On your marks, get set, go!

Before most major events and activities there is a time of build up. That may be four years build up to the Olympics, it may be 12 months build up to Morden Park Holiday Club, 9 months wait for a new birth or anything really. However there comes a time when the build up is over and it is time to start.
For the Olympics that is (officially) on Friday although some football and a few other things will already have taken place. For Morden Park Holiday Club that is today with 261 excited and/or nervous children getting ready to come and play games, sing songs, make crafts, do quizzes, have fun and, most importantly, discover something about what it means to have a relationship with God through Jesus Christ.

The build up comes to an end and the new thing starts. Yet it seems that for many, we get stuck at the starting gate. There is every opportunity to run the race but we get caught waiting for something more; something to move us to the next step. For others we are so eager to get going that we go ahead of the starting pistol and have a false start then, through that failure, feel that we are disqualified for the race altogether.
God is calling us to be part of the race together. Not competing with each other but supporting one another as we saw some of the cyclists do recently in the Tour de France.We don't have to look hard to find sport used as a picture of the Christian life in the Bible. Paul writes, "One thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining towards what is ahead,  I press on towards the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenwards in Christ Jesus." (Phil 3:14-15) There are many others too, but the consistent feature is that to be in the race we must be running. We don't just wait at the starting line once the pistol has been fired hoping that the person who fired it will then come and tell us in a different way to get going. The Christian life is for living and living now, not just for what happens once we've died. So let's run the race before us and see the amazing things that God will do.

Is it possible to love one another?

I was at a Pastor's conference recently discussing how our churches treat us, whether they allow us time off, and many other ways in which (to misquote Gilbert and Sullivan) a pastor's life in not an happy one. The conversation was rapidly descending into a colossal moaning session and while it can be helpful to get things off our chests in a safe environment (ie. where no one is likely to post a blog about it) it struck me that not only does the way many were talking not fit my experience, but also it doesn't seem to fit Jesus' expectation of what the church will be.

I happened to be sat at the back of the room but raised my hand and when called on talked about how my experience at Morden Park has been one of love and support, not just for me as a pastor but for everyone within the congregation. We are a medium sized church made up of a variety of nationalities and backgrounds but my observation over the last 3 1/2 years is that we are a group of people that love one another. As I look around the other Morden churches that I know well I see a similar experience amongst their congregations too. This phenomenon doesn't even seem confined to within congregations. We work together enough as churches that we have good relationships across the churches and are able to love and support each other there too. Indeed, just last Sunday one lady from a neighbouring church told me that her brother who has been suffering in his health for many years has now reached the stage at which the doctors are able to treat him. He, and his sister, are now a regular part of who we are praying for within the church.

As I read through John's gospel I see Jesus say to his disciples that they are to love one another and through that to demonstrate to the world that they are his followers. I haven't managed to find anywhere to say that this only applies to his immediate followers. Instead this command to love one another seems to get repeated (15 times on my count) through the New Testament and be Christ's expectation of how we would live. Indeed early church history seems to point to the love within the church being the most powerful demonstration of the love of God.

I know that at times our experience of church may not fit with Jesus' expectation. Generally this seems to come when we put ourselves in a higher position than Jesus within the church and so expect the church to fit with our own agenda rather than being conformed to God's will. So Paul tells us not to think of ourselves more highly than we ought and to have the same attitude as Jesus Christ in considering others as better than ourselves (and a lot more besides).

This love is not just a feeling for each other but a decision to love, a conscious choice to care and a determination to humble ourselves. I have been so encouraged to see much of this within this church and in the wider Christian community. It isn't always easy, but it is always right.

What are the essentials

Since having the church website up and running I have, together with many others, been trying to make sure that not only is the site up to date, easy to use and informative, but also that we have every page completed. An email this week made me realise that some of the pages were still blank as one mother was trying to get the information about the location of our last youth celebration.

One of the blank pages was about what we believe. It would be easy to cut and paste a doctrinal statement from an organisation like the Evangelical Alliance or to put up the essential aspects of what it means to be a Baptist, but these all have shades of meaning an nuance that make them harder to understand. I could have copied out one of the creeds, but which one? Anyway, the creeds tended to be written as much for who they excluded as they were for who was included in the church. I could have put up the watchwords of our particular branch of the Christian family (Baptist, evangelical, charismatic) but again these are not phrases that mean much to those who don't know our jargon.

So I sat and tried to work out what are the essentials of our faith. I'm sure that if you look at what I have written you will see many gaps (no mention of baptism!) and somethings that seem superfluous or even contentious (different views of creation, anyone). I think part of the struggle is that a relationship with Jesus Christ is about so much more than being able to tick the relevant boxes of what I do or don't give intellectual assent to and yet there is something of that in there. God's love, my sin, God's forgiveness and my need to receive it, the place of the Bible and the role of the Holy Spirit all seemed essential, but so does a recognition of the relationship as something that grows and develops over time.

Please do have a look at what I have written at http://www.mpbc.org.uk/whatwebelieve.htm and feed your comments back either on this blog or by emailing me. Even while writing this post I have had to go back and revisit what I have written, tweaking a few details and trying to clarify some points. I'd rather avoid heresy, if you spot any, but I guess no one has ever produced one without anything controversial, such is the diversity of this glorious and mixed up body we call church.

The Church Family

When Christy and I moved to Morden Park Baptist Church in 2008, we believe that God told us that we need to make our church an even more welcoming place for families to come to. There was already a lot going on with children and young people on Sundays and through the week but we needed to connect that more deeply into church life. We needed to be somewhere that was going to be helpful for people at any stage of life whether children, teenagers, single adults, newly married couples, parents, or seniors.

Over the last few years we have, as church together, been able to build up so many different parts of the ministry of the church. We have been able to celebrate weddings and help couples prepare for marriage. We have seen the youth and children's work grow. We have seen a few people publicly show their faith in Jesus through baptism. All this has been exciting and we have been thanking God for what we have seen, but there was still a feeling that there must be something more.

Over the last couple of weeks we seem to have taken a big step forwards in fulfilling this vision. A couple of weeks ago we started our latest Marriage Preparation Course to help a couple as they get ready for their wedding and their life beyond that.

On Sunday we were privileged to celebrate the dedication of a little girl whose family are now a regular part of our congregation. We have a few other young children who are likely to be dedicated later this year. We also had the joy of seeing four people getting baptised. For some this was to demonstrate a long standing faith and for others it followed quickly after discovering what it means to have faith in Jesus Christ. As we listened to their stories of what God has done in their lives I was struck by not only how different they were but also how they were all brought together in Christ.

Last night we launched our Youth Alpha course with many young people coming from our own and other local churches to explore questions of life and faith. For some, this is about fitting their faith together while for others it is more about discovering whether the Christian faith is for them or not.

In a couple of weeks we will celebrate with our seniors at our New Year meal. We are able to join with those within and beyond the church to build friendships and show something of God's love.

I find it so exciting to be part of this church family where we see so many expressions of the Kingdom of God for people at whatever stage of life. Praise God for the way he is building his family.