How We Got Here

One of my favourite songs is Jeremy Camp’s ‘Walk By Faith’ (You can listen to this on You Tube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xT9wH8t4Hzw). The song was written during ‘the deepest, darkest pit of despair’ (according to the singer), when his young wife was dying of ovarian cancer.

“Will I believe You when You say
Your hand will guide my every way?
Will I receive the words You say
Every moment of every day?

Well, I will walk by faith
Even when I cannot see
Because this broken road
Prepares Your will for me”

Walking by faith is not easy. There’s so much we don’t understand in this world and probably never will understand. But one thing that this song reminds me of is that God is able to use every experience we go through for good. ‘This broken road’, whatever that means for us, is actually woven into God’s plan for good.

We’ve come a long way to get to this place of owning St Mark’s. It has always been a walk of faith, because naturally speaking, there was no way a small church would ever have the resources to own a six figure building. We’ve had hurdles to overcome, moments of doubt, times of disappointment and despair. But every twist and turn in the path ultimately teaches us valuable lessons.

We’d all prefer a straight road, with no bumps. Our goal in travelling is usually to get from A to B in the quickest time possible. Meandering along country roads is fine for holidays when we’ve all the time in the world, but it’s not much use for everyday travel. God, ironically, doesn’t seem to be in as much of a hurry as we are, though. He’s more interested in shaping our characters as we go along.

Community payback is the current name in England for a scheme where offenders work on community schemes to repay the community for the crimes they have committed. It used to be known as ‘community service’ and is run by the Probation Service. Typical types of project include graffiti removal, street clean ups, rubbish removal, gardening and repair projects, and even recycling projects.

The aims of the scheme are two fold. “As well as being a means to punish offenders for their crimes against community without serving a prison term, Community Payback literally forces offenders to pay the community back for the crimes they have committed. As a local community member you have the opportunity to decide on the projects that would most benefit from a hard working, supervised, unpaid labour force.” (http://www.communitypayback.com/)

When volunteers were clearing the outside of St Mark’s and getting rid of all the rubble, weeds and other junk that had been deposited there, two ladies passing by commented to each other, ‘Look at those two doing community payback.’

We had to laugh at the comment, since both men working at the time were not criminals or ‘offenders’ being forced to do community work, but willing volunteers, giving up their spare time to serve the church. That concept seems largely to have disappeared in people’s thinking in England, alas: it was obvious to the two women that young men doing that kind of hard physical work must be being forced to do so!

And yet the spirit of community service is still alive and well. People are still more than willing to get involved in something ‘for the greater good’ as they perceive it. We have had no shortage of volunteers since we started work on St Mark’s, some of whom don’t even attend church regularly. There is a lot of community spirit around.

Why do people volunteer? I’ve spent most of my adult life in various volunteer roles, some of which involved great responsibility, none of which involved monetary reward. Volunteering England defines volunteering as ‘any activity that involves spending time, unpaid, doing something that aims to benefit the environment or someone (individuals or groups) other than, or in addition to, close relatives. Central to this definition is the fact that volunteering must be a choice freely made by each individual. This can include formal activity undertaken through public, private and voluntary organisations as well as informal community participation.’ (http://www.volunteering.org.uk/WhoWeAre/Who+we+are/aboutve.htm)

Christians have always been at the forefront of those volunteering, not because they are any better than anyone else, but perhaps because they have a strong sense of how much God has done for them and so they want to show their gratitude in practical ways. John says that our love for God is demonstrated by our obedience to Him and that we should demonstrate our love through actions and in truth (1 Jn 3:17-18). For the Christian, then, we should all be involved in ‘community payback’, giving something back to our communities because that is a tangible way that our communities will see what God means to us and how much He has done for us. It is also, hopefully, a way that we can serve our communities and thus give them a glimpse into how much God loves them.

Last Saturday, church members tidied out yet more stuff from the bowels of the earth, also known as ‘under the stage’. This is a vast storage area, a positive labyrinth of paths! It was amazing what we discovered there: planks of wood, broken chairs, stuff for jumble sales (including the dolls).

