12 years ago was my first Easter weekend leading the multisite/church plant that is now Life Church Seaford.
I had an idea for an outreach event that I thought would be amazing and I came up with an incredibly creative Easter Sunday with what I believed was an incredible service plan that aimed to hit all the right gospel notes and contained the most soul-stirring renditions of some of the best songs I'd come across.
I leafleted most of my town, paid someone else to leaflet the rest, prayed my socks off and geared up for revival.
The outreach event and the weekend didn't go very well.
Not only didn't the church show up to the outreach event, the town didn't either and the venue charged us far more than they said they would. Undeterred I spent most of Easter Saturday (along with others) lugging gear around in vans and setting up a school hall for our service. Sunday came and, again, it wasn't great. Of the 50 adults part of our church plant most seemed to take the Sunday off visiting family or sleeping in and a grand total of two guests joined us. It was our lowest attended Sunday of the year.
'Trying to reach the lost with the gospel and establish a church plant is hard work' I thought, hours before getting a letter through my door on Easter Monday from a church member telling me that she was leaving.
To say that I was discouraged is putting it mildly. 'Why the heck,' I wondered 'had I moved my family from a large and vibrant church for this?'
Amy wept most weeks for the friends and life we'd left behind and I, having recently become an elder, was learning the hard way that ministry wasn't the quick pathway to happiness that I thought it would be. In fact the year I became an elder was probably the hardest year of my Christian life so far.
For years I'd dreamt of preaching and pastoring, of being a missionary and of planting a church. But it turned out that doing a thing and dreaming about a thing are very different realities. For one thing I'd always believed that pastors were the ones who had it all 'sorted' and yet when I became one, not only did I continue to struggle with all the same problems as before, whole new problems seemed to pop up almost weekly! I was an imposter and I was suffering a clear case of imposter syndrome.
This led to me working harder and striving even more which led to frustration with ministry and the church which led to more striving which led to more of an awareness of my many character defects; which only led to more imposter syndrome. It was a joyful season indeed!
Today things are different. Easter weekends have become the spiritual and ministry 'high point' I always dreamt that they would be.
As I write this it's Easter Monday and I'm amazed at what the lord appears to be doing. Yesterday was our largest ever Sunday service. What began with 50 people has grown to many more. We had 255 squeezing into our building as we celebrated Easter and witnessed six people getting baptised, three of whom had come from completely unchurched backgrounds.
On top of that I'm continuing to witness a growing move of God in our nation and community that appears to be gathering pace. I've been in full time Christian ministry for twenty years and I've never seen anything like this before.
Nationally researchers are recording a turning to Christian faith among young people that hasn't been seen for many decades. Some are even talking of a 'quiet revival' taking place.
Two days ago the Guardian published a fascinating piece about a woman who recently experimented with Christianity. A professed non-believer the author writes about trying to see if she could become a Christian by throwing herself into church. It's a fascinating article that's well worth a read. In it she writes:"
[Today] we are leagues away from the New Atheist movement of the 1990s, which repudiated religion on supposedly intellectual grounds.
Locally I'm also really encouraged. For years I've preached a strategy of becoming locally enmeshed in as many groups and relationships as I could and now I'm beginning to see some of the relationships I've had start to show signs of fruitfulness. A friend we made at an outreach event eleven years ago came to church for the first time yesterday, and just today my barber has messaged me asking if she could come to church. Last week a dad from my football team has reached out and requested to come to church as well.
As a church we're seeing more and more people turn up from previously unchurched backgrounds as well. Consider this delightful email that dropped into my inbox two weeks ago:
Hi all, I'm keen to attend a service but I'm nervous...
I'm 38, and I was raised in an extremely anti-church hippie household. I've been searching for my spiritual home for my entire adult life - thinking it was in all the various New Age 'bits 'n' bobs', but in recent years, I'm being increasingly pulled towards Christianity. I think I now just need to fully embrace it! The overwhelming gratitude and devotion I'm experiencing these days is like nothing else!!
I'm literally starting from the very beginning. Apart from a distant memory of a story from school assembly, I know NOTHING about scripture! So, I'm doing ALOT of homework, mostly through the Hallow app. And I'm also binge-watching The Chosen and cannot wait for season 5 in the cinema! And I'm reading Jordan Peterson's latest book 'We Who Wrestle With God' - both have come at the exact right time - cosmic timing!
I guess I'm emailing because I'd love the opportunity to pop by for a cuppa/chat before coming along to a service...
My first attempt at a service will be Sunday 13th
She's now been to church two weeks in a row.
From observations and conversations from the past few weeks here's four things I've learnt:
- Our non-church friends often don’t feel they can come to church without a formal invitation but are interested in coming when invited.
- They talk of 'imposter syndrome' when they do come and need to be reassured that just looking on with curiosity is 'ok'. They're also worried of becoming emotional. I get that, crying in public with a bunch of strangers isn't a comfortable experience.
- There are non-christians seeking God every week at our services. This wasn’t the case 5 years ago. We mustn't ever dial the supernatural mysteries down but we must explain ourselves clearly and speak to them thoughtfully about what we think is going on in church.
- Prayer works. The Father hears our prayers and acts in his own time to answer them. I've often thought of prayer as like rain on the ground. It doesn't make the seeds grow but it adds more of the nutrients that God uses to make life happen.
Aslan is indeed on the move, and he's perhaps even gathering pace.
More Lord.