A few months ago a woman came into our church and made the pronouncement that she would never return to our church, would never again grace us with her presence unless we took all the flags down off the walls. To keep us continually focused on missions we have flags from all the nations that we support missionaries or orphanages or churches (or whatever else) in hanging from the walls.

For me, it was one of the first tests of leadership in the church, what should we do? Did we listen to this woman who spent most of that morning getting in peoples ears about how the flags were evil and signs of Satan or did we stay the course and leave it as a focus?

We decided to leave the flags there because we believed that the opinion of one should not dictate to the majority (that is of course unless they are right, but that wasn't the case here).

Today I was confronted with a similar situation, before our night service tonight I was confronted by an older member of our congregation who proclaimed that I should never lead worship unless I was wearing shoes. Her argument was that as a leader I should do whatever it takes to remove and all barriers for people in our church, so even if one person complains we should do what they say.

Do you think this is reasonable? Let's put aside what you think about the actual issue here, I don't wear shoes because I don't like wearing shoes, I wear thongs (or flip-flops depending of where you live) and slip them off whenever I can. (That and the fact I have nerve damage in my hands and feet and shoes hurt.)

Do you think it is reasonable for the objection of one person to set the policy and standards of the church? The Apostle Paul did say that he endeavored to become all things to all men in order to save a few but there are obvious problems with this when you become a Jew to save some and a Gentile to save others.

Situations such as this need to be measured firstly against Scripture, does God care about this matter and if not, against a reasonableness test. Is it reasonable to hold an entire group of people to the standards of one person in this case? If they are a reflection of a larger opinion in the church and it doesn't hurt to do it then just do it. If however it is the opinion of just one person or a small group of people, why put ourselves in bondage to their whims? This week it's making sure your wearing shoes, next week it's wearing a suit when you preach even in 40 degree heat!

It's easy to laugh at these things but these things no matter how trivial do matter to people so when you are dealing with situations such as this make sure you do it in love. If you treat these situations flippantly or with disdain or the person without respect these imaginary emergencies and worries can turn into real hurt and pain.

When I first started studying theology for ministry I had no idea what I would learn. A mentor of mine at the time said that going through college dried him out and nearly burnt him out and told me to be very weary of it all. His fear was that my fresh conversion zeal would be sapped away by constant study as was his.

My experience of study has been quite the opposite, although it's tiring getting all the assessment work completed and trying to balance work, study, ministry and life, I find that I am energized by the company of great minds who have thought deeply and inspire my own deep thoughts.

Study has made parts of Scripture come alive, have new meaning and deliver a depth of meaning that I would have never encountered simply sitting in a pew.

One of those times occurred while reading "Theology for the community of God" which introduced me to the theology of the Trinity, how it works, why it is important and the consequences of having a God who lives in community with Himself.

The textbook brought me back to the fundamental nature of God, God is love.

Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.

We know that we live in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit. And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in him and he in God. And so we know and rely on the love God has for us.
God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him. In this way, love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment, because in this world we are like him. There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.

We love because he first loved us. If anyone says, "I love God," yet hates his brother, he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen. And he has given us this command: Whoever loves God must also love his brother.

John 4:7-21

When we say that God is love we sometimes seem like we are reading a bumper sticker, it's the right next to the "In case of rapture this car will be unmanned" sticker. But what we are conferring is the fundamental cause of the universe, God is love, and out of that love we came.

God is love.

God = love.

John in the passage above says it 6 ways from Sunday that when we love we are showing God to the world. When we speak of love we are speaking of God and the things of God.

In mathematics such as algebra you can substitute certain symbols to mean something else.

For example:

x = a + b

y = 5 * x

Therefore

y = 5 * (a + b)

Think this one through with me.

I'm seeking love = I'm seeking God.

I want to experience love = I want to experience God.

I want to know love = I want to know God.

When we seek love, we seek God.

