consider, but the computer has overruled.

There’s a certain moment in Disney’s Beauty and the Beast that never fails to make me hold my breath with anxiety, to wonder what if this time it goes wrong….

Belle is wandering alone around the castle; having successfully shaken off Cogsworth and Lumiere; when she discovers a single rose floating in a glass dome.

(I want to say that she is in the West Wing at this point, but then I am in The White House with president Josiah Bartlet!)

Intrigued she takes off the glass dome and reaches out as if to touch the rose when all of sudden the Beast intervenes – snatching the glass dome out of her hands and placing it back over the precious rose in a single movement.

Why so precious? Well it was an enchanted rose of course, and the Beast was an enchanted Prince. While the rose survived the Prince still had a chance to reverse the spell that had turned him into a hideous beast many years before, but, when the rose lost its last petal he would be doomed to remain a Beast forever.

So what does he do? He just leaves it floating around! What if he hadn’t got there in time? She nearly knocked the last petal off! Why not take more care! Couldn’t the glass dome have been fixed down somehow in readiness for any beautiful but headstrong girls who might happen upon it? It could at least have had a sign next to it: “Polite notice: please do not touch”.

Ok – so what’s my point? Well the Beast could have learned a few things from those who hold the keys to church culture.

I am currently trying to plan towards a total spring clean of church life. I want us to empty out all those spaces where things accumulate – the equivalents of the attic, the cupboards, the drawers, even the dreaded long-neglected garage in church life. And then to lay everything out on a metaphorical table for us all to look at.

Unfortunately as I have looked into how I might proceed with this project I have discovered that the culture of a church is not really kept in the equivalent of an attic or a garage, but rather behind the equivalent of a state of the art museum display case to which – as I noted recently in Project Space: Who holds the Keys – I don’t hold he key.

So the question is: how effectively can you assess what you do, how you do it and why you do it when you can’t properly examine all the constituent parts? I want to turn them over in my hands and get a feel for how they compare to each other. I want to see where they have aged, if they have become obsolete, or whether they just need some restoration work.

Basically, if we are aiming to ‘S P A C E’ everything that makes up church life – to Sort, Purge, Assign a home to, Containerise, and finally Equalise it all – how do you do that when church life is under lock and key?

And the answer? No – AN answer: to humbly, prayerfully and lovingly point out the dangers of leaving it all where it is. Next up: Autopsy of a deceased church by Thom Rainer.

The NTV and I have just returned from a Pastoral Refreshment Conference. It did what it said on the tin – we have indeed been refreshed. We were refreshed by the fellowship of the saints, and by having time and opportunity to feast on the love of God for us in Jesus as the word of God was faithfully opened up to us, and as the Holy Spirit warmed our hearts to its truths.

It was also quite a sobering experience. As we chatted with a wise and experienced pastor about the struggles we are facing we were forced to look at the possibility that our story here might not have a fairy tale ending. To face the possibility that at some point, given certain factors, flagged up by various indicators, it may quickly and irretrievably become the part of the story that your children ask you to skip over as you read it to them. We were asked to consider carefully whether it is really wise to go deeper down the track of this forest, as it seems to get darker and darker rather than pursue another quest altogether. Because of course this is a real battle, against a real enemy which can result in some very real casualties. If this skirmish is doomed for us, would it not be most gallant to retreat and live to fight on a different front? Is it time to jump into another story and pursue our adventure there?

The answer to these promptings? Well it would be arrogant to presume that there wasn’t at least a need to regroup.

Lord please help us, please grant us courage and humility and love and faith. Help us to be quick to spot the warning indicators in our lives and our walks with you. Help us not to ignore them in foolishness, laziness or arrogance. We do not want to stay out of stubbornness, and pride. Lord, nothing is wasted in your economy. But nor do we want to leave hastily. The farmer has to wait while under the earth you bring life. Lord if there are sprouting seeds that you would have us nurture, and we believe that there are, please overrule every detail of our lives to keep us here. If you walk with us, if our hands are in your hand we can keep going no matter how dark it gets. Grant us wisdom we pray Lord, Amen.

‘The Princess and The Pea’ is an odd story isn’t it! I’m not surprised that it has never gone feature-length! From what I can remember – a prince is in search of a princess. His mother insists that she must be the genuine article – but how to tell? Well apparently by putting a pea under her mattress – correction – mattresses! If she sleeps like a log she is clearly not the delicate, easily bruised and rarely rested specimen of womanhood that they are searching for, BUT if the poor lady has tossed and turned all night and emerges black and blue – she is the one!

