Has the state killed the church?

It's been almost 3 years since my last post. That's a long time.

I've just participated in a seminar discussing the economics of European Union Social Policy. It was when someone mentioned the differences in Social Policy across EU nations that my mind started to drift. Don't worry, I quickly restrained myself from losing complete concentration; however, after the seminar, my thoughts returned to the disparity in social agendas among EU member states.

In the seminar we discussed how Mediterranean countries focus on the church and family for welfare and social support; this is what got me thinking: there was a time when the UK focussed on the church and family for welfare and social support. It was on Christian principles and Church values that a welfare state was founded; however, over time, as the state has grown, it has taken on consistently more of the church's role. The state now provides for the poor, it has developed a judicial system, it enforces living and working standards, it provides support for dysfunctional families, and more recently, it carries out marriages/civil ceremonies. Moreover, in assuming the church's role, the state has morphed it into a socially acceptable and "politically correct" state; for example the Weston Mercury have just tweeted the news of a "Recruitment drive to find more gay adopters". So what is there left for the church to do? Should the church be managing its own decline?

There is one role the state has chosen not to adopt from the church, and that is the profession of Jesus as Lord and Saviour. The state does not offer God, Jesus or Love. So there is still something the church can put its efforts into, and I can say that I've witnessed this happen more evidently. The church is moving its balance from a greater focus on family and community to a greater focus on professing God's grace and mercy, Jesus as Saviour, and life beyond the social norm. That's what I perceive the Alpha movement being all about. How many of those churchgoers reading this actually attend church with their family?

That's not to say the church ignores the importance of family and community, the church still fulfils its original role by incorporating such values into its new age primary objective of making the gospel known.

This isn't a criticism of such a change; the church has had to change in response to the state's attempt to take on a worshipful role. The church has adapted as the wealthy welfare state have provided more and more.

There is a new issue now. The fat welfare state is no longer fat, but instead it is debt ridden and making significant cuts to operations. Over the last half a decade, St Paul's Church, Weston-super-Mare, have seen significant growth in the area of welfare it provides. Where the state is unable to provide for the rising welfare issues this economy faces, the church is there to fill the gap and do what it does best.

I doubt the church will provide gay adoption services, but it can create jobs for the unemployed, it can offer financial and living support, it can offer love and community, it can offer skills and knowledge training, it can offer business advice and support. The church is massive with a presence in almost every single community in the UK. The church takes it personally. The state can't trump that. Is it time for the church to rebalance its focus, to compliment the gospel with more welfare provision?

For me there are three types of churches; those which never adapted to the new role of explicitly proclaiming the gospel; those which adapted so radically that all they do is focus on clobbering individuals with the gospel; and those who have a healthy balance of both and are able to be continuously flexible with the needs of society.

I believe that an active church can change the UK's social agenda and resume a greater role in society. The question is whether it wants to, or even, whether it needs to?

I'm content.

I described myself as content earlier. This was because at church, many people were experiencing God at work right there right then in their lives.
I dismissed my missing of communication with God to fact that my life is fine, it's just chugging along smoothly. There have been no huge "wows" and there have been no huge "ows" in my life recently. I thank God everyday through my words, actions and prayer for this content life I'm living at the moment.

As I walked back from Church, I yearned right there right then to serve God solely. I want to live on the edge for Him. I want to have the "ows" and "wows" of this life as I run through rain or sun with God. I want to serve Him! I can not express how much my soul longs to serve God! I just feel as though I'm not doing enough!

Yet when I look at what I do already, God is in all my activity. I talk about Him so much!
Can I do more than this? Or is God just still keeping me patient?

How long left?

"Just keep swimming"
When you swim you use you're whole body. You breathe in pattern and sync with your body movements. You swim through a substance that is molecularly incomprehensible and creatively majestical.

"Just keep swimming"
When you live, you use you're whole body, every physical part, every part of your soul, every part of your mind. You breathe, sometimes gasp, for that precious, refreshing, living breath that God breathes into you. You breathe in sync with your life movements; desperate times, restful times, times of pattern and consistency. You live life in a world that is physically wierd, creatively majestical, divinely designed.
Its a privilege, a challenge, an adventure, a mission. Its temporary.

Who invented self-checkouts?

Tuesday morning I got up, showered, got dressed, had breakfast by myself, walked into town, went to Tesco, picked up the Financial Times, two bottles of Robinson's Sugar Free Orange Squash (the ones with the blue caps) went to the self checkout, scanned my items, put my £5 note in the machine (that was all I had left of my weekly £20 from the night before) picked up my bag of items, my receipt, my small change, walked out the shop, watched the Audi RX-8 zoom in front of me, walked back to my flat, had a drink of my newly purchased Orange Squash then went to my room and starting reading my paper.

