I met a friend today

I met one of my friends today.
That may not sound to you unusual, it's fairly common to meet with friends on a day to day basis. But as much as I did meet with them, I also met them for, most likely, the first time. At least, who they are now.

My friend has been suffering for the past few years as a cocaine addict. And over an unplanned coffee, they shared with me their struggles. They told me about the social circles they moved in, the jobs they sought, the life they lived, in order to maintain their fast growing addiction.

Against their better judgement, they took the risk of being rejected by me to share with me where they had failed in life to maintain their own moral convictions at the hands of the ever increasing clutches of cocaine, and how they lied, stole and slept their way to the next high.

They talked about why they stopped their study, how the demand for money meant they couldn't afford to remain at Uni but needed to work. My memory brought up conversations we had had where they were lamenting the fact they were living from house to house as they couldn't afford rent.

My friend also shared how their mother, their partner and their doctor had been working for their recovery over the past weeks, how the mood stabilisers they took for their bipolar symptoms stopped them from finding much to smile about. They talked about their recent engagement, their thoughts for the future, and at the end of it all, they talked about faith.

At no point had my Christian faith been a secret to this person, and on many occasions we had discussed religion, and Christianity, and hope in Christ. They weren't so keen for the 'church' stuff, but were open to discussion of a faith nature.

They identified the bizarreness of our relationship, the fact that we barely had anything in common except for the fact that we both enjoy a good, solid and deep conversation, and after our brief hanging out, I felt a lot of sorrow and compassion for my friend. I had never considered that I would be the friend a drug addict.

My hope and my prayer is that we can continue to hang out, as we intend to do. They said that one of the higher times of the past few years was when we watched a movie together, so that's what we are planning to do. In doing so, I pray God might grant me the opportunity of sharing with them again the hope of the Gospel.

Please pray for my friend. And pray that I might be to them a light.

You need to be there..

A recent blog post by Mikey Lynch got me thinking about church attendance, and how we can better serve new people coming into our churches.
Mikey gives 3 points as to why people stop coming, I won't list them here, but there was one thing that I came to realise after reading his blog, something that is so incredibly obvious, yet I'd never even thought of, that is so important in facilitating a solution to the points he shares.
And it was this:
We need to be attending church in order to recognise who is actually new. This might seem like a no brainer. And it is. Yet, I hadn't thought about it with such intention before.
If we're not actively participating in our church community, we have no hope of recognising new faces, and run the risk of alienating people by assuming they are either not new, or thinking they are newer than they are.
And it goes further into no-brainer land:
We need to be ensuring we are attending every week, so not only can we recognise new people, but serve them.
For example, to a gathering like TBT, a service of Crossroads Church Hobart, this is not only obvious, but one of integral importance. The community is specific and small, so in order for new people attending to have the familiarity that comes from seeing the same faces and further developing new relationships with those people, I would dare to say the members of TBT need to be sure of their responsibility to attend every week.
This is something I think they do really well, and it's very encouraging.
But for larger church services like Wellspring's Resonate, and for parachurch meetings like UFC, the issue is a lot more subtle, and returns more to the points Mikey makes.
Attending church is not just about our attendance as an end in itself, fulfilling our religious obligation, nor is it how we feel about attending or what we are getting from our attendance, as much as it is recognising that whether we like it or not, we are part of a community, and that community thrives and grows with our participation and commitment to serving one another, and serving those new to our community..
The best way we can ensure we're doing that.. is to be there.

Shifting Community pt 2 - The challenge of growth

In my previous post I started a series of reflections on my church community, especially with regard to our evening service at Wellspring, called Resonate.

This is my second post in the series.

As a church body gets bigger, certain things are obviously going to change. It gets more difficult, at a leadership level, to enquire and address the needs of the individual churchgoer (be they Christian, or visiting), and at the other end of the spectrum, as that individual, it gets more difficult to get to know the church leaders and other members of the community that you call your local church.
Where your church used all go out and enjoy a meal together, at one or two different locations, instead there are groups that regularly meet and hang out after church together. Where feedback on the music style or choice of songs used to be simpler because everyone knew at least one of the musicians, now it's up to the leaders of music teams to be perceptive and seek out that feedback from the congregation.

The way we experience community shifts as a church grows.

I'm not saying that growth is bad, on the contrary, a growing church community can very often be a reflection of God's blessing during that season and the work that God is doing through those that are being faithful to the word and serving the church. But with that growth comes challenges. Pastoral, stylistic, financial and stewardship, preaching, training and leadership challenges. These and more are all things that Wellspring currently faces.

And we know that in order to function as a church community we need to do more than set out more seats...

Shifting Community pt 1 - Reflections on prior years

Wellspring's evening service, Resonate, has grown a lot since I first turned up at the church. My first experience with Wellspring's young adult service was when we were called BayWest, and the service was called Sunday Night Live, it was a service of about 40-50 regular attendees (can someone refine this? John, Chris?). After the initial 2 weeks, and the hard slog of fitting into a church community as a newly committed Christian, I was finding myself getting to know many of the members, and after summer Camp and joining the praise and worship team, almost everybody.

The service has, over the years, experienced a few changes, and as we migrated into the hall adjoining our church building, we have gradually begun to fill the 200ish seats we have there.

But as the service style has changed, and the numbers have grown, our model of ministry has also changed.
Where there used be a volunteer 'ministry team' whose job it was to ensure they knew who was a part of our service, there has been a shift to a more traditional anglican model of service, but maintaining the style of our previous years.

This has resulted in a massive shift in community - something I'll reflect on over the next few weeks and blog posts.

Ephesians

It seems to be rather a topical book at the moment. We recently looked at it (chapters 3-6) at MYC, and at Wellspring we have just begun it as a series, playing tandem with our current series of 'A book a week' in the old testament.
So, in addition to all these, my Bible study will start a parallel series looking at Ephesians. We'll be playing a bit of catch up as we're already two weeks behind, but hopefully the intermittent books of the old testament will do us well to get back on track.
I'm hoping as an individual to get a lot out of the study as I prepare for a sermon on Eph 4:17-5:2.
Good times.