Stunned Into Silence by God!

Just over a year ago God spoke to me.  I was on retreat from college at Ampleforth Abbey in the Yorkshire Dales and had gone for a walk on my own in the Abbey’s extensive grounds.  I reached the woods on the far side and sat down amongst the trees to be quite, to enjoy the beauty of nature all around me and to seek the presence of God.

As I sat on the slightly damp autumn leaves with my long black coat spread round me like a cloak God spoke to me in that still small voice.  His message to me that day was that the future of the church lies not in continuing separation and disharmony but in combining the very best that each distinct flavour of Christianity has to offer.  At least that was the impression I received and I am still trying to work out exactly what that means.

Tonight, at college, we had a special college communion for Ash Wednesday which included The Imposition of Ashes.  This is, as I understand it, an Anglican and possibly Roman Catholic service and one I have not come across in any Methodist church; though I dare say there may be some who do this.  I found it to be a most moving and deeply spiritual service, one of the very best things that the Church of England can offer to the wider church.

It was at the end of the service that the Imposition of Ashes took place, as we filed out into a dark churchyard for the final blessing.  The minister standing at the church door made the sign of the cross on my head with ashes and said, ‘Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.  Turn away from sin and be faithful to Christ.’

For me it was a moment of deep penitence; a moment when I realised more deeply and profoundly than ever before that I am a fallen creature who is utterly reliant on Christ for my salvation.  It was a reminder that I am a mortal and finite creature and yet through the grace of God I have received eternal life and can be certain that I will be with God for ever.

As I walked slowly out into the churchyard and looked up at the stars shining in the clear night sky; as I stood before the wooden cross, the symbol of Christ’s sacrifice: I felt stunned, I couldn’t speak or even think or move.  I just stood in the silence and stillness, the vastness of creation before me and an awareness of my own smallness and insignificance filling me and it hit me all over again that God loves me, even me; and that had I been the only person who ever lived and sinned he would still have given his son to die for me.

As I write now I still feel in awe, a sense of wonder and amazement fills me along with a profound sense of peace.  I have been truly blessed by our God this evening and I pray that through the ministry to which he has called me others too would know that awesome and humbling sense of the reality of the presence of God in their lives.

Father God, please take me and use all that I am and all that I will be for your glory.  In Jesus name.  Amen.

Two Faithful Preachers - Proud To Be A Methodist 4

Since the Methodist Recorder began running its Proud to Be a Methodist campaign I have written on three different reasons why, although I am first and foremost a Christian and disciple of Jesus Christ, I am also very proud to be a member of The Methodist Church and in training to become a Methodist Presbyter.

What has made me immensely proud to be a Methodist today are two lay preachers I had the privilege of learning from as I trained to become a lay preacher myself.

The first of these men is Colin Maleham who retired today from active preaching after 52 years of faithful service.  That is a long time to be active in a particular ministry within the church and is something that was quite rightly celebrated by the congregation this morning at the church where Colin preached today.  I had the genuine privilege of being invited to read the two scriptures for this morning’s service and also to deliver the benediction at the end.  Colin preached what must have been one of the best sermons of his 52 years and goes out on a definite high.  The North Fylde Circuit will be the poorer for no longer hearing Colin preach the word of God faithfully, but after 52 years he deserves his retirement from the task he has so faithfully committed to for over half a century.  There are other faithful preachers of the gospel on the Circuit, both ordained and lay, but I know Colin’s faithful preaching and sensitive leading of worship will be missed.

The second preacher I would like to mention is David Simpson who went to be with the Lord last year after a long battle with cancer.  He was a member at the church I attended this morning and another faithful preacher of the gospel who I learned a great deal from.  It still seems strange going to that church and not seeing him sitting at the church sound desk.  I continue to benefit from David’s devotion to his Lord because this morning his widow, Lorraine, offered me some of his theology books; an offer I greatly appreciated.  David’s preaching ministry wasn’t as long as Colin’s but I know that he is still greatly missed by all the congregations who benefitted from that ministry. 

I am proud to have known both these men and to have benefitted from their faithful service to God in more ways than I could tell.  The same goes for the other Methodist lay preachers whose worship leading and sermons I have been blessed with over the years.  It is a little known fact that the majority of services in this country in Methodist Churches on a Sunday are led by lay preachers.  Like Colin and David these faithful men and women serve their Lord in this way Sunday after Sunday for no reward other than serving God.