In those few early hours I spoke to no one.

I was surrouned by people in different situations who I'm sure without hesitation would have passed a few words in response to my starting of a conversation.

Philippians 4:5
"Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near."

To all.

Who do I show my character to? Who knows the meaning behind my character?

A simple conversation:
"Good morning, wonder what's going on in the financial world this morning. How are you?"

"Very well thank you. Although I'm sure you won't find much positive news in there! How are you?"

"I'm... actually... very peaceful this morning. I don't need to find positive news in here- I know all the Good News I need to know. Have a great morning, God bless."


Then I suppose it could carry on:
"Wait a minute, what do you mean..."

Is this just the perfect morning conversation, or can it really happen?
There's only one way to find out- keep popping down to the shops each morning to get the Financial Times! Moreover, pray for the opportunity of this conversation to arise.

New Record!

Woop woop! I've got a new record! And by that I don't mean I've brought out a chart-topping music album, however, if I were to bring out an album it would definitely be chart topping (failure charts)- a mix of rap and country I reckon... hmm, I might consider doing that.

No no! I'm talking about how the other morning when I broke one of my personal records and created for myself a new personal best- I'm always striving to do better and be the best, but didn't really see this one coming, furthermore- I don't know whether it will really be viewed as a positive new record...

Basically, I managed to stay up until 5.45am working on an essay- and finished it! Now tell me, is that sad? Is that good stewarding of time? I hadn't really thought about it- however, what did occur to me is this idea of getting things done in time. Striving to do better and reaching our targets...

I was reading in Acts last week after wanting to find out about the source of communism, and it led on to describe the day before the great and glorious day of the Lords arrival. It says the sun will become dark and the moon will turn a blood red. Now that totally freaked me out because every night the sun goes dark giving way to the moon, and often the skies are blood red

"red at night, shepherds delight" -farmers and shepherds would say that this is the sign of a brilliant next day. So next time I see a blood red sky I am going to be thinking, "tomorrow could be the day, the delightful day when Jesus returns to sort out the good and bad in this world". However, I'm sure all who know the word will know when the day of judgement is about to arrive.

But it got me thinking, if it was tomorrow when Jesus comes back onto this earth, who's going to heaven and who's not. Who will I see again? But I want everyone to get this awesome gift of eternal life given by the grace of God- if I knew I had one day before Jesus arrived I would certainly be out there telling everyone that they need to understand the truth.

The other truth is that we don't know when it's going to be, it could be tomorrow- so why am I sat here at this computer typing about it- shouldn't I be out there talking about it- whoops, I think I just gave myself a challenge- that's it, grab the stool and Bible and hit the streets of Plymouth-

Wait a minute, Chelsea are playing West Ham in 6mins, that's a better opportunity to evangelise through fellowship- I think I'll do that instead.

We've got a target to reach, the issue is we don't know our timescale- how long we've got to do this assignment, in which case, we better be getting on with it now.

I gave my flat mate a couple of paracetemol earlier, her way of thanking me was by saying "lifesaver"- people need to know the truth about life saving... I'm off- come on God, we're going to win this match today and everyday.

No Evidence

I had an awesome day yesterday, yet feel as though I haven't taken anything tangible away from it- only my own knowledge of what went on and how I progressed in my skills and experience.

Basically it was competition, much like a cross between "The Apprentice" and "Dragon's Den". The competition was called FLUX.
I was in a team of six people, all 1st, 2nd and final year business school students from the Butonics Society. We were one team out of 6 in our stream and there were 2 streams, obviously making up a total of 12 teams, all from different disciplines.
Each team was given a real life business scenario and had to work on their business to come up with a way of enforcing change and development.

Ours was a company based in Bristol called Clear Water Revival who deliver ecological and energy efficient leisure pool solutions. This ranges from huge swimming pools, right down to hot tubs and saunas. The twist being that these leisure pools are heated and maintained using the earth's natural resources; wind power, solar power, geothermal energy and biomass.
One of the benefits about this company is that they are the only company that delivers these sorts of pools in the UK- this means they have 100% market share.

So the day consisted of creating a business plan, meeting with business experts for advice on our business plan, revising and making our business plan better, then presenting our business plan in a Dragon's Den style pitch to the Judges and the other teams who then slammed challenging questions back at you.
We won that round, out of six teams the judges picked our group as having the best plan and the best presentation. Brilliant. It was going really well- I was excited, yet for some reason didn't show it like the other lads. As soon as we were announced the winners they all jumped in the air and screamed- I felt obliged to give a little yelp, so managed a slightly delayed "YEAAA!" -but stayed in my seat!

