Some rambling thoughts

I think the church in general have 'kind of' created our own language, a lot of which doesn't really make sense unless you know it. These rambling thoughts are written with the church in mind so if you're reading this and you're not sure what some of the jargon means, email me and I'll try to interpret it!

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There are so many people walking on the Lickey Hills. How do we begin to connect with these people and give them opportunities to connect with God? We know that, thankfully, God is more than capable of speaking to people without us getting in the way but at the same time He has given us the amazing task of introducing people to Him by the way we live our lives as a community and by communicating His message. The gospel of Jesus Christ's death and resurrection must first start by our own 'death and resurrection' experience. Laying down our selfish desires and putting God at the centre of our lives. Finding that place of sacrifice before God and admitting that we can't do this on our own, has to be our starting block. We need God to breathe His breath into us and for us to reconstruct our lives around the world-changing belief that He wants to be involved in our lives. So, we begin to connect with people by first and foremost understanding that we ourselves need reconnecting.

But as we come to better understand that truth and begin to centralise our lives around God, we also begin to understand that we are part of a bigger picture. A picture of God, beginning to fix this world we live in, and then the scary truth begins to set in, we are, in some mysterious way, part of that redemption plan. The glory goes to God but He, in His grace and mercy, chooses to use us to begin to put this messed up world back together again.

So, what are our responsibilities, as Lickey Church, in putting this messed up world together again?

First, we have responsibilities to one another, to 'be' communitiy and to live our lives together in 'oneness' (Ephesians 4:1-6), there should be no-one alone or in need, we have responsibility to spur one another on (Hebrews 10:24); to "trust steadily in God, hope unswervingly, and love extravagantly" (1 Corinthians 13:13).

Secondly, we have responsibility to our 'neighbour' - the people we come into contact with outside of this immediate community. We are a living 'witness to our oneness'. People seeing us love one another extravagantly is testimony to God, who lives within us. How we live our lives together, determines how people see God. We need to be a community of people who have learnt to find unity in diversity. A group of people who may have no other commonality than the fact that Christ lives in us: we "submit to one another in love out of reverence for Christ." (Ephesians 5:21). But we cannot become a 'holy-huddle': a group of people who are content just to meet once a week and leave it at that. We are to be a community of people who are outward-looking, discerning the needs of the local community and reaching out to them in their place of need, giving them opportunities to see that God is interested in them and wants them to be part of this plan to begin to fix this broken world.

And we do this not because we want to change people to become more like us, or in order to get more people in church, but because primarily we are called to love as Christ loved. There can be no ulterior motives....