In a recent post – ‘Project Space: Who holds the Keys?’ – I explored the possibility of the purpose of a church, its heartbeat, getting buried under layer upon layer of culture and as I wrote it ‘The Princess and the Pea’ came to mind.

Imagine the pea – once so central to the plot – gradually disappearing from the story. Imagine all those mattresses – mere incidentals to start with – taking over as the focal point of the story. One mattress has been donated by a certain prominent family and must be appropriately admired. Another is the oldest surviving mattress in the area and must be carefully preserved.

Thankfully it is exempt from health and safety restrictions!

Yet another is a classic example of mattress making from a certain era nd appears in several books on the subject. Others are quite simply loved for their comfort and familiarity.

To come to the castle is to come to the mattresses! (No Godfather reference intended.) When someone comes along who enjoys the mattresses they are welcomed with open arms. However, whenever someone tries to draw attention to that lumpy pea – well that’s just a bit embarrassing.

Clearly something has gone badly wrong along the way! What hope has that prince got of finding his princess?

A sure hope!

Praise God – for he came to seek and save the lost. His true children will always discern that tiny pea sized lump no matter how deeply it is hidden or how ashamed people are of its presence.

By God’s grace that ‘pea’ still does its work on those he is calling. Their consciences become tender and they are made to feel blessedly uncomfortable with their sin. They toss and turn and finally, unable to slumber any longer, they come to their senses and tear off first the bedding and then the mattresses, one by one, in a desperate bid to remove themselves of this annoyance. Imagine their great joy and delight when, to their surprise, and by God’s lavish grace they find not a stone, or a thorn, not even a pea – but a pea-rl, THE pearl, the pearl of great price.

Of course some will be horrified – those poor mattresses! Some, but not all.

Imagine the excitement of those who have remembered the pea and its purpose. Imagine their trepidation as they ask their friend how they slept. Imagine their relief and joy when the friend replies: “What a dreadful night sleep I have had – but no matter – see what I have found! What is one night of discomfort in the light of eternity in possession of this treasure?”

Dear saving, calling, awakening Father, thank you that your gospel is “the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes”. Lord I confess that your people in this land have buried it deep, we have hidden its light. Lord please bring us to repentance. Please open our eyes to the state of the church. We know something is wrong, but we merely wrap ourselves more tightly in our cultural duvets hoping it will all go back to how it was. Please bring glory to your name, please equip those who want to put the good news about Jesus back in its rightful place – central to the joy and purpose of the church. Your church. In Jesus’ precious name, Amen.

Where is the oddest place you have found lost keys? We once found the church key (not a small item!) in a pile of branches in our garden months after it had gone missing!

In his book Renewal, John James writes about his experience of leading a struggling church through a process of REVITALISATION. Joining an existing church as its leader, bringing a team of people to be involved in partnership with those already there. He looks at the joys and advantages of this process, the role he recommends it needs to play in sharing the gospel here in the UK and also shares with honesty the difficulties that come as a new culture is grown in old soil. As he looks at the process of REVITALISATION he draws helpful comparisons between it and the process of CHURCH PLANTING – setting up a church from scratch. His aim isn’t to praise one over the other – but to identify the different aspects of these two processes. In doing so he helpfully puts the idea of a blank sheet closely under the microscope. How blank can a ‘sheet of paper’ really be?  The people involved will certainly not be blank sheets! A whole variety of baggage arrives with them and quickly gets unpacked. Traditions form before you know it and the need to evaluate and assess comes up just as speedily and brings the same sorts of conflict it does everywhere else.

John James acknowledges, however, that the process of culture setting in an entirely new entity will be a simpler and less painful process.

Culture – that intangible, yet ever-present and influential matter of ‘HOW WE DO THINGS HERE’.

In a new church the heartbeat of that culture – the ‘WHY WE DO THINGS HERE AND UNDER WHOSE DIRECTION’ tends to be closely linked to the expression of that culture as the ‘HOW WE DO THINGS HERE’ gets established. Often there will have been a lot of preparation and prayer as a team has come together and developed a united vision and a common excitement. The challenge here is to create a non-concrete culture – one that is flexible enough to question and develop and adapt and to always submit to Christ as the head. And what a challenge – culture is a quick-setting material!

