Joining the Iceberg Club

We have just passed the sixth anniversary of the September 11 crisis in the USA. I can recall that even in secular Australia people sought answers from the church at that time. They sought prayer, hope and even perhaps some answers to hang on to. The result six years on is that the church generally in this country continues to decline. Reality, it seems, is that when people do turn to the church, too often we miss the moment.

In 2000 the Sydney Olympics were seen as a classic moment for the church to bring a Christian focus and I have no doubt this was effectively done; but where is the fruit? Why does the church continue to struggle to have its voice heard? Some would say that perhaps we are not shouting loudly enough, or we are not visible enough. For me the Christian story is subversive in nature; and is less about accepting a declared set of ideas and more about seducing people into a journey of discovery. For too many today the answers are sorted – done and dusted – where I have to confess that I seem to spend an increasing amount of time not understanding much at all and to be honest I am actually quite comfortable living in the mystery.

Last Sunday afternoon I was privileged to be the celebrant at a local wedding. The couple chose the Bible readings from the Song of Songs chapter 2:10-13 and 8:6-7. I felt led to focus on the issue of anticipation:

'My lover spoke and said to me,
“Arise, my darling, my beautiful one, and come with me.

See! The winter is past; the rains are over and gone.

Flowers appear on the earth; the season of singing has come,

the cooing of doves is heard in our land.'

A wedding day is a day of anticipation for all concerned; but most of all for the bride and groom. I wonder when the anticipation wears off. It has always struck me as rather cool that God has made men and women so different (apart from the obvious!). It should ensure that we spend a lifetime in anticipation. Sadly, there comes a time when we appear to withdraw from the sense of anticipation and settle for something less; losing the mystery along the way.

I think that every day with Jesus would have been full of anticipation and mystery. How about that first miracle at Cana in Galilee, where Jesus turned the water into wine? Who would have guessed that one? I bet the disciples were on their toes after that. A young boys lunch that mum had put together that morning ended up feeding 5,000!? It would have been fun mountain climbing with Jesus. One day they ran into a couple of guys called Moses and Elijah up there! Even going to church had its moments when Jesus healed a man with a crippled hand right there in front of everybody in the synagogue!

I like the time when Jesus came to the pool of Bethesda in Jerusalem. Rumour had it that occasionally an angel would stir the waters of the pool and the first one into the pool after that moment was healed. Good idea; but a bit unfair on a man who had been crippled for 38 years and didn’t have any mates to get him into the pool even if the angel did turn up. “That’s okay,’ (my translation) said Jesus. ‘Get up! Pick up your mat and walk.’ And he did! And the ‘religious’ of the day responded with great joy. Nah! They pointed out to the guy walking home that it was illegal to carry his mat on the Sabbath. Nice one.

Last Sunday we had a big day with a double baptism for the Arnold clan and an Oasis celebration. Now, I personally didn't think it was the best service that we have ever done. It was a great time of baptism; but perhaps missing something in other parts. Yet I was overwhelmed by the number of visitors who were clearly blessed by the day. They didn’t have to give the amount of praise that they did. ‘Nice service Pastor,’ would possibly have been the standard reply. One person said, ‘John, there is something very special going on here with you guys. It was exciting to be here today. Thank you.’ I think that person got in touch with a little more than what was simply presented. Maybe they stumbled into the mystery of being with Jesus and his people last Sunday?

Now, where was I? Oh yes; the effectiveness of the church. I figure that a gathering for worship is a bit like the old iceberg illustration. What we see – and have control over - might or might not look impressive; but there is a whole lot more going on that we cannot see. That’s the stuff that we need to open up for people. That’s the stuff that perhaps we need to open up to ourselves. I am personally nurturing a sense of anticipation about that and wondering how to grow the idea further. You might like to join my anticipation club – it numbers one at present.

Our world is too small

If you were not on the church attendance roster for last Sundays gathering, you missed a real treat! We played host to three ministers from the US of A; but that was about the only thing they had in common. One was Caucasian from the Mid West, one was CIA (Chinese, Indonesian, American) based in the North East and one was proudly black from the south in Atlanta, Georgia. Forrest, Henry and Roe were a great encouragement to us all and a few were privileged to share lunch with them and hear even more of their stories.

