The Seldom Seen Kid

This weekend I spent two hours in the pouring rain watching Elbow play to 10,000 people next to a very large telescope. The lead singer, Guy Garvey, is a bit of an icon of mine. I don't know whether it is his northern charm and wit, his ability to write stunningly beautiful lyrics or his ability to make a whole field of people laugh despite the torrential downpour, but there is something instantly attractive about Guy Garvey. He somehow manages to make bird watching cool (again?), to design a real ale for his band and to bring a grown man to tears as well as being possibly the coolest man alive.

The thing is, when Guy Garvey recommends music, I can't help but listen to it. I like to model myself on him. There is an archetypal 'Elbow fan' that enjoys good beer, gigs and anything northern. And that's what I aim for. Guy Garvey is hardly short of disciples.

As I read about the need to re-embody Christ as a Church (in Alan Hirsch's Re-Jesus), I am struck that the concept of discipleship is hardly alien to our culture. It is hardly alien to myself. I have an Elbow hip flask, I even proposed to my fiance with an Elbow song playing in the background. We see disciples everywhere. Bieberians, Beyonceians, Cockaynians, our culture is littered with followers. And what they do is simple- they attempt to embody the thing that they follow. They dress like them, speak like them, act like them, model their style on them.

Following Guy Garvey is simple- you listen to the music he recommends, you drink beer, you act northern, you tune into his radio show every Sunday night. Yet we make following Jesus this really weird thing. It couldn't be simpler.

Hirsch & Frost say put it like this:

"Faith...is more like the supreme gamble in which we stake our lives upon a conviction. It can't be reduced to belief in a set of propositions. It is a profoundly existential act in which we are fully and personally involved"

Christianity is in essence lived out. It is the thing that impacts your every day, your decisions at a micro level. It cannot merely be a belief in an abstract system which gifts you a magic ticket to paradise. If we fail to grasp this we will struggle to ever understand the concept of discipleship. What you do matters- and our call as followers of Jesus is to do what he would do; to embody Christ in our culture and situations. The sad truth is, that we seldom see all out true disciples of Christ amongst us.

You can study all the complex theology you like, you can be expert on Scripture, you can remodel and replant the Church a million times, you can write excellent worship music (well probably not), you can speak the most eloquent prayers imaginable but unless you embody Christ in your daily actions it is pointless.
 

Jesus calls us to 'make disciples'- in other words 'people who follow'. As I write this, I think of how lacking I am in areas of my life. How little discipline I have, how little I seek to bless the poor and needy, how little I attempt to embody Christ in my every day existence. Just opening up the beginning of Matthew and reading the sermon on the mount inspires me to live so much better than I do. It strikes me that if we are to 'make people who follow', a good place to start is with ourselves.

The need to re-discover Jesus and the values he stands for couldn't be greater. The need to become embodiers of Jesus couldn't be greater. We aren't lacking clever ideas and complex institutions- we are lacking this one single thought: Jesus Christ has the power to radically change everything in his path, if only we are prepared to allow him.

Jigsaw Falling Into Place

When my friend became a Christian she said one of the reasons she felt prepared to commit to faith is that she was amazed she could be a 'hand of God' on this earth. I think there's really a beauty in that sentiment. Although it might be a testimony that some might claim doesn't encapsulate her forgiveness and redemption- to me it echoes one of the key things about 'gospel' and about Christ that often we overlook.

I've written it before, and I will write it again, I will preach it, I will talk to you about it, I will think about it; you are part of something bigger than yourself. 'Salvation', whatever that means, whatever that looks like, has to be a placing of a jigsaw piece into a glorious tapestry. The whole point of 'salvation', of forgiveness, or redemption is: The Church.

Whatever you think about that word, whatever connotations, however boring 'Church meetings' are, however screwed up the institution is; it is the light of the world. I'm personally frustrated daily by how the Church functions; by its hypocrisy and short-sitedness. But I'm optimistic that the Church is worth fighting for, that it can stand for something, that it can bring hope. And like my friend, I'm so amazed that I can be a foot or a mouth or an ear of Christ on the earth.

The 'body' language is borrowed from Paul in 1 Corinthians 12:

"Just as a body, though one, has many parts, but all its many parts form one body, so it is with Christ. For we were all baptized by one Spirit so as to form one body—whether Jews or Gentiles, slave or free—and we were all given the one Spirit to drink. Even so the body is not made up of one part but of many."

The imagery is very deliberate I think. Paul could easily have used another piece of imagery; we are the 'ship' of Christ, some of us masts, some of us sails and so on. But I think that kind of misses the point. Elsewhere Paul tells us we were 'raised with Christ' (Colossians 3v1). The Church, (or if you don't like that word- the body of those that have come into faith) are today the very embodiment of Jesus. The word body is so important- because at the resurrection something beautiful was birthed; not only the bodily resurrected Christ, but another body- the hope to the hopeless, the kingdom of God, the community of faith, the body of Christ. And done right, I really believe it has something to offer.

