Church Without Walls II
CHRIST’S CALL TO CHANGE
Sermon preached at Barclay Church, Edinburgh by Rev D. Graham Leitch
14 April 2002

In this second service on the themes presented to us - and the challenges raised for us - by the CHURCH WITHOUT WALLS REPORT, we’ll explore together the theme of CHANGE.

A WAKE UP CALL TO THE CHURCH
The CHURCH WITHOUT WALLS report is really a “wake up” call to the Church IN Scotland, and especially the Church OF Scotland, represented by its congregations scattered throughout the length and breadth of the land.

It’s a summons not to withdraw further into the safe and secure world of what is familiar and precious to us within the history and traditions of our church, closing our eyes to its accelerating decline , but to face honestly, open-eyed, the challenge today’s church faces, of relating to, communicating with and winning for God a world that, if it believes God still exists - and many still do - no longer believes that God really matters!!

The rapid changes in society over the past 40 years in social mores and morals alike, combined with the seismic changes in culture summed up by the word “post-modern,” have left the church beached like a cumbersome whale, out of its element. Or, to change the imagery - Christians have been left living out our lives as Christians within our own particular ecclesiastical sub-culture with its own language, music, rules and traditions.

Joseph McCulloch, whom the Sunday Times called “a turbulent priest” in his book “My Affair with the Church” wrote, more than 25 years ago now, about the church as:
“...imprisoned and confined by its past, locked within outworn systems of thought and structure, inhibiting that elasticity of mind and freedom of action upon which its effective ministry in the modern world entirely depends...in the existing church there is too little room for the Spirit of God to move among the dwindling number of those who still huddle within its spiritually stifling confines...”

Young people today are more likely to find the friendship and sense of belonging they seek in a pub or a club than in a pew. The utter dominance of a scientific world-view and the relentless secularisation of society has created a new climate, a new culture - a new world - in which the church of yesterday is often answering questions no-one is asking today.

in the existing church there is too little room for the Spirit of God to move

NOT A MATTER OF FAULT AND BLAME
This isn’t a criticism of this - or any - congregation any more than it’s an attack on the local or national leadership of the Church. If so, it would be a criticism of myself. The CHURCH WITHOUT WALLS isn’t about fault and blame. Its about facing a completely new situation.

And it’s about asking how God expects the church to respond to it. We can close our eyes, live in denial and be content that at least the church will see US out!! We can stand fast in our pride of history and love of tradition and traditionalism, pretending all is well.

Or we can face the challenges with courage, meet each opportunity with vision and with faith and, opening the door of the church to the disordering and ordering wind of the Spirit, obey the command of the Bible and “hear what the Spirit is saying to the churches” and, in particular, saying to the Church of Scotland today.

In an effort to further aid us in thinking through the challenge of CHANGE as it relates to our life as Christians and life as a local church, we’re going to look at the subject through three sets of words or pairs of ideas.The first pair of words is STATIC and DYNAMIC

1
STATIC AND DYNAMIC

I remember how surprised I was when I researched some of history of Barclay Church, to discover that, when I came to be the Minister of this congregation in 1980, the pattern of the congregation’s life had changed little in the preceding 50 years. In many congregations the “it’s aye been done that way” culture still holds sway today and nothing much has changed!

Some of you will know the rather unkind old joke about how many Church of Scotland members it takes to change a light-bulb. None! Why? Because in the Church of Scotland nobody ever changes anything!! But there’s sometimes been more than a grain of truth to it!

A young man left his home city in his late teens to emigrate. In the city square stood a statue of the Duke of Wellington on his horse - the horse stood on its hind legs, the muscles taut, straining at the reins. Returning 25 years later and visiting the scenes of his youth, he arrived back in the city square and there it was - still supporting the famous duke, still poised to charge forward - but still there, unmoved in its strangely unnatural frozen immobility!!

WE HAVE TRIED!
No-one can say that the congregation of Barclay Church hasn’t changed over the past 20 years!! There have been many changes. Our congregation has worked harder than most to adapt to a changing culture, to bridge the chasm which separates the unchurched from the Church and its gospel. There have been changes in structure (the way we organise ourselves as a church); changes in worship (the style and content of our regular services) and frequent changes in our church programmes and activities too.

Indeed one of the real encouragements of reading the ‘Church without Walls’ Report is discovering how often this congregation has anticipated its recommendations and is already implementing them!!
Our congregation has worked harder than most to adapt to a changing culture.

Change always creates insecurity and fear

Of course, CHANGE always creates insecurity and fear. This is natural and understandable. Some of the most conservative and traditional of our members are probably already thinking, even if they’re not yet saying, “enough's enough” or “we’ve already changed too much!”

But the fact of the matter is that we’ve really changed altogether too little. At least too little to be effective in communicating faith and making disciples of today’s children and tomorrow’s adults. It’s uncomfortable truth - but it’s true!!

