Howard's Blog : Ethos

TUESDAY, MARCH 16

Getting out of the Bubble.

 Getting out of the Bubble.

I sat in a pub in South Bristol last week whilst staying with my friends Dave and Ali. It was about the third question, the one that follows after "what's your name?", when one of Dave's church friends asked me "what do you do?" Now normally I love that question because saying you start churches from scratch usually opens up a real flow of God talk, but this time my answer prompted the honest response "so you're not a real minister then!"

I was tempted to answer "I'm not a vicar, as there is only one vicar (Latin: vicarious - someone who acts in the place of another) the man Christ Jesus" (see 1 Timothy 2:5), but I resisted and said "I'm not a full time minister". I hoped that Dave's friend was commenting on the fact I was doing a three week return to teaching placement in a central Bristol comprehensive (yes that was the answer to the second question) rather than a comment on the validity of planting a church that wasn't Anglican, Baptist or some other "official" type of church.

Assuming Dave's friend did agree it was OK to plant a new church in Cheltenham under any label apart from the established denominations, and that might be a bold assumption, then the idea that to be a real minister or church leader you need to be full time is an interesting one.

I delivered two days training a few months back with a great bunch of twenty somethings that were doing Frontier Impact training. It seemed to me that they had got hold of the idea that the aspirational aim of any young radical Christian was to be full time church staff regardless of the nature of the role. I told them that they were mistaken that they should not accept vaguely defined full time church staff positions that bore no relation to their gift mix or calling. I told them they should get the jobs they were trained to do and use the skills they had learnt at university and live for Jesus as doctors, teachers, engineers, social workers, accountants and especially live for Jesus as bankers.

I say that not because I feel my thirteen years as a full time church leader were wasted, far from it. I am called to preach and when I do I still feel God's pleasure, and the evidence, dare I say it, also suggests that those listening feel a measure of God's touch when I operate in my main gift. It's fair to say that's also true for my leadership gift. However after I prayed and prepared, preached and led, what about the other three days left over in my week? The sad fact is that too often they got full of shuffling paper and putting out chairs. I am happy to put out chairs, and I can very effectively shuffle paper provided it's interspersed with a coffee with church leaders from down the road, where we can talk about connecting with lost people.

But one of the reasons I like church planting is because if you don't meet some new people then you will find your church plant becomes an exercise of the spiritual discipline of solitude. So although Godfirst is the recipient of a rare newfrontiers church planting grant, which allows me to be full time, my aim is to be part time.

My aim is to have some paid teaching employment outside the Christian bubble; yes I could hang around tennis clubs looking friendly, but actually working and doing church at the same time seems a very biblical idea that seems to have fallen into disrepute with the demise of Paul's tent making business.

For the last three weeks I have been back in the classroom thirteen years after I left teaching to join the full time staff at Kings Church Catford. I have been preparing lessons, marking work and doing geography teacher things like going to the pub on Friday after work. Dan who goes to City Church Bristol is a member of the Geography Department and it was refreshing to talk with him about his call to image Jesus in the school, by being the best geography teacher and work colleague he can be. So after praying each day on the train for a part time geography teacher vacancy in Cheltenham (a very rare occurrence) I applied for a post at a local comprehensive school yesterday. I don't know if I will get the post or what the future holds? If God wants to open other doors in teaching as I lean on them that's great, or even, as seems unlikely, doors open beyond Godfirst so that I could fill every week with preaching and leading then I'm good with that too.

But no, I don't want to be a real minister if that means being a priest or a vicar who conducts spiritual acts on behalf of the people, at a special building, on a special day of the week, for a price. I don't want to talk about sharing my faith with lost people but never encountering any outside Sunday meetings or Alpha courses. I don't want to grow the church because I need enough people to be a real full time minister. I want to be real, and authentic like the apostle Paul who did church not because it was his profession but his passion. That passion for God's church must reach beyond the minister, real or otherwise and reach to every member of Godfirst from mums at home with young kids to those in offices, factories, hospitals and schools; from the retired to students and my teenagers. In that sense we are all full time and real ministers