2012 - what is to come.....

Since stepping out of structured church we have noticed many things that we took for granted about being in a church.  When a church is functioning well, there is a great sense of community and purpose, as well as a wonderful sense of belonging and knowing that there is a large group of people who will help and support you when needed. There is also a trusting in the Elders to tell you which way the church is going and what the plans are for the year ahead.  These are things that when you are in church, and maybe have been all your life, you may well take as a given.

This is our first New Year not having our year mapped out for us, we dont have any lists of dates of House Group Leaders meetings, or Weekends Away or prayer meetings etc.  Our year is wide open!!!  It is a very strange time for us but also very invigorating as well!  There is a great freedom in seeing an empty year ahead and watching and waiting to see what God is going to do and being ready to move when there is some clarity.  I can't say we have a lot of clarity at the moment but from what other people are saying who are in a similar situation, this isnt unusual.  Structured church has a wide path and a clear heading, you follow or go with flow, depending on what sort of person you are, and that's great.  We feel we are on a much smaller path with lots of corners and no clear view, but as we take each step along the path, things seem to fall in to place around us.  I sometimes get a glimpse of what it is we are going to be doing, but it is always just outside my peripheral vision and when I try to look directly at it, it just seems to disappear.  I know it is to do with new church, and community and breaking down old ideas but as to how this is going to look or be like, we don't really know.  We will just keep doing what we are doing until God moves us round the next corner and we see the next little bit of the path before us.  But until then our calender is wide open, and that is a wonderful thing to behold!

Church and Revival

I have been part of a local church for most of my life and have been very active in New Frontiers Churches since marrying my Husband in 1994.  We have run Housegroups, Alphas, Student Groups, led worship, been Trustees, been involved with Kids work - you name it we have done it! And for the most part have enjoyed it. But there came a point before we left our church there were more and more things that just didn't sit right with us, not because they were wrong but because we just didn't feel this was where our heart was anymore.  We weren't interested in having a church building, and being a big church in the city.  This whole ethos has never sat well with me particularly, but I thought that was the way to do it so went along with it, but really I don't think this option works for everybody.

I can see that there is a huge need for the local church and the work that they do, especially working into communities and the such like, but what about 'Joe Blogs' off the street, where does he fit into this.  However hard we try, churches seem to be middle class, academic, youth and student based organisations, not that this is wrong but there are a lot of people who don't fit into these criteria, how do they cope with a church where they don't have a 'place'.  There is coming a day when we are going to see a huge revival and I really don't think that the only people who are going to come to know Jesus in this revival will be middle class or students! How will 'Joe Blogs' or 'Josephine Blogs' cope with this alien set up of 45 minutes of worship, followed by some notices and then 45 minutes of an academically based exegesis of a bible passage?  I don't think that it is unfair to say that they probably won't cope!  So there has to be an alternative, but what is that?

This is difficult to answer at the moment, but I know that God is opening a way up for a new type of church or better still a whole new way of doing church. Have you ever given much thought to why we do church the way we do?  How much of it is tradition and dare I say religion?  What would it be like to do it completely different?  What could it look like?  These are the questions that we are pondering and asking Father God to help us with.

So we are looking at the bare bones of what church is, which is to gather with people who love God to spend time together and focus on him.  For the last couple of months we have been gathering people we know on a Friday or Saturday evening once a month, to have a meal together and have a time of worship or something along those lines.  It has been a really fantastic experience and really encouraging for us.  One of our prayers has always been that the Father blesses us with every heavenly blessing so that we can be a blessing to others and I would love our house to be a place of blessing.  One where people come in for a good meal, good company and some great worship and go off refreshed and blessed to go about their daily lives in their churches and homes. We don't want to start a church, but we want to live a life where we are the church. rather than going to a church.  I think opening up our homes is going to be an amazing way to cope with the numbers of people who will come to know God in a revival.  It wont be for everyone, as with 'Big Church', but it will definitely suit people who maybe don't fit into the other option.

How will this look as time goes on?  Well to be honest we don't really know, we are walking a path where we can't see round the corner, but we are trusting in God and know that he is leading us and that he is good all the time.  We said when we left our church that we were on an adventure to see what God was doing out there in the big wide world, we didn't know at the time that it would mean not being in a church! God moves in mysterious ways:-).