Just recently my wife, teenage daughter and I walked around the village where I was born. Although my family moved to a nearby town at an early age, this is where I spent a good deal of my childhood, staying with my paternal grandmother.
As we walked familiar views conjured up warm feelings of long hot summer days fishing in the brook that ran alongside my grandmothers cottage and the smell of the countryside drifting in through the open gable end, attic window, which was my bedroom for the duration of my stay.
At the end of the street is the building which housed the Methodist Church youth club where I would spend hours running around the maze of corridors and rooms stopping occasionally to roll a ball on the snooker table or bash the ping pong ball. Further along the street, past the the "White Horse" (the local watering hole) is the village playing field, or probably better described as a field that you can play in. Where I could see in my mind the beaten up, crunched, burnt out car wrecks, the remains of the latest stock car meet as memories of climbing over the bonnet of the nearest car in the vain hope that it had some life left in it and that the engine would magically spring into life allowing me to drive at breakneck speed around the track, came flooding back.
From what I recall this never happened but that I was content to scramble in and out of the cars, pull on the steering wheels and and imagine the noise and the smell of the local demolition derby.
As I was giving my daughter a running commentary of these things whilst snapping away with my idiot proof camera the memories faded and the stark realism of the present day knocked into me with enough force to wind me and jolt me back into 2011.
The brook water was dirty and full of weed, no sign of fish only a couple of coke cans. The attic with its gable end window now belonged to someone else, the Methodist Church buildings looked derelict with the little bridge across the brook blocked off because it is unsafe and the playing field now has two goal posts and a rotting set of portacabins that were once changing rooms, with no stockcars in sight.
Now, I am not in the habit of drifting off into sentimental daydreams, in fact I have often taught that trips into nostalgia are the products of a mind that is unable to cope with the reality of living in the present. So what was this all about.
I had been giving a lot of thought just recently to some Christians from a UK Church who are constantly wishing that the movement they are a part of (that was once a living organism now more an organisation) recovers the values and ways of the past. This type of regressive thinking is dangerous and doesn't bring about growth. It can cause movements that were once radical (meaning from the root) being unable to interpret those radical values in the light of the new day.
For those who are part of this particular Church and others like it, this is reflected in the structure of their Church life, especially in the administration where keeping the system running smoothly takes precedence over caring for the people, where loving the people becomes secondary to the facts and figures of administration and where the administrators are so out of touch with the present that their application of the system falls short of peoples needs.
Often evangelism is carried out using tried and tested outdated methods, with the usual lack of response being quickly covered up with phrases like "well we sowed some seeds today" or "this is a really hard area" or my all time favorite "we met lots of old friends". Surely the purpose of outreach is to make NEW friends, old friends are taken care of within the pastoral structure of the Church/group, although sadly they had probably voted with their feet a long time ago.
I have no doubt that God is alive, well and active amongst His prime creation human beings and is about the business of building His Church. I have serious doubts however as to the life and well being of parts of His Church or called out people who have become as organised as the institutions they left behind when the Holy Spirit gave them a wake up call so many years ago.
What is it about humans that so desperately want to box up the creator, give Him a label and tell Him how he should be running His Church?
We see His power, which is spelt LOVE, at work amongst us. We then design a system for that power to function within and expect Him to perform within our own prescribed boundaries.
As CS Lewis once penned "Aslan is on the move" whilst reminding us that "He isn't a Tame lion" (Chronicles of Narnia)
The creator is not responsible for the lack of growth in the parts of His Church that are less than they ought to be, it is our responsibility, so we must stop trying to tame the lion.
This is not a problem that just happens in some of the older groups or denominations, some of the so called new Churches have succumbed to the problem of administrators and administration, and in doing so have lost the ability to interpret the values, that caused them to be so radical in the first place, in the light of the new day.
This is a time to let Aslan roam free among us, to be open to fresh ways, to flow with the Holy Spirit. To deal once and for all with the fear of change and to sack, get rid of, kick into touch (or alternativley pray for them and counsel them) dominant administrators and their administrations.
It is interesting to note that administrators don't appear in the list of the people gifts that Jesus gives to His Church (Eph4:11-12). It does seem that the Church was meant to be able to train, minister and be built up without their input. In the light of (1Cor12:) and (Rom12:) the administrator may come under gifts of service but is still to be subject to the Apostle and Prophet, an apostolic administrator is the invention of a very fertile imagination and would come under the heading of extra biblical, but then so would a lot of things.
Administration is sometimes necessary, should never be controlling and should never determine faith and practice.
Memories can be good and if so should be filed away for those special moments when we are allowed the luxury of them. The bad memories are to be handed over to the King of Kings who renews our mind.
Jesus is Lord!
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