Selah2020: Pause and Reflect

[Transcript of a midweek message published by Horley Baptist Church on YouTube^[1], May 2021]

If it ain’t broken, then don’t fix it! That’s how the saying goes, so is the church broken or are we changing for change’s sake?

On Sunday we were talking about making changes to the way that we do church, but the saying goes “if it ain’t broken then don’t fix it”. So are we saying that the church is broken or we’re just making changes for change’s sake? See, is the church broken? is Horley Baptist Church broken?

Well I guess that kind of depends on your perspective or really I mean, yeah, it’s a lovely church, full of lovely people; we’re growing slowly, people are attracted to us. But when you really get down to the nitty-gritty, can you say that we are seeing accelerated growth? Well no, not really. Are we seeing our Alpha courses full of participants? Well no, can’t really say that either. Are we seeing loads of baptisms? Well, we’re seeing a few but not as many as we would like.

You see, I think we’re a good church, we’re a relatively healthy church, we’re a blessed church, but we’re not as good as we would like; we’re not having the impact on our community as we would like. I was challenged the other night by one of our leaders who said: “You know when we go back to Sunday morning services, will there be a noticeable difference between what there was before and what we have now? Will people come in and there’ll be a different feel, a different atmosphere?”

I have to admit I’m not entirely sure, at least not how I had things planned because the tendency within myself, and probably the tendency within you as well, is to kind of steer ourselves back to those things that we are familiar with, those things which we find comfortable Even when I myself try and push the boundaries a bit, I still find when I stop and look back at my plans that they seem to be remarkably similar to what we had before. See, if we want to see real change then we need to change, if we really want to make a difference in our community then we have to do things differently. They say that the definition of insanity is to do the same thing over and over again and expect different results.

I remember a while ago I was preaching at Horley Baptist and I challenged the congregation: “I said, you know, if we were to redo our services so they were more attractive to the young church, to the people within our community, would they look like what we have now?” The answer was “No, not really!” Little did I know that in just a year or two we have that opportunity to make those changes, to really stop and think about our Sunday morning services and how we view church overall, to bring about real positive change. there’s a couple of things that we need to remember when thinking about change:

Firstly, we need to keep the main thing as the main thing. See, our purpose as a church, our reason why, our foundation, our mission is to know Jesus and make Jesus known. Everything that we do, the ‘what’ and the ‘how’ should be based on that foundation. The problem is that over time we forget that. We become comfortable, we become inward focused and therefore we start to do things that suit ourselves rather than the mission field that we are supposed to be reaching out to. So we need to keep the main thing as the main thing; keep it simple, keep it focused. Share the good news about Jesus Christ.

The second thing we need to remember is that we need to do everything possible to make that happen. I believe, as the minister of Horley Baptist Church, and I believe for the UK church as well, that requires a massive rethink, a massive overhaul of what we need to do. If things when we go back look suspiciously like they did before then we have failed to take that calling seriously. We have forgotten what the main thing is, what our purpose is as a church, and instead we have just settled back into a comfortable sofa that everyone thinks is lovely but anyone on the outside looks at it and thinks “that’s really old and tatty and should go down the dump”, but it’s so comfortable. We need to take a serious look at who we are and what we do in line with the mission that God has given us – ‘to know Jesus and to make Jesus known’.

If we are honest with ourselves then we’d admit that things weren’t working before – well, they were working, the church like a was like a well-oiled machine, but in reference to our primary purpose, then things were not working as good as they should have been. We have an opportunity to rethink, to overhaul, to change and to start afresh.

That will be unsettling, that won’t be comfortable, it will require sacrifice, it will require change. It will inevitably create mistakes, maybe even a loss of congregation, but none of that matters really. What we need to do is seek God first, his purpose and follow his direction in our lives and in our church and allow God to do the rest. As I said the other week: it is Jesus who builds his church, it’s not us. We are called to do what God has designed us and called us to do.

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[1] YouTube link: Is the Church Broken?
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