World Cup Churches: 31. Uruguay

Continuing a series of blogs heading round the 32 qualifying countries in the 2022 World Cup - I will pick out one church in each one.  I am not going to choose only churches that are to my liking.  This is an exploration not a recommendation! To see all in the series select the label 'World Cup Churches' below.

Uruguay won the first World Cup and again in 1950 and though a small country have consistently qualified for the tournament in contrast to several larger South American nations.  Arguably football is what Uruguay is famous for, but it is an unusually peaceful and progressive nation on its continent.

Progressive is not a word to fill believers with great joy given that in many parts of the West it is synonymous with unbelief attacking and dismantling belief, at least in the public space.  Nevertheless, in Uruguay it has had positive aspects in offering freedoms that non-Catholic churches found hard to come by in much of South America.

Allow me to introduce Esperanza en la Ciudad.

The sufferings of the Armenian people have led to them finding their way around the world and, despite its small population, Uruguay has many thousands of Armenians who have benefited from its placidity and freedom as a place to live.

Most Armenians identify as Orthodox but there are also Armenian Evangelical Churches, not least in the Americas, including Uruguay.  'Hope in the City [Eng]' is one and of course they bear the outreaching characteristics of all evangelical churches.  While my church has been shivering with carols on the street in North London, this Armenian evangelical church in Montevideo is giving out foody gifts in the sunshine by the waterfront.  Ah well.

Billy Graham

Today's news of the passing into glory of Billy Graham reminds me of the great debt I owe to his ministry.  It has come in the form of people whose lives were changed during his London evangelistic meetings, several of whom have been key leaders in churches I have served.

Not so long after arriving in the (now) London Borough of Haringey, I had reason to travel to the old site of his 1950s Haringay Arena  meetings.  It is now a retail park.  You may not find the Lord there but you will find plenty of casual workers waiting for vans to pick them up for another illegal (?) day's work.  It was a stark reminder that times move on.

Sixty plus years later secular and social pressures would make such an evangelist and such an event very difficult to keep on its intended track of winning souls for Christ.  Mind you, the harshest things I have seen written about Billy Graham and/or his ministry have been written by (alleged) Christians and it is unlikely that any contemporary internet troll could come up with anything any more vitriolic.

Billy Graham diligently rose above all such political and theological spewing anger and simply preached Christ.  Was he always infallibly true?  Of course not.  Did he point people toward the One who is?  Of course he did.

It is easy to complain about a signpost.  It's worded incorrectly, it has spray paint on, it should be positioned differently, the typeface is ugly, the colour is wrong.  In the end, if it points uncounted numbers of people to the right destination - that is a good signpost.

And when it is gone, it will be missed unless it is replaced.

And today we miss Billy Graham.

“Someday you will read or hear that Billy Graham is dead. Don’t you believe a word of it. I shall be more alive than I am now. I will just have changed my address. I will have gone into the presence of God.” Billy Graham

The Temple of the Heart

Just round the corner near a Cornish fishing harbour is this sign.  It records that John Wesley stayed here and that the Methodists met here.  Too easily we institutionalise the way of Christ but, just as in the Holy Land, the true foundations of Christian faith are no longer present for they were the hearts that were changed, so here is a reminder that although the Church quickly becomes mistaken for buildings, publishing labels and international conferencing it is largely based in people's hearts, and therefore their homes.

Mrs Colville

Today at Church we thought about sowing seeds of goodness (Galatians 6:7-10).  It reminded me of Mrs Colville from Gateshead.  

What did Mrs Colville do?  It was embarrassingly simple really. In the middle of the 19th century she went from door to door seeking to tell people about the Gospel of the Lord Jesus.

She arrived in Ballymena in Ireland with the Baptist Missionary Society.  Going from door to door one day she was she found two ladies who were already conversing with a young man about spiritual things.  His name was James.  James subsequently sought out Mrs Colville for further discussion and his life began to change.

The story moves to Kells, a nearby village, where two young men - Jeremiah Meneely and Robert Carlisle - were walking home with the school-master following a school property meeting.  Robert asked them had they heard about the great change that had come over James.

That autumn, reflecting on James's change of life, Jeremiah was inspired to begin a Prayer Meeting.  After 3 months nothing much had happened, except two more men had joined.   On January 1st the first conversion took place as a result of the prayer-meeting.

But after that there were conversions one after another. By year's end about fifty young men were taking part in the prayer meeting.

From that meeting in North Antrim the seed of revival grew into the great Revival of 1859 in Ulster, one glimpse of which might be seen in this description of one of countless great meetings which often lasted days - I could not get into the building; every open window was more than occupied. In the vestry room there were those under conviction of sin; it was a scene impossible to forget and equally impossible to describe. An old man, a boy, and a young man were in varying stages of upset. They all wanted to be free from sin. “ I know that my redeemer liveth, the young man said. “I know that He can save my soul. I know that He can wash me from all uncleanness in the fountain of His atoning blood. But, Oh I have crucified Him, I have crucified Him."

