Infiltration

Last Central Gathering Richard and Jenny Dean shared their vision for the MSC they are leading called The Wanderers. They mentioned that part of their strategy was 'infiltration' - I love the idea of this - it is quite a word to use! It just articulates something of what we should be like as Disciples - people who seek after God's work in the world around us - not necesarily providing things that people come to but going to where they are, where life is and becoming part of it. So they are part of a number of groups and seek to share life with the people it seems they are connecting with.
Jesus' strategy for evangelism was of this type - to enter a place, see whether there is a welcome, where there is peace and the opportunity to stay. See Matthew 10.
All the MSC's in some ways function around this idea - that there are appointments that God has prepared for us, people of peace, doors opened out there in the world around us. So we continue to seek to be a church of communities of disciples in the mission of Jesus with a message not of 'you come to us' but 'we'll come to you'.

Counting the cost to be fit for service

Last Sunday at our twice a month central gathering we were looking at 3 of Jesus' encounters with people:

As they were walking along the road, a man said to him, "I will follow you
wherever you go." Jesus replied, "Foxes have holes and birds of the air have
nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head." He said to another
man, "Follow me." But the man replied, "Lord, first let me go and bury my father." Jesus said to him, "Let the dead bury their own dead, but you go and proclaim the kingdom of God." Still another said, "I will follow you, Lord; but first let me go back and say good-by to my family." Jesus replied, "No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for service in the kingdom of God." Luke 9:57-62

I noted 3 challenges for us as followers:

1) Comfort - the guy who tells Jesus he will follow him and maybe expects congratulation and affirmation only to be probably surprised or even shocked by Jesus telling him that his way of life is one where he gets nowhere to lay his head. It is not a comfortable way.

2) Convenience - this guy seems to have a pretty good reason not to respond immediately to Jesus calling him to follow. Jesus' reply challenges the way in which we seem to find all sorts of plausible excuses not to put following Jesus first in our lives. We fit Jesus into our diaries and calendars forgetting that we wil live better by submitting them first to him.

3) Distraction - "I will follow you, Lord; but first let me..." - how many times do we function by the word 'but'? Too much. It isn't wrong for someone to want to say goodbye - it just isn't great to be distracted - there are always things that could distract us - I am writing this with lots of commotion of our family-life around me and am having to concentrate hard so as not to lose the thread of my thoughts. It is so easy to find an excuse for not following NOW. As Jesus points out, if we were ploughing and kept looking back the furrow we have created will be next to useless for sowing and harvesting. So often we look at other things, we look back and find ourselves moving in the wrong direction. We are therefore not fit for kingdom purposes.

As we continue to develop mission shaped communities we will find that there are times when we have to tackle these kinds of things in ourselves - are we ready to count the cost?

Psalm 84 Pilgrimage

Blessed are those whose strength is in you,
whoose hearts are set on pilgrimage.
As they pass through the valley of Baca,
they make it a place of springs;
the autumn rains also cover it with pools.
They go from strength to strength,
till each appears before God in Zion.
Psalm 84:5-7

This Psalm beautifully describes something of our vision.
Finding Strength in the Lord
We seek to be people who find strength in God. The journey for this church has been the stripping away of all the things that usually churches find strength in - we must be wary of seeking strength in anything but God. Strength to strength - as in our weakness we find our strength in him.

Hearts set on Pilgrimage
Pilgrimage - a journey to God, with God, seeking God and experiencing his company. On the move, community on the go.

Bringing life and blessing
The valley of Baca is the place of tears - as we go we expect that the Lord's work in us will be life-giving - springs and God-blessing - pools.

Men's Retreat

Recently a group of us went away overnight. We had a great time talking, worshipping, praying, eating and drinking and learning to shoot arrows together. I was struck (not by an arrow, thankfully) but by a number of other things. First that this grouping was mostly people who have joined the church over the last 12-14 months (fantastic!). Secondly, that we still need to form and develop relationships with each other and this kind of thing organised so well by Carl Good is a really good thing! Thirdly that we must keep the pressure up in our own lives as well as as a whole church to make sure we are clear about our target - that we have something to aim at. As we saw during our archery lesson if you aim at the bullseye you are almost sure to hit somewhere in the target. I see far too many people's lives that are targetless. We need to aim at something, we are designed to function in this way. Somebody once said that "we need a big vision, but a tight focus" - are we focussed enough?