Sadly, it is often pretty bad at this. But that's not necessarily the point. A part of entering into faith, and a vital component of 'gospel' is that we become part of something. In the same way that there is no point in saving a jigsaw piece from isolation unless we place it on the puzzle, there is no point being 'saved' if we are then not put in the puzzle of Christs' body. The Church's focus is often on 'getting people in', on evangelism. But the sad thing is that all to often what happens when we only do this is that although people come in they just fall out the other side.

And this is why I'm so frustrated by the 21st Century mentality that 'Church' is that thing you attend on a Sunday. No! I'm so frustrated that it's often led by professional Christians and attended by 'regular folk'. No! The Church cannot be constrained by four walls, by a one hour slot, by how it is defined. The Church must learn to outgrow its meetings. It must learnt to allow 'communal time together' on a Sunday to simply be an overflow of its community and not the sum of it.

I will spend my life trying to seek what this might look like. To rethink tradition when we need to, and to hold onto it when appropriate. But in an age of frustration with culture and society, where consumerism is starting to look like it might not have all the answers; I believe that we have something to offer. And I for one am proud to be a part of something glorious, but by myself I can't achieve it.

Takeover

I was sat in a Merleau-Ponty lecture this morning and my mind wandered from the topic of an phenomenological approach to the problem of other minds (as it does...) and I started thinking about this weekend. I went away with a bunch of blokes from our Church and I was really challenged that we need to step up, we need to reignite the sleeping Church, to start reaching men and showing them what it means to be followers of Jesus. But I'm not entirely sure how much of a 'follower of Jesus' I really am. I need to figure this out before I can model it properly to other people. And so I wrote this prayer on my notes: Jesus, be part of my study, be part of my imagination, be part of my concentration, my reading, my lectures, Amen.

I am starting to realise how important it is to make following Jesus not just about praying more, reading more of the Bible more, going to Church more but starting to let Jesus transform the mundane. Being part of Crunchy nut cornflakes and belgium beers. Being a part of 15minute showers and 2hour lectures on consciousness. It's easy to write prayers like that, it's not easy to see what that looks like in actuality.

I have a mate who told me that he had a conversation with some friends the other day who said to him "you always bring Jesus into every conversation don't you" to which he replied "that's kind of the point isn't it?". The point of being a follower of Jesus is not that we live enhanced, that we live 'better' like we're living on a kind of upgraded life to everyone else. Jesus says (matt 16:25): "For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it."

Living a life focused on following Jesus is about living every part of our lives for him. The exciting, the mundane, the Churchy, the cheeky kiss with the girlfriend, the coffee with your friend, the phonecall with your mum, the bank account, the DVD collection, the degree. God is interested in all of it. And unless we learn to know what making God a part of all of that, unless we learn how to 'lose our lives' for Christ, we won't ever find our real lives, our Christ centred lives.

We can reinvent Church a million times over, have a preach in a pub, preach in a coffee shop, sing coldplay instead of matt redman, have interesting table discussions, we can pioneer all the forms of fresh expressions we like, grow as many cell groups and clusters as we can. But unless we start modelling real discipleship, real following in every aspect of our lives, we won't grow.

We might have more people in meetings, more 'converts'. But I think there's a definite difference between converts and disciples. I'm not satisfied being a person who turns up to Church every Sunday and cell group every Thursday just to go on living and acting like everyone else. I want Christ and the kingdom movement to infest every aspect of my life. Otherwise I will lose my life.

I don't know entirely what it looks like to be honest, but I think it starts with realising that we cannot segment our spiritual and normal lives. If we've given up our entire live to follow Jesus- the pint in the pub with my mate is just as much living a life focused on Jesus as the two hour sermon on Sunday. The reading a great novel, listening to a great album is just as much worshipful (or at least should be) as singing Tim Hughes songs on a Sunday. We need to start seeing God in more things rather than less things. Otherwise it's going to be impossible to live devoted, Christ centred lives. I'm not suggesting that we all stop meeting in Church meetings, that we stop preaching sermons, stop writing crap worship songs (ok maybe I am suggesting we should stop this...) But rather that it just isn't enough. It's not enough for a Christ centred life to just do these things more.

We need to stop the attitude which says the only things that are of value, the only things that are worshipful and the only things which are focused on Christ are the things of organised 'Church'. I'm challenged to rethink what 'Church' is, what following Jesus means and how I can make that prayer I wrote on my lecture notes an outworking in my life. That's what I'm striving for.