Personally it was a real treat to sit back and enjoy the ministry of others, as we heard our visitors share and the whole church interact very well with them also. The morning was refreshing for me in hearing a message rather than giving one; and encouraging to see many of our own people responding to the various needs and tasks that the visit caused us to respond to. Well done everyone.

Creating a new worship community can be a little all consuming at times and it is easy to lose sight of the bigger picture. Moments such as Sunday remind us that the Christian church is very much a global movement and comes to us in all kinds of shapes, sizes and colours. My first experience of the wider church was in Amsterdam in 1986 when I attended a conference for 8,000 Evangelists hosted by Billy Graham. On the first night of the conference we were asked to pray with and for the person sitting next to us. My neighbor was an Indian man who asked if I would mind if he prayed for me in his own language as he was more comfortable doing this. I assured him that I didn’t mind and he prayed so powerfully that I was blessed amazingly with words that I did not understand and did not seek to have translated. Looking back in life you note special moments in your journey and that time was one of mine.

I remember at the time of the 9/11 attacks in 2001 we called a prayer meeting at our centre for people to just gather and pray. Many were so shocked that they were barely able to verbalise their feelings and some others were getting frustrated that they couldn’t hear the words of some of the prayers across the room. I had to remind people that our hearing and understanding was much less important than people knowing that God heard and understood.

Our visitors reminded me that we are part of a very big family. We were able to talk, laugh and interact with people who were strangers just a few hours earlier. One of my little things is to regularly make the comment that we are in danger of making our world too small. With all of the freedom and openness that we enjoy in this land the family unit is shrinking rather than growing. Just today I was sat with a member of our clan and his youngest just came up next to me and climbed onto my lap as if it was the most natural thing in the world; and you know for a growing number among us it is!! Each Sunday morning – and at other times – I see kids going naturally to other adults whom they know, love and trust and see them as family. Not some theoretical thing; but quite real. This is a powerful thing and goes a long way to expanding the worlds of these small lives long into the future.

I often talk with fondness about my friendships with people outside the life of the church as I value these relationships greatly. However, I want to say that part of my being drawn into the life of the church and ultimately into a conversion experience was the issue of friendship and family, and the Christian family was for me, just about literally life saving.

I think back twenty plus years to my first church family and friendships that are still deep and long lasting. A little further along and I consider our mid north coast family and value greatly these great friends. Nowadays I am just as thrilled to be building deep friendships here in this region that will last eternally! There are some people very close to me that I love very deeply; but the sense of family love that many try to keep tight and controlled, I lost control of years ago. You see when I speak about loving all of the people in my congregation, I actually mean it! God has gifted me in many ways; but one of the most precious is the gift of an ever expanding family. I am forever grateful for that and just want to keep the story going.

Mission that looks like me!

Thankfully, I have a continued concern for people outside the life of the church. I am grateful for this as I sometimes feel that while Christian people might give lip service to this concern, I sometimes find the church quite disconnected as far as mission is concerned. It seems that the old missionary model still exists where it is accepted that the people who need to hear about the love of God are the obvious unfortunates of life. Now of course this is true and part of Jesus’ own call to ministry was to ‘preach good news to the poor .. proclaim freedom for the prisoners .. recovery of sight to the blind and release for oppressed;’ but I think that we can tend to get stuck there and lose sight of the more obvious mission fields right on our door step.

Ronnie and I support wider mission in a bunch of other ways such as sponsorship of a child and financial backing of social justice and / or ministry fields. However, for me my missionary heart has never strayed too far away from people who look like very much like me. My Biblical foundation for this is found in the call of Ezekiel in the Old Testament. Good old Zeke might have yearned for a mission field among some tribe of a distant land but God told him his mission was with his own people, the people of Israel. The first three chapters of Ezekiel describe this and the narrative closes with words that mean a great deal to me. Ezekiel has had a vision of God and now he is back with his people beside the Kebar River at Tel Abib (Modern day Tel Aviv):

‘I came to the exiles who lived at Tel Abib near the Kebar River.

And there, where they were living,

I sat among them for seven days—overwhelmed.’

I regularly get upset about injustices locally and internationally; but my heart is generally for people who look, speak and act very much like me. Even now, some twenty plus years on from the time when my faith came alive, I know and understand the feelings of Ezekiel as he sat among his own and was overwhelmed by their sense of loss and pain. I am pleased to say that my heart is still regularly overwhelmed as I pray, reflect, talk and serve among our local community.