As people with a heart for sharing God's love with those around us we are in what fighter pilots might call 'a target rich environment' - in other words there is no shortage of targets for the receiving of the good news - however we have to make sure we are asking the Lord to help us focus on the right target - the one that is being prepared by the Holy Spirit.

So often we are targetting the wrong things, pointing in the wrong direction or trying to hit too many things at once - the vision needs to be big but the focus needs to be tight. We need revelation from God because without it we don't work within the right restraints and if that happens, like an arrow released without control and thought, something or somebody could get hurt. Proverbs 29:18.

What a great time

The New Wine Leadership conference this week here in Harrogate has been fantastic. Those of you who know me won't be surprised that I have been energised with the networking side of it. The speakers were of really good quality - prophetic voices of practioners in kingdom things in their specific contexts.
Personally I was struck by the challenge to focus on your higher calling as a disciple and child of God rather than being dominated by the leadership calling. I realise that I can get so wrapped up in the leadership task that I lose sight of the call to relationship with the Lord and with others. Somebody once said that they had met a French theologian who had been reflecting on the first question she might be asked on entering heaven. She came to the conclusion that it would probably be "where are the others?" Are there 'others' in my daily life? Or am I/we to wrapped up in other things like 'church' or 'work' or 'family' or 'troubles' or 'leadership' to be even aware of 'others'?
People who are wrapped up in themselves make very small parcels.

We (myself, Penny and the kids plus Mo and Andrew Clarke) had a great time also with St Andrew's Starbeck. We saw the Lord really stirring people up and doing some lovely things in their lives. Jesus is so good.... why would we really want anyone or anything else in our lives?

God is great but sometimes not so great things happen. We are sad that Rachel and Mark Turner will be moving on from St Mary's. What we hope for and anticipate won't always work out so all we can do is to return to Jesus.

Moving from the mountain

I was reading Deuteronomy 1:3-18 this morning and one verse in particular stood out "You have stayed long enough on this mountain" (v6).

Movement is one of the signs of life - our instinct so often is to seek to settle down, to stay in one place - but the Lord kept calling the people on. There was more to come - something to aim for, to move towards... the place of promise. I had the distinct impression that the Lord was nudging me to continue the movement into his purposes for St Mary's. One of the main pictures we have worked with as a church over the last 16 months or so has been that of the pillar of cloud/fire leading the people on.... they stopped when it stopped and moved when it moved - a marvellous picture of revelation and response.... God moves... I move.... God stops.... I stop. In the coming months we will have to finalise a decision to move in the direction of becoming a network church - a network of communities with their unique mission and ways of functioning. This will mean deciding what not to do, and what to do more of. It will mean deciding to move from the 'mountain' of Anglican parish ministry that we presently occupy and for a time has been the right place to be and instead move into the unknown of being an Anglican new church of communities springing up wherever God appoints... a distant dream maybe... but possible under God.

I followed up by reading John 20:1-10 and found myself thinking that v8-9 suggests that full understanding doesn't always accompany belief - the 'other disciple' (John?) we are told "saw and believed" but then it says they didn't fully understand. This will be the case for us. Continually. As we head towards our vision of releasing communities of disciples to live the mission of Jesus we will find that belief isn't always accompanied immediately by understanding. If we always look for understanding first then we will be disappointed... if we trust that understanding will come as we do what we believe then there will be joy and quite an adventure.

So we must see... (which may involve looking into a grave - looking death in the face?), we must believe (assent to/agree with/do what we see) and then we will understand.

Messy Church

This Saturday one of our MSC's begins Messy Church - if you want to know more have a look at our website http://www.stmarysharrogate.org/ The idea is that we have a chance to gather a whole load of families together for Glue, Glitter and God once a month as well as gathering around food in someones house and a small group at other times. This MSC is known as Outnumbered - the name taken from the BBC sitcom of family life - "Outnumbered follows the daily chaos of family life and two parents and three young children locked in an unequal contest." So much of family life is chaotic and challenging - Outnumbered MSC reckons that it is a good idea to include God in it!

Things often feel chaotic, or at the very least messy, in our lives. Somebody recently wrote about change, commenting that we are okay with continous change, the kind of change that develops out of what has gone before and can be anticipated and managed, .... but it is discontinuous change that is our main challenge a kind of change that is disruptive and unanticipated, that we feel ill equipped to deal with. This kind of change seems to be what we are so often dealing with in our present circumstances but we believe that God brings order out of chaos, that he redeems and turns things around. We are a people of hope even in the face of change and uncertainty and we see this being worked out in our lives as we remain faithful to him and his promises.