I was taking my daughter for a drive this afternoon. Fiona (my wife) was feeling washed out and I decided to give her a break and do some quality driving with my daughter. Not very eco friendly I must admit, but she loves driving around in my MX5 with the roof down, and the wonderful weather today may be our last chance this year.
So we drove around our back roads, out and about the beautiful Sussex villages that are on our doorstep. We stopped in Lindfield to look at a local cricket match.
OK, so a post about a drive and a nice cricket match. Notch up one more boring family related post. Oh not so fast.....
I've been doing a lot of thinking (navel gazing, if you like) on what is happening with the relationship between Church and the local community. And basically feeling down and depressed at how unattached church can seem from the community it surrounds.
Anyway seeing this cricket match, a few things struck me:
It is too easy to look at the UK today and say that the community has broken down in recent years. Blame Thatcher, blame commercialism, blame Sunday Trading if you like. BUT there ARE lots of places where the central Village Green still works. Maybe we can look at these places to act as our model and see why they still work....
OK so it is only a cricket match, but look just across the green and what do we see? I'll show you....
People watching Cricket, amazing! But further out......
So the picture is a bit small, but this is youth playing, apparently unorganized. This is not 8 years olds, but full blown teens. Not teens sulking in corners, not teens shooting up drugs. Teens playing Frisbee, that single wheel is a unicycle. And further out again......
People sitting on park benches....! Amazing!
OK, I'll stop with the sarcasm.
My point here is that there are places where "normal" life still goes on. Where generations mix and where community meets. OK I know this is happening all over the place, but the more I read and the more I think; the less I understand that our society is not a broken mess. That it is OK in lots of places.
I've read and heard a lot about how the church needs to get re-connected with the community and make itself the center of what is going on. I heard someone at Greenbelt talking about how annoyed they get at the church always trying to re-create what is already happening the community. Trying to replace it with church based things, re-create the wheel if you like.
All this activity to make church the center of society again.
But why should Church be the center? I can see that as Christians we want to make Christ the center, but in today's UK is it appropriate to make church the center?
It is possible that Church is not about being a mainstay of community in the 21st century. Maybe the time when that was the case has passed. BUT it doesn't mean that the church community ceases to exist, it just means that it takes it place alongside other community offerings.
We know that people need to meet Christ (OK being evangelical here, excuse me for a min). We know that it makes sense, or else why do we follow him, and most of us still call ourselves Christian?
So church is how we get people to meet Christ?
Not really in my experience. Church seems to be one of the latter stages in most things, unless there is some-kind of tragedy in life. If you know of a place where people just walk through the door, sing hymns, hear a sermon, and simply convert - please let me know!
If people need to meet with Christ, they need to meet him where they are at. If people meet him, then maybe just maybe they will want to come to church or be part of a Christian community.
So we need to be where people meet.
Not to evangelize, but to share like interests. As we get to know people, we meet their friends. Maybe they can meet one of ours. (I must write that "contagious Christian" book sometime - Oh its been done :)
Back to the cricket match.
Somewhere in that crowd of people there might just be a christian, maybe more than one. When we look at our congregations, what do we see? People who attend church once a week? What about the likelihood that these very same people are also involved in other groups. Our tendency to attend church also seems to translate in a tendency to belong to other organizations. Scouts, Political groups, and even cricket teams.
Well if Christians tend to join other groups, wouldn't the same hold true of people in those other groups. If they find something of interest, then maybe they might be willing to spend some time looking into things further.
The challenge here would then seem to be what is Sunday morning about? Seeker friendly offerings that hope someone might walk through the door and get "hooked"? Leaving the older christians to be "topped" up spiritually in home groups and other activities? Or is Sunday about worshiping the creator God, participating in the mysteries of faith? Leaving the rest of the week to live our faith in a real sense and interact with those around us?
Food for thought......?
Well that's another blast of thought come to an end. If you are still reading I'm amazed and please post a comment or send me an e-mail with your thoughts. Otherwise I hope you like the photo's and I had a lovely time with my smiling daughter!
Talk about knocking one for a six!
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