In a church with an already existing culture the challenges are very different. They already have a strong sense of ‘HOW WE DO THINGS HERE’, but the heartbeat of that culture will often be hard to detect. Imagine a room that has been often, but not thoroughly, redecorated over the course of many years. Without a lot of painstaking paper peeling, paint stripping, chipping out old tiles etc. it is hard to see the original design of the room and how what you have now relates to that. Now imagine that this room is now, and has been a shared space. A shared space that has gone from generation to generation. Everyone involved will have their own (often very passionate) opinions on the various styles the space has gone through and will try to influence the current culture – the ‘HOW WE DO THINGS HERE’ to express their preferences. Some of those involved will be more influential than others. Their main goal can become to protect their cherished culture – and so the culture becomes its own heartbeat. The current culture of the room becomes its defining point and what the room was intended to be, who owns the room and who it is for quickly become irrelevant. More of an appendix than a heartbeat.

Who holds the keys to the culture of a church is of vital importance. This is pointed out in stark terms by Colin Marshall and Tony Payne in a chapter on culture change in their book entitled: The Vine Project.

They imagine a scenario where a minister is appointed to lead a church with an existing culture that is extremely distant from and often in conflict with the minister’s deeply held convictions about the gospel, about the word of God, about the purpose of the church and his role as a minister.

They ask: ” Do you think the culture would change? Perhaps over some considerable time there would be some movement. The prayerful preaching of the word would have its effect. But we might also safely predict that if the activities, structures and traditions of the congregation never changed  – if there was, in other words, no corporate repentance – then the effect of biblical sermons would be much the same as the effect of the biblical words of the Book of Common Prayer. They would be heard and acknowledged, but absorbed, assimilated and contradicted by the countervailing weight of the existing culture – of what you actually did, day by day and week by week. Or to out it another way: we need to be doers of the word and not just hearers only. Where there is no repentance there is no change. (The Vine Project, page 28, 2016 edition)

In a church REVITALISATION there needs to be more than change in the teaching programme, more than a change in the evangelism strategy or the children’s work, more than a change in how the minister divides up his time – there needs to be a change in housekeeping. A releasing of that big bunch of culture-keys that so often jangle and clink at the side of an individual or two. The bunch of keys that render certain areas off-limits, that render other areas as fixtures that can’t be questioned, obligations that must be met, certain relationships more important than others..The keys that seem quite innocuous – after all there is always the teaching programme, the evangelism strategy, the children’s work… are they really under lock and key too?

Yes – if the heartbeat of the church is its culture than they are fettered. Limited in the time and resources they are given, left to a few people who don’t fall into line, who are tethered at the margins where they can’t do too much damage and where they are unlikely to attract attention or gain influence.

This realisation has come to me as a bit if a slap in the face. Not nice, but good to know. I would rather be awake to the issue than drowsing in false confidence. We are certainly tortoises and not hares in our situation – as John James expresses it – plodding on.

So what do we do? Wrestle the keys off the housekeepers – forcefully remove them and strap them firmly to our own belts? Lull the housekeepers to sleep and ease the keys off? (I’m thinking Disney’s Robin Hood at this point). Bide our time?    

Well, if there is an answer to that question it is for another post. One thing I am convinced of is that however the keys come to be released they should not just end up in the hands of another set of housekeepers. They should hang on a nail – the nails in a wooden cross. They should hang on a hook – a hook firmly embedded in God’s word.

Of course many would ask – why try to effect a change? You’re an interloper – either join the culture or go elsewhere. What right have you got? And anyway – given how difficult it all is – why bother? As has been explored in a previous post – if it isn’t a good fit go find another foot!

This brings me to another book I am reading – The Autopsy of a Deceased Church – Thom S Rainer. If it could be shown that the church was dying – does that change things? Well it is certainly worth a pause for thought.

 

I introduced by latest project in my post Mud Pies for Jesus – 1/2/2017. Let’s call it Project Space.

Let me start by telling you about yesterday. I went to the funeral of dear friend and brother from our church family. He wasn’t much older than me, and his death was very sudden. I wept.

I wept for myself – I will miss my friend. He was a faithful member of our weekly bible study and of our Sunday morning gatherings and I will miss his fellowship. He was kind and generous and knew how to make people feel precious. It was a privilege and a joy to see the Lord at work in him. I will miss my friend and I wept.

I wept for his father. Also a member of our church family, he has lost his wife and now his son in the course of a couple of years.

I wept with joy at the hope we have in Jesus. I wept with joy that my friend is home and well and whole.

I wept with sorrow for the lost – for those who, as yet, do not have hope in Jesus.

But I also wept for our church.

I wept with sorrow that there are influential members of our church who do not believe that their friends and family, neighbours and colleagues need the hope of Jesus. I wept with sorrow that our resources and priorities as a church are reserved for the task of providing our community not with the hope of the gospel, but with a well maintained church to tell them what they want to hear and to be there as on-going something in the village.

