Induction

So many people kindly travelled to my Induction today.  Many, many thanks to them and those kind enough to write their greetings and promise their prayers.  Here's the statement I read:

 

My calling to Christian ministry in its dedicated full-time form came when I was working for NatWest Bank.  I was at the Keswick Convention in the Lake District, a large annual gathering of people seeking to know God better.  Following that clear sense of call the first role I enquired about was in administration for a medical facility in Bangladesh.  I was told it would be a good idea to go to a Christian training college first. 

So I left my home in North London and went to BTI in Glasgow, the furthest I’d ever travelled up to then! I wondered what far-flung place or places in the world my commitment to follow Jesus might take me.  I wonder where then I’d have guessed I’d be called to in 2014?  To what obscure desert, mountain range, city ghetto or jungle valley?

What I wouldn’t have expected was to be just 2¾ miles away from my then home in Finchley and be here in Muswell Hill.  Not only that, but I have been called to Pastor a Church that I occasionally attended when I lived up the road.  In the event, I used to travel twice as far as this from Finchley commuting each day to work in Central London.  It is, I suppose, a reminder that the adventure of Christian service is not to see the world but to change the part of it the Lord calls us to serve in. 

When the opportunity arose to explore a call to this Church I was excited by the opportunity to work for God in our capital city.  Through our multi-national congregation and the church’s long history of support for missions we will yet touch many parts of the earth in the years ahead even though we don’t visit them.

At the same time our Church offers the privilege of ministry in a real local community.  In our years of local church ministry Diane and I have enjoyed immersing ourselves in genuine community.  We have felt very kindly welcomed to Muswell Hill and we look forward to doing good here in the name of Jesus Christ bringing comfort and challenge in the Good News of the Gospel.

I am especially grateful to be called to Pastor a Church which was founded, to quote its original Trust, holding ‘the Deity of the Lord Jesus Christ and the Sole Authority of the Holy Scriptures and that interpretation of them usually called Evangelical’.  These are the roots from which, by the grace of God, we will seek to bear fruit in this community for his glory.   

Together as Pastor and people we do not appear to amount to very much in a great city.  But as Pastor and people with the Spirit of God and the Word of God and the Love of God I believe that in the unfolding years we will make a real difference.

One Month back in London

Celebrating this Anniversary today it strikes me that there are a bunch of London things that I am reliving after years of being away.

 

1. My driving has diminished.  On ringing the Car Insurer to discuss my new (higher of course) premium the receptionist suggested I might do only half or less of my previous mileage.  She was right.

 

2. My driving has deteriorated.  Perhaps not in quality, but certainly in politeness.  The tipping point occurred about the third or fourth time I was cut up by a white van that was deliberately using the wrong lane to get past a line of traffic I was in.

 

3. My parking has improved.  Basically, if you can't park your car in a space that is smaller than it there's no point in having a car in London.

 

4. I no longer associate the Oyster with the seaside but with Red Buses.
 



5. I now assume that everyone in church comes from a different country to everyone else.  e.g. Brazil, Japan, Costa Rica, Iran, South Africa, Nigeria, France, Cyprus, Poland, Malaysia, Singapore, Romania, Italy, Burma . . .

6. I am reminded that every church building in London seems to have at least two churches meeting in it, and usually one or two based in a different language.

7. I assume everyone in London has a baby - it is not at all hard to understand why London is projected to grow by a million people in the next ten years as I negotiate a thousand prams in the shopping street.

8. I have rediscovered that, while everyone outside London thinks of living there as their worst nightmare, nearly everyone who does live there loves it to bits.

9. Every loft is converted.

10. There is always an airliner overhead.

 

Wrong Way

 

Here's the YouTube clip we showed in Church on Sunday.  What is truly amazing, as the reporter points out, is that not only does the player run the wrong way when he was on the verge of a touchdown: everyone on the field seems to join in the mistake.  So he gets tackled by the team that stood to gain if he kept running, his team-mates help him to run the wrong way too.

 

When we head the wrong way in any area of life, there's no telling how we disorientate others around us.  Well, there will be a telling one day in fact  . . .

There are two places in the world where men can most effectively disappear

(according to 19th century American novelist Herman Melville)  — the city of London and the South Seas.  He might have added - Sundays at Church.

 

In these weeks of being effectively between pastorates I get to experience what happens when you go to church as an outsider.  Of course on one level I am far from an outsider.  I was at a church today where we recited the Nicene Creed and was possibly the only person in the room that knew it off by heart.  I rarely stand up at the wrong time, rarely fail to know who wrote a hymn or song, let alone how to sing it, rarely fail to find the Bible reading quickly and even know where to sit and where not to sit.  Nevertheless, no-one knows that about me when I arrive.  This morning I attended my fifth service during this personal inbetween-time.  My wife and daughter add a couple of extra experiences to this mid 2014 survey of being a newcomer at British Churches of all kinds.  As I have found on Sabbaticals gone by there is a nearly unfailing theme here.  Let's try a picture:

 

I count it the highest privilege to belong the church of Jesus Christ.  I do not deserve it.  My sin properly excludes me from its fellowship but One has paid for my sin.  The cross is the reminder I did not properly belong apart from God's grace.  I do not need the gathering Christians to act out my deserved exclusion. Yet time and again I walk through open doors, receive a wan smile from a busy steward, find my way to a seat or bit of pew, then watch 50, 80, 150 people come in, sit around me and talk to each other with warm welcoming reunions.  The key word there is watch.

I conclude that this is a British Church epidemic of inhospitality.  I am the same person who has people gathering around me when I am the known Pastor or visiting preacher.  I wear just the same aftershave and am indeed far more friendly and relaxed than when I am about to lead a service.  My wife and daughter are the same people that people gather round when they are known.  But become a stranger and at once you are strange.  Where that leaves you if you really are generally strange in some way I dread to think.

 

A very special moment happened in one church where a pleasant older lady eventually engaged me in conversation well after the service had finished.  Her husband moved away and returned with two mugs of tea.  I was very grateful.  He gave one to her and then to my surprise turned away and drank the other one - his!

 

I note that Christ's measure of discipleship is not how we welcome each other (though how we love and forgive each other is another story).  His measure is how we welcome the stranger.  I am embarrassed that the average Estate Agent is (albeit from other motives) more exemplary of Christ's pattern of welcome than his alleged people when they gather to worship.