Lightbulb Moments

There is a part of us that is always looking for spectacular things to happen in our spiritual life. We love those amazing stories of God breaking through and transforming someone’s life in a powerful and remarkable way.

The reality for most of us is that our spiritual life is much more mundane most of the time. We have good intentions but, in practice, we sometimes fall asleep reading our Bibles and saying our prayers. We enter the day determined to love our neighbour as ourselves, but someone cuts us off in traffic and we completely overreact.

We long to invite people to church or to events, but it seems to come out all wrong and we embarrass ourselves and whoever it is we have sought to invite.

Recently, I attended a meeting for all the clergy working in my area. We gathered in a church hall that was teeming with life as the toddlers were meeting that morning. The Rector, who had to excuse themselves, had left some fabulous refreshments and the Area Dean, who’s the person responsible for chairing our meeting, invited us to take our seats.

He urged us to reflect on the summer past, and of the time since we last met in May. People were asked to share a couple of things that had encouraged them, after we had welcomed some new colleagues and introduced ourselves.

It was a beautiful time as people shared about holidays and new things they were trying to reach out to others. One of our number, had been off work because of some surgery and was grateful for the time to read and reflect, Another had been on sabbatical and felt refreshed by some conferences they had attended and the opportunity to visit some different churches during that time away from ministry. Some had seen people coming to faith since we had last met, others had begun their life in holy orders. Some people were excited about building a new team, others were seeing and experiencing people being healed after starting healing services. Some had experienced great joy through seeing young people serving God on overseas trips and hearing their stories, and how these had excited and encouraged their congregations. Some people had been able to oversee important building work, others had tried to be more proactive in giving invitations to their local community to church events and activities, and were building new connections with people.

As we went around the circle sharing these stories, and later praying for each other, I had one of those little lightbulb moments.

I was conscious of how different we all were, and how different all the churches we were leading were from each other. What was striking, however, no matter how we expressed it, was that everyone was looking outwards, they were striving to be ‘churches without walls.’

They were searching for ways to package the greatest story ever told, the story of God’s love and His salvation offered to each one of us. They wanted this story, not only to excite and grip their churches, but to impact and bless their neighbourhood and community.

As I thanked God for all the wonderful people around me, I knew we were all batting for the same team. We were different expressions of the same truth and God was on the move in all of our churches.

In a world dominated by very difficult news headlines of war and strife and division around the globe, the church had a different story to share and it was good to learn from each other, to rejoice in what God was doing and to pray His blessing upon each other’s ministries.

Don’t forget this weekend our youth group is meeting in the coffee bar during Sunday service at 11 am. Tonight, our Alpha group begins for those who are curious to explore questions of faith and life and its purpose in the coffee bar at 7.30 pm. All are welcome.

Look forward to speaking again soon.

Much love to everyone,

Jono.

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