There is, however, something which is very much part of the Christian message which intersects precisely with people’s experience of daily life and present need, without making unjustifiable promises. And whilst it relates to our subjective experience it stems from an objective fact.
We are all of us, young and old, rich and poor, happy and sad, black, white, brown and yellow, are running out of time. That is a hard, objective, fact; an undeniable reality. Indeed, it is not just we who are running out of time —the world is itself running out of time, and I am not talking about global warming. On present models, the universe came into existence about 15 billion years ago. Our solar system has existed for about 5 billion years. In far less than another 5 billion years, this whole planet will be gone. We will never ‘save the whale’, much less ‘save the earth’. All we can do is stave off the inevitable demise of everything we know for less time than it has taken it to get here
Time running out, time running out
For the fool still asking what his life is about
Time running out time running out. (Jackson Browne, Black and White)
Sitting in a quaint tea-shop in the village of Clare the other day and musing on the problems of rural ministry, I found myself looking around at the other diners and asking myself, “What, really, has Christianity got to offer these people which they might possibly recognize that they need?” That is surely a question we need to answer before we can think about reversing the decline that affects so much of the church in this country.
At one table were a couple of women in their twenties gleefully discussing a recent trip to Paris. What could belief in God give them that they didn’t already have. At another were an older woman and someone who was probably her daughter. They looked well-off and comfortable. What did the ‘God-shaped gap’ in their lives look like?
And then there was my wife and I. What would make the other diners want to swap their lives with ours?
What I think we can’t say is, “Come to Jesus and your life will be happier and more fulfilled.” Frankly, I get very irritated by the stories in the UK Focus along the lines of “My life used to be an utter mess but then I did an Alpha course and now I’m married and it’s all brilliant.”
Maybe it’s just envy on my part (it may be!), but life can be an utter mess after you become a Christian. Indeed, it can go downhill from that point. Certainly I don’t feel that I could personally offer such a ‘package’ with any integrity.
So what can we offer, if not that? Certainly one thing is the experience of God. Indeed, I would go so far as to say this is the key to Alpha’s success. I once had a very long one-to-one conversation with Nicky Gumbel, who insisted this was integral to the Alpha ‘model’ —that they wanted to give people an experience of God, not just a message about him. This is why the ‘Holy Spirit weekend’ is meant to be a non-negotiable part of the Alpha package. It is the point at which ‘theory’ translates into ‘practice’.
And although I can’t endorse the Alpha model, I certainly wouldn’t deny the importance of the experience of God in my own life. The great difference that becoming a Christian made to me was the sense that now I knew that I knew God —that, and an otherwise hard-to-explain enjoyment of things I’d previously avoided, like Bible study, Christian Union Meetings and church.
This, however, is hardly a ‘unique selling point’. Or rather, it is unique, but is it a selling point to happy twenty-somethings and contented fifty-somethings? “Come to Jesus and you’ll start enjoying church” —hmmm.
There is, however, something which is very much part of the Christian message which intersects precisely with people’s experience of daily life and present need, without making unjustifiable promises. And whilst it relates to our subjective experience it stems from an objective fact.
We are all of us, young and old, rich and poor, happy and sad, black, white, brown and yellow, are running out of time. That is a hard, objective, fact; an undeniable reality. Indeed, it is not just we who are running out of time —the world is itself running out of time, and I am not talking about global warming. On present models, the universe came into existence about 15 billion years ago. Our solar system has existed for about 5 billion years. In far less than another 5 billion years, this whole planet will be gone. We will never ‘save the whale’, much less ‘save the earth’. All we can do is stave off the inevitable demise of everything we know for less time than it has taken it to get here. Read more
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