 
The faithful band of Methodist lay preachers, past and present, make me proud to be a Methodist.

A Lent Confession

I know, I know; Lent is still nearly a week away, but I have been thinking a lot about Lent over the past few days and it seemed right to blog on this now in case my own personal reflections are helpful to others before we get to Ash Wednesday.

The confession comes now; I’ve never really thought much about Lent and never done much about it either.  In my defence Lent is something that was never really taught about or taken seriously in the church I attended for most of my life.  For many years I had a sort of vague understanding that it was some sort of commemoration of the forty days Jesus spent in the wilderness and that people gave up something for Lent because Jesus had fasted for forty days and forty nights.

When I became a Methodist Local Preacher a few years ago I decided that I really ought to know a little bit more about Lent than I did.  I found out that it was a much bigger deal than it seemed to be in the church I attended and that it was a time of personal penitential preparation (how’s that for alliteration?) for Easter, climaxing with Holy Week.  In the busy world of a working life I’m ashamed to admit that it still largely passed me by.  I guess I still had the idea in my mind, reinforced by some of my fellow Methodist preachers; that Lent was for Roman Catholics and High Church Anglicans.

Last year, my first at theological college, I determined to observe Lent properly.  I actually gave up drinking alcohol, but it didn’t last for the full forty days.  I went on a Mission weekend with college and the people I was staying with offered me a glass of wine.  Without even thinking I accepted the offer and drank it, only to realise afterwards what I had done.  I still carried on with the different pattern of prayer and Bible study I had decided upon for Lent, of course; but I somehow felt an over-riding sense of failure.

This year my mind is firmly focussed on Lent; on the fact that after the final gluttony of Shrove Tuesday I will be consciously entering a period of spiritual reflection, a period of personal penitence, a period of spiritual preparation for the reality of Holy Week and the joy of Easter Day.

I will be giving something up for Lent this year; in fact I’m going to be giving up two things.  In penitence for my failure last year I will be refraining from all alcoholic drink for the forty days of Lent.  In addition, I will be fasting from all meat, poultry and fish for the Lenten period.  I will also be trying to increase the time I spend daily in prayer and Bible study and will try to take Holy Communion more often.

I will also be fasting from all food from dinner time on Shrove Tuesday until dinner time on Ash Wednesday, a twenty four hour fast.  Apart from required college activities I intend to spend the time on my own, away from the internet and other media, reading the Bible and praying, a quiet day as much as it can be.

Why am I doing this?  Jesus spent forty days and nights in the wilderness of Judea, fasting, praying and meditating on the word of God as he prepared for his ministry.  I am a student in my final year of theological college preparing to start ministry as a Probationer Presbyter from September of this year and the focus of my Lenten period this year as I study the scriptures and pray will be that ministry.  I also want to genuinely prepare myself spiritually to appreciate as never before the events of Holy Week ending with the crucifixion of our Lord Jesus Christ: and then to be able to celebrate fully the focal point of all of space and time, the resurrection of Jesus.

Why am I writing about this?  Not to show off how spiritual I'm being this year, that's for sure.  If that was my motive this blog would have remained unwritten.  I'm writing because I feel that by not properly observing Lent I wasted many opportunities for spiritual growth and deepening my relationship with my Lord and I want to urge others not to waste the opportunity.  If you are a Christian who has never observed Lent before please think seriously about doing it this year: according to Christian brothers and sisters I know who do observe Lent it may be one of the most profound spiritual things you ever do.

Celebrating My Spiritual Ancestors

I first came across the idea of spiritual ancestors last week during discipleship group prayer at college.  The idea is that just as we inherit our physical DNA from our physical ancestors, from those members of our family who have gone before us; so too we inherit our spiritual DNA from Christian brothers and sisters who have gone before us.  These spiritual ancestors can either be people we know well or people we’ve never met, but they are all people who have had a profound spiritual influence upon us.

I would have to include members of my own family amongst them.  One was my mother who forced me as a child to go to Sunday School even when I didn’t want to and who thereby grounded my life in the Christian faith.  Another was my Aunty Christine, who persuaded me to go to a Christian Youth Camp in the Yorkshire Dales where I gave my life to Christ.

