The FINGER OF GOD

One lady was brought to me at the end of an amazing meeting in Karachi, Pakistan, who had what looked like a deformed hand. The knuckle of her index finger was almost on top of the knuckle for her pointer finger, and the remainder of her index finger was heading toward her ring finger, almost crossing over it.
Through the interpreter I could understand that it brought her a great deal of constant discomfort.
I placed my hand as gently as I could over the top of hers and in the name of Jesus I commanded every muscle, every ligament, every vein and ever fibre of her hand to be completely healed. I asked God for a creative miracle, and it was as if He just reached out of Heaven and said "here, let me get that for you", and in three short movements I watched her finger re-align before my very eyes.
She smiled while opening and closing her hand for first tome in only God knows how long and said in broken English "I am fine now, thank you".
Praise be to the God who still reaches out of heaven to heal today!

'What Would Jesus Say' to Your Church?

Some people criticize the church out of anger while some people defend the church out of ignorance, but when Jesus dictated the seven letters to the churches found in the book of Revelation He was neither angry nor ignorant. He just had such a passionate love for the church that he was willing to share a few 'home truths' that might spur them on to what they could be (if they had ears to hear).
The church today might need to hear similar things from Jesus... Sometimes He might be saying what he is proud of and other times indicating where our short comings are.
The truth is none of us are a part of the perfect church and we would do well to remember that Jesus loves us all and wants each if us to be all we can be in God.
Let's not ditch the church because of it's short comings or be so proud of it that we can't see them.
Rather let's with sober minded judgment press in to be all we can be, listening to the voice of Jesus, empowered by His Spirit as we go.

The Great South Land of The Holy Spirit – Revival will sweep the nations of Australia, NZ and the South Pacific