And I wept at the reminder of the mess caused by damaged relationships. Some of those who have left our church over the past five years still live locally and so were able to come and join us in our grief and, in most cases, our hope. Let me be very clear – it was GOOD and RIGHT that we could gather together yesterday. I was glad to see my brothers and sisters. But it also made me weep with the sadness of the conflicts and hurt and loss of friendships and fellowship. The loss of partners in the gospel, the loss of co-workers in the job of sharing the hope of Jesus to those who are currently without hope. The loss of mutual encouragement as the Day approaches. The loss of those to spur and be spurred on to love and good deeds. The loss of those to gather with.

I do not write this now to accuse, or persuade. I do not bring this up now to force anyone over old ground, or to resurrect past conflict. I simply weep at where we are. I am simply telling the story behind my tears.

You see – love hurts! At least it does this side of death. I think it is a good thing that yesterday’s tears soak into the pages of Project Space as a reminder that church is not a job to get done, a task to succeed in, a doctrine to get right, or a good book to read or indeed a blog to write, but rather a messy and yet precious family that God has put a messy me in to love and be loved by in Christ. A family to sit under the Lordship of Christ with in thankfulness, endurance, forgiveness, patience, obedience, compassion, faithfulness, humility, gentleness and HOPE.

Lord, please teach me to love, teach me the truth about what you call us to as your people, show me where I need to be forgiven, and where I need to forgive. Protect me from despair, bitterness, impatience and ungodly anger as I delve into the mess. May the light of your victory, the promise of your return, and the knowledge of your love for me, for your people, for the lost and for your glory keep me in perfect peace. As my saviour taught us I pray:  Our Father in heaven, hallowed by your name, your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us. Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For the kingdom, the power and the glory are yours, now and forever, Amen.

Recently I have been spending a lot of time scrabbling around in the mud and dirt of church life. I’m not referring to that messy cupboard that I’m sure every church has – you know the one that always seems to need a good clear out and a thorough clean! Nor have I taken over the gardening for the church grounds – a relief to all concerned I’m sure!

No, I have been getting my hands and my heart dirty in the murky, muddy, messiness of what is really going on in the life of our local church. It is a mess that is well hidden. It crouches behind polite smiles, conversations about the weather and the comforting normality of coffee rotas and fundraising. It is a mess that infects PCC meetings and worms its way into letters of ‘concern’ to the powers that be – all the while never really showing itself. You catch a glimpse of it and then like a chameleon it suddenly takes on the appearance of a personality clash or a mere difference of opinion about the way we do things here. It is a poisonous mess, protecting itself from diagnosis, while still inflicting its victim (our church family) with the horrible symptoms of conflict, pain, hurt and ultimately a church that is failing to thrive and a community whose gospel light is in danger of being extinguished completely.

The thing is I quite like a mess – because when a determined group of people decide that enough is enough and commit to do something about it, you can collectively roll your sleeves up and be part of a transformation!

So what first? Well – more mess of course! As we all know – the first thing you do when you are sorting out a long neglected space is take everything out and see what you are dealing with! Imagine an attic in the process of being sorted – it will be far less tidy than an attic full of boxes of stuff, but it will also be much closer to the desired end point.

As some of you will know I am a fan of a book called ‘Organising your life from the inside out’. In it Julie Morgenstern advocates SPACE. Sorting; Purging; Allocating a place for what you are keeping; Containerising it; and then maintaining a state of Equilibrium by regular evaluation and mini-sorts.

At the moment I feel as if I am sitting in a room with all the stuff of church life laid out around me. It needs to be sorted, some needs to be purged, what is kept needs to be accommodated and containerised in our calendars, hearts, finances, prayer lives, priorities, meetings, our attitude towards our building…and then we need to plan to have regular check-ups and updates.

In future posts I will start to share some reflections from two excellent little books I have been reading – ‘Autopsy of a Deceased Church’ and ‘Renewal’.

But let me end this post with three massively important points of reference for the process.

1. This is not my ‘space’ to sort.
   • I am a member of the family, a brick in the building – but Christ is the head. It is Christ who will build his church. It is Christ who will discipline his church. It is Christ who will save the lost sheep that live around us. He does not need me to sort it all out! I am here, and I feel strongly about investigating the problems embedded in his people here – but whether I can ever go further with any ideas that come out of this investigation is in his hands.
2. The first and central task at hand is, therefore, to submit to God’s word about the church.
   • You can’t sort and purge and organise someone else’s ‘space’ until you know why the ‘space’ exists and what they want it to look like. We must not let our preferences or tradition, our history or our picture of the past, or our agreement with a well written book stand in authority over God’s commands.
3. And finally: This is not ultimately an individual task.
   • Sorting through relationships is much less straightforward than sorting out your handbag. When you decide that it is not sensible to carry around the kitchen sink all day – the kitchen sink doesn’t feel offended or unloved! While I can do some initial research and reading up on the subject alone, I need to then share what I find – or think I have found – with others who have a passion for God’s church. In turn, I will need to listen to what they have observed and noted and read and prayed about.

