Learning From Paul 2

"Paul took the disciples with him and had discussions daily in the lecture hall of Tyranus. This went on for two years, so that all the Jews and Greeks who lived in the province of Asia heard the word of the Lord" Acts 19:9,10

If finding the places where people gather was a key to Paul's methods, the second is the time he gave to a place. Here in Acts 19 in Ephesians he spends 2 years, elsewhere he also spends substantial time preaching and developing churches. However, there are also ocassions when he spends very little time in a town, city or region, even if those times were proving fruitful.

What he doesn't do, however, is spend any length of time in places where there was no fruit and there were those times even for a missionary as good as Paul. Just look at his time in Athens in Acts 17, he spent time, day after day, debating in the synagogue and market place, but it says at the end 'A few men became followers of Paul and believed'. Compared to other places Paul does not seem to have spent a lot of time there before moving on to Corinth.

Jesus says in Mark 6:11 "And if any place will not welcome you or listen to you, shake the dust off your feet when you leave, as a testimony against them." They are tough words for us, especially if we are trying to share Jesus with people who we care about. The more we care, the more likely it is we will be happy to spend time trying to show the love of Jesus with them even if they are not responsive in any way. The same can happen in our clusters. A cluster can spend a ot of time working with a specific group of people or in a particular area and not see any positive response. There are two things we need to recognise in those situations.

Firstly, Paul learned that sometimes we are called to sow or water seeds rather than reap the fruit. In those situations do what you can to let people see Jesus as best you can and then move on. Others will cme along to water and reap, that's the way God works in these situations. But secondly, remember time is short. Time spent on someone who will not respond means time lost on people who would respond. Paul could have spend long periods of time in places were the response was negligible and missed out on places where the fruit was ripe for picking.

Who are the people you are trying to reach out to. Do you need to stay or to move on?

Learning From Paul 1

"Paul took the disciples with him and had discussions daily in the lecture hall of Tyranus. This went on for two years, so that all the Jews and Greeks who lived in the province of Asia heard the word of the Lord" Acts 19:9,10

Paul is perhaps the greatest missionary the church has ever seen. He was responsible for planting and establishing numerous churches as well as leaving behind letters that continue to shape our understanding of God and guide how we should be as churches. Whenever Paul travelled around different cities he usually followed what seems like a method that we can learn from today.

Firstly, he went to the places where spiritual people hung out. For the most part that meant he would go to the Synagogue in that city. The Synagogue was a great place for him to go to as it gave him the opportunity to preach Jesus and debate with the Rabbis there. However, when that route wasn't possible he went to other places like the Lecture Hall belonging to Tyrannus or the Areopagus in Athens (Acts 17) or a river were people gathered to pray and debate (Acts 1611ff). These are all places were people were spiritually open and had an interest in religious things. There in these places he would preach, debate and argue, heal the sick and begin to build a church.

Today it's not that easy to find gatherings of spiritually open people apart from in Church, which kind of defeats the object! But it isn't hard to find places where people gather more generally and usually in those places you will find people who are spiritually open. It could be in the staff room at work, the pub, the shopping centre. The thing is, every reason why people gather usually has some sort of spiritual connection. The staff room is the place of fellowship where relationships are built. The pub can be the place of debates and discussions or a place to drown out the hurt and pain. Shopping is according to many sociologists is the new religion, most people shop in the big shopping centres more for the experience than the actual shopping. Our issue isn't finding places where people gather but finding ways of bringing Jesus into those places and there are no easy answers to that question.

When I was working for the Halifax Bank there were two places where people gathered. In my imaturity as a Christian I avoided both really most of the time. During the day it was the staff room were people gathered, while I usually went to the Christian coffee shop down the road. After work it was the pub, but I was usually too busy going to christian groups to go there. Looking back I remember how 'spiritual' I felt at those times, but now I recognise how fear was paralysing me in the mission field that God had placed me.

Why not spend some time today thinking about where you live, work or play and ask yourself 'where are people gathering?' Are you there in those times and places or are you too busy being spiritual instead of being a missionary?

Courage

J Oswald Sanders, the director of China Inland Mission early last century, once said "A great deal more failure is the result of an excess of caution than of bold experimentation with new ideas. The frontiers of the Kingdom of God were never advanced by men and women of caution". Mission has always been, and always will be, a risky business. Mission wil always require boldness, courage and a willingness to fail. Whether is it simply the courage to speak to you work colleague about what Jesus means to you, starting a new cluster or stepping out into mission overseas mission requires courage. Unfortuantely courage isn't an attitude easily found in church life.

I'm sure that at some point you have watched the Wizard of Oz and remember the cowardly lion. The lion wanted to find the wizard so that the wizard could magic up some courage for him because he was tied of being afraid. Lions are meant to be big fearless ferocious creatures but this one was a wimp! What he discovered at the end of the story is that courage isn't the absence of fear it is doing the right things in spite of fear. Courage is not letting fear paralyse us.

For the Christian courage is about recognising that fear need not paralyse us. Why? because "God will be with you wherever you go". If God is for us who can be against us. We are meant to be a people who are salt and light in our community, a people who are healing the sick and casting out demons, a people who are prophetically speaking to individuals and nations, not hiding away in buildings too afraid to do anything different or new.

is fear in some way paralysing the missional drive God has placed in your Spirit. Maybe today is a day to repent and believe?