In 1606 the Portuguese navigator Pedro Fernández de Quirós landed on one of the Islands of what is now called Vanuatu. Thinking he had discovered ‘Terra Australis’ (the great south land) he made the following proclamation… ‘Let the heavens, the earth, the waters with all their creatures and all those here present witness that I, Captain Pedro Fernandez de Quiros, in the name of Jesus Christ, hoist this emblem of the Holy Cross on which Jesus Christ’s person was crucified and whereon He gave His life for the ransom and remedy of the human race, on this day of Pentecost, 14 May 1606, I take possession of all this part of the South as far as the pole in the name of Jesus, which from now on shall be called the Southern land of the Holy Spirit and this always and forever to the end that to all natives, in all the said lands, the holy, sacred evangel may be preached zealously and openly.
It wasn’t until 1770 that Captain Cook finally landed in ‘Botany Bay’ and Australia was officially noted in the History books.
Over the years many Christians have taken note of the earlier proclamation from de Quirós, and in 1993 it gained wide acclaim when Geoff Bullock (an Australian Christian song writer) penned the very popular worship song of the same name.
In 2006 a delegation of Christians from Australia, Vanuatu, a number of other Island nations as well as Spanish and European Representatives gathered in Hogg Harbour, Vanuatu to commemorate the 400th anniversary of this proclamation (which was by this time being heralded as a prophecy), and together held a communion service with speeches from many dignitaries including President Kalkot Mataskelekele of Vanuatu.
Since 2006 increasing numbers of intercessors and prophets from Australia and around the world have been casting their spiritual eyes upon Australia and the South Pacific.
In 2008 a series of significant yet widely un-noticed prayer meetings were held in Sydney to pray for a great outpouring of the Holy Spirit upon our nation. Significantly, one of these meetings (held in Blacktown – in Sydney's west) hosted pastor Raynold Bori also known as the Apostle of Vanuatu. At this meeting Pastor Ray (as he is affectionately known) spoke of the Protocol by which we are to approach the Father, and prayed a very powerful prayer of the Nations of Australia and the South Pacific Islands.
I myself was deeply touched by these meetings as they held particular significance for my own prayer journey.
For me this prophecy began to stir more than 10 years ago. Although at the time I had no idea what the Lord was up to.
I was driving down a local street one day when I saw a Mazda 808 wagon drive past. It was very similar to a vehicle a friend of mine had driven when I shared a house with him for a few months back in 1984. I remembered him that day, but did think too much more about him until that evening when as I looked up at my digital clock it flicked over to 8:08pm. I immediately thought of my friend again.
What really surprised me was that the next morning as I was glancing at the clock it flicked over 8:08am. This time the Lord had my attention. “ok Lord” I whispered under my breathe “maybe you want me to pray for my him”, so I did.
The next day I saw 808 in a phone number, on the clock and on the back of a bus. I told my wife… “I think I am supposed to pray for my friend whenever I see 808”. She laughed and said, “OK, I suppose you had better do that then”, and so for the next 10 years I don’t think I would have gone for more than a week at any time without praying for my friend, and sometimes up to five times in a day, always based on whenever I saw the numbers 808. My wife and I would constantly chuckle to each other at the frequency and the randomness that 808 would come up in my line of sight.
Then something really strange happened. In 2008 I received an invitation to be a part of a meeting to pray for revival in our nation. It was to be held on the 08/08/08 at Prayer Mountain in Merroo, in the Mountains overlooking Sydney.
It was an amazing day which culminated in a large group of us interceding and prophesying over the City well into the evening.
It was at this meeting that I heard the Lord confirm in my heart that my apprenticeship was over that from now on whenever I saw 808 I would need to pray for a Holy Spirit outpouring for the nation of Australia and it was at the very next meeting a month later that I first met Apostle Raynold Bori.
I have consistently been praying for revival for the past two years and it had been amazing how many places I have seen 808. But it was recently (sometime in May this year) that I began seeing 404.
I rise early each day, and during one particular week I was setting my alarm for 4.00am. But what happened was that for 5 days running each time I picked up my phone in the morning to check the time, it showed 4:04am. The Lord had my attention once again.
“Father, what does this mean?” I asked. The answer I got at that time was “I’m doubling your shift… It’s getting closer”.
So from that time I began to see 404 and 808 everywhere. And I was praying even more than before. I even saw 808 on the back of an ambulance while I sat at the Lights in my car near my home one day.
Recently (July 10th, 2010) after I had been to a prayer meeting and having received a message from a friend which stirred my heart about the coming revival I got onto twitter.com to post a message saying “I sense REVIVAL is hitting Australia. It has been so close, and this week the signs are... it is here! Can't wait to see what it looks like!” Now what I didn’t realize is that because twitter is based in America, it is set on US time, and my post actually registered at 8:08pm, when It was really 1:08pm in Australia when I posted it. (you can check it out for yourself… http://twitter.com/paul_from_oz )
What’s even more interesting is that it is now exactly 404 years (in May) since de Quirós made his declaration over the Great South Land of the Holy Spirit. And I have since reconnected with Pastor Ray (another amazing story of the Lord's timing) in Vanuatu, and he has invited me (not knowing any of this story) to speak at a conference on the Prophetic with him a week before there is to be a gathering of Apostles from around the world who will seek God together for the Great outpouring of the Holy Spirit prophesied 404 years ago.
To say that I am excited would be an understatement.
To say that I feel humbled to be able to be a part of all this is also incredibly understated. Anyone who knows me will know that I don’t feel I deserve to be in a position where the Lord has entrusted me with such things.
But with all that has happened in my life, and the many other experiences I have had along the way, I am increasing in my boldness and courage, and have such a strong belief that this is the time when God will pour out His Spirit.
As the Prophet Joel wrote, and Apostle Peter quoted,
‘I will pour out my Spirit on all people.
       Your sons and daughters will prophesy,
       your old men will dream dreams,
       your young men will see visions.
Even on my servants, both men and women,
       I will pour out my Spirit in those days.’
As I stood up in that meeting at Prayer Mountain back 08/08/08 the Lord laid a prayer on my heart which declared that a wave of Holy Spirit power was about to sweep the world starting in Australia, NZ and the South Pacific, sweeping from East to West around the Globe.
Many prophets from around the world have been having similar visions and dreams, and I am only one of many voices whom the Lord is using to raise up a crescendo of prayer that will shake the Heavens and move Gods hand.
My Prayer is that if you have taken the time to read this that you will also join me and countless others in praying for revival for our nations. That as I share the pulpit with Apostle Raynold Bori in Port Vila, and as many Apostles from around the globe gather a week later (14th – 17th September 2010), that the heavens will be opened and that the Lord will hold back no longer and His great Glory will fall on all flesh.
Blessings to you all in Jesus name.
Paul DeWildt

