Reignite

Seeing God rekindle life and purpose in your church

Ian Parkinson, Rob Peabody

• Publisher: Monarch Books
• Year: 2005
• ISBN:
  9780857216700
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Church

Ian Parkinson shares his experience of partnering with God to transform two very different local churches. He weaves stories from his own congregations, and draws on his experience of ministering in an inherited traditional but declining church, revealing what he has done to turn them around. The transformation of such churches is critical: there are relational links to build on within communities; there are resources in place; and most importantly, God desires to renew his people in their sense of identity, vision, calling and anointing, even when they lose their way. In order for this to happen, there need to be leaders who are enthused and equipped to share in God's vision to be agents of change in the church for the sake of the world. This is transformational leadership. Such leadership comes about when we are gripped by a compelling vision of how God intends His Church to be, and a passion to see it move it forwards. Ian Parkinson begins with a brief overview of the true calling and identity of the Church, before examining the catalytic role of leaders in establishing practices and habits which enable the congregation to see vision become reality.

1

Recovering Our Identity: The Church That God Has In Mind

The Church is the means by which Jesus is uniquely present and distinctively expresses himself in the world.¹

When the church is in mission, it is the true church…

The mission of God flows directly through every believer and every community of faith that adheres to Jesus. To obstruct this is to block God’s purposes in and through his people.²

A missional church is a community of God’s people who live into the imagination that they are, by their very nature, God’s missionary people living as a demonstration of what God plans to do in and for all of creation in Jesus Christ.³

In early 1992 I accepted an invitation to move to a small seaside town just south of the Tees estuary on the edge of the post-industrial north east of England to become vicar of the only Anglican church in the town. For all of the 125 years of its history, Emmanuel Church Saltburn had been a fairly typical “middle of the road” Anglican church. Recent years had seen it declining numerically and in influence within the local community from which it was increasingly disconnected, not helped by a sexual scandal surrounding my predecessor but one. The modestly sized congregation had an average age of between sixty-five and seventy and were of a tradition that expected ministry to be the exclusive responsibility of the vicar.

These days they may be smaller numerically, and possibly with congregations whose average age is even slightly higher, but churches like this can still be found in communities in England and elsewhere. Nostalgic for a previous age in which they occupied a far more central role in the life of the community, they tend to be hallmarked by a misplaced optimism which insists that if we just keep doing what we have always done then things are bound to get better one day. They may well be the kinds of churches Ann Morisey had in mind as she reflected:

In my more cynical moments I am tempted to think that the mainstream denominations do not lack a theory of Mission. They have a very potent, but implicit, theory of Mission. It is that the church structure, style and location are already appropriately in place. All that is required is that those outside the Church accommodate themselves to what already exists.⁴

In the week in which I accepted the job, my daily Bible readings “happened” to be from the book of Nehemiah. From that time onwards, Nehemiah became a bosom friend and close companion.

Nehemiah was a member of the Jewish community who had been born in Babylon during the period of exile in the late sixth century BC. A high-ranking official in the court of the Persian emperor – whose antecedent had conquered Babylon and resettled numbers of Jewish people back in their homeland with permission to rebuild their ruined native city – Nehemiah is the leader whom God used as a catalyst finally to see the task of rebuilding achieved. Rebuilding was not simply about restoring the physicality of a once glorious city, but far more about getting the people of Israel back on track with their calling from God to be His representative and missional people on earth for the sake of other nations. It was about a restoration of identity, purpose, and function, about a people becoming once again who God intended them to be.

The parallels with the situation into which I was about to step were uncanny. Events of the recent past had left a number of people emotionally scarred and had winded and demoralized many more, including my immediate predecessor. The image of broken-down walls and accompanying sadness and despair seemed peculiarly apt as I familiarized myself with Emmanuel Church – and not just because of its recent history. There seemed to be a significant mismatch between God’s grand vision for His church, His expectation of the role a local church might fulfil, and the assumptions and aspirations that shaped Emmanuel Church’s self-understanding and modus operandi. Set right in the middle of a somewhat rundown seaside town, with all the social problems and issues that are so often prevalent in such communities, it didn’t seem that the church had any real sense of its call to bring something of the good news of Jesus in word and deed to those who were so lost and broken. There was immense work to be done to help people discover and gain confidence in their true identity and calling in Christ. I was convinced that this was exactly what God wanted to bring about.

