Downfall

I took my girlfriend to her first ever football game this weekend. It was dire. Sheffield Wednesday vs Notts County- Wednesday lost 1-0 to a penalty. The rest of the game was just lobbing the ball from one end of the field to the other, with barely a chance on goal. I grew up a Wednesday fan, I remember watching them take on Premier league giants like Chelsea at Hillsborough. I remember the late nineties stars- DiCanio, Carbone, Kevin Pressman, Des Walker. It's got pretty bad since then. I remember the relegation from the premier league, then the relegation from the Championship. The nail in coffin was losing 3-2 to Crystal Palace on the last game of last season and sinking back down to League 1. This season we've lost a manager, half of the squad, half of the fans, and are sitting comfortably in 17th place. Brilliant.

I've never seen Hillsborough as empty as it was on Saturday. I was taken aback a bit when the announcer said that the attendance had been nearly 17,000. That's pretty low for Hillsborough. That felt pretty empty. That's a sign of how bad things have got.

Let's not get delusional about the state of the Church. It is exciting when you get 80 people along to an Alpha course. It's brilliant. It's 80 more people that might get a chance to hear that God can transform them. I don't want to belittle that.

But we need to realise how serious this is. My Church is way above average for Church attendance in the UK- about 150 people come along on a Sunday. That might seem a lot. But it's not. 17,000 people are willing to watch an awful game of football. About 1% of that are coming along to my Church. What's going wrong?

People just don't want it. If you asked the majority of the people at Hillsborough on Saturday they would tell you that Church is dull, it's irrelevant, they don't need it. Are they right? Part of me looks at those numbers and is tempted to give up to agree with them. Let's just let this thing die out and stop clinging on to the dying remains of an irrelevant world view that has no place in our culture.

But if we really believe that this is true, that Jesus can transform people and save them, we can't just keep plodding along. We can't give up either. This is desperate. There is no room for complacency and half heartedness in the Church any more. If we really believe this we need to step up, and get on with it. If we don't, we need to stop clinging onto this for the sake of security, attention and something to do on a Sunday. Because there isn't any room for that. The stakes are too high.

We belong in the Premier league- Jesus Christ is Lord of all. At the moment we're playing Sunday league football. There's a long way to go.

Everything in it's Right Place

If I believe in God, it isn't surprising that I see him everywhere. He is part of the heat radiating from that sun, he is part of the passion in Justin Vernon's voice as skinny love fills my ears. He is part of the feeling I get when I see my girlfriend approaching in the distance. He is part of my longing to see Christians who are more intellectually engaging; he is part of the 800paged philosophy book I'm reading. He is part of that guy sitting and reading, of the beauty of the sky.

This is not some kind of crazy pantheism; where God is reduced to just the things we see, but it is my belief that God created all things, that he is part of all things, that he is making all things new. Every glimpse of beauty, every passion, every joy, every sorrow. He sees, he knows, he made it. I refuse to be cynical about the phrase "everything is spiritual"- despite what the world tells me. I refuse to believe love is a releasing of endorphins, that passion is a brain state, that music is just a collection of notes.

I refuse to put God in the box that everyone does. The one labelled 'for church' 'for prayer time' 'for that godly conversation'. Because if God is here he's not a distant force who created and left. He built his house & moved in.

God's voice is in the cool breeze on my neck, in the intricacy of that leaf, in the joy of relationships.

He spoke the world into being. His word brought life to the stars, and to the earth- and I don't see why I should believe that his voice ceased. If there is still life, then he is still speaking. His word creates, his word sustains and he speaks to all of us, all the time.