"I AM CIDER DRINKER . . ."
Well I do like cider but that has nothing really to do with this article. Except that cider might remind us of rural Devon and I was inspired the other day by an insight from that part of the world.
Those few (and I am sad to say that it was very few) who took advantage of the opportunity to watch the DVD Expressions last month heard the story of a deanery evangelist in Devon who had set up a meeting for unchurched folk in a village hall. Sunday 4:6 gathered to learn together and to worship together. It was, however, one of the comments of the lady evangelist that really set me thinking:
‘I don’t think this is church yet. I hope we will become church. I don’t
think we are church yet because I believe that church consists of worship,
community and mission. We’ve really cracked community and we are
working on worship, but we don’t have mission yet.’
As I listened to her words part of me could not help wondering how many established congregations would qualify as church under her definition.
At the moment we are in the process of looking at worship and the results of the questionnaire are being typed up so that we can all look at them. We have done some work on developing our life as a community with the Wednesday morning coffee, Growing Space and our social events offering the opportunity for people to gather and get to know one another better. So what about mission?
I would like to suggest a twofold definition of mission:
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1.
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serving the practical needs of others
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2.
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seeking to share our faith
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Using those definitions I want to offer a challenge to ourselves as a congregation – to look at who we are and what we do in terms of mission. Whatever we are involved in whether as groups or individuals is there some small way in which we could adjust what we do to focus better on mission? Whether it be flower arranging, singing in the choir, looking after the building, organising social events, helping with Young Church I am sure that in some small way we could focus a little more on those who do not at present worship with us. I am not primarily thinking of the need to do more things or different things but to look at how we do what we already do.
Equally important are the attitudes we bring with us to our church life. Do we believe that the church is there to meet our needs? Or do we believe that we are called with others in the church to respond to the needs of the world? This is a pretty fundamental question and one that we all need to really seriously think about.
Perhaps at our AGM every year we should have an item that reports on our growth in mission over the past twelve months. Now I think I’ll make a note of that in my diary!
Yours in Christ
