Grit, the missing Element.

I had a breakfast the other day with my friend ‘Pastor Benson’ it was great to catch up with him. He arrived in Kingswood with the instructions from his Church leader to “plant a Church in Bristol”, and that’s how I got to know him and become friends.

He tried planting in the conference room of the Soundwell Swimming Baths, before moving into the city centre into the Holiday Inn as a venue for their Church.

He now has a small fellowship meeting regularly there, interestingly I asked how his Church started and he had on e word “grit”.

Keeping on going.

Each Saturday they went out onto the streets and invited people to come (anyone doing much Street work knows what a hard and thankless task it can be!), each Sunday there were there, set up, with tea and coffee waiting for people, as they prayed, worshipped and sought God. It took 7 or 8 weeks before anyone other than his family to come and join them, yet they kept on going, they didn’t quit, and the Church was born.

He said to me on Saturday “it doesn’t say well done and gifted servant, or well done successful servant, but well done good and faithful servant” we just had to be faithful.

My mind wandered back to my Greek lessons at College (not exactly my finest hour!) and remembered a phrase (actually normally used of being filled with the Holy Spirit) which is “go on be being filled”, but wondered if “go on be being faithful” perhaps might have the same idea, faithfulness isn’t a one off, but something we are called to be in a continuous cycle of repetition, remaining actively faithful.

Yet as I thought about this, it is amazing how quickly Christians scarper from the battle-field, they may all be noisy in the barracks before the battle, and maybe be around for the first charge, but faithfully having the grit and determination to ‘stand firm’ or ‘stand fast’ keeping going with what God has called us to do. Holding the line in obedience not wandering off in distracting vanity projects, not fleeing the battle front-line for a safer-option.

Let’s be people of grit, of determination and perseverance.

Scripture is full of heroes that kept on going, that remained faithful, gritty characters that persevered, Noah building the Ark, Moses leading the people through the desert, Esther in prayer, Ruth in her commitment to her mother-in-law Naomi, Daniel in righteous living, Nehemiah in re-building the wall and Paul in the proclamation of the Gospel.

Yet our greatest example of grit and deterination is Jesus “who for the joy that was before him endured the cross and scorned its shame”. Jesus did quit on his Fathers Mission even when his sweat fell like drops of blood, even when it cost him everything he had including his life. Jesus remained faithful unto death “even death on the cross”.

I believe the “secret” to transformation in mission is not more courses, or new programmes and ideas but rather greater grit, more steadfastness, keeping going and pressing in to see the harvest.

Bill Wilson of metro-ministries the worlds largest Sunday School in New York said “Christians so often quit before the break through”.

So, a challenge for us all is to not just start new things but have the grit and see them through and come to fruit.

Patient endurance is tough, but often the key to fruitfulness.

Things can only get better?

Yesterday it was the 20th anniversary of Tony Blair’s historic Labour landslide in 1997, for many of us it was our first time voting in a general election, also the Tories were all we could remember, they had (it seemed to us) been there forever.

I remember a couple of weeks before the election and a friend said in the pub “I still reckon that some how those unscrupulous Tory ******* will some how get back in!”

Yet here before our eyes we saw history being made, as seats bluer than Bernard Mannings joke book became New Labour Scarlet, and many of the giants of the Tory Party were felled by the voters.

I have heard people say that the biggest killer is apathy, but my generation wasn’t particularly apathetic, I voted first thing in the morning as soon as the polling station was open, and at work the next day many of us were bleary eyed from staying up until about 3ish -“did you see Portillo?”

Britain was changing and would never be the same again.

For us, we saw that our vote changed things. That change was possible. That what had looked like it was set in concrete wasn’t. More-over the mistakes of our parents generation (not that my parents have ever voted Tory I’m pleased to say) could be rectified, this was a generation forging its own future with a new set of values.

I remember the song that was the Labour Parties Election theme “Things Can Only Get Better”, I remember being struck by the message of Hope, bill-boards said “Labour: Class sizes will get smaller” or “Labour: wages will increase”.

Fast forward a few years and I remember 10 years ago Barak Obama getting elected the first black President of the United States, the same message of Hope, “YES we CAN!” -in fact Obama called his autobiography “the Audacity of Hope”. It is incredible to think of a black president of the United States of America when as recently as the 1960’s Blacks and whites weren’t even allowed to sit together on buses.

I remember reading “Rosa (Parks) sat so Martin (Luther King Jr) could walk, Martin walked so (Barak) Obama could stand, Obama stood so our children can fly”.

The idea that we are making history and the world a better place for our children is a compelling vision.

Yet fast-forward to today.

Sadly the achievements of Labour were blighted by the Iraq war and the global recession and they are back in opposition, the Tories look unbeatable again.

Young people who probably have seen both Labour and Conservative in power probably think “why bother”, and ask does my vote change anything.

Obama’s “YES we CAN” has been replaced by the world asking of America “They Can’t Can They?”

This election is not fuelled by hope but fears.