COMMUNITY TRANSFORMATION - reflections from AFRICA

How many Africans does it take to change a community? And no, this is not a joke. In fact I might go as far as asking, how many Africans does it take to change a nation? If you were to ask Nelson Mandela you might hear him say “one”. But then on reflection he might just as well turn around and say “all of us”. And he would be right on both occasions.

Community transformation is possible, and it has to start somewhere, but ultimately it is about the grass roots fabric of a society actually turning around, so that the whole community is impacted by the change
Over the past 9 – 10 years I have had the privilege of travelling throughout a number of what we might call developing nations (or third world countries). I have met some of the most beautiful people you could ever meet, and have also seen some of the most wrenching scenes that would make even the hardest of hearts crumble.
Once in Lusaka, (the capital of Zambia) I visited the humble home of a young man and his family as they lived at the back of one of the Local Councillors (government officials) houses. This man and his wife where employed by the councillor to clean his luxury house and tend their finely manicured garden. For their 14 hour days, they would receive the princely sum of $2US (equivalent) per week between them. Not even enough to buy mille meal to feed their five boys. Their home was a lean-to made of rusted tin and cardboard, and each of the boys had clothes which looked like they had been ripped to shreds by a lion. As we sat to share a cup of Fanta (Lord knows how they managed to get hold of a bottle of Fanta) we heard a story that has now become all too familiar. In a world where there does not seem to be a social conscience at all, it is a dog eat dog existence, where the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.

In 2006 I spent 3 weeks in the Mathare Slum of Nairobi Kenya. One morning after a mob had run riot the night before ravaging one of the slum districts with axes and machetes, I saw a young man lying dead in a stream on the side of the road, already in a stage of riga mortis. I was on my way to visit a man who was dying from some kind of tumour that was growing out of his back, and had just spent the morning with a group of orphan school children in their tiny little school room in the back of a local tin shed church. You get to the place where no matter where you look there is a need, and you know you have only so much resource, only so much time, and your heart will only hold out for so long before it breaks completely.
And then you are reminded of the story of a boy found tossing starfish back into the ocean after a violent storm had washed thousands of them up on the beach. A passer by stopped to say, “Boy you’re wasting your time, there are far too many. You can’t possibly make a difference here”. Picking up another starfish and tossing it back into the ocean the young boy responded by saying “made a difference to that one”.
And so we press on. In the hope that somewhere in the midst of all this there is an answer, that may bring some kind of change big enough to make a difference.
Well in the midst of so much hardship and trouble, there are plenty of good news stories. Like the illiterate preacher in Uganda who decided to buy 6 sow piglets. He gave each of these piglets away to 6 orphans (not necessarily children) with the view to having each one give away a piglet from the first litter each pig bore. On last count I heard that there are now more than 300 orphans who own a sow pig that can provide a small income and some food to eat.

