Loneliness in ministry is really hard: feeling like you have offered the best of yourself in the love of Christ, to a world that doesn’t care. The psalmist comes to mind: “is it nothing to you, all you who pass by”.
After offering five face-to-face enquirer’s courses at five different village halls on five different evenings, and having no one turn up to three of them, I was left asking the questions, ‘why’. As someone with experience offering commercial events, and promoting gatherings for the Royal Society of Chemistry, I know why I failed… because I didn’t do enough research into where and when people were available, and I didn’t manage to get the promotion in front of those who might be interested. There is also the question of timing, and location. I know that people who may have been interested may not have been free at the same time I offered the events… however.
However. This is church. Unless the Lord builds the house, those who labour – labour in vain. Not just in vain, but in vanity. Whose house am I building? Mine? Or the Lords? If I take on board everything I have learned about commercial success over the years, and if I apply that to the church: would the church grow? Probably. And if the church does grow, would it grow regardless of the presence/absence of God? Down this road there is functional atheism. The question is not whether the toolkit of commercial success can build a church – of course it can – the question is whether we are fooling ourselves to believe we’re growing anything but our own church. Thinking we can build the church by the ‘sweat of our brow and the toil of our hands’ is the language of the fall. To live with the Kingdom of Heaven at hand is to live with the skin of our hands touching God. To be hand in hand with God alongside what God is doing… to respond to God’s work.
So what have I learned from an unsuccessful enquirer’s course?
- I have learned that the few people who did turn up had questions. I was expecting theological questions about God and Christ. What I got were questions about the church and the behaviour of Christians.
- I remembered that in the parable of the sower and the seed, the sower did not prejudge the soil prior to sowing. Judgement came after the results of fruitfulness or not. I ran a series of events without first checking what the ground was like. This was not a strategic success – and I feel that this is exactly in keeping with the sower and the seed.
- I realised that if people wouldn’t come to the good news, the good news might have to go to the people… I thought about making short videos to answer the two dozen or so questions I had gathered from this series of enquirer’s courses.
- Heaven – what / where? Not up in the sky.
- Jesus, really crucified? Fact or fiction? The whole thing is a bit far fetched.
- What does praying do?
- What is a Christian? Are they crazy?
- Science vs religion – how can scientists believe?
- Is Christianity bollocks?
- What are the facts to do with religion?
- Why can’t people bring pets to church?
- Faith, is this too big to understand?
- Why should we come to church? (and separately) What drives us to come to church?
- What is faith?
- Is God too busy to answer my prayer?
- What is the difference between God and Jesus?
- Was God a Jew?
- Why are less people going to church – compared to years ago?
- What is church?
- Why do we have different religions (we narrowed this down to denominations), “Why are there different religions within Christianity?”
In conclusion I felt both crushed and encouraged. How is it that I can feel both at the same time? Perhaps because my pride is crushed and my soul is encouraged? Being a friend of God is an odd experience.