God creeping in at the edges

We had an excellent Pentecost Later Service last night. It worked really well despite being deceptively simple in structure.

We started with an explanation and then listened to three songs that in various ways explore what it means to be human in today's world - U2's Magnificent, the Killers Human (my favourite single of recent months) and Brett Dennen's Aint No Reason. People were invited to chat about how they felt about the songs as they played (they had lyric sheets to help them).

For further exploration we had three zones - one with the newspapers, one with notes on the section of Mark's Gospel we'd reached by yesterday and an art zone. In each of these people were invited to explore how we express our humanity in the worlds of work and politics, arts and culture.

The same questions were displayed in each zone - What does it mean to be human? What’s our calling as humans? What’s my calling? What does the Holy Spirit have to do with this? - plus some more specific ones.

Having meandered between zones for half an hour, we came back together for some liturgy and simple illustrative rituals - washing our hands to symbolise the cleansing that comes through the Spirit, drinking water as a symbol of refreshment and being anointed with oil as a sign of being filled with the Spirit to live as the people God calls us to be.

It was all very simple. yet it was a very profound evening. One reason for this was that we'd learned of the death of a regular member of our later service and the format gave space for those particularly affected by the news.

But I think something else was going on which is that when people are given freedom to explore a fairly well focused subject, that's what they do. And while they do that in a variety of ways, God is able to creep in around the edges and surprise us.

So, it was a good, simple and in many ways profound evening where lots of us encountered God in ways that aren't often possible in church.

Learning lessons from Paul?

Looking forward to the evening service today. It's the last one in its current time-slot - next week we have two (more on that in a moment).

The reason I'm looking forward to tonight is that we reach the climax of our reflections on Clustering around the Table based on 1 Corinthians 11-14. And I am keen to explore whether the model Paul assumes - relatively small, home-based gatherings around the meal table - is a model that would help us build community and share our faith with our neighbours in more informal and interactive settings.

The early believers took the Greco-Roman symposium as their model for what happened when they met - a meal followed by a structured conversation in which everyone participated. One of the key things to notice in this, it seems to me, is that the early followers of Jesus didn't create something new and didn't amend something noticeably religious as the pattern for their gatherings. So, could we take the dinner party or summer BBQ as our model for church?

Next week we launch our new evening programme for an experimental period. We're replacing the hallowed catch-all 6:30pm service with two gatherings. At 4:45pm we'll be having a classic-style service with hymns - old and new - prayers and a sermon. Then at 7pm we'll have a late service with more contemporary music, an informal feel and interactive worship and teaching. It will include elements from our cafe-style gatherings and a more flexible and fluid approach.

It'll be interesting to see how it goes. My hope is that over time it might double the numbers coming in the evenings as people feel able to invite their friends to one or other of the services. Our primary aim in all this is mission - we want to provide people of varying temperaments worship formats that they feel comfortable inviting their friends to.

Of course, in many ways this is but a stepping stone along the way to working out how we might apply what we've been exploring in Clustering around the Table to how we create church here that builds believers and provides opportunity for others to hear and respond to the Christian message.

In due course, it would be good to see groups meeting in cafes and pubs on Sunday and other evenings through the week in order to do and be church. But revolutions start with baby steps...

Priorities for embodying the good news

I'm clearing the decks so that Linda and I can get away for 36 hours to France before the winter sets in. We're off tomorrow - going through the tunnel for the first time.

So, I've been working on a church ethos and values statement which I'll share once the elders and leaders have taken a good look at it. It's been interesting thinking about what the church stands for, what values we embody as a community.

In many ways it's exciting to be thinking through these kinds of policies for how we run ourselves as a church. We've also been agreeing a covenant - a process that's not yet halfway through but is progressing slowly - thinking about new ways of doing leadership and firming up job descriptions for the ministry team.

All this is vital at some level, but I have to say, I'm not sure it's why I went into the ministry!

I've been reflecting a little on where my priorities lie (you have to when you're writing a job description for yourself!) or what my calling is. I've always seen my primary gifting as teaching and missional leadership (by which I mean looking for opportunities beyond the confines of the church community to earth and embody the gospel so that large numbers benefit and some find faith in Jesus).

I guess I'm hoping that the stuff we're doing at the moment will free me to do that in the coming months.

I'm also increasingly convinced that my studies in the social history of the New Testament (a suitably vague term for my area of interest) is actually a vital part of my missional leadership. I am finding all kind of resources in my studies that fuel questions about what we're doing today and why. If we are going to break out of the way we've been and done church as baptists for the last 200 years (and I believe we must if we are going to have any future), then the way the early Christians embodied the good news of Jesus in their culture holds vital lessons for us. And merely picking our favourite NT text and turning it into a system will not do!

I'm convinced that structure and organisation matter far less than ethos and values, that operational systems cannot be put above relationships and that being busy in church is no substitute for living a Christian life in communion with others.

How do you describe your church?

Excellent post by Andy Goodliffe (who's blog is increasingly unmissable, jammed full of essential stuff) on the language we use about church. Check it out at andygoodliff.typepad.com/my_weblog/