Starting all over again!

After over a year of struggles ("in the wilderness"?) I finally seem to be getting back on track with my faith. After an intermittent relationship with my Bible I have managed to set aside time to read, study and pray on a consistent basis and feel I am beginning to reconnect with God better. My connection with Church has been on a similar level, especially having left our previous church under difficult circumstance. We have been attending an upbeat Anglican church on and off for a while (in spite of the protestations off our children). This morning I really felt excited of the prospect of going to church so my youngest daughter (aged 9) and I set off, me with anticipation, her with her iPhone just in case it got "boring". The experience was less than pleasant; we lasted 30 minutes! On the short walk back to the car I reflected on the "why" and whether I had the right attitude myself, especially considering that in the past I have preached about going to church not expecting to get anything out of it, or liking the songs, or enjoying the sermon. No! I always taught it was about putting something into it. So was I being a hypocrite? 

I began by thinking about my expectations for the morning service; I expected to worship God; to hear from him through His word; to experience His presence and connect with Him. Was that an unfair expectation for the Creator and Sustainer of All Things and his representatives on Earth? I don't think so! I felt myself craving for a traditional church, with hymns, collects, canticles, an exposition of the word......which coming from someone brought up (from the age of 37) in the Baptist tradition may sound quite weird. 'But traditional church is not relevant' I hear you state. 'The church needs to change to connect with the lost or die' is your rallying call! So why, at a church that works hard to be relevant and contemporary was my experience so bad? But that's the wrong question isn't it. The correct question is 'Why does the church continue to shrink despite its best efforts to be "of the time'. After all, we have been told to accept gay marriage, divorce, adultery (if your very sorry) as part of being up-to-date. I have got three answers to that: 1) Jesus accepted and accepts everyone from any walk of life, whatever their sexual orientation, their history, their creed their colour, their financial standing, the differently abled, the body obsessed. Even people from the Inland Revenue I am told. Provided they accept him unconditionally, provided they deny themselves, take up their cross and follow him (Matthew 16:24-ish). In my experience this is not true of the church who can be selective in accepting people, particularly if there not middle class, or they are dirty and smell a bit because they sleep on the streets. 2) Almost two-millennia of being counter-cultural saw the teachings of Jesus spread to almost every part of the world and grow exponentially to number millions. A few decades of trying to assimilate with culture, trying to be relevant has not stalled the decline in church attendance. 3) This decline is not happening everywhere! For a long time the church in Africa failed grow, probably because of the racist and imperial attitudes of those trying to spread "civilisation". Yet in the 100 years of the 20th century the church has grown from 4 million, to over 300 million. Is this because the African church as been successful in assimilating the plethora of different cultures of that great continent? Well I guess it has succeeded in being relevant, but not in a way sought by the West, it's relevance is the primacy of the Word, its love of God expressed in its worship, and its desire to connect with God and to reach out to the lost. It may have a way to go in accepting everyone in the way Jesus did, but it will get there!

If you have never experienced an African church then just go along, it might have the same profound affect on you as it had on me. Come to think of it.....perhaps that's where I should go looking to  "worship God; to hear from him through His word; to experience His presence and connect with Him."

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