When my arthritic joints complained loud and long about
jogging, I took up swimming. After several months of enjoying the space of a
large open-air pool, with a change of season to chillier weather, I have now
started swimming at our indoor pool.
Recently I went down early to swim my lengths and found the
whole pool fairly full with people intent on swimming their own lengths. There
were no lane markers, just a free-for-all.
Everyone had their own space which they were relentlessly occupying and
I struggled to fit in. I only really got a space to swim, instead of dodging
round everyone else, when some people finished their swim. It reminded me of
how church can be.
There is much talk of our being on the edge of breakthrough,
that there is a sound of harvest in the air and my concern is how we are going
to make room for a harvest or a significant influx of new people into our midst.
Unfortunately too many churches are like the swimming pool.
Everyone is busy in their own space and no one is prepared to move over to make
room for anyone else especially newcomers. It is a well-known fact that in all
churches, traditional and new, everyone has their favourite place to sit. It
may no longer be my pew but it is my row or my seat. How will we react if
someone else sits there? How will we feel if instead of having a spare seat
next to us, someone new and dare I say it, maybe not smelling so good, sits
next to us?
However it is a lot more than just where people sit.
Harvest and great moves of God mean new Christians, lots of
them, people who have no idea how things are done in church. Will we be the
people who welcome them, not just with a superficial greeting but with a
genuine invitation to join us? Will we talk to people and help them feel at
home? I loved going to a church in New
York who not only welcomed visitors but also explained what was happening and
why. It was very refreshing.
Harvest may also mean we are going to have to dust off our
discipling skills both individually and as churches. Jesus said “go into the world and make disciples …’
He didn’t ask us to just make converts.
Discipling is a messy, time consuming process. New Christians need a lot
of attention and I have always been very grateful to the people who discipled
us in our early days.
In previous years, most people in Britain had a basic
understanding of Christianity and the church. Our British culture was based on
it. Most people would go to church once or twice a year – it wasn’t a complete
unknown. Nowadays though many people, even those brought up in UK, have no idea
at all about Christianity and the Church. Many may become believers from other cultures
and even from other faiths. Churches, no
matter their worship or service style, have a very definite culture. An awful lot of people in Britain today will
have no idea about that culture and will need help feeling at home.
Newcomers to church need to feel they have friends, people
who like them. If we are too busy in our own friendship circle with our own
ministry to speak and live lives with others, people will slide out the back
door as quickly as they came in the front.
At our prayer meeting this week, we were challenged about
how harvest will impact us as a church and as individuals. My feeling is that
now is the time to start thinking about this topic and change our own mind-sets
and heart attitudes. How are we as individuals and churches going to build a
welcoming attitude of openness and help people feel at home? We can also, as
churches, start considering how we are going to disciple people and with what
resources. This will need to be across the ages not just for adults.
This is not the first time this topic has come up in my
Christian lifetime and I suspect the Church missed something previously. We
just did not get ready. I really do not want to have to walk this circuit again
so my prayer is that I, my church and the Church will prepare both our hearts
and our programmes for the breakthrough and harvest we have been praying for
for years.
