Guest blog…
I have encountered a number of situations recently where the church has seemed rather HR with tick-box lists and strategies for this, that and the other. Now I absolutely think that God works in and through and out of these processes and schemes and that very often, with prayer and attentiveness to the leading of God's Spirit, implementing a strategy or plan for, for example mission, is important, helpful and fruitful. However, I am always anxious to try to make sure that I do not get so caught up in the theory and administration of a particular task that I lose sight of what it means for me to be a disciple of Jesus Christ and what should be the natural outworking of my relationship with God. I have been thinking that sometimes what works on paper and what works with the people-power and monetary resources available may not always be what God would have us do.
I am saddened when mission is often considered as an exclusive activity, as the task of a particular church or a select group of individuals on a particular team. Mission is not the church's bright idea but God's plan to bring humanity back to Himself. Mission should not be about modern music or fancy technology or dictated by money or resources but should begin where Jesus began, teaching and sharing the Good News and loving and serving our neighbours and those on the fringes of society. I have found that strategies and plans are often key to the church engaging with and serving the contemporary world but are redundant if I am not living my relationship with the living God and if I neglect the greatest commandments to love God and love my neighbour.
I have also been challenged recently by the Lord's Prayer. If Christ is our example then surely His prayer, the prayer that He taught His followers, needs to be our prayer and needs to permeate our thoughts and our actions. I often find that when I pray the Lord's Prayer I am by myself, yet the first word that leaves my mouth is a plural pronoun - "our". When we pray the words of the Lord's Prayer, we are praying not just to our personal God, not just to the God of the people in the room at the time, not just to the God of the members of our church community, or of the communities of which we are a part or of our country. We are praying to the God of every person on this earth and we are praying the Lord's Prayer for every person on this earth.
When we pray the words Jesus taught us, "thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven", we are not just following Jesus' example of how to pray. We are committing ourselves to follow Jesus' example of doing the will of the King and Jesus died on a cross to fulfil the will of the King. We are committing ourselves to be people of the kingdom, to being part of the transformational process of bringing about the kingdom of heaven in our broken world. As C. S. Lewis wrote in his Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer, "Thy will be done." But a great deal of it is to be done by God's creatures; including me. The petition then, is not merely that I may patiently suffer God's will but also that I may vigorously do it. I must be an agent as well as a patient. I am asking that I may be enabled to do it.
I am challenged to make sure that Christ is my example and His prayer is my guide.
Rebekah Clark is our guest blogger - Rebekah has been one of our reps on the Church of England Youth Council for some years
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