“Things can only get better” is not the mood of the country which is more fearful than I can remember in a long time.

So, is this blog about my political viewpoint? well no, actually it is about something far deeper, it is about not letting a dream die.

It is easy to say “wasn’t that good” or be nostalgic for the good old days, easy to set a moment as a ‘golden era’ never to be equalled let alone excelled, it is easy to think that the hopes of our youth have matured as we have become more jaded, cynical and our defeatism can have an older sounding rhetoric.

It is amazing how quickly we forget that things can and do change.

It is amazing how quick we can feel disenfranchised again, how discouraging circumstances stop us dreaming those big, crazy audacious dreams of a different world.

More over if we stop dreaming that a better and different world is possible, we wont bother to fight and achieve it.

Take hope out of our hearts and we are lost.

The Tories are saying they are going to defeat Corbyn with a landslide, and is a clever tactic because if people give up before the start then we have lost.

If you don’t play to win in sport you nearly always loose.

Battles that are fought are won or lost in our minds.

Some one once said “do events happen to us, or do we happen to events?”

It is amazing how the radical revolutionary sinks back into the mire of the despondency.

Imagine for a moment the earliest of disciples, locked in the upper room for fear of the Jews, hidden away, and when the Holy Spirit came they were filled with boldness (which is a fruit of Hope) and this small group of uneducated artisans went out speaking to the people and changed the world forever.

Yet despite seeing thousands come to Christ, soon persecution happened and things went badly wrong, and yet despite their change in circumstances, the challenges and the opposition they kept on going…

Here is Paul talking about his recently Missionary endeavours “Five times I received from the Jews the forty lashes minus one. 25 Three times I was beaten with rods, once I was pelted with stones, three times I was shipwrecked, I spent a night and a day in the open sea, 26 I have been constantly on the move. I have been in danger from rivers, in danger from bandits, in danger from my fellow Jews, in danger from Gentiles; in danger in the city, in danger in the country, in danger at sea; and in danger from false believers” 2 Corinthians 11. Yet Paul never gave up.

So, as we approach this election, as we are in very different circumstances in a time that feels very different, my message to myself and to anyone who reads this blog, is don’t let discouragements and oppositions burst our dreams of making the world a better place for our children.

In fact the world seems a darker place than 20 years ago, but when it gets darker the light shines more brightly.

when times are at their most challenging and depressing we need the dreamers and the prophets more than others.

Anyone can be an optimist on the mountain top, but it takes bravery and courage to be an optimist in the valley.

we may live in a very different time, and the world may feel very different, but lets “not grow weary in doing good for at the right time we will reap a reward if we do not give up!”

In the film Robin Hood Prince of Thieves Robin is fighting in the water and he shouts to Azeem his friend to ask hat to do, and Azeem tells him to “get up and keep fighting”. I think that is a message for all of us who maybe feel a bit weary and battle warn, when maybe Hope feels more like a distant memory that a present reality.

I’ll end wth a quote from CS Lewis who said “You are never too old to set a new goal or dream a new dream” -So let’s keep dreaming and fighting to turn these dreams to reality.

I

Weathercocks or Signposts??

I like Rujard  Kiplings poem “IF” first line is ‘If you can keep your head when everyone else is loosing theirs. A wonderful picture of not being swayed around with every prevailing wind and tossed around on the changing seas of public opinion.

Recently I watched the most remarkable House of Commons maiden speech I have ever heard from their youngest MP,Worth checking out. Watch SNP MP Mhairi Black’s rousing maiden speech in full

In it she quotes Tony Benns classic quote about Weathercocks and Sign-posts, where spin around around pointing whatever direction the wind is blowing… signposts stand firm and true.

How often are we as Christians more like weathercock than sign posts?

Interestingly I was at chapter (a group of local vicars) and their was talk about the courage to be in a Church community trying to tell a different, bigger more Kingdom story… Easy to sell out, go native, adapt and compromise to buy into the lie that this is all there is and we are just a funeral chaplaincy service to the last generation of Christendom.

Let us be  (despite the discouragement at times)people who are signposts of hope, continually pointing people to the bigger, more beautiful Kingdom of God with the treasures of transformation and life rather that spinning around and around directionless.

We talked about prayer, and a great quote from Chris, the new curate at Bradley Stoke, about needing to “Pray in the Pray-ers” and living differently knowing that it makes a difference. Being a signpost not a weathercock…

The challenge, even when no one else is doing it, even when you are shouted down and maybe even laughed at and mocked, let’s be people of integrity who stand firm for Christ.

Paul in his letter to the Church at Ephesus  (ch 6) talks about the Armour of Christ before urging them to ‘stand firm’ –after all you can have all the Armour and still turn and run from the battle.

In Ezekiel 22, God talks about finding someone to stand in the Gap (for prayer and intercession) but found no one.

CT Studd once famously said that “he would live for Jesus even if no one else would”… I believe God is calling us to be a signpost not a weathercock, are we going to echo Isaiah (6) and say “here I am, send me”.