Well, it’s been a while but I’m back in blogland!   My two weeks in France served me well…good times, good times (thanks to my family for being such a good family!)…even if holidaying just won’t ever be the same now that we are parents of a growing family ourselves…no more long hours of lazy, selfish basking in the sun.  Although I did manage to grab some minutes (not hours unfortunately) of lazy, selfish basking in the sun!

Anyway, back to the real world and things seem to be heating up around me.  On Sunday evening a team of young people from church head off to Belfast, the big smoke, for a week of children’s/youth mission in Sandy Row.  I’m really looking forward to it…

Our own Youth Summer Mission is fast approaching too…always lurking in my mind…exciting things are in store I believe…but just so much to do!!

The rugby season is drawing near again as well.  I’ve missed my wee team and am so lookin’ forward to a new season with the boys, now big U-17′s.  Lookin’ forward to working out new ways of how to smash our opponents off the pitch every week

On the family front Caroline continues to be very pregnant.  Don’t know if there’s any other way to be but very pregnant when you’re pregnant…anyway…yeah, 25 weeks gone…I’m workin out that that’s over half way I think, so it’ll not be long until baby no.2 arrives.  Mayhem.  Good mayhem   Mayhem I can’t wait for!  Caroline and I also happen to be 6 years married tomorrow…so tonight we are going out for dinner and (for the first time in about a year I reckon) we are going to the cinema.  A randomer in town the other day commented that they thought I was too young to be married 6 years!!  Married ‘very young’ is aways my answer…

Two good friends are getting married in church in the next week too.  I’m really loking forward to both weddings…and wish Heather&Keith and Fordi&Jenny all the very best!

In the midst of the busy-ness of life in general and life as a youth pastor I can get myself a bit lost.  It’s easy to.  It’s easy to be caught up in all that’s going on but miss what’s really important.  I get very easily distracted.  I find it hard to still my heart.  I sometimes find it very hard to focus on what I am simply called to be:  a follower of Jesus.  

And so my prayer for myself and for us all is that our No.1 desire would be Christ.  That each day we would conciously set our hearts towards him and that in all we are and that in all that we do we would ‘love God with all our heart…’  When we do this we maintain our focus, we act not in our own strength alone and we really begin to engage with what God has in store for us.   Living this way we can slowly impact the world around us for the Kingdom…

Closing thought…let’s be honest with each other.  Let’s speak openly with those close to us, those we trust about life and faith.  Let’s look into our own hearts and take responsibilty for where we are at with Jesus…and let’s just go for it.  ‘The Church’ needs people who will really just go for it, people who will run with it, the Gospel message, with all they’ve got to give (even when we don’t really feel like it).  Sometimes, I think, Christians get caught up looking inwardly all the time – looking in at all our own wee hangups, issues and problems.  The Truth I seem to keep learning is that things around us change and even often seem to fail us (in ‘the Church’ too) but the character and promises of God remain the same forever.  And it’s to Him we must fix our eyes.  Let’s look to Jesus.  Let’s lift our eyes up towards heaven and take it from there…who’s gonna lead the way??

On Sunday evening at church Steve Magowan read the following out from Hudson Taylor’s book, ‘A Retrospect’…it’s Taylor talking about his ‘call to service’ really struck a chord with me…

‘Not many months after my conversion, having a leisure afternoon, I retired to my own chamber to spend it largely in communion with God. Well do I remember that occasion. How in the gladness of my heart I poured out my soul before God; and again and again confessing my grateful love to Him who had done everything for me — who had saved me when I had given up all hope and even desire for salvation — I besought Him to give me some work to do for Him, as an outlet for love and gratitude; some self-denying service, no matter what it might be, however trying or however trivial; something with which He would be pleased, and that I might do for Him who had done so much for me. Well do I remember, as in unreserved consecration I put myself, my life, my friends, my all, upon the altar, the deep solemnity that came over my soul with the assurance that my offering was accepted. The presence of God became unutterably real and blessed; and though but a child under sixteen, I remember stretching myself on the ground, and lying there silent before Him with unspeakable awe and unspeakable joy.

For what service I was accepted I knew not; but a deep consciousness that I was no longer my own took possession of me, which has never since been effaced. It has been a very practical consciousness…’

Brilliant stuff.  I love the way he talks about wanting God to give him some work to do ’…as an outlet for love and gratitude; some self-denying service, no matter what it might be, however trying or however trivial; something with which He would be pleased, and that I might do for Him who had done so much for me.’

Isn’t this the essence of what it means to be a servant of God?  That we should seek to serve God so that we have a way of offering our love and gratitude to Him who has done it all for us…and that it shouldn’t matter how trying or trivial the task might be.  Real servants just serve.  They just get on with it.  It’s class when you see people who just give themselves away for the sake of the Gospel.  People who don’t look for human praise or a pat on the back.  People who quietly deny themselves and just do whatever it takes – limelight or not.  People who just serve because they love God, they serve because they want to give themselves totally over to the Kingdom…

My heart burns with a desire to see young people (and older) live with this kind of servant heart.  To be honest, Churches (mine included), spend so much time setting up ministries and so much time trying to get teams together to ‘get the work done’…and this can be hard.  Hard to start and hard to keep going.  I don’t think this should be hard.  I guess my prayer would be that a generation of ‘self-denying servants’ would rise up and just get on with it…and keep getting on with it…giving themselves away for the sake of Christ…all as an outlet for love and gratitude offered to the One who has already given it all for us.

Let’s try to live like this this summer…and keep it going.  Many opportunities arise over the summer to serve.  Let’s ‘deny ourselves’ and get on with it… 

What is ‘church’ really all about?  What does it mean to be part of a ‘local church’?  Why do we bother with church?  What does Jesus want his church to really be like?  What is ‘the Church’ like that God would intend us to be?  These I guess, are some of the questions that are going round my head at the moment…

The more I wrestle with these questions, the more my heart comes back and settles on 2 passages…two passages that have come up so much over the last year or two in my life and ministry…

Jesus stated that The Greatest Commandment (Matthew 22:37-39) is this: ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’  This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’

The Great Commission (Matthew 28:19-20) commands us to ‘go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.’

If both of these are ‘great’ for Jesus they should be great for us!  For me, when I take these two great passages and fuse them together I kind of picture Jesus pointing out into the world saying ‘GO!’….’Go and make disciples…disciples who love me first…disciples who are loving each other…disciples who are loving the lost…’

I believe that in the context of the local Church, church must be a place that is geared up to make this happen.  It must be a place intentional in it’s mission of making disciples and increasingly seeking to express love for God first and others second. 

I’ve started reading Total Church by Tim Chester and Steve Timmis.  The key principles of doing church that they lay out at the beginning are gospel and community.  They state that in whatever they do ‘the content is consistently the Christian gospel and the context is consistently the Christian community.  What we do is always defined by the gospel, and the context is always our belonging to the church.    Our identity as Christians is defined by the gospel and the community’.

They go on to state that being ‘gospel-centred’ means being word-centred (because the gospel is news, a message) and also mission-centred (because the gospel is a word needing proclaimed).  I like these thoughts…

So being a community, where people feel they belong and where the Truth is proclaimed seem to be big on what these guys are all about.  I’m looking forward to reading on.

I love belonging to ‘the Church’…I love a sense of belonging in a place where radical love should be expressed, I love to hear and proclaim what I have come to know as Truth, I love being ‘on mission’ all the time…

What are your thoughts on church?  Post some comments…