None of this stuff was initially visible: we had to dig deep for it in order to ensure that every area has been cleared and there is room for all the equipment we want to transfer to St Mark’s once the Beever Street building is sold. But in all of the tidying, perhaps this is a reminder to ‘fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.’ (2 Cor 4:18)

The plaintive cry of children as the holiday season starts is enough to strike dread in any parent’s heart. It’s usually uttered fairly near the start of the journey and becomes increasingly whiny as the time spent in the cramped box otherwise known as a car adds up.

This cry is fairly typical of the impatience of the human heart, however. Whatever our personality type, most of us are filled with enthusiasm at the start of a project, buoyed up by emotion, excitement and exhilaration and fuelled by the nervous energy which anticipation brings. More is needed to sustain us on the long journey to our ultimate destination, though.

The Bible has much to say about perseverance, an old-fashioned concept that is desperately needed today. Perseverance, according to the dictionary, is ‘continued steady belief or efforts, withstanding discouragement or difficulty, persistence.’ (Collins dictionary).

The initial rush of enthusiasm and hard work at St Mark’s has to be allied to perseverance. Recently, I have watched people transform dark, gloomy rooms into places of light, but this was a persistent, gradual transformation. Each coat of paint was lovingly applied, then critically evaluated: “no, you can still see the original colour; it needs another coat!” Some people felt as though they were in solitary confinement as they painted toilets in restricted space, cramped, locked away, unseen, far from the hustle and bustle of the rest of the work. It was a parable of how God works: often largely unnoticed by the rest of the world, then emerging with the triumph of something classified as ‘good’.

The Bible says that perseverance produces character (Romans 5:4) and that we should make every effort to add perseverance to self-control and godliness to perseverance (2 Peter 1:6). We are in this project for the long haul. We need more than the first flush of enthusiasm to overcome setbacks and to persistently plough the right furrow.

Galatians tells us we reap what we sow and urges us ‘let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.’ (Gal 6:9) James tells us that the testing of our faith develops perseverance and that ‘perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.’ (James 1:4) We’ve not got there yet, but we are on the way and we will get there!

The church is made up of vastly different people, with different gifts, talents, skills and personalities. We can often feel threatened or intimidated by those differences, but really, the differences should be celebrated. God is clearly a God of variety!

Romans 12 says “just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, so in Christ we who are many form one body, and each member belongs to all the others. We have different gifts, according to the grace given us.“

The variety and difference of gifts in the body of Christ have become more and more evident over recent weeks at St Mark’s. Some of us are gifted with the paint brush, showing infinite patience and attention to detail in that job. Some of us are gifted at cleaning. Some of us are gifted at organising, at tidying, at cooking, at washing up, at making drinks, at going shopping, at gardening. The list of jobs has been endless, it seems, and there has always been someone willing and able to do that particular task at that particular time.

It is easy to feel insecure about what one cannot do or to feel that one’s gifts are insignificant in comparison to another’s. But Paul teaches that ‘Now the body is not made up of one part but of many. If the foot should say, “Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,” it would not for that reason cease to be part of the body. And if the ear should say, “Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,” it would not for that reason cease to be part of the body. If the whole body were an eye, where would the sense of hearing be? If the whole body were an ear, where would the sense of smell be? But in fact God has arranged the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be. If they were all one part, where would the body be? As it is, there are many parts, but one body. The eye cannot say to the hand, “I don’t need you!” And the head cannot say to the feet, “I don’t need you!” ‘ (1 Cor 12:14-21)

Perhaps one of the most useful lessons we are learning, therefore, is that we’re all needed, all important, all valuable but all different. Long may it be so!

Ecclesiastes 3 talks about there being times for everything, including a time to tear down and a time to build. It certainly feels like we’ve had our share of tearing down over the past few weeks, particularly in the main church hall, where every time we touched something, it seemed to fall apart! One of our most memorable moments was when a lady who had helped with coffee mornings run by the Methodist church came in and was talking to members. She then suddenly saw the state of the main hall and gasped. “What have you done?” she wailed eloquently. We were quick to reassure her that the room wouldn’t stay in this state!

So… here are some photos to chart the progress of what has been going on in the main hall, which has just recently been professionally re-plastered. We’ve just purchased our own scaffolding, so hope to be able to paint this room soon.