Calibrated Christianity

The trouble is with pathways is that they are only pathways because many have trodden there before.   That’s how a path is established.  I know a brother who set up a ‘pioneer’ work in a northern city.  This work was a fresh expression of Christianity but was by no means unique.  The city already had good people ‘doing things to help Jesus.’  When all the fuss was over it turns out the pioneer work was exactly the same as the others, apart from the energy mustered up around it.  Twenty years later the brother still regards this as a ‘pioneer’ work even though it blends into the landscape of ‘church’ in the city.   Becoming also-ran must be disheartening, but the initial drive to pioneer a work for Jesus, I think is a victim of wrongly calibrated Christianity. 

Many Christians follow their ideas unaware that the ideas have been furnished by information.  The information goes on through our understanding of the Bible, our family lives, community, church, work etc.  We are information exchanges.  In Mark 7 Jesus says it isn’t what goes into a man that makes him unclean.  It’s what comes out! We are capable of making pure streams of grace into rotten smelling sewers.  It’s just how sin works.  So many are correct about their calling and how they can do good for the Lord (and I do think the majority, including the above example, have great hearts), but are wrongly calibrated.  That is, they set off with skewed mind-sets and polluted waters.  They envision what a work looks like because the reference point is what they saw someone else do.  Often the work is a flat-pack of what’s gone before and the message geared to meet a culture, ‘where they are.’ 

The gospel is not cultural, it’s biblical.  It has little interest in how it upsets the hearer’s inner constitution.  It is geared to thrust a sword into the heart and make wretched souls fall before the Holy One.  To perpetuate the clarity and loving aggression of the Gospel we mustn't do the ‘done thing.’  We must be free from the invisible cords and ties of what people expect of us or what we expect of ourselves.   

Many of the impressive works we see in the western church today are like reservoirs.  These hold Christians in one place while the demand draws upon them.  Anyone can build a reservoir! It’s just a big puddle!  The Church I see in the NT was a flowing, no, GUSHING source of life, love and unity.  We are called to calibrate ourselves toward God's word with the Help of the Holy Spirit not find a nice church where we can experience some nice worship, a palatable discourse, tea and biscuits.  

Gary Ward