I have another friend in Uganda who has found that if you train an orphan in a life skill (sewing, wood turning, metal fabrication) you can turn their whole life around. He works in a bank and has been using half of what he earns to establish a small church and workshop where he can train people in these basic Life changing skills.
I met a man in Zambia who has a similar role in his community; however he and his wife help young girls who have been used as prostitutes, and rehabilitate them back to some kind of normal life including teaching them a life skill.
Everywhere I go I meet people who are making a difference where they are, with what they have.
But is it enough?
I have a train of thought that has been developing on this matter for some time, which relates to how a community can actually change.
As a Christian I have some very firm beliefs, and at the core of what I believe is the basic premise that there is a Creator God who loves the whole world and wants the very best for all of his creation. Many do not hold to that belief. However, what even the most avid of sceptics would agree on is that somehow in the midst of this mess we call the world there are some basic laws of the universe which seem to be constant under most circumstances.
For example: The law of gravity... ‘What goes up must come down.’
And then there is one of my favourites: The law of sowing and reaping... ‘You reap what you sow’
If we believe then that these and many more ‘laws of the universe’ are somehow irrefutable then it makes sense to work within the parameters of these laws to find the answers to our dilemma.
When it comes to African communities then, it would stand to reason that any society that has a culture of ‘live for yourself’, and ‘take whatever you can when you can’, will have had extreme repercussions from decades of this kind of neglect.
Take into consideration that whole generations of parents have been wiped out in certain communities through the aids epidemic (now rendering one in four infected throughout many parts of Africa), and the onslaught of war and famine. And you have a recipe for certain disaster. This is what we are seeing in many African nations where the average wage is now less than $500 US (equivalent) per annum.
OK, so what solution?

Without wanting to over complicate this matter I have purposefully simplified my theory to help the process of its outworking.
If we take the law of sowing and reaping and unpack it a little, we find a basic premise of life.
A farmer has a hand full of seed. He can (a.) Make some food to eat, so he can feed himself for this season. (b.) Sow his seed so that he has a crop to feed himself for the next season. (c.) Make enough food for this season and the sow the rest so that he has food next season.
If a man has time, talent, and a little treasure, he can (a.) Use it all for himself (b.) Give it all away. (c.) Use some for himself and give the rest back to society so that the next generation has a share of his wealth.
You reap what you sow.
If you sow sparingly you will reap sparingly.
If you give nothing back then the next generation will suffer.

The 3T’s of Transformation
One of God’s most basic laws (the Law of the Tithe) is based on this greater law of sowing and reaping. Give back a tenth of what you get. It’s not a tax, as it has always been a choice that we get to make, however there is more than enough evidence to say that God thinks we will be better off if we do. He even says, ‘test me in this and see if I will not open the flood gates of heaven.’
So to help transform a Community I have formulated these simple thoughts based around this law.
Giving back into our communities a portion of our TIME, our TALENT, and TREASURE will be the basis of a wider transformation that could ultimately change a nation.
If a generation can be taught to sow back into the generation that follows then society will change. Take some Time to teach your Talent, and give something of what you have (Treasure) back into society.
What I have noticed is that when people are taught to value each other, (another of God’s Laws – Love your neighbour as you love yourself) and the next generation sees this in actions as they grow up, then they develop a new culture with a different mentality.

So if a man gives away a pig, because someone gave him a pig, or a lady teaches another young lady how to sew because someone taught her to sew, or someone who knows how to read and write takes some time to teach a few others these same skills, and if people learn to respect the land as well as the people who share it, and community starts to change as a result, then why can’t a nation change.
In the midst of all that there are Big Brother neighbours like us in the west who have TIME, TALENT and TREASURE, and if we were to do our bit, not just give stuff away, but actually get on the ground and teach in these developing nations what we know, then we will have helped make a difference, even if it is only with one community.
At least it will have made a difference to that one.
So how many Africans does it take to change a nation?
‘One... at a time’

Ye olde Prayer Walk

What happened to the old fashioned way of getting the job done. Pray hard, and get out there on the streets and see what happens.

Maybe I’ve gone a bit soft over the years, or maybe I haven’t been listening keenly enough, or maybe I just haven’t been listening to the right preachers… but I don’t remember hearing a lot of talk from too many pulpits recently on getting down and dirty (the knees that is) in the prayer closet, or in fact, what is just as important, and sometimes more so… good old prayer walking.

Charles Wesley used to do it, DL Moody used to do it. Many of the greats of church history used to do it, spending countless hours wandering the streets praying for their communities.

