I wonder how good your memories are? Before our summer holiday break of all-age services, we were considering what makes a healthy church and, this morning, we return to those thoughts. But perhaps I should briefly remind us of our previous conclusions?
Well, first of all, we decided that a healthy church is energised by faith. Then, we heard that a healthy church has an outward-looking focus and is not pre-occupied with itself. A healthy church also seeks to find out what God wants, rather than following its own agenda, and is prepared to face the cost of change and growth. And the last feature of a healthy church that we considered was that it operates as a community, rather than functioning as some sort of club. If you want to catch up on what we’ve already covered, ask me for the sermon cards I produced, or take a look at our Healthy Church website.
This morning, we’re going to focus upon the sixth sign of a healthy church, that is, a healthy church makes room for all. I’ll start with a true story from Robert Warren’s Healthy Church Handbook …
The leaders of a large Anglican church had an awayday in which they looked at the marks of a healthy church and it turned out they identified four areas that they needed to work on, one of which was ‘Welcome’. In the afternoon session they were to divide into four groups, each of which would address one of those areas, and each leader could choose which of those groups to join. When they divided up, it turned out that no-one – absolutely no-one – wanted to address the issue of welcome in the church!
A healthy church …
makes people feel welcome
‘Welcome’ is one of the key issues in making room for all – if people don’t feel welcome when they come to church, there will certainly be plenty of room in the building!
Welcome and hospitality are important Biblical principles: do you remember in Luke’s Gospel how a sinful woman washed Jesus’ feet with her tears and then anointed Him with lovely perfume? When Simon, His host, started to have bad thoughts about what was happening, Jesus said to him:
“Look at this woman kneeling here. When I entered your home, you didn’t offer me water to wash the dust from my feet, but she has washed them with her tears and wiped them with her hair. You didn’t greet me with a kiss, but from the time I first came in, she has not stopped kissing my feet. You neglected the courtesy of olive oil to anoint my head, but she has anointed my feet with rare perfume.”
If we are to be truly open to all, we have to be generous with our welcome and with our hospitality towards whoever comes to church. And yet it’s quite easy for churches to get it wrong, sometimes without even realising it. For example, some fellowships may be much more welcoming towards newcomers who are like themselves, but less welcoming towards those who look, dress, or sound different. That isn’t being open.
Other fellowships may offer a welcome at the door, but then, at post-service coffee-time, church members huddle in their own groups and ignore visitors. That isn’t being open, either.
Still others may welcome newcomers at the door, but regard them as part of the audience, as consumers of church events, rather than getting to know them as people and encouraging them to participate. This isn’t what being open means, either.
A healthy church, on the other hand, seeks to incorporate newcomers. ‘Incorporate’ is an interesting word, because it means ‘bring into the body’ and isn’t that exactly what the church is – the Body of Christ?
When newcomers arrive at church, it’s not just a handshake at the front door that’s needed, it’s helping them to feel at home, to feel that they belong and have something to offer. Opening the door is one thing, but opening our hearts is far more important.
So, a healthy church is one that welcomes all. And the next point is that a healthy church also …
values children and young people and nurtures them in their faith.
As we heard in our first reading – that well known passage from Matthew’s Gospel – Jesus had little patience with those who would keep the children well away from Him. He insisted that the disciples allow them to come to Him, so He could bless them – they weren’t a nuisance or a distraction, they were an example of how to accept the Kingdom of God. The Church today is equally called to welcome, to value and to nurture young people in their faith, rather than put barriers up around Jesus.
I’m sure that many churches would be horrified at this notion that they may be putting up barriers that keep young people from Jesus, but the truth is that it happens all too often. We more mature people expect younger people to come into our churches and to appreciate, value and participate in what we are already doing and the way it is being done. But the truth is that many young people come from a completely different culture to us and fail to connect with the way that we do church. If we want young people to come to and become an active part of the church, we have to be prepared to do things differently. Dare I say it? We have to be prepared to change!
