Challenge to Change

By Revd Simon Harris

Any impetus to change requires a challenge. Jesus provides that challenge: Go make disciples. That is, go and make disciples who will become disciple-making disciples themselves. Disciples that bear fruit is not a ‘nice to have’ but an essential requirement. On the night before he died, Jesus talked about his Father being the vineyard owner (John 15). A vineyard owner needs fruit to survive. Being faithful is not enough.

Last year, 2011, in our churches, how much fruit? How many people came to faith in Christ for the first time? The numbers are perilously small.

“However beautiful the strategy you should occasionally look at the results.”

Winston Churchill

Our strategies are beautiful (great Services, creative teaching, vibrate worship, powerful preaching). Are we brave enough, however, to look at the results?

This creates the challenge to change. We long for different results.

“Insanity is doing the same thing and expecting different results.”

Apart from cosmetic changes (music style, dress code etc), churches have been fundamentally doing the same thing for years. The times we are in though have completely changed. Yet Jesus said (Matthew 16:18):

“I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it.”

Maybe it’s time for us to stop trying to build the church (that is Jesus’s job anyway) and start making disciples (which has been our job all along). This will require churches to return to an approach much closer to Jesus.

People, not just programmes

Jesus’s strategy for transforming the world was to gather twelve people and pour his life into them. Typical church concentrates on running programmes and events that often get in the way of building meaningful relationships with those we are trying to reach.

Imitation, not just information

Sunday by Sunday we bombard Christians with information telling them what they must do. It’s not enough. If it produces any change it is very slow. It’s like teaching someone to drive a car by only giving them the theory and then expecting them to go off and drive by themselves. Jesus taught not with loads of information but with lots of opportunity for imitation.

Out there, not just in here

We focus the overwhelming emphasis on inside the church. Jesus in stark contrast did almost everything ‘outside.’ He crossed all the barriers (social, cultural, etc) to meet people where they were.

“If we want to reach those that no-one else is reaching we will have to do what no-one else is doing.”

Craig Groeschel

Jesus will build His church in 2012. Will we join Him?

Revd Simon Harris is the senior minister at Burlington Road Baptist church in Ipswich. For more background, or to contact Simon, visit his website at http://simonharriswrites.wordpress.com/2012/01/15/taking-up-the-challe nge/

What next?

To follow on from this, a further event, 'Celebrating the Challenge - Night Shelter and beyond', will be held on Sunday 26 February, 6.30pm at Christ Church, Tacket Street. Please click here for a poster with more details. This evening will include a celebration of all the good work that has taken place around the Ipswich Winter Night Shelter and will consider what lies beyond.

Feedback:

	Charles Riddleston (Guest)	16/01/2012 20:26
Well said and well done Simon. I was at the "Crown Him" event on 14th January and applauded his talk. Although not agreeing entirely with the definition of "insanity" to which Simon refers - “Insanity is doing the same thing and expecting different results” - I can see its applicability to the hackneyed ways in which, so often, the church does evangelism. The Christian Police Association recently had (or maybe still has) a drive to provide New Testaments to police officers. Getting the Word of God into people's hands is important; as important, I would suggest, as providing for social needs. Three cheers to you Simon. Who will rise to the challenge?
	John Battman (Guest)	17/01/2012 12:08
Well said indeed, Simon...not a word of condemnation to make us feel guilty but one of encouragement to make us look afresh at what we are doing...or how we are 'being' as Christians and Church. In the midst of all Jesus' amazing ministry of healing the sick, feeding the hungry, comforting the hurting...he still called people to repent and believe, to be converted, to be born again, to be saved!...not words or terms heard much these days. The 'challenge' starts with me. Lord help me to respond in the power of your Holy Spirit.
	Crown Him non-attendee (Guest)	19/01/2012 16:41
I wish I had been able to attend Crown Him, but had a prior commitment - this summary sounds like an important challenge, and all credit to Simon in delivering it. One point: when we quote "I will build my Church ...", I increasingly find myself wanting to suggest that this is probably much more "I will build My Church in Ipswich" (in Ipswich for us Ipswich locals, substitute your locality as required) NOT "I will build Burlington/Bethesda/St Margarets/etc etc". I suggest this because surely we are primarily to serve His Church, His Body (which has no denominational label), and only very secondarily our local interpretations and outworkings of that, except where it aligns with the primary focus? And my limited understanding of the Bible would suggest that much of Jesus' ministry was actually out at the sharp end of life (marketplace, work place, street-side, hillside), and far less often back at any of his bases, and that's indeed a further challenge for us in our local churches in our current culture. Perhaps that is what Simon was perhaps including with his section on "Imitation not just information"?
	Charles Riddleston (Guest)	19/01/2012 17:51
Having been present to hear Simon flesh out his section "Imitation, not just information", I think the message here is that of PRACTICAL ACTION coupled with DISCIPLESHIP. I consider that many Christians are being sold short in both of the above areas. Practical action and discipleship are linked, because a discipled Christian is a practical one, operating properly by the unction of the Holy Spirit. Many Christians receive lots of good INFORMATION from preaching and teaching, but without the REVELATION afforded by the Holy Spirit there is little or no TRANSFORMATION in their lives.