[Sound Clip: Happy Christmas (War is Over)]
That powerful song written by John Lennon and Yoko Ono coupled with those images make us think and reflect on what we have done over the last year. Lennon's song "Happy Christmas" is played a lot these days; it has become a Christmas standard not because it is a sentimental song, far from it, but because it makes us reflect on the state of our world and our part in it, at the time when we start thinking about what we want to achieve in the year ahead.
In the last year our world has seen war, terrorism, poverty, natural disaster, the trial of a tyrant and yesterday his execution. It's been quite a year. In our own lives we have coped with quite a lot too, illness, bereavement, loss, depression as well as good stuff like new growth, new friends, new jobs and opportunities and new love. Our lives individually have been mixed, our life together has been a wonderful journey together where we have supported each other in the bad times and rejoiced together in the good.
We are used making new year's resolutions for ourselves; goals if you like for our next year. Weight loss is usually one of them for me; especially after the excess of Christmas! We often say we want to learn something new, exercise more, make new friends, save more money, clear a credit card, or whatever. We are used to making those resolutions and are doing well if we are still working on them by the end of January!
However, as a church community too we need to make resolutions or goals for our life together. Later on this year our Board and team leaders will spend a weekend away setting goals for our life together helping us to grow and develop over the next year. We will use four broad categories of church growth; spirituality, maturity, service of others and numbers as the broad areas within which we will work. I think these four areas can help us in our own Christian journeys too.
Growth in Spirituality
We are all called to grow in our spirituality. Jesus calls this being a disciple. We grow spiritually when we learn and apply the truths of our faith to the situations and problems we find in our every day life. We grow in spirituality in any number of ways; by reading and understanding the Bible for ourselves in a regular way - that's why we produce the prayer diaries to give a resource to help people to that, when we make a commitment to be in church regularly and not let other things get in the way, when we learn to see God at work in worship styles which are not our own, when we learn to spend time with and listen to God. All these involve growing in spirituality. We also grow when we start to realize that we have to apply what we have learnt.
A number of us have struggled with depression this year. One of the things I often used to hear in other MCCs was that "I need a break from church" or "I am not feeling mentally well enough to come to church". Of course I am always very sympathetic, but I also know that the Scriptures tell us to praise God no matter what we feel like. The very act of praising God lifts our spirits. One person recently told me that for the first time she had realized the truth of this when she made herself come to church and she felt better by the end of the service than she had at the start. This person grew spiritually that day and learnt a valuable lesson.
So how are we as individuals going to grow in our faith and in the application of it over the next year?
Growing in Maturity
One of the strange things I find in MCC is that I started off in the 1980s as the angry young man and now seem to have become an elder statesmen without really passing through anything in between! I find that often other pastors ask for advice or to chat through issues. One of the things that I hear time and time again is that people in MCC congregations don't seem to know how to disagree with each other, or how to disagree with their pastors. Mistakes are always noticed, but the good things are never praised. Everyone knows the weaknesses of each other but never the strengths. One of the ways in which we have learnt to grow in recent years is in maturity. Growing in maturity involves lots of different, but related things. It involves checking stuff out before we act on it, it means not engaging in malicious gossip, it means not telling everyone else about a problem before dealing with the person with whom you have a problem. It means getting involved in the various ministries of the church instead of sitting on the side lines criticizing. One pastor I know in America says that there are three choices people make in a church but only two of them are valid; we can get involved in building up the ministry of the church, we can sit on the side lines and watch or we can try and tear down as fast as the others are building up. Of course many Christians are in love with death, division and decay and opt for the third course of action. This is not a valid or valuable choice.
We can be problem centred or solution focused this coming year. We can criticize what we don't do or we can see if we can help develop our ministries more. A few years ago Jenny-Anne and Ian realized we needed to do more to welcome and include trans people in our church. From one conversation in the social room between a few of us, we have now sponsored a trans group which meets monthly, see around a third of our congregation come from the trans community and are respected in the wider trans community - which has lead to people joining MCCs in Bournemouth, Birmingham and Los Angeles - just because of that solution focused conversation. How are we going to have more of those conversations this year?
Growth in Service of Others
Over the last year we have reached out to serve others being rays of light to them in the gloom of our world; the trans group, the campaigning, fund raising, and emotional support given to Moses, the money raised for the Immigration Aid unit are some of the examples. Another was on Christmas Eve when Philip went at just a few hours notice to play at another Church so they could have a good Christmas Eve service. As we reach out we grow, we obey Jesus' command to serve him in the least of our sisters and brothers.
Over the next year we will continue to reach out, we will continue to work with those who are desperate, poor and in need. There will be times when we get tired, cynical or skeptical, but we will continue to reach out with love and service for this is what Jesus calls us to do.
Growth in Numbers
Many pastors are fixated about numbers. We can find our mood can change if we have a few more in worship this week than last! We have grown over the last year; our figures show we see between 50 and 60 regulars at least once a month in worship, with an average in worship in the low to mid 30s. Numberical growth is the responsibility of everyone one of us:
Who do we tell
about MCC?
Who do we invite to come along?
How well do we welcome those who are new?
How much do we chat to people after worship who may be new or shy but who
need to be drawn in?
How often do we pray for each other?
All these things will help us grow in the next year.
Conclusion
Our next year together will be good. We cannot tell what the next year will be like in terms of the world, or politics, or wars, or tyrants, but we know that if we stay faithful to the call God has given us to grow in our spirituality, our maturity, our service of others and in numbers then we will be blessed again beyond measure.
This
sermon was first preached in the Metropolitan Community Church of Manchester.
Click here
for further information.