I don’t mean that we have to change what we believe – of course not! But we may want to try presenting and doing what we believe in ways which can connect with younger people who have had little or no previous contact with the church. So, for instance, a fairly basic change we need to make is to be sure that our services are not full of Christian jargon that some people struggle to understand – actually, that would be better for all of us! We need to make Sunday worship relevant to young people’s lives, by addressing the issues that are important to them and relevant to their daily lives. Maybe we need to have a regular service which is aimed particularly at enabling young people to worship in ways that are meaningful to them?
These are all issues that a healthy church will discuss and seek to address.
We’ve focused on Sunday worship, but that shouldn’t be our sole concern. After all, for many seekers – young and more mature people alike – a worship service is not necessarily the best or the right place to start, “simply for the reason that the one thing they want to do is ask questions, and that rarely fits with most public acts of worship.” So, a healthy church will also look at providing groups which offer the opportunity to ask questions, to teach the basics, and to nurture embryonic faith – for example, it may run a Youth Alpha course, or the like.
But let’s not forget older generations, either. A greater and greater proportion of our population is reaching the age of 60+ and many have had very little contact with the Church for a very long time. We must also consider how we might reach out to them and make them feel at home amongst us, so that they might build a relationship with the living God.
Being open to all will mean a commitment to being accessible to all, and that commitment will mean that, as a church, we need to be adaptable. A healthy church values people of all ages and nurtures them in their faith.
A healthy church also …
sees diversity within the fellowship as a strength
This means that we should rejoice in our differences and not discriminate because of them.
There are several passages from the Bible that are particularly relevant here, not least the passage from Paul’s letter to the Galatians in which he writes these amazing words:
“For you are all children of God through faith in Christ Jesus. … There is no longer Jew or Gentile, slave or free, male and female. For you are all one in Christ Jesus.”
Paul is saying that, when we come to faith in Christ, we are all one – it doesn’t matter what our backgrounds are, it doesn’t matter what gender we are, it doesn’t how able or disabled we are, we must be accepting of one another and supporting of one another, because we are all children of God. There is no room for anyone to look down on another person because they are different.
In fact, God uses our differences for the benefit of His Kingdom. Remember another passage from one of Paul’s letters – his first letter to the church at Corinth:
“The human body has many parts, but the many parts make up one whole body. So it is with the body of Christ. Some of us are Jews, some are Gentiles, some are slaves, and some are free. But we have all been baptised into one body by one Spirit, and we all share the same Spirit. … All of you together are Christ’s body, and each of you is a part of it.”
Being open to all means being open to one another’s differences and seeing them as a strength, rather than a weakness. Our differences can, indeed, be an encouragement to us. For instance, when we lived in Kent and went to Whitstable Baptist Church, one of the members was a young man who happened to have Down’s Syndrome. He was a very pleasant and friendly man, but I think it’s fair to say that communication was sometimes difficult and, in one sense, the differences between himself and most of the congregation were very obvious. But when it came to worship services, it was amazing: he communicated his love for God with all of his body – I have still not encountered anyone else whose own worshipping has inspired me quite so much as him.
Our previous church, Mill Road Baptist Church in Wellingborough, was situated in a very multicultural part of the town and the fellowship included people from the Caribbean, from Asia, from Africa, and from different parts of Europe. Yes, there were differences – differences in worship styles, differences in outlook on life, differences in approach to church life – but those differences enriched the fellowship, rather than causing difficulties.
There is a natural tendency within us human beings to want to congregate and share our time with people who are just like we are, but, within a church, it is unhealthy to allow this tendency to influence us. The other Bible passage that I feel is pertinent here is the parable Jesus tells to illustrate the nature of God’s great heavenly banquet: the invitations to a feast go out to the polite and the popular in society and they make excuses for why they can’t go along, so it is the poor, the sick and the generally unpopular who are invited into the feast.
God’s doors are open to all – are ours?
We have seen this morning that a healthy church makes newcomers feel welcome, not just by a handshake at the front door, but also by helping them to feel that they belong. We’ve also seen that a healthy church values young people, indeed people of all ages, and nurtures them in their faith. And, finally, we’ve heard that the healthy church views diversity within the fellowship as a strength.
May we take seriously the call to be open to all and may God’s Kingom be enlarged, as we are obedient to it. For Christ’s sake, we pray. Amen.
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