A number of Methodist Ministers have had an influence on my spiritual development and journey.  Their names would mean nothing to most of you, but I give God thanks for their lives, ministries and witness.

As a Methodist I have to acknowledge John Wesley and Charles Wesley as spiritual ancestors and I am profoundly grateful to the for the Methodist movement they started and which has blossomed into the church I am proud to be a member of today.

I also give thanks to God for the late Revd. David Watson, the Anglican Rector, evangelist and author whose theology so simply and clearly expressed in his books has had a huge influence on my understanding of the Christian faith.   I would also include in those thanks the late Revd. John Stott who has also has a huge influence on me through his books.  Stott’s book on ‘The Cross of Christ’ is without equal in my opinion.

To these spiritual ancestors, and others, I owe an enormous debt of gratitude and I thank God for each and every one of them; as well as for my brothers and sisters at Poulton Methodist Church and North Fylde Circuit and my brothers and sisters, both staff and fellow students, at Wesley Study Centre/Cranmer Hall, Durham who are shaping my walk with Christ right now.  May God bless them all.

Is Christianity Really Under Attack?

Is Christianity really under attack as the Daily Mail headline screamed from the newspaper racks on Saturday morning?

The article in the Daily Mail concerned two cases that have recently gone before the British courts.  The first concerned Bideford town council who had been saying prayers at the start of council meetings.  A former councillor, an atheist, had taken the council to court claiming that the saying of prayers was a breach of his human rights.  The court rejected the claim on the grounds of human rights, but ruled that formal prayers at council meetings were unlawful because of a technicality in the Local Government Act 1972.  The court’s decision has been predictably opposed by prominent Christians including a former Archbishop of Canterbury.  A government minister has promised to amend the legislation to make such prayers possible.

Is this really an attack on Christianity?  To be honest I don’t think that it is.  I am not, of course, for one moment suggesting that prayers should not be said before a council meeting, or any other meeting for that matter.  Asking God to be involved in guiding discussions and the decision making process is always going to be a good thing to do.  I do wonder, however, about the value of making it part of the formal business of an essentially secular meeting and forcing people with no faith to take part.  Far better, I feel, to allow those who wish to pray to gather informally as a group before the meeting commences and to pray together as sisters and brothers in Christ.

The second case concerned a Christian couple who owned a bed and breakfast business who had a policy of allowing only married people to share a room.  They were sued by a gay couple in a civil partnership who were told they could not share a room because they were not married.  The Christian couple lost the case and were made to pay compensation to the gay couple.  I’m not going to comment further on the issue here because the whole issue of whether homosexual acts are sinful is one still fiercely debated amongst Christians.  Clearly, though, the Christian couple acted as they did because they believe the Bible teaches any sexual activity outside of marriage is wrong.  One of the Court of Appeal judges, commenting on the decision, said “I do not consider that the appellants face any difficulty in manifesting their religious beliefs, they are merely prohibited from so doing in the commercial context they have chosen.”  This appears to be reasonable, but in my own personal opinion it may not be since we do not leave our faith at the door of the church or in our homes; we are called to be Christians every minute of every day.

In an article in Saturday’s Mail the former Archbishop of Canterbury, George Carey, had written an article in which he claimed that those who practice the faith are being pushed into the background by the country’s secular establishment.  Carey writes, “We’ve become enslaved to multiculturalism, political correctness and so called equal rights, so obsessed with the idea of minimising any possible offence to any minority group that we don’t seem to have realised that one of the great British human qualities – tolerance – has now been replaced by intolerance.  Indeed, in the name of so-called tolerance, Christians are not being tolerated.”  George Carey goes on to say, however, that British Christians are not being persecuted as some have said, but that we are being pushed into the background by the secular establishment.  He concludes by writing, “We Christians need to be more muscular and vigorous in defence of our faith and it needs to be more widely understood that this faith is not something that we leave behind when we go to work. (a reference to the fact that many recent cases have involved workplace and commercial situations)”

So Christianity is not being persecuted in this country.  That word must be reserved for countries where people are imprisoned, tortured and even murdered because they are Christians.  But it does seem as if our faith is under attack in this country from a secular establishment that either fails to understand, or does not care about the fact that our faith affects every single area of our lives all the time.  We are not Christians for an hour or two on a Sunday morning; we are Christians 24/7.