I still remember walking round Saltburn that week with a ridiculous sense of excitement and anticipation building within. It wasn’t that there was anything about the current state of Emmanuel Church to get the juices going. But the conviction that God was in the business of building His church, and the compelling picture of the church as Scripture describes it, eclipsed everything else. The next nine years proved to be an exciting adventure of seeing a local church reengineered and begin to resemble far more the New Testament church. It was a project that, I discovered, was very close to God’s heart and one that He longs to see replicated in more and more communities.

What was most striking about Nehemiah was that he had very likely never before visited Jerusalem (despite having strong family connections there), let alone seen it in its former glory. His only experience was of destruction and the disappointment which exile had brought. Despite this, Nehemiah never let go of the compelling vision which his Scriptures gave him of God’s true purposes for His people. It was this vision of what Jerusalem and Israel might once again become, and a conviction that God wanted to work with him to see this come about, which drove him on and gave him the impetus, against all odds, to see the city rebuilt and Israel rise up once again as God’s nation. It was a vision that was so all-consuming it threatened his emotional health, drove him to weep and fast and pray continually over Jerusalem,⁵and shaped the trajectory of his life for the months and years that followed.

If we aspire to be effective agents of change, used by God to reengineer dormant local churches, then we too need to be captivated by a compelling vision of what the church is meant to be and what our church might become, and a restless dissatisfaction with the status quo. Hopefully we will have had first-hand experience of churches that are modelling something of what a functional, kingdom-focused church should look like. I had been fortunate not only to be shaped as a young adult by being part of a pioneering charismatic church in the city where I grew up, but also then to work for six years in a church in Middlesbrough alongside a wonderful colleague who had himself overseen a major reengineering of that church, bringing it into an experience of the ministry of the Spirit and a much more missional identity. My experience in both of these churches had given me not only an exciting picture of what a local church could be like, but also real hope that God could bring such a church into being in the community I was called to serve. I felt I had a basic pattern, not simply to try to impose unreflectively upon my new church, but rather as a basis for fresh improvisation in this new context.

In addition to some experience of seeing such ministry modelled, hopefully we will also have so immersed ourselves in the Bible’s narrative that our understanding of God’s design for His church and for every local expression of it will be shaped by that narrative.

WHAT WOULD JESUS DO?

As teenagers, my children could, from time to time, be seen wearing wristbands bearing the acronym “WWJD”. It stood, of course, for “What would Jesus do?” and represented a very helpful reminder to strive, in every situation, to be faithful to Him and not to compromise in any way. In my opinion, it’s a really good question to ask ourselves and a great way of checking that we are truly on track.

In teenage Christian culture the primary sphere in which faithfulness is sought is in the areas of personal, moral, and spiritual integrity. Perhaps the question “What would Jesus do?” is one whose scope we ought to widen a little more. Perhaps we ought to be asking it about the way in which we “do” church. Perhaps we might rephrase it slightly and ask, “If Jesus were responsible for directing and organizing the local church of which I am part, what would He do?” If Jesus were starting out on His post-resurrection mission today, would He bring into being a church that looks just like our church and organize things exactly the way we are currently doing? How might we go about seeking to discern just what kind of church God has in mind in our own day and age?

When we start asking such a question we find that God has given us some pretty clear answers. In fact, He has spent a good deal of time and effort in seeking to bring about a community of faith which has absolute clarity about its identity and purpose and about God’s intentions for it. The clues to such a purpose can be found not only in His interactions with His people Israel in the Old Testament era, but supremely in the ministry of Jesus, in the instructions Jesus gives to the earliest church, and in the spontaneous work of the Spirit in bringing the church into being and directing it in its formative period. And because God’s purposes never really change and because the work for which we were created remains unfinished, God, in every generation, is always seeking to renew His church and bring us more into line with those foundational purposes.

In a nutshell, God’s church is His primary missional agency, serving His great purpose of partnering with Him in the work of drawing lost people back into relationship with Him – a community called to be a sign and foretaste of what life looks like when God is acknowledged as King.

