God's Work in the Trenches

An interesting post Waileia: God's Work in the Trenches partly because it lead me to two new weblogs that look interesting, so I have added them to Newsmonster.

Firstly such small hands which is the one Jesse quotes, then onwards following Lee Anne's link to open book: ABC Jesus Special by Amy.

I find it interesting that Lee Anne and even more so Jesse have narrowed down down what Amy is writing. Amy says

My fundamental distress with this whole matter is what has happened, when you get down to it, is how this whole phenomenon works to distract the world from the truth of Jesus. Be interested in Jesus as a figure in esoteric hypothesizing. Let yourself be fascinated by conspiracy theories and be taken in by flawed logic and historical fantasizing. But never, for a minute, bother with what's actually there in the Gospels. Busy yourself with reading between the lines, that you ignore the lines themselves: Jesus' words of God's love, forgiveness, Jesus crucified, Jesus risen...all ignored because it's more fun to speculate about his love life.

from this Lee Ann says

We need to remember this as we share our faith with the people around us.

and then Jesse concludes

Without consciously realizing it, this has been a constant struggle for me. God gives everybody particular gifts and talents to serve Him. For people who minister behind the scenes in a church community, it can be difficult to remember that the application of your gifts needs to result in souls finding Christ.

My concern is that it seems to be a common problem through the Church over 2000 years to narrow the gospel down. The Gospel does not close down to "application of your gifts needs to result in souls finding Christ", it is far bigger than that. If nothing else it misses (usually by taking for granted) the first commandment which is to Love God.

Maybe the problem is that too often we want to reduce God, his mission and out part to a single goal, we set a number one priority and focus entirely on that. But that does not work, instead we need to be able to accept the breadth of priorities that make up God, our relationship with him and our participation in his mission in his world. All too often we see Churches narrowing down rather than widening out their image of God and his mission. The result is a small God, limited mission and fragmentation.

For me the picture has to start with Worship, then in our response in love to God's world we will be involved in Teach, Tell, Tend, Transform, and Treasure (the 5 marks of mission from the URC church although matching those from the Church of England). This is hard, it may seem to require lots of balls in the air at the same time. But part of the challenge to the Church from the New Age movement is this need to deal with the wholeness of life and existance. So while Jesse is right to encourage the background people to take part in the "Tell" element of mission it is not to be at the expense of the others.

Of course it sounds daunting to talk of the need to be involved in all these areas. Of course we need to make the best of all the gifts that we have been given and we need to be working on our individual callings.

But as a wider Church we need to be taking the breadth of Gods mission seriously. As a Church we need to be participating in the work of the Holy Spirit in everything not only evangelism, not only in dedicated service to the poor, or ill, not only fighting for justice, not only helping people grow in faith, not only caring for the environment BUT in all these things, all the time and in all places.

Now how do we do this? How do we do this without burning each other out (something that certainly does not count as loving your neighbour)? Get this right and we really are Good News for this world!

Comments

[Jesse]

Thanks for the link, David.

I wholeheartedly agree that Christian life isn't only spreading the Good News. However, I'm not sure that I agree that Lee Anne and I are narrowing the Gospel; I think it's just a simple case of re-framing and condensing the ideas and inspirations of others.

I think what I was trying get at in my post was that, in my case at least, it's easy to forget that the church isn't just another charity, and that your actions are much more than mere community service. They have an eternal significance, and I think it's important to carry out those responsibilities with that frame of mind.

A Christian life is often joyful, but it also involves a lot of responsibility. I think Christians need to be purposeful in shouldering those responsibilities.

[Dave W]

Jesse,

Sorry for the over simplification of what you said - I agree it was a bit unfair.

I totally agree about the need to not treat the church as another charity, another reason that worship, prayer and bible study should be so central to the Christian life.

I also agree about the idea of being purposeful, but isn't that great, in a world where so many are searching for meaning we can find not just meaning but also purpose - again something to get excited about.

Dave