My own story (pt 1)

How did this happen for me?

I have always been fascinated by the Church. Working with David Watson, from St Michael-Le-Belfrey, York, in the early 80’s exposed me to a wide spectrum of church life from community, monastic, high, low, youth culture, house church, new church, and alternative church. I met people like Peter Wagner and sat in on classes taught by John Wimber at Fuller Theological Seminary. I was fascinated by the church growth movement; what made churches tick, how did they grow, what worked, what didn’t? I was able to hear at first hand how the charismatic renewal movement emerged and spread through Britain during the 60’s and 70’s. I unconsciously imbibed David’s passion and love for the church and also his willingness to pioneer new ground rather than allowing stagnation and fruitlessness. I recognised early that church played a central role in God’s mission to the world, and that was what I was committed to.

In the early 90’s we had the opportunity to plant our first church. With a strong desire to impact our town of 20,000 people we began in homes then as soon as we were big enough we forged ahead with what became a congregational church plant in the style of most other new churches. We met in small groups during the week and hired a school hall on Sunday mornings.

Disconnection

Having established this church we then moved on to join a large congregational ‘new’ church in Bath where we eventually found ourselves involved at a leadership level. However after several years I began to recognise that something was amiss. I began to feel an increasing disconnection from church life, particularly the main Sunday meetings. This led to confusion and even guilt. Why did I feel this way? The meetings were outstanding in many ways; excellent worship, great teaching, exciting ministry, but I would come out feeling short changed, like something was missing, or that I was missing something, but I couldn’t figure out what it was. I concluded that I was probably just backsliding. So I felt worse and worse. It became more attractive to take one of my sons to his football match and enjoy chatting over a coffee with other dads and mums on the touchline as we cheered our boys on each Sunday. This felt real. I was engaging in real conversation with real people. I wondered if church could be like this again. Our midweek home groups were often merely attempts to reproduce Sunday mornings leaving me feeling equally vacant.

I slowly began to recognise that I was not alone in this frustration and started to wonder whether this was perhaps a God-initiated restlessness. Prophetic word began coming through our church via several visiting ministries. God was up to something and it was to do with the shape of His church, the wineskin. I was aware of this but decided against rushing out and buying every book on ‘the latest way to do church’ etc. I was weary of running after every new technique and programme that presented itself. I wanted God to reshape my thinking Himself in His own way and time. I was not about to get caught up in the latest Christian fad. I already knew enough to know that that would be a pointless exercise in the long term and would ultimately leave me even more disillusioned than before.

A new journey

It wasn’t long though before I found myself on a new journey, which I believe was God initiated. In the summer of 2001 while at a conference a throw away comment by one of the speakers, about how we lead by influence, triggered off a chain of thoughts relating to my own family. We have three children. The result was that over the following months God began to deal with me, or put another way to reshape my thinking, about church and ministry. Although I may have said something different with my words the truth was that in my thinking I saw church and ministry as something ‘out there’, something I went out from my home to do. It was separate to family life and usually revolved around attending a variety of meetings. God gradually began to convince me (it took about 18 months!) that I had everything the wrong way round. I began to realise that infact not only do church and ministry begin in the home but in one sense they end there! He showed me that infact my home was both my church and my ministry. Period. Anything accomplished beyond that would simply be an overflow of what was already happening there.

Needless to say I was in big trouble! I quickly had to acknowledge that the toughest place to do church or ministry, regardless of ones definition of either, was in the home! Doing church, I discovered, is harder the closer one gets to home, and gets gradually easier the further away one gets. After two years on this track my view on that has not changed!

This is how I wrote about this gradual transition on my blog last year:

“Thinking back I can see now how gradually my heart had shifted across to the new paradigm way before my head. Increasingly I found myself physically present on a Sunday morning at our church meeting (usually excellent) but inwardly I just wasn ' t there. It was uncomfortable. The truth was that I was being a hypocrite; saying one thing on the outside but another on the inside. Something just wasn ' t right, but I couldn ' t get my head round it. With hindsight now I can see clearly what was happening. I, like many others all over the world, was beginning to hear the bea t of a different rhythm, one that was emerging from the heart of the culture around us. And the church I was a part of was becoming increasingly meaningless, disconnected and irrelevant to the real life I was facing everyday. Somewhere amidst the successful structure we had built, called church, we had lost touch with ourselves and those around us. Instead of sharing our hearts and lives in simplicity with one another we would go to another meeting. There we would sit in tidy rows, inspecting someone else’s dandruff, and experiencing spiritual life vicariously as someone at the front shared their latest spiritual insights and experiences. Great, but it left my heart crying out for relationship, reality and a spirituality I could live out daily in my home and work place. Infact I didn’t need another meeting, worship session or conference. I needed real people around me 7 days a week, with whom I could live out my life and spirituality not in a disconnected way but in a real flesh and blood way; even in the midst of the rough and tumble of daily life.

Grasping the simple truth that my family was ' my church ' has opened up a whole new world. Church has become what I do everyday. We are church - when we get up in a rush to get ready for school and work; when we argue and fight; when we make up and forgive; when we play together; laugh, cry, watch TV. Our whole life has become church. God has become more a part of everything.
I have discovered that being church is about living life, with others, with God at the centre. It ' s just that simple.”

Multiplication

The next significant milestone in this transition happened in 2002 while ministering in Cluj , Romania .

I was accompanying a friend from church and we were doing the ‘traditional’ ministry type things; teaching bible school students, doing meetings in a gypsy camp and some larger evangelistic meetings in the Town Hall. With plenty of time to kill in the hotel I was praying and asking God how one could come to a city like this and even in a short period of time leave something of lasting influence. God dropped a little bombshell on me. In answer to my question he said,

“Find where the needs are great and the people most open. Go where your efforts will produce the maximum fruit. And as you go, work for multiplication. Plant churches that will plant more churches (along the lines of

home & family = church). Go to a place, preach the gospel where there is openness, plant a church and train them to do the same. Then go to the next place.”

Wow, I thought, what a brilliantly simple idea. I wonder if anyone else has thought of that?! Little did I know!

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