Or this from the local newspaper in one town:  Common street prostitutes and public nuisances who had frequently been convicted for drunkenness and loitering are now clothed with attention to decency and struggling to earn their livelihood by honest labour, and by learning to read. They are all daily and humbly beseeching pardon for their past sin and in regular attendance at some place of worship.  At the Raceview Woollen Mills by twelve noon the factory had to close down as so many of the employees were crying out to God.

Mrs Colville had returned from her Mission Trip sad at the poor response.  Yet she had been the sower of a seed that, even in the amazing events of 1859, had scarcely begun to reveal its true harvest.

Meanwhile in Edinburgh . . .

A young lady was converted in that great revival of 1859 and all she could pray for was one thing. That revival would break out in her little church in Edinburgh. Time went by - thirty years went by - and she still had not seen an answer to her prayers.  But she was sowing in prayer as surely as Mrs Colville had previously done to lead towards that Revival in which this lady had been saved. But that will take another blog.

Just Looking

The story is told of a man on his hands and knees under a street light looking for something.

Along came an Officer of the Law who was concerned with the man's behaviour so late at night.

"Have you lost something, sir?"

"My wallet, officer", drawled the man who was evidently somewhat the worse for drink.

"Do you remember when you last had it?", asked the policeman.

"Yes I think so.  I think I dropped it back there round the corner."

"Then if you don't mind me asking", continued the officer,"why are you looking for it on the pavement here?"

"There's a light here," replied the man. "Back there I couldn't see where I was looking".

It may be a joke, but I feel sure that something like this explains several things.  It explains why apparently normalised people go after messengers of disaster or death - into trafficking, into terrorism and the like.  That seems to them to be the light and they head there looking for something.

It also explains the difficulty the church often faces when it is dark even though it holds the answer.  Sometimes the light goes out because people become as in a private club or family and evangelism loses its meaning for them; sometimes the light goes out because people are too preoccupied with things other than light-giving; sometimes the light is lost in a compromised faith that admits immorality, dissension or unbelief; sometimes the doors of the church building are just mostly shut (and the lights literally out!).

If no light is shone on what needs to be found, it is strangely likely that people will head for any light even if what needs to be found is not there.

Hearing

Not too much attention is given by Christians to the meaning of hearing.

Even as I write that, I realise I must immediately disown all reference to Church microphones and induction loops that plague the peaceableness of every congregation's relationships.  (It seems clear to me why angels in heaven use trumpets and God a very loud voice life the sound of many waters - nowhere could be free of sin that had electronic sound reproduction!).

The hearing I refer to is that with which the Lord Jesus ends many parables -  he that hath ears to hear let him hear.  Lest we take that turn of phrase to mean that everyone will hear Jesus also indicates rather the opposite, quoting the old prophet - ears have they but they hear not.

Serving God in a vast city where, nonetheless, many do not hear I have been thinking about this.  Clearly we who know Christ have to be out there and the past year has seen our church do that on many occasions (but nowhere near as many as the Jehovah's Witnesses locally, let's admit).  There is a telling to be done.

But there is also hearing.  

The picture above is a quotation from John Wesley.  It stands by one of his great outdoor theatres of preaching where thousands heard.  We envy him.  Then we beat ourselves up for falling so far short.  But we might miss what he says - to declare unto all that are willing to hear.  Wesley was a great evangelist partly because he had a great hearing audience.  A Christian in Saudi Arabia or North Korea has very few hearers (except perhaps by media).  A Christian in parts of Africa or South America may quickly amass many.  Jesus did both, with Galilean audiences of thousands and disgruntled Jerusalem Temple or Nazareth sceptics who wouldn't accept a word he said.  Hence his point.

The willingness to hear is not the work so much of the evangelist as the community.  Or more properly of the Holy Spirit who graciously unplugs ears sometimes.

A Son's Tribute - Last Gasp

We chose this hymn for my Dad's service.

On my Birth Certificate he described his occupation as evangelist.

It fell to me of course to describe his occupation on his Death Certificate.  Evangelist, I said to the Registrar.

She looked at his age in his mid-eighties.  "That's retired?", she suggested.

I hesitated.  He had been in hospital only once in his life really, those last weeks.  He had told the doctor that he was not afraid to die because he was a Christian and trusting in the Lord, one of the nurses who passed his Bible over to him to read each day had been given it to read for themselves.  Perhaps he was an evangelist still.

 

Then again, I thought, this is a Death Certificate.  He may have been evangelising until his final breath but there was a final breath.  There are no evangelists in the presence of Jesus.  Only retired ones.  Evangelist (retired) then.

A Son's Tribute - Caravans

Although this picture comes from a generation earlier, it depicts the kind of setting in which my Dad began Christian ministry as a Wickliffe Preacher.  Three young men, a caravan plastered with big texts and a drive from village to village and including market towns and occasionally urban centres with missions to teach the children about the Gospel.