A LIGHT TO THE NATIONS

The beginning of God’s great work of reconciling a lost humanity to Himself consists in the call of a semi-nomadic Middle Eastern man, Abram, to be the founder of a people who will belong to God in a uniquely close way and among whom God will show His glorious presence and favour. God will pour out His blessing upon them for a very clear and distinct purpose – that they might in turn bless others and be a living sign of God’s goodness and truth, such that other nations might in turn be drawn to encounter God and to an authentic experience of His good life.⁶ The context in which this great calling was to unfold was challenging. God’s truth and light was to be made known to those who were not only far from Him but whose lifestyle and practices were shaped by values far removed from those of God Himself. It is God’s love for all those whom He has made, and His concern that all those who are far from Him should be brought back to Him to encounter His presence, that lies behind this strategy and gives shape and identity to the community He calls into existence. From the outset, Israel is called to be a missional people, sent out into the world by and on behalf of a missional God.

Throughout their history, Israel struggles to hold on to this vision of being a people set apart for the sake of others. They enjoy the privileges of being chosen by God but are less attentive to the accompanying responsibilities. Loss of missional purpose has serious consequences. It inevitably leads to complacency and compromise and a tendency to redefine God in order to make Him fit in better with prevailing cultural values. Far from seeking to help the surrounding nations to step out of their spiritual and moral darkness into God’s light, Israel adopts many of their pagan practices. The few voices that continue to speak out for the living God are marginalized, ridiculed, and even, at times, destroyed.

Remarkably, despite their gross failure and disobedience, God never gives up on His recalcitrant people. The experience of invasion by a neighbouring superpower and the accompanying destruction of the infrastructure and institutions of their nation gives Israel opportunity to reflect and to turn back to God in penitence. The prophetic literature that emerges towards the end of the exilic period, and in the years immediately after the return of God’s people to Jerusalem, is some of the richest in the Old Testament. In it God reminds His people of His own nature and purposes, of the calling of His people to be God’s servant on behalf of others and to be a light to other nations.⁷ They are to be ministers of God’s redemption, healing, deliverance, and restoration throughout the world. Moreover, because of their inability to fulfil such a calling unaided, and because God is so serious in His determination to see His redemptive work fulfilled on earth, God promises to pour out His own Spirit upon every believer in order to cause them to walk in His ways and to enable them to do His will.⁸

Over the course of the next few centuries, Israel’s primary concern is that of survival as they are occupied by a succession of different pagan superpowers. Any thought of fulfilling a greater purpose in the world becomes gradually pushed further and further into the future, into an era which will succeed this present age when God will finally establish His unmistakable rule over human affairs. The people who were intended to be God’s agency for world transformation have become a tiny embattled minority whose principal concern is to maintain a distinctiveness apart from the rest of the world, and whose defining characteristic is nostalgia for a bygone age when they had greater influence. Sound familiar?

Kenneth is a member of a Pentecostal church in the Serere District of north-east Uganda. Like many such churches, Kenneth’s church prided itself on its concern for personal holiness and on the way in which its members refrained from such ungodly pursuits as drinking alcohol (alcoholism is a significant problem in that culture). Kenneth’s zeal for Christian distinctiveness led him, from time to time, to visit the local bar where he would berate the regular customers for their drunkenness and explain to them that they were destined to burn in hell. Not only did he not make much headway with his brand of personal evangelism, but his church was very much marginalized and rather despised within the wider community.

A few years ago, Kenneth’s church was introduced to the Tearfund-sponsored Church and Community Mobilisation Process,⁹ a programme designed to promote sustainable development by helping local churches to work with their communities and to mobilize their own existing resources for the transformation of the community. The process begins with local churches undertaking a series of Bible studies designed to help them gain something of a broader vision for the calling of the local church.

Kenneth was profoundly impacted by this process, especially by the Bible study, which helped him to see that the purpose of the church is to be salt an...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Praise
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Foreword
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1. Recovering Our Identity: The Church That God Has In Mind
• Suggested Itinerary For Church Leaders Awayday
• 2. Moving Things Forward: Leadership As A Catalyst For Change
• 3. Imagining The Future: Articulating Vision That Stirs The Heart
• Useful Vision-Casting Exercises
• Values Brainstorm
• 4. Holding On Tight: Leading Through Transitions
• 5. Hosting God’s Presence: Allowing The Spirit Freedom To Move
• 6. Increasing Capacity: Growing And Developing Leaders
• 7. Organizing For Growth: Developing Functional Structures
• Sample Worship Questionnaire
• 8. Staying The Course: Leadership For The Long Haul
• Questions For Group Study
• Notes