Let me illustrate what I mean by using the children’s work at Barclay as an example. Yes - we have changed the names of our Sunday Schools and Bible Class - we now call them “Quest” and “Next.” And, yes, we use contemporary children’s songs after the children’s address.

But despite having one of the best annual Children’s Holiday Club programmes in Scotland and massive appreciation from the parents of the substantial numbers of unchurched children who attend, and have attended each year for many years now, we have not seen a single family come into a faith in Jesus Christ, or into an active association with our church, or into its regular worship life as a result.

None!!

FISHING FOR PEOPLE
When Jesus called the disciples with his “Follow me” He told them it would be their task to fish for others. I have the text “I will make you fishers....” hung up in a prominent place in my study next to a plaque which says “A bad day fishin' sure beats a good days workin'” so I know that!! But if I returned home from a day’s fishing and replied to my wife’s enquiry about the kind of day I’d had by saying - “the fish were jumping everywhere, the water was boiling with them” she wouldn't be fooled!!

“How many did you catch?” she would ask!! The fact of the matter is that nowadays most churches’ nets are empty!! We are failing others and, more importantly, we are failing God in the matter of making disciples.

“Follow me!” is a call to change,” the CHURCH WITHOUT WALLS report says.“The history of the church is an account of our failure to respond to that call and Christ’s faithfulness in recalling us again and again to the Way. The call to change is not a threat but an invitation at the heart of the Gospel.....”

HOW SHOULD WE CHANGE?
We need to ask, in what ways is God calling us to change? A horse is not meant to be cast in bronze and frozen in immobility. It is a living thing - and so is the church. So MUST it be!! Alert, alive, on tiptoe - not just poised and prepared to GO but GOING!!

The Church can never stand still and must never stay the same - its God and its Gospel are unchanging - but the ways it communicates and celebrates and shares its unchanging faith can never stand still!! The truth is that it is time for courageous and radical and costly decisions to be made - the chips are down and the future of God’s Kingdom work in Scotland and of the Church of Scotland itself is at stake!!

2
SAVING AND LOSING

The second pair of words is SAVING and LOSING. I have in mind two things Jesus once said. And it is surely His voice that we need to listen out for and hear most of all!

1. LOSING OUR LIFE FOR CHRIST AND THE GOSPEL’S SAKE

The first is in Mark 8:35 :
“whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me and
the Gospel will save it....”
The church today is being called to “lose its life” for the sake of Christ and others, for the sake of the kingdom cause and for the Gospel! While remaining faithful to the Gospel and the unchanging truth of God, it must renounce its pride of history, forsake its love of tradition, abandon whatever things in church life stand as unnecessary walls between unbelief and faith, between society and God’s Truth, between the contemporary world and the historic Gospel.

It is true here that the church that wants to “save” its life - that is concerned only about itself and its
own survival - will“lose” its life.

It is time to stop thinking of saving the church and start thinking of saving the world!! It is time to heed Christ’s “Come! - Come follow me!” and to heed Christ’s GO - “Go and make disciples!!

2. DYING IN ORDER TO LIVE
The second word of Jesus I have in mind is found in John 12:24:
“ I tell you the truth, unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it
remains alone. But if it dies, it bears much fruit...”

I believe that God is calling us to die to ourselves -to our own interests and preferences and prejudices - so that we may begin to live for others and, living for others (as Jesus did), live to God!!
Our dependence upon our history and traditions - our very Church of Scotland way of doing things, which may be good in itself, can yet become a barrier between us and God, and has certainly come between the unchurched and God.

God is calling us to die to our own interests, preferences and prejudices...

Is our history, are our traditions, has the survival of the Church become more important, in our eyes, than God Himself?

3
CHANGING AND BEING CHANGED

And then, the third pair of ideas I want to offer comment on, is CHANGING and BEING CHANGED.......and I just want to say a sentence or two:

CHANGING AND BEING CHANGED
At the core of the CHURCH WITHOUT WALLS report there is a plea for change. But the change the church needs is more than tinkering with its worship; it is more than turning its structures upside down. The change the church needs is more than the human effort of its membership redirected. It is more even than a change of mindset - it is an openness to the Spirit, a readiness to listen - “to hear what the Spirit is saying” to our Church, and a readiness not simply to change but to be changed by God Himself...

It is not by listening to a committee or responding to deliverances of the General Assembly, far less is it by our own wit and wisdom that the Church can change as it needs to!

It is by the kind grace of God alone and with the generous help of His Spirit alone that we can be reformed - RE-FORMED - and renewed - RE-NEWED, made new again, for all that God is waiting, longing to do for us and through us.

Is it not time for the church to LOSE its life in order to FIND it - to die in order to live?!!

“Unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies it remains alone, but if it dies it bears much fruit.”
John 12:24

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