J.John Conference – Part 3

Healing

I don’t think any of us would be ashamed of acknowledging that we’re a bit dysfuntional. Most of us would also admit tat we could do with a bit of healing in one area of our lives or another because we’ve all got hurts, hang-ups or habits.

On Tuesday at Kidsplus I was teaching the children the story of Jesus healing the Leper, and we prayed together for God to heal something physical in the life of someone we know, to heal an emotional hurt in our own life and to heal a relationship. Christ healed many. God is a God of healing – He offers it to us all. I believe God heals, I really do, but I am also sceptical and I think that that’s probably because it wasn’t something mentioned at church, or in my life at all, till I was about 16.

J.John really challenged me on this though. He said that the church had abdicated its responsibility to healing. We should be praying for the ill in our congregations but also practically doing what we can for them. The example he gave was paying for a hip replacement to be done privately when it would leave the person suffering for months if they stayed on an NHS waiting list.

The Body of Christ is made up of many parts – that’s many people with many talents and professions and we should be using them within our congregations to offer healing ministries for those who need them.

J.John offers a prayer for healing at every meeting he is a part of, he makes it a priority and he perseveres because God honours perseverance. I can’t really imagine what the reaction would be if my minister was to start praying for healing for members of our congregation in services. I know it happens individually but to make it a part of a service . . . I honestly don’t know if people would be okay with it or not.

Spiritual Gifts

J.John spoke about how our churches are built upon volunteers now and more often than not we’re willing to give anyone a go at anything. But he says that instead we should be seeking to help people discover their spiritual gifts and allow them to use them, to fulfill the purpose for which God created them.

Tom did a series over the summer last year with the youth about spiritual gifts and, whilst it was really good, I’m still none the wiser as to what mine are! I just don’t know. I am sure though that in time God will reveal them to me and put me in situations where I can explore and use them.

We’re each gifted in one way or another and God’s got a job for us within His Kingdom. We need to discover what we’re meant to be doing and we should be excited to do it too! – there should be an attitude of service instilled in each of us, for even Christ came not be served but to serve.

J.John Conference – Part 2

Being Accessible

William Temple once said, “The Church is the only society that exists for the purpose of those who are not its members”

J.John’s three Ws of church: worship, wellbeing and witness. According to him 95% of our money, time, resources and energy are spent on worship and wellbeing – and so are church staff. Their time is focussed around times of worship and caring for the existing congregation. But shouldn’t we get it back to a 33% each balance? Have staff members whose primary job is to evangelise. As well as this though, Paul told Timothy to pastor his church as though an evangelist – we should be working as evangelists whatever our position within the church. 

We need to be continually re-evaluating what we’re doing, how we’re doing it and why we’re doing it in order to ensure we’re being as accessible as possible. It’s not about “guest services” (J.John was very anti-guest services!) but about ensuring every service is as accessible as possible. I was struck that maybe we at St.C’s should put the same effort into making every service as accessible as services such as Holiday Club or Prize Giving and other all agey type ones.

Of course, if we’re going to have services like that we need to have new people along to them! That means us stepping out of the comfort zone and inviting people in. And once they’re in we’ve got to let them belong. J.John said that someone had put it like this:

People used to have to believe, then learn to behave before they could belong in the church. But now we’re creating a culture where you feel you belong so you can grow to believe and then learn to behave.

I’m not convinced this is “used to”. I think it’s still the reality. If people can’t conform to our model immediately, if they’re not instantly on board with our image requirements, lifestyle expectations and belief systems then they’ll get funny looks,  left on the fringes and eventually they’ll walk away. We do different, you want in you’ve got to be one of us. Maybe I’m being a little harsh, over-exagerating. But I think we still have this idea of “If you’ve want to be a Christian, you’ve got to be one of us”. Thing is, Christ will accept them and let them belong before they sort anything out, before they change anything, just as they are.

J.John also had abit of a rant about terrible church coffee. Now I think we all agree with this one! We certainly complain about it enough! We wouldn’t serve bad coffee and biscuits in our homes so why do it in church. It’s a mentality thing – if people recieve good coffee, nice cakes (now that one St.C’s can do!) and a bit of a chat and a smile they’ll feel more comfortable and welcome. We need to be generous and hospitable.

J.John Conference

After his appearance at Souled Out on Tuesday night J.John was leading a day conference thing yesterday so Stef, Dan, Tom, Louis and myself toddled along. (:) sorry, just imagining those guys toddling – I’d like to reassure you they’re getting very good at walking!) It was a really good day – J.John is a great communicator (though not quite as good as the legend that is Trey, as Stef pointed out) and he gave us all alot to think about. So much, infact, that I filled over eight pages of my notebook. This means I’m not going to post everything here but will try and sift it out to the stuff I found most challenging and applicable.

This first big thing for me was what he said about prayer (shock) and priorities. Apparently the average amount of time a pastor spends in prayer is three minutes a day! I’m sorry but that is ridiculous. If pastors aren’t praying how can congregations be expected to? And if pastors aren’t praying how can they expect to know and follow God’s will for their church? If it gets to the point where we make our pastors so busy they can’t even find a half hour to an hour to spend with God we need to seriously rethink some stuff and give them back that time.

J.John likes to use funny little catchphrases and tag-lines so here are some about prayer and priorities I scribbled down:

• The Lord of the work is more important than the work of the Lord.
• Mary had a little lamb, given to her to keep. But then it went and joined the church and died from lack of sleep.
• If our output exceeds our input then our upkeep will be our downfall. (that one may take more thought power to process but does make a lot of sense)
• A leader doesn’t have to meet everyone’s needs, only ensure that everyone’s needs are met.