That then meant we had to go head to head against the winning team from the other stream in an elevator pitch. The elevator pitch is when you have under two minutes to sell yourself and your company or product to a professional business person when you meet them "by chance" in an elevator. Our team instigator and leader, Levi, took on the role of entering the elevator and delivering the pitch. He did really well and got across everything he had to- who he was, what his company does, where he is based, what he wanted/needed from the business person in the elevator and why they should invest in him. The only thing he missed out was asking for their business card to be able to arrange a further meeting with them to discuss more- I think that is why we lost against the other group. But I still remain true that we were the better team and should have won the competition and the cash.

I had a real issue with this competition the night before.
How was it benefiting God? -Or was I being totally selfish in wanting to do and win this competition and the cash?
How could I give such a situation to God? Basically I wanted to be the one who benefits at the end of the day, myself and my team- I wanted it to be about me and wanted to just erase God out of it for one day so I didn't have to worry about giving it to him.

But obviously that is impossible and I tried to come up with ways to give it to God...
In the end I just realised that somewhere between being a ruthless and competitive business man, I also had to be compassionate and Christlike in the way I conduct my business and work with other people- as the day went on and got long, this became increasingly difficult as tensions grew and people got tired.
The other way I prepared myself for making sure God was in my business, was through reward and forgiveness- where most businesses' HR will work on a scheme of reward and punishment, I prepared myself to put across a model of forgiveness.
And finally after reading a bit in Romans, I realised that being right with God is not through doing good things- obviously that is how we should be living. But instead it is just by having faith in God. I know I have that faith and so I didn't have to try to be a super Christian in the competition, but just had to remember who my creator and saviour is.

It was a shame we didn't win- like I said, I felt we really should have done- we would have had a press conference today and then be coached for the national final next year.
Hopefully next year though I will be able lead a team into FLUX with a head start.

I just wish I had something to show for myself of the work and effort that went into yesterday, but I feel I have nothing- no evidence.
I guess this will happen again and again in my future as I try new ideas, setting up businesses, or whatever it might be that I get into.
At least now I am prepared for it.

Where's it gone?

Today is Sunday 26th October, so it’s been almost 2 months since I started this blog and 1 month since my last post.

So where's it gone?
That means I've been here over five weeks now! It really doesn't feel like that, it feels like just two weeks still. So much has happened in that time. Three weekends ago I dashed home to live in a slum with the youth group at my home church, but people pulled out and the weather wasn't so good anyway. Instead I met up with Dave and Jen and played scrabble (Dave really didn't enjoy it) I almost won, but Jenny stole the points at the end putting her into poll position! Mum and Dad left home that weekend to vacate to Northern Italy. Apparently they sent me a postcard to uni, but I still wait fervently everyday for that card!

One thing I did that week was to go out on my new bike with the PUBC (bike club) I was so psyched up- I had my new mongoose, full suspension downhill pro bike. I walked it over to the group as to stay modest and found them with h-e-ouge bikes with triple barrelled front suspension. They were all wearing full face helmets and proper shin pads and clothing that had the remains of some good mud flying riding. I knew this wasn't going to be as easy as I thought. My absolute zeal was diminished within the first few seconds of standing with the other bikers waiting for more people to arrive. We set off and straight away they took on a flight of brick steps- luckily I was able to cycle round a different way and go down a slightly smaller flight of steps.
It was awesome though. Indeed I was slower than the other guys going down the trails, hitting the jumps and sliding round the corners, but I still enjoyed it. Hopefully I will learn more about my bike and how to ride it properly downhill.

I've been finding it hard in my relationship with Claire- I don't really know why. I'm changing now in different ways, I'm making new friends, surrounding myself with people who aren't the cuddly loving Christian type that I was used to at home.
I'm trying to strike a balance between the Christian and non-Christian friends I have so that I am in, but not of the world- that broken world that Jesus talks about. My prayer is that God will push me out into the wilderness where I will be tried and tested, but where I will find other people and be able to show them the way and the truth to the life, Jesus.
I know that I can and will remain faithful to God when I am in the hardest of situations, I can say that I have done so far.

The one way I am going to remain faithful is if I keep dwelling on and in God's word. But like my love for Claire and like the weeks that I've been here; I ask myself about that passion to know God- where's it gone?

I was really doing well in the first month of writing this blog, praying to God each day. Reading His word and seeking Him in every situation, but that discipline has hidden itself somewhere behind the pile of clothes in my room, somewhere on the dance floor in the clubs, somewhere between the text books on my shelf, somewhere and I've got to get that discipline right back inside me to be a true disciple and follower of Jesus Christ.

I've now got a big hole in my heart- I feel as though I've thrown away one of the best parts of my life and I don't really know what to do about it.

Still on the search for a church where I can settle- I'm gathering a short list, maybe next week I'll go to the one I want to stay at. For now though it's Col 3:16.