Moments of Awe and Wonder

I really enjoyed the Willow Creek Global Leadership Summit last week. When we came out I asked our church trainee what he made of it. The first thing he said was "it's very American, isn't it?" Apologies to any Americans. It was quite American and quite attuned to their particular context. But it is always valuable to see how other people do things. It stops us getting stuck in the rut where we do things a certain way just because we always do them that way.

One of the phrases that kept being used was "worship experience." By which they meant what we Brits would call a church service. When I first heard it I winced slightly. But then I got to thinking, if you look up "church service" in a dictionary, you might well find it described as a worship experience. The Americans simply substitute our term for the meeting for a description of what you get in the meeting. The phrase describes what you expect to get. It replaces (bad) jargon with description.

And that made me think "what should we expect when we come to a church service?" I wonder what you anticipate when you set out for church on Sunday? Here are a few of the things I think the Bible tells us we ought to anticipate.

A rich mixture of:

• Lifting our hearts to God together with delight in who he is
  
• Sharing deep community with each other before God
• Bearing each others' burdens and confessing our sins to one another
• Everyone being trained and equipped to see all of our locality saved
• Aligning our lives with God's truth so that we live for him week by week

All of which should be liberally sprinkled with moments of awe and wonder as we saturate our hearts with him.

I think I shall adopt a new phrase to replace "church service." I am tempted by "worship experience" but maybe "moments of awe and wonder" is more what I aspire that all services should be.

Growing Up

To my shock I am nearly 40. How did that happen? I don't feel 40!

One of the things this makes me think about is that the number of people who have actively fed me as a Christian over the years and have had a regular concern for my growth in Christ is going down. Some have died, others are serving God in distant countries. The older we get, the fewer people are likely to participate in our growth, and that is especially true for Christian leaders. I am starting to suspect this is true for everyone.

So, what can be done about it? I don't want to go stale, I want to keep growing, keep being pushed and encouraged to grow. Where might that come from. I can think of the following sources:

• Older belivers who are still around. But I might need to actively invite them to teach me and lead me
• Older believers who have died, but whose coat tales I can still ride by reading their wisdom and biblical teaching. This will require me to make some decisions about areas in which I want to grow and make deliberate plans to search out the people who can teach me. The temptation to not do so is everywhere - mostly busyness. Busyness is the ultimate spiritual growth killer for me. I can be tempted to believe that I simply don't have the luxury of time for extending reading, thinking, study, chewing the cud with others. After all I am nearly 40, didn't I get through that years ago?!
• Getting peers around me who have an active involvement. With the passing of time this needs to be done more and more intentionally with people who stick for the long term. Developing spiritual friendships with people we have a history of openness, honesty and mutual encouragement to grow is something we need to do early in life
  
• Getting younger believers and leaders to teach and lead me. Paul told Timothy to teach the older men. I am sure there must have been some leaders included in that. It's easy to assume that all the teaching goes one way, from me to the younger. But the older we get, the more godly teachers and leaders will be younger by definition. And it isn't easy to offer to help your olders, so they need to be invited too. A student friend recently dropped me a quick email with his news. And penned at the end "what is God doing in your life at the moment?" Well done Joe Greenhalgh - keep at it. We old guys need people your age to keep us pursuing God and running hard after him.
  

Bish on Handling the Bible

Excellent post on the Blue Fish about what it means when Paul tells to be an unashamed workman who correctly handles the word of truth:

Evidently, the main qualification for leaders is character. In each of these lists we also find mention of ability to teach. I've been taught many times that this is about skill in ministry. Which tends to mean ability to do basic grammar and speak understandably. I don't doubt those things are useful.

But, what if 'able to teach' is another character trait? What if 'rightly handling' isn't so much about grammar and more about teaching with kindness and patience and without quarrelling and arrogance (as the 2 Timothy 2 context would seem to say)?

What if the ability to 'give instruction' really is the 'so that' of holding firmly to the trustworthy word - which must include being transformed by it.

What if when we train young men and women to lead we put everything into character, by developing Biblical convictions in the heart that should overflow into life? A generation who so tremble at the word of Jesus that they dare not misunderstand lest they misapply and so defame the glory of God.

What if when we trained young student leaders (and other leaders) to do Bible study we weren't only concerned for accuracy, good questions and methodology, but chiefly for them to believe the (rightly-understood, thoroughly-exegeted) gospel afresh. And so to teach what they believe. Would they not then burn with the gospel as they lead? Would they not then, as gospel-believing repentant sinnners be able to lead the small group of forgiven sinners around them into mission together?

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