He said that we are only given enough time in our lives to do the will of God – so why do we keep saying we don’t have enough time?! (One of my favourite phrases recently). It must mean that we are doing things which aren’t the will of God or that they are God’s will for someone else. So what are our priorities? It’s important that we know because when we don’t live by priorities we live by pressures.

Prayer should be our number one priority. John Stott told J.John that he would pray for 1 hour a day, 1 afternoon a week, 1 day a month, 1 week a year. What’s our rythm of prayer? How much time do we set aside for it? Do our lives revolve around prayer or prayer around our lives? How can you make it a higher priority?

(More about how I’m going to do that over the next couple of weeks later.)

I’m actually going to leave it there and put up more stuff in a different post later.

Souled Out

Last night was Souled Out with Brenton Brown leading worship and J.John speaking – it was a fantastic night! And I loved it being at the Music Hall, such a great setting to worship God in.

Brenton Brown writes some great songs – ones that have become favourites of mine these past few months – but as I was singing I couldn’t help but laugh a little because his songs are quite . . . tame? Not sure if that’s the right word. I’ve been thinking more and more about our image of Jesus recently and have been challenged to see him as more of a revolutionary, more of a risk taker and challenger of the norm. He was not the blonde haired, white robed, politely smiling and gently spoken man with a funny glowing aura that we like to paint a picture of. He was real: he was passionate and funny and got angry and made sly digs at the authorities of his time and scolded his disciples and enjoyed playing with children! He was real!! As you’ve been reading I’ve also been thinking about the anger of God and particularly this week about the image of the resurrected Jesus given in Revelation 1 with eyes of fire, a sword protruding from his mouth and a voice like thunder. And here we are singing nice songs about the gentle, gentle Lamb of God. Made me smile.

At one point during the worship Brenton stopped playing and started the congregation/audience (not sure what to call them) singing Amazing Grace. A small glimpse of heaven I can assure you. Reminded me of the description in Revelation (chapter 7) of “a vast crowd, too great to count, from every nation and tribe and people and language, standing in front of the throne and before the Lamb . . . And all the angels were standing around the throne and around the elders and the four living beings. And they fell before the throne with their faces to the ground and worshiped God”. Heaven is going to be awesome!!

J.John was a really interesting speaker. I was a little wary of his lack of bible reading but he did use biblical stories to illustrate his points and actually gave a really brilliant rendition of the Feeding of the 5000. He spoke about a lot of stuff so I’m not going to try to tell you everything and I’m pretty sure his message will be on the Souled Out website pretty soon. The main thing I remember and will take away (other than a lot of funny anecdotes and cheesy tag lines I’ll recycle in the future) was when he asked us to consider our lives to be like a car on a road and to think about where in the car Jesus was. Is he in the boot? – only taken out for that religious happy hour on a Sunday but the rest of the time no one knows he is there. Is he in the back seat? – a passenger in life without any real influence. Is he in the front passenger seat? – a companion in our lives but still a passenger and not the one in control. Or, yes you’ve guessed where this is going, is he in the driving seat? – leading the way, choosing the path taken. And are you a backseat driver, complaining about or trying to influence decisions? 

To be honest I don’t think I’m any of the above. In the “car” of my life, Jesus sits on the roof. That’s right, I’ve tied him to the roof rack. He’s there for everyone to see, no one can miss Him, everyone knows. But I’m the one in the driving seat. Jesus is still in relative control because He shouts instructions down through the window – He can see the route ahead because He’s sitting on the roof, the difficulties and the easier bits, so He’s able to guide me through. Thing is, sometimes I choose not to listen and, at other times, I can’t quite hear Him – usually when I’m driving too fast and it makes it really windy. I want Him to get down off the roof and into the driver seat, I’m just going to have to work at listening and letting go of that steering wheel.

J.John also challenged us to think about our witness and evangelism and posed the questions: What are you doing about being a Christian? Do you live up to the name? It’s easy for me to think that because I work for church I’m off the hook, that I fill my quota of Gospel spreading work and whatever else I happen to manage is like over-time. I couldn’t be more wrong if I tried! My witness at home and in school is equally as important as my work at church. It’s more difficult and requires more sacrifice but it’s something God requires of me.

At the end of his talk J.John asked anyone who wanted to make a first time commitment to Christ, or a re-commitment to Christ, to stand and pray with him. Now, I’m not usually up for that sort of thing. Sometimes God gives me a mighty big shove to go forward when a preacher makes a request and even then I really have to psyche myself up and talk myself into it (I can think of maybe 3 occasions out of many when this hasn’t been the case) but last night was different. As I sat with my eyes closed and he made the appeal I just knew I was going to stand. I actually stopped listening to J.John and once I was on my feet became concerned I’d stood at the wrong time! I want to reassure you I have not experienced a crisis of faith or committed some terrible sin, I was in a good place with God and I think maybe that’s why I felt the need to stand. I wanted to get on my feet to show and to say, “God, I love you! You’re Awesome! And I want you to get off the roof of the car and into the driving seat! Again!”

J.John sent all those who had stood out to the foyer (but we were actually in the bar) for prayer and some bloke prayed for us all. Unfortunately, it meant I missed my favourite Brenton Brown song Everlasting God. Gutted. I’m taking it as a sign that I’m going to have to go and see him again at some point, which I’m not complaining about because he was really good

This post is over 1000 words long. Sorry. Congratualtions if you got through it though and sorry if it’s kept you from your work or up past your bed time.