For some of us this may re-invigorate our relationship with God because we know something about love and so we can start applying this to God. We can look at the hearts of our parents, or the love we have for our children and we get something of a glimpse of what this means with a relationship with our Heavenly Father.

For me it grows in me the desire to grow in holiness in my relationships. To love someone deeply means to impart something of the things of God into their lives. When I seek to serve the lost, the hopeless and the unloved in my community, the people who don't have a job, live on welfare, smell, when I minister to them to show them the things of God what I am really trying to do is show them love.

If I have not loved them then I have not shown them God.

I was worship leading this Sunday morning, one of my favorite things in the world. The service was excellent, the songs, prayer, communion and message where all consistent and filled with the Holy Spirit but...

... at the end of the service no one came forward for prayer.

Typically we have about 5-10% of the congregation come forward for some one on one ministry at the end of the service but this week there was no one. At the time I was a little thrown, questions circled in my mind like "what had I done wrong?" but after some time I have come to the realization that I didn't do anything wrong, it's just that no-one came forward for prayer and ministry.

So great service, no response. What do we do with that?

With some reflection I've identified a couple of issues that bear fleshing out.

Consistency. We have a dedicated team of people who pray and minister after the service consisting of any of the Elders in that service plus some ministry heads (pastoral care, prayer etc) who have hearts to be involved in peoples lives and let them know how much God loves them. This week half of this team were away on holidays and I get the feeling that if they were there certain people would have been drawn out for prayer.
We can call that a good and a bad thing for the obvious reasons. It's good that people bond and trust each other but you can't base your whole life on one person always being available to you, that's why we are one body with many parts.

The next point of reflection is expectation.

Some people might read this and think that I'm crazy, stupid or plain ungodly for expecting that there would be people who will come up for prayer. I strongly disagree with that sentiment because if we do not have a point, purpose or expectations on our meeting together then it will be an essentially aimless affair.

Our morning services are geared towards a response from the message (motivation for change), healing and growing in Christ. Nothing wrong with that but the church down the road may have a completely different goal of say people signing up to work in the community, another church may have the call for greater participation in church life. Contrast to our night services where we do not have a clear aim or goal, we run listlessly from idea to idea and wonder why nothing is working.

Whatever the goal we should be clear minded and focused on it because consistency in what we do brings the freedom for people to participate each week and the freedom to not.

Community starts at home? Maybe that's not atomic enough, community starts with the individual.

Whaaat? How does that work? Community by it's very definition has to involve more than one person so how can it start with the individual?

The weekend just gone the Eldership of my church (which I am one of) went on retreat to pray, reflect and discuss God's direction for His church in the coming year. I think we all went in with some fairly clear ideas about what 2009 will look like but by the time we were done God had turned it all on it's head.

If you are a member of my church, you should probably skip the next couple of paragraphs, it contains spoilers for next year :)

God's agenda for our church seems centered around the statement "Being in community. Being of community" which is to say we are committing ourselves to growing our church in community with each other (as well as those who walk through our doors) as well as committing ourselves to growing in further outside of our church walls into the greater community.

The basis for all of this community building are small groups with the stated goal of "Being a church of small groups, not a church with small groups". That doesn't mean adopting a cell church model but rather seeking to make community a part of the DNA of our church. When someone new joins, the goal is to have them plugged in with a small group who will then become the primary mode of pastoral care and support.

The Holy Spirit was quite convicting when this vision took form in front of us, out of my own mouth I heard the challenge to us as a leadership to be practicing this form of community that we had been discussing for the rest of the church because if we were not able to practice and demonstrate it how could we expect the rest of our congregation too?

So why does community start with the individual, because the individual must make a conscious decision to open their life up to those around them even if those openings may invite pain or conviction. (Although in my experience it has always brought more joy than anything).

Community is not something that can be tough, it can only be shown. In fact we have the greatest example of community in God. As a Trinitarian being he is in constant community with himself and at his very nature he is love.

If we want to grow a God-like community, a royal priesthood of believers than we can do no better than taking a leaf out of God's book on this on.