And today, we seem to have forgotten all about it. (or at least I had) I remember as a 17 year old driving the streets of Darwin in the Northern Territory praying for opportunities to witness to someone. I would sometimes go out with a bunch of mates in a ute or a small truck, and we would have three guys in the cab and one on the back (it wasn’t against the law back then) and we would cruise around looking for hitch hikers.

If we saw someone looking for a ride we would thump on the roof, so everyone knew what was up. We’d pick up the hitcher, and the three guys in the cab would pray and drive, while the one on the back with the hitcher would have the task of witnessing and trying to lead the hitcher to Christ.

I remember one time I was out driving by myself when I saw a guy walking in the opposite direction (not hitching) when I heard an inner voice tell me I should go and talk to the guy. So reluctantly I turned the car around and drove next to the guy, but then lost courage and kept driving. Eventually I had enough courage to stop the car and get out, but I was already several hundred yards past him and parked around the corner. I began walking towards him and when I got there I again lost courage and kept on going. But about 20 yards further on I eventually stopped, turned around and with a deep breath and a loud voice said “hey buddy”. He stopped and half turned to look at me. I hadn’t thought through how I would start a conversation with him at this stage, and I just blurted out “Jesus loves you man”.

“What did you say?” (by this stage I was asking myself the same question) But I found myself repeating “Jesus loves you”

“Why are you telling me that?” he asked. (yep, that was going through my mind as well) “I was driving past, and as I saw you on the side of the road I thought God wanted me to come over and tell you that He loves you.”

“Wow thanks man… You probably won’t believe this” he said “but I’m on my way to the beach to commit suicide. I haven’t felt loved by anyone in a very long time, I just cant live with that any longer”.

Needless to say, the young guy who was walking toward Casuarina beach on a sunny day in Darwin in 1984, did not commit suicide that day.

I can’t tell you that he got radically saved and went on to become a missionary, but I can tell you that I went away rejoicing that God had used me to saved that guys life and sow a seed of love and faith where very few seeds of good had been planted before.

1 Thessalonians 5:17 tells us that amongst other things we aught to ‘pray continuously’, or as some translations put it, ‘pray without ceasing’. And I have to say that in every season in my life when that has been the case, I have seen fruit.

Just walking the streets, praying for the folk who live in those houses or apartments can bring so many opportunities to meet people and share our faith, let alone the fact that many of the people you are praying for may not have anyone else interceding for them in any way.

If we want to help Jesus fulfil His great mission on this earth then we need to get out of our ‘ivory towers’ and out there where its all happening.

I know I need to.