Christianity has a bad name in some circles because we tend to be seen as people who answer questions that no one is asking. We have a prepared script with the appropriate Bible passages to prove that a person is far from God, needs to repent and turn to Jesus and no debate will be entered into. It’s funny that we are often critical of Jehovah Witnesses for doing the exact same thing?

Rather than going in there with a script we need to go in with an open heart, open ears and closed mouth. We need to sit with people and hear their questions, their doubts, their joys and their fears. Only by being with them can we hope to offer anything of life and hope. For me it has always been in sitting with people that my heart has been enlarged for them. It began with some street kids in my local suburb 24 years ago, sitting with them in the gutters at 3.00 in the morning hearing and feeling their pain.

For six years those kids shaped my future ministry. Over that time our team was mocked and occasionally abused and hardly a night would pass without our being ridiculed for what we were doing. On a couple of occasions I was physically attacked; once so badly that I had cracked ribs and was black and blue for days after and yet it was in this place that God touched me.

These kids were not usually out of bad homes with abusive parents. Often they were simply bored and trying to be a little rebellious. The suburb was a new growth area full of young families not dissimilar to where we are today. Since those days I thank God that I still have a heart for the mission field that confronts every morning when I open the front door.

What is it that touches your heart? Is there a way that you can find to sit among them and be overwhelmed?

Sometimes life has a habit of reaching out and grabbing you at the strangest – and most inopportune – moments. This was so for me last Sunday when I found myself in something of a strange personal struggle for most of the day.

Of course it was Father’s Day and I was conscious that this particular Sunday actually fell on the anniversary of my dad’s death on September 2, 2000. That day seven years ago was a very odd one for me as dad died in Ballarat and we were then living on the north coast of New South Wales. I was kept up to date with his condition but family felt that he might again pull through but by the time that it was clear he wouldn’t I was unable to do anything about it. Adding to the mix that day was the fact that I was dealing with a family break up within our church life and I was trying to handle this in the midst of my own journey. Such is a Pastor’s life.

I give this as background, because on Sunday morning in the midst of preparation for the service and then moving into the worship time itself, the memories of that day seven years ago came flooding back. Here we were celebrating a special day for dads and I found myself in this strange place of great sadness and loss. There is of course nothing unusual here as many will be able to equate with moments just like this; it was just inconvenient and disconcerting for me in terms of the timing. If the Pastor made less sense than usual and seemed a little ‘off’ then maybe this explains it.

Please don’t get all deep and meaningful with me and try to sort out my feelings of deep seated grief and regret at not being with my father when he died, because there is nothing to sort out. Every time I said goodbye to him over those last years we were both well aware that it might be our last goodbye and so finally it turned out to be. I am fine with all of that but still have those moments of simply missing someone that meant a great deal to me. This time it surprised me but on reflection it was hardly surprising. I had immersed myself in preparing for Sunday and in doing so had probably been able to suppress those usual memories at certain anniversaries.
When did life last sneak up and surprise you? For me the whole day turned into a time of mixed feelings and good reflection as I gave myself permission to accept what was going on and flow with the emotions and feelings that were evoked. Have you known a time recently when something similar occurred?

I guess I write this to encourage something that is very important to me; the issue of authenticity. We all have our different masks that cover our true feelings from time to time; but I believe that we will grow as a church and really begin to make a difference in our communities when we allow those masks to drop a little more often. You see, everybody is playing the same game and it is only when a few are silly enough and brave enough to remove a mask that we can give permission to others to do the same.

A favourite book of mine by John Ortberg is called – ‘If you want to walk on water, you have to get out of the boat.’ I believe that many today play the game of being Christ followers. It’s not that hard in the boat. Generally life is good and the sun is shining. Yes, from time to time the weather might get a bit squally and we have to hang on a bit and occasionally we might have a disagreement with fellow passengers; but life’s okay. A little dull maybe; but okay.

I am blessed that I came to be a follower of Christ from the outside in. It was while I was messing about in the water that I discovered the joy and peace of the boat and decided to join the crew. However, I have never lost sight of the fact that the real action is outside the boat!