Passion for God

In the last post I thought about how our love for others should make mission as natural as breathing. Today we think of the other side of the same coin - our love for God. The most passionate people for mission, evangelism and the growth of the Kingdom have always been those who, above all else, are passionate about God. Every Christian movement that has grown throughout history has started with a white hot love for God. Starting with St Paul, through to people like John Wesley, St Francis, Martin Luther, and more recently, John Wimber and Mother Teresa, there has been one common denominator and that is their passionate love of God that propels them forward into mission.

Every Christian starts out as a passionate follower of Jesus whose love is evident, but time and the worries of life drain that love away. The things that make up our walk with Jesus - prayer, worship, giving, service, Bible - become a chore rather than a delight because the love we once had for God has become lukewarm. One of the ways in which our relationship with God is described in Scripture is as a marriage - we are the Bride of Christ. Every marriage goes through ups and downs and in those times when love fades, work needs to be done in order to regain a regain love that was lost. Experience tells us that it is absolutely possible for love that was once lost to be rediscovered. If you feel that you have lost your first love for God what can you do to regain it? Here are some suggestions but I'm sure you can add others.

• Time - are you giving proper time to your relationship with God?
• Communication - every relationship needs good communictaion, especially listening. Are you listening to God?
• Focus on His beauty - everything you read in Scripture will say something about the character and nature of God. Whatever passage you read this week spend time searching for what it says about the character of God.
• Remember his love for you - THE CROSS - take time to gaze upon the cross and to worship Jesus.

The Heart of God

"For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, so that whoever believes in hims shall not perish but have eternal life"

Following Jesus involves many things that we as Christians can focus on - prayer, the Bible, worship, fellowship, pastoral care, spiritual warfare, healing, prophecy, giving - the list seems endless at times. Sometimes we just need to remember what is the focus of the heart of God. Early in the last century one of the world's greatest theologians, Jurgen Moltman, said "It is not the church that has a mission of salvation to fulfill in the world; it is the mission of the Son and the Spirit through the Father that includes the church." Mission is not something that God does it is an attribute of his character, it is nature to be always wanting to draw the lost and the least into his Kingdom. The problem for the Church worldwide is that mission has been relegated to an occassional activity that has to be worked at rather than an expression of who we are. We have made Church to be something that is for us so that we might be comfortable while God is drawing us to sacrificially follow him into the world calling people back to Him.Mission is not just a good idea it is the very heart of God.

'For God so loved the world...' are such well known words to us that they lose their power. It is because our God is so loving that mission is such a natural expression of who he is. It is not something he has to work at or plan for or wait for the right opportunity. His is always reaching out longing for the lost and the least to turn to him and be saved. His heart is that everyone should be saved and so his Holy Spirit is constantly at work in the world convicting people of sin, righteousness and judgement. Our assignment is to so capture his heart of love for the world, his longing for all to be saved that Mission because as natural a part of who we are as it is for God himself.

Is it possible for us to regain mission as an expression of who we are and not simply an add on activity? Can we be the kind of people who find mission as natural and as vital as breathing? When we do we might once again truly reflect the character of God.

Back

I think it is time to revitalise the blog seeing as it has been such a long time simce I posted, so over the next few weeks I'll be putting up some stuff I'm doing for St Andrews based on our church values.

What a Week

What an amazing week the New Wine conference at Newark was this year. This was my eighth New Wine (the last two on the Leadership Team) and I think this has been the best so far. It just seemed like God was at work every where. There must have been around 25 people saved (which in a Christian event isn't bad!), literally hundreds of healings, people sensing God's call to go - either into the difficult areas of this country or abroad and others just getting refreshed by the presence of God.
I have always New Wine to be a consistently positive experience, but this year I was just blown away by the grace and mercy of God in the way that he used me in different ways throughout the week.
There are three particular things in the week that have really encouraged and challenged me. On Tuesday night I led a policeman called John to the Lord. He then came to my seminar on Friday. He arrived early and sat at the front writing in a notepad. We had a chat and when I asked him what he was doing he said he was keeping a journal because he didn't want to forget a thing about that week. I just love the passion and desire of new Christians.
The second thing was Thursday night. We had Baroness Cox speaking in the evening on the persecuted Church and, to be honest, I really thought that this was going to be the low point of the week in terms of the evening meetings (there always seems to be a low point, except for this year!). How wrong was I!! Baroness Cox was an absolutely amazing and challenging lady who does incredible things for God. The worship and the ministry that night were just filled with the presence and power of God. To top it all we had an offering that raised £70,000 for the Message Trust to develop Eden projects across the nation.
Finally, I loved working working with the guys from the Message. For the first time we had set up an alternative venue for the morning Bible Studies which would have a more Urban feel. Andrea and I were hosting the event - which basically means we gave the notices! - and then handed it over to the people from the Message. These guys were talented, committed and amazing people of God who have given their lives to reaching people in the estates and city centres. Every day I was impacted by the challenge they brought, they just loved God and loved people.