Life beyond these walls

There is the oft used phrase, we need to think outside of the box.

When we think about church, we are often conditioned to think about it in certain ways.

We see falling church numbers. I'm not sure if it is still true but it used to be a truism that if you asked any young person what they thought about church and they would say that it was boring. Numbers are falling and this should be a concern, but the picture is more complicated.

When I was at University I went to a church that could easily seat 400 and then probably had about a hundred, it now no longer meets in the large church sanctuary but in the rather more personal hall. I was talking to one of the older members about how to get people in church and he said something that always struck me. He said that we were called to be salt and light, but sometimes we were going to be faithful and people would not respond, but we were called to be faithful. It was at a prayer meeting, they were open to change, but they saw the key problem was that people did not like the message, and therefore changing the presentation was not the issue - people still did not want the message. They were called to be faithful.

Elsewhere in Glasgow the Late Late Service met, they had started in a nightclub and tried to be accessible, but still when you stripped away all the earthly barriers people did not come. They tried as hard as possible to remain faithful and yet meet people where they were, and yet still people would not come. Of course, that does not remove the significance of what they did, because it gives them the right and others to move deeper with people. To say even if we stripped away the cultural barriers you still will not come, let's talk about the real issues.

Jesus said that it was harder for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven than for a camel to go through the eye of a needle. We live in a society that despite all its problems thinks we have made it. We have science to explain the world. We have TV to entertain us. We have food in our stomachs, and healthcare. We may not be immortal, but death is not something most of us see often. We are so busy, we think we do not need nor have time for God. It is irrelevant, something from another century. Who needs God today? It is just superstition.

The Bible emphasises that Jesus is the narrow way and few find it. Jesus does not barter or cut His cloth to fit the fashions. When He died, He did not lead a multitude, there were just a few followers. We may want Pentecost when at least 3000 were saved to be a normal experience for the church, but clearly it is not. Persecution followed, and people fled. Christianity took over the Roman Empire, but it was corrupted by it's growth and the position of true faith has always been fragile. We can emphasise what a brilliant teacher Jesus was and how He connected with ordinary people, but they still did not understand what He was about (even his closest disciples for much of the time) and it was the crowd that called for his crucifixion.

Christianity has shaped the modern world, in many ways the root of our problem is not the failure of the church but its success. The church once had such a dominant role in society because it educated, it cared for the sick and the needy, it taught right and wrong, and much more like having a strong role in the arts. Today in the UK the state has taken over many of these roles, and everyone accepts that they pay taxes to support them. The fact that it seems almost everyone accepts that the poor should be looked after, that education for all is a good thing, that we should care for the sick, that slavery is wrong, is a sign of the coming of the Kingdom of God. The values of the Kingdom still are mainstream values, they may have been modified in part, there may be some values which are incompatible, but Christian values are still the foundation of how we live in the UK.

We are blessed by our Christian past every day. If Jesus had not come the world would be a very different place. The light has shone, the salt has made its savour.

The problem is that he church has so successfully shaped life outside of its walls, that people no longer see as necessary the spiritual life within. The problem is that we need God, and therefore without God we fall. The blessings of the past do not last forever.

We need balance here, many people today, even who would never go to church, do acknowledge God. The media in Britain tends to be a lot more anti-religious than the majority of people. Or perhaps those that are anti-God tend to be effective in how they use the media, while those who love God are not so much.

It is not that we need really to start thinking outside of the box, but to get rid of the box altogether, and instead to seek God and start seeing the world through his eyes. A large part of the Bible is prophecy to the peoples and perhaps we need to learn to be a more prophetic. Turning away from God has inevitable, if not immediate consequences.

However we can be far too fixated with words, when people need to see Christ in what we do. Our spiritual forebears formed schools because children needed educating, they formed orders to care for the sick and charitable institutions to care for the poor. If we are to be a prophetic people, what new works would God call us to? The state may be doing education, healthcare, but there are other needs. The church still is a major force in the hospice movement, but we need to keep asking how can we serve. Jesus said whatever you do for the least of these you do for me, what can we do for Jesus today?