I think that George Carey is right; it is time for those of us who are Christians to take a stand for our faith, for our right to live out our Christian beliefs in the whole of our lives, not just in the bits of our lives that are convenient to society.  We must do so lovingly and we must look to the example of Christ as we seek to live like him; but we must be faithful to our Lord Jesus who gave everything for us.

We can take a stand for Jesus and be victorious, even in our work lives.  A few years ago the Library service I worked for decided to introduce Sunday opening at some libraries.  They further decided that all staff would have to take their turn in working on a Sunday.  I have always believed in keeping Sunday special and that only people who work in essential services should do so on a Sunday.  I informed my line manager that my conscience would not allow me to work on a Sunday and was told that a refusal to do so would constitute a disciplinary issue.  I told her that should Sunday opening be introduced and should I be told I had to work Sunday then I would refuse.  Fortunately the Library service management team decided to introduce Sunday opening on a volunteer basis and to employ part-time staff to cover any shortfall in man hours. Maybe my stance, and that of other Christian staff, was reported to them; but whatever the reason Sunday working was introduced on a voluntary basis.

As our society becomes more and more secular we Christians are going to find it more difficult to be faithful to Jesus 24/7 because as Christians we will be seen as more and more counter-cultural.  We must remain firm in our faith, remembering that our Lord Jesus is always with us through the indwelling Holy Spirit, strengthening us, helping us and guiding us.  To him be the glory forever.

I end with some words spoken to a young George Carey as he was about to go into National Service:

“Stand up for your faith.  Don’t wait for people to mock you for it.  Live it out, be proud of it.”

Tearing Down the Barriers...

I was preaching this morning on the story of Zacchaeus from Luke 19:1-10.  Zacchaeus, you may remember, had to climb up a tree to see Jesus because of the crowds.  This little man couldn’t see past them to get to Jesus.  The crowd formed a barrier, preventing Zacchaeus from meeting Jesus.

This got thinking about the barriers in place today that stop people from meeting Jesus.

The church itself can be a barrier between people and Jesus.  I have often heard it said that a person is interested in Jesus, but not in church.  Part of the problem is that church is simply seen by many as irrelevant.  Much of the music and language used in our churches belongs in another era; especially some of the language which belongs in Elizabethan England, not twenty-first century England.  If somebody walked into the average Anglican or Methodist Church on a Sunday morning would they even be able to understand what was going on?  Would they feel they were still in the twenty-first century or would they feel that they had been transported to a bygone age?  Would they feel comfortable sitting on narrow and hard wooden pews in a building that isn’t properly heated?  Would they even stay for the whole service in such discomfort?  Why should they?

Our churches must be welcoming places, where people feel at home and comfortable.  They must be places where the language used is, on the whole, contemporary modern English.  They must be places where the music feels modern.  They must be places where they can come to an encounter with the living Lord Jesus without any obstacles or barriers being put in their way.  I’m not advocating getting rid of everything traditional in church, but rather being sensitive about how we blend that which is good in our traditions with the contemporary worship, music and language of the twenty-first century.

I don’t think the church as a body is the only barrier to knowing Christ, though; I think individual Christians can get in the way too; and I relate the following personal story by way of illustration.

I used to work in a public library.  One morning I said, without thinking, to a colleague, “I’m glad you’ve just served that lady, she really gets on my nerves.”  My colleague replied, “I thought you were a Christian.”  This brought me up short and has continued to bother me; at that particularly moment in that particular situation I was a lousy witness for Jesus and maybe put up a barrier between my colleague and her own salvation.  How easy it is for us to be a bad witness to Christ in the things we say and do.

It is said that the only way many people meet Jesus is in the lives of the Christian people they know.  We can be a barrier, or we can be an open door leading people to Jesus.  Nicky Gumbel tells the story, in one of the Alpha books, of a man who came to Christ after his wife’s witness to him, not through words but through the way she lived and built their marriage.

As individual Christians I pray that we would not be barriers to Christ but would all be open doors to lead people to Jesus Christ.