Mission re: Jesus

So if Jesus is building His church and we are to be His church rather than merely doing church, then I am sure we will need 'the mind of Christ' or a 'Jesus mindset' if we are to know and understand His Mission for His church.
A typical 'church mindset' would see Mission as something we do 'over there'.
Growing up in the church, mission for me always revolved around boring talks from little old ladies in dimly lit rooms with more slides than you could poke a stick at coupled with the embarrassing sounds of grunt and snort as nodding heads jerked ever so briefly back into upright.
Not until I read the book 'For this Cross I'll kill you' as a teenager did I begin to appreciate what Mission was all about, and being challenged by the sacrifice of five young missionaries in 1956 who lost their lives amongst the Auca Indians of Ecuador I began dreaming of one day going 'over there' to experience another culture and share Jesus with people I don't know.
After training for ministry and spending a number of years serving the local church I eventually got my first taste of 'over there' when I travelled with a team to the southern Phillipines island of Mindanau. Since then I have also visited a number of African nations and have developed a much broader world view than I ever thought possible. However, as I returned home each time I somehow felt that I should put on a shawl, dim the lights and bake a few scones while presenting the 'over there' slide show for the majority who have stayed at home. What frustrated me the most was that the those who would turn up for the 'over there' slide show would also sit back and watch as a small handful took on the task of reaching out within our local community.
I discovered that having a 'church mindset' could be quite destructive allowing people to escape to the safety of their 'church club' viewing outreach as a task for specialists.
Since then I have noticed that as we begin to see the World as Jesus sees it and gain a 'Jesus mindset' then 'over there' takes on a much broader meaning and we begin to see 'over the back fence' and 'over a coffee' and 'over a desk at work' or school with the same fluency as 'over in Africa' or the Phillipines.
But so long as the church continues to see mission and evangelism as a task for specialists to be done 'over there' we will will continue to fail in our attempts to fulfil the great commission.
From about 16 onwards personal evangelism was quite high on my agenda. In 1983 I attended a week long conference called 'Here's life Tasmania' culminating in a group of newly equipped young saints of God heading out two by two into our local community (much like the Mormons - but without the ties and name tags) to find as many people as possible to engage in spiritual conversation and hopefully lead a few to Christ. The results varied, and I found that I wasn't really cut out for that kind of door to door engagement. The greatest challenge we found was that the local churches in Launceston had done very little over the years to truly engage the community and there wasn't too much respect for church within our city. Who was I to share my faith with complete strangers in my own town.
Fortunately that didn't stop me completely.
I merely learned how to build bridges with people and developed a fervent prayer life, interceding for everyone I felt led to share a witness. Over a period of five or six years I was privileged to lead dozens of people to Christ.
I went off to Bible college and spent four years training to become a pastor during which time I was constantly challenged in my theology and simplistic approach to life and ministry. I Learned a lot.
But at the same time I was gradually gaining a 'church mindset' and after several years in ministry my focus had shifted significantly from trying to change the world to trying to manage the church and deal with my own life issues.
Somewhere in the midst of all that I had lost the momentum of my earlier life.
I became very good at preaching about evangelism and encouraging people to believe in the ideal of reaching a lost world, but I myself was so entrenched in 'doing church' that I was rarely able to connect with those outside the church.
It wasn't until I took on a ministry role within a very small church which couldn't afford a full wage that I began to reconnect with the world. Working in secular employment while ministering in a local church meant I had a foot in both worlds like when I was a lay leader in my youth. But I had lost the passion and momentum of my youth and found that although I was connecting well with many people I was doing very little that might help lead them to Christ.
Mostly it was those who actually turned up at church or signed up for an Alpha Course who I had the courage to engage in real conversations with around faith.
Now I'm leading of a small ministry team where we go around and encourage churches, especially those planting new churches or pastors leading churches in third world nations.
We have learned that each pastor and each church member must first become missionaries in their own land, and must reflect upon their own 'church mindset' to break out and discover new and innovative ways of connecting with their local communities.
Rather than merely 'doing church', working hard to create a good show for a crowd of comfortable saints, we are challenged to engage in meaningful relationships with real people in community, getting back on our knees in prayer while attempting to bring the Kingdom of God into peoples lives through love, acceptance, a listening ear, a shared meal, a word of knowledge in season, a word of encouragement and whatever else the lord might lead us to do or say in the community we find our selves in.
To lead a church that is focussed on fulfilling 'Jesus mission' on earth we must have 'the mind of Christ'!... a 'Jesus mindset'.
We (the church) must begin to see the world through Jesus eyes.
We must view individuals in our community as Jesus views them and learn to respond to the felt needs in that community as Jesus leads us to.
We must have 'Jesus mission' at the centre of all that we do. And we must ask ourselves a few very important questions along the way:
1. What Community or people group are we called to reach? The answer to this question will give us an anchor point for when we are tempted to run away to a new project when things get a bit tough.
2. What felt needs within that community does Jesus want us to attend to? Again, answering this question will help us to remain focussed and not allow potential disappointment to put us off task.
3. How can we place ourselves within that community to build relationship that might lead to respect and trust? It is vital to believe we have a message worth sharing, and that we place ourselves in such a way within peoples lives that they can see Jesus in us, and trust us to the point of hearing the message we carry.
4. What kind of church culture will best honour God and draw us together in community while engaging the lost and growing those already on the journey? The answer to this question will be fashioned in part by the answers to the earlier questions. but is possibly more vital as it will ultimately define what and who we are, as well as fashioning that which we are inviting those in our community to join.

