Zetland Park Methodist Church Pastoral Letters
October 2012
"A Discipleship movement ..."
Having looked briefly at the idea of Discipleship last month - the importance of being committed to live-long learning and development in faith for ourselves and of our being involved in the discipling of new Christians, we now pick up the theme of "movement".
One of the things which marked the early church was the huge energy and enthusiasm with which it spread. Almost everywhere Peter and later Paul and other early evangelists visited a new community of faith sprung up, starting with a few folk but quickly increasing in number. Across a huge area and in a relatively short time the Christian message spread throughout the Roman Empire and beyond - it was almost like a virulent virus! And the more it was persecuted, the more it spread. Similarly with the Celtic mission across the north of England. Small groups of Christians set out often into the unknown and just trusted God for where they would end up. When they did get somewhere, they would settle down for a while and let the small community of faith 'infect' the local population with Christianity, grow disciples and then move on to another place and the process would repeat. When moving on they would leave enough support to encourage continued growth of the mission.
Movement was at the heart of what was going on. And interestingly every time the church has become more settled and established new renewal movements would burst forth, a bit like an unsettled volcano with vents repeatedly spurting forth lava. Of course, that is how Methodism started. What marked these times was the desire to spread the gospel message to those who weren't in touch with the Faith. The outwardly focussed commitment and vibrant energy given to serve and bring to faith those who were not part of the community faith was clear to be seen.
In the past 100 or so years when the counties in the West were generally accepted as Christian, the fervour for movement was expressed in going out to Africa, South America, and into the East.
Alas, movement and energy to go out and spread the faith into our now generally faithless country has not recently been the mark of the Church in the West. True, we have had every programme under the sun in the last 30 years to try to bring people into the church, but not until now has the focus been to take the gospel out again to share it with people who don't (and maybe won't) come to church! Even within the Methodist Church the volcano has stared rumbling again and the clarion call of Matthew 28 has been heard to sound again from Conference, "Go and make disciples of all nations."
But how are we to show we are really on the move?