I began ‘ordained’ Christian ministry at the end of 1986 and was privileged to serve as Assistant Minister in a large Baptist Church in Essex. My senior colleague was likeable, charismatic, a gifted preacher and a lover of country music! As a church we engaged in various activities to ‘get people into the church’ premises. Among the outreach events that people were invited to come and experience were for example, a couple of ‘Sing Country’ evenings – where he and I would play our guitars and sing with one of the ladies in the church. We did all we could to get people ‘into church’ and they came, and by the grace of God many became followers of Jesus, were baptised and are still serving him today. I recently checked out church attendance stats in the 80’s and it was just under 12% - almost 1 in every 8 people attended church back then. Plan A was to ‘get people into the church building’, share the gospel and see them respond to Jesus, come to faith, and be baptised.
A few weeks ago, I was privileged to meet with the ministers and leaders in one of our geographical networks in Webnet (often referred to as Clusters). It was an evening of sharing ‘where we’re at’ and what God is currently doing among us. We reflected on various things – one of which was reaching our communities with the love and message of Jesus. A shared reflection that emerged more than once was, ‘we know we can’t just expect people to come to us – we need to go to them’.
The most recent church attendance statistics suggest a current figure of at best 5% of the population in England as attending church regularly (which is defined as at least once a month). This is very different from my 1980’s experience that I mentioned above. (To be fair, recently my colleagues and I have been hearing of occasional people simply turning up at some of our churches; however, I don’t think we can consider waiting for people to do so to be our only or even our main strategy for reaching those in our communities).
If we assume that we do need to ‘go to’ our neighbours, or more accurately intentionally ‘be among’ or ‘be alongside’ our neighbours, colleagues, friends, and family members, it becomes vitally important for us to show the character of Jesus and also live out his values as we do life together. The apostle Paul knew this was important in his cultural context too – writing to the Philippian Christians, ‘your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus’ (Philippians 2). He sees the need for Jesus’ followers to reflect Jesus’ character. Eugene Peterson paraphrases Paul’s words to the church in Rome like this, ‘Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you.’
This is a great and noble objective, but as I look back on my own over 50 years journey of discipleship, sadly I must acknowledge that my (spiritual) ‘maturity’ is not as ‘well-formed’ as I might have hoped for. I’ve been to church a lot over the years! I’ve read the Bible a fair bit. I’ve done homegroups. I’ve led homegroups! I’ve prayed and been to prayer meetings – I even fell asleep in one as a teenager! I’ve done the ‘full nine yards’ of church and church activities, and my ‘attitude’ at times doesn’t seem to reflect that of Christ Jesus. I may be alone in this, but I humbly suggest that’s not the case. This is why I find myself asking, to what extent have our church practices and activities of the past 50 years (or much longer than that) been successful in shaping and forming men and women who display the character of Jesus and publicly live out his values among neighbours, colleagues, friends, and family members? Today, we talk quite a lot about discipleship – which is good and important, but it leaves me asking, how well are our current activities, our church programmes, forming disciples who look and act like Jesus. The late Dallas Willard once said, ‘The greatest issue facing the world today, with all its heart-breaking needs, is whether those who . . . are identified as “Christians” will become disciples—students, apprentices, practitioners—of Jesus Christ, steadily learning from him how to live the life of the Kingdom of the Heavens into every corner of human existence.’* Let me invite you also to ask ‘my’ question. If you’re a church member or attender, ask your minister or leadership team what they think, maybe even ask them, if this is a prayerful conversation you might have in your church? If you’re a minister or a church leader, let me invite you to explore this with your colleagues and after that with your church. Let me make it clear that my aim here is not to create dissatisfaction, but rather to enable a prayerful and creative conversation, which by God’s grace may lead to action which helps to better produce Christian men and women characterised by ‘well-formed maturity.’
May it be so for the glory of God and the good of the world he loves.
Alisdair Longwill.
*Comer, John Mark. Practicing the Way (p. 34). SPCK. Kindle Edition.
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