As we endeavour to fulfil Jesus mission on earth and we answer these basic questions I am sure we will see a church emerge that has a different look and feel to any we have been a part of before. I'm excited about the future of His church if we allow Him to lead and grow His church His way.

What if...

A recent conversation with an agnostic friend of mine had me enthralled, defensive, challenged and embarrassed all within the space of a decent coffee break.
Brought up in a catholic system he discovered a plethora of reasons why he should be disillusioned with the church. Like many before him he found church to be irrelevant at best and has spent most of his life philosophising why the world and the church don't seem to get along any more.
With a healthy appetite for investigation he spent a number of years checking out the other brands of god religion only to end up with no religion at all except a wry sense of humour and the ability to debate the various brands with just about anyone on the planet.
As our conversation turned to what I was doing as a part time pastor thinking of planting a missional community in a densely housing commission populated burb within the Sydney landscape, I found he had plenty to say, and I could do very little but listen and learn.

"I hope your not going to build a church like all the others" were his first words of challenge, and I was immediately on the back foot not wanting to have to defend the wider church, yet somehow glad he asked the question, as I too had hoped this church might be a little different.

I grew up in the church, my father an evangelistic preacher/church planter who had moved us as a family all over the nation of Australia from Melbourne to Adelaide, from Darwin to Launceston and Sydney and although it was always very exciting to be apart of growing churches I discovered along the way that the church isn't as fantastic as I was lead to believe.

For one thing it's made up of humans, and we tend to mess things up everywhere we go. It is also carrying the baggage of bygone eras which it has found very difficult to shake off.
For many years the church was heavily influenced by secular organisations and fraternities as many of those who rose to church leadership were schooled in such a way that traditional forms and structures were the norm, and church was run very much like a club for the faithful. Church services were formal occasions where you would stand and sit with the arrival of the president and his parade of helpers and the minister was merely an employee who had to do what he was told.
Thankfully much of this has changed over the past 20 - 30 years, but club culture within the church is still alive and well especially with the emergence of the mega church model while denominational-ism is also a issue amongst the majority smaller congregations scattered throughout the west.
There are however many churches who are doing great things throughout the world, and some of these mega churches are quite clearly leading the way in this. But it is very rare to come across a long established church, large or small, that has managed to throw off the restraints of establishment and really begin to engage the community they are planted in.

Hence I was ok with my friends first challenge. I did however try to explain that we were infact attempting to be a missional community that engages the wider community. This of course fell on deaf ears as he somehow knew that I would likely have some very rigid ideas of what that might look like.
"What if..." he said, "I were to come into your church", he went on to ask me how he might feel if after a little while he didn't like it. Would he be free to leave? Would he feel comfortable walking out?
What if church were not held in a building which looked and felt like a church? What if people were free to come and go as they please, and they weren't pressured into putting money into a plate, sit in rows or wear nice clothes? What if church was in a park under a tree, with a bbq cooking in the background and kids kicking a football around and the music was relevant and not religious, and there were no loud sound systems and the preacher talked about real issues? What if it was more about relationship than religion and God was the centre of that, and rather than giving handouts which people become reliant upon you actually shared meals with people where you engaged in real conversations that build trust and respect?
What if...?
I was attempting to absorb all that he was saying, and was intrigued that he, claiming to be an agnostic, had so succinctly summed up what our real mission on earth was. But he didn't stop there, as if he had read my mind, he said, "so what if people don't come? So what. If they don't come it's because they don't want to be there."
I responded with "yeh, but what if it's really cold or raining in winter who would want to come out to meet in a park. How would you keep them warm"
He said "why do you have to keep them warm? why do they have to come at all? To make you feel better? It's not about you."
OUCH!
To say I had been challenged would be an understatement.
To say I had a lot to chew over would be a fair comment.
To say I have a lot more to learn would also be true.

What if church wasn't about me?
What if rather than trying to build God's church for Him, or trying to get Him to build a church for me, I let Him build His church.
What if I were to get on with the task of 'being church', rather than getting so caught up with 'doing church'.
What if...?