Today's children see many more words than these.  Why, as I write this they are busy tweeting them to one another, looking at them on endless websites and generally being bombarded by the messengers of the global village.

 

We smile at the change.

 

The quality of the media is vastly different but the message carried is vastly inferior.  Windows 8 has introduced no new input that improves on THIS IS A FAITHFUL SAYING THAT CHRIST JESUS CAME INTO THE WORLD TO SAVE SINNERS.

 

Sure, we can save documents, blogs, digital images, spreadsheets and the like.  But is there a new, improved way to save sinners?

 

One way to look at this in the 21st century is to say that we no longer interpret behaviours as sin.  That is to miss the point.  Sin is not the human way of looking at human behaviour, it is the revealed divine way.  Like the arrested bloke's, "Get yer 'ands off me. I ain't done nuthin' wrong." this self-described innocence needs some higher corroboration.  The Bible makes it clear enough that we cannot change the way God looks at our sin.  The Gospel declares that God has.  He has sent a saving Messiah - Christ Jesus came to save.

 

Throughout his life my dad lived with people gently observing him as pleasantly quaint and earnestly unnecessary.   It is the evangelist's lot.  But they were wrong.  He was witnessing to the only solution to the only long term problem we humans face.

 

 

 



Building

Christians have every reason to be thankful for the work of Peter Brierley and Christian Research.  I hope that he'll excuse me picking some holes - some important holes, I think - in his recently-reported research reported to the Pentecost Festival.  Peter's strong point has always been collecting data and delivering it in understandable ways.  Interpreting it is tougher.

Let's take just one glaring statistic because I think it teaches alot more than it appears to teach: in 1990, there were (allegedly) 120,000 conversions and (definitely) 60,000 deaths, in 2009 there were (apparently) only 80,000 conversions and (definitely) 120,000 deaths of Church attendees.

Does this, as Peter deduced, show a lack of evangelism?

A conversion is only a conversion for sure when the pilgrim reaches the end of the journey.  Be faithful to the point of death and I will give you a crown of life.  Professions, not conversions then.  But are they even professions?  Aren't there still here the formal additions of automated confirmations, of aspirational declarations for other purposes such as getting the kids into the local faith school?  Ironically the deaths - those who have died in the body of believers - are more accurately described as converted.

And who does what here?  Instinctively we feel that the Church does conversions and God does deaths.  Yet with modern medicine we can hold death off quite significantly.  We cannot by our knowledge add a single soul by conversion.  Are these statistics a picture of what we are doing or of what God is doing?  If God is doing less converting do we do more evangelism or do we do more praying?   Is our hurt about numerical decline of the visible church more about gospel passion or our own pride and influence?

The Church is a building.  That's all it is.  A building, never a declining.  Added to, never subtracted from.  Every new believer one new living stone that will never die, not an inadequate shoring up of a wall that once had many more stones in. 

We are too earthbound.  Biblically, eternally, heaven-perspectively we belong to a number that cannot be counted but every day is added to until every last one of God's children is home and everyone left outside has to confess they never wanted in.

It is not the Church that is declining.

The statistics show that what is declining is the spiritual state of the country and the culture.

Starbucks

Church

If a Sabbatical does anything to a Pastor, it de-Churches him. In a life tied up with a local community of believers it is always possible for him to incrementally mistake the Church for the message or the organisation for the essence of faith. As people, in a sense rightly and in another sense catastrophically wrongly, expect their Leaders to be the guardians of policies, politics and programmes so the normal week becomes occupied by preoccupations.

The Church as people is sacrificially loved by God. The Church as a constituted charitable organisation always stands in danger of becoming not just irrelevant to God but the enemy of His kingdom.

Perhaps the low point of my Sabbatical came when I attended Evening Prayer in the late afternoon at one of Britain's ancient Cathedrals. It was a very pleasant spring Sunday afternoon. The Cathedral had had early and mid-morning Eucharists. This was the third and only other service of the day.

The verger showed me to a seat in the choir - I wasn't expecting many attendees and neither was he. Behind me sat the Canon. A Clergywoman stood at the back togging up. Another member of the Cathedral clergy sat opposite, talking to what I took to be a key member of the Chapter who spoke of resigning over ill health.

The verger took his seat. The Clergywoman walked forward and read through the service. and the other four of us sat, stood or knelt as appropriate.

Concerning which I reflected that the whole voluntary congregation at that service appeared to be Baptist Ministers - or more specifically, me! The other four probably had to be there by rota. Though I might have felt intimidated by being clerically outnumbered I needn't have worried as they gathered afterwards to complain about some upcoming meeting and did not speak to me at all.

Does such an experience make me doubt my faith? Despair of the Church? Absolutely not. It just reminds me that the Church is living stones not ancient stones. Which is somewhat the point of the conversation below;