And so I ask the Lord, if it be his will and in his timing, to put together a group of people with a united, bibilical vision of what church is. A group of people that can then lay everything out on the table and take a good look at what we have (and what we are missing). A group of people who can prayerfully decide together, and under the Lord’s headship the best way forward for the gathered people of God in this area.

Dear Father God, you raised Christ from the dead and seated him at your right hand in the heavenly realms, far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every name that is invoked, not only in the present age, but also in the one to come. And God placed all things under his feet and appointed him to be head over everything for the church, which is his body, the fulness of him who fills everything in every way. Help me to love your people here, and to fight passionately, but lovingly to fan into flame and to protect the gospel witness of your gathered people to those around us. Thank you for my lovely sisters and brothers in Jesus whom you have placed here with us – please help us to be clear and bold in our understanding of and ‘putting into action of’ your mission for your people here. Guide my reading and my thinking and my communication, that it might only serve your purposes. In the name of the Lord Jesus – who build his church no matter what. Amen.

Chatting to the NTV one morning her was saying that people often complain to him that God unfairly sets us a standard that we can’t reach, that he asks of us what we can’t possibly give.

As we pondered this – presumably in the context of something we had just read together – we went back to the garden of Eden.

The command wasn’t hard to obey – rather it was the obedience was hard to stomach.

Satan called into question the goodness and truth of the standard God required of his people and they listened.

When mankind first sinned it was not a failure to keep an impossible standard, but the rejection of a relationship of trusting obedience with the one and only God.

And now? The standard has been met in Jesus, and the offer of relationship continues. Praise be to God that his people are proclaiming this gospel around the world and that, by his grace and mighty work of rescue, it comes to some not simply with words, but with power, with the Holy Spirit and with deep conviction and great joy! 1 Thes 1:5

Dear mighty, patient, loving Father, thank you. Thank you for the power of your gospel to save, and for your ongoing work in your people. Please work in me to increase my delight in obeying you, please increase in me my joy in and my love of your precious commands. Please help me to point people to you and to a relationship with you as Lord and saviour. In the name of the one who made that possible, Amen.

An excerpt from the prayer “My God, I thank thee, who hast made” by Adelaide Proctor.

I thank thee more that all our joy is touched with pain,
that shadows fall on brightest hours, that thorns remain;
so that earth’s bliss may be our guide and not our chain.

I thank thee, Lord, that here our souls, though  amply blessed,
can never find, although they seek, a perfect rest;
nor ever shall, until they lean on Jesus’ breast. Amen.

Fitting that I should find this turned down corner today when I am feeling rather turned down myself.

Thank you Lord that I can’t always rely on my brain chemicals or mind management skills to keep me going. Thank you Lord that I can’t rely on my children to make me feel loved and worthy of love. Thank you Lord that I can’t rely on the church where I serve to want me or to give me strength to keep going.

Lord these things are there to drive me to your breast in trusting lament, but instead I have let them chase me into a cave of practical unbelief.

Forgive me Lord that, despite my relatively strong theology in this area, practically I hold you accountable for these things. It is not just that I do not enjoy The One and Only Daughter’s rudeness, but that I ‘judge’ how good and trustworthy you are by it. Oh, forgive me my patient Father. Forgive me for responding to yet another ministry criticism with practical unbelief in you. I have measured you with these fallen markers Lord. I don’t realise that I do – I think it is the rudeness or the criticism that is crushing me, but the real wound is self-inflicted. The real punch in the gut comes from the sub-conscious conclusions that I foolishly and sinfully take from life’s rubbishness about you. And the result? I become bitter and I turn tail and run, longing to find comfort and peace, but despairing of success.

Thank you for rescuing me from myself. Thank you for this prayer, for your daughter Adelaide Proctor. Thank you for taking me from my cave of practical unbelief to your merciful breast.

Right now all I can do is weep there, to sigh and tremble in depression and exhaustion, but I’m there and that is just how it should be today. In your timing help me to start to look up and see where I am, to behold you more consciously. Help me to gently start bringing these things to you in articulated prayers, may your Spirit work in me to bring your word to bear in these situations and lead me into godliness. And thank you that there is no rush, that all is well as I rest on you in quiet and stillness. Amen.