A New Season
We are now into the third month of using our new premise.
If you can recall, I have been speaking of a season of ‘tabula rasa’, where we seek the Lord for new wineskins as we desire to remain open to new ways which the Lord could use to reach our generation.
Jeremiah 6:16 remain our anchor as we aim to be biblical in our values and always centering on the Lord Jesus Christ in all that we do. We need to keep to the essence of what church is all about: in our worship, our fellowship, our teaching, our outreach and so on.
At the same time, change has always been a part of the Church in her two thousand years of history. We do not seek to be locked in time and space and forget how to communicate the Gospel in a changing world. And indeed, here in Singapore, we have many cultures and sub cultures. Some are caused by race and language. There are also other causal factors.
The issues involved are indeed complex but there are guides that could help SJC to respond. We can consider the following:
1. How the Lord has been working in our vineyard
2. What He is doing in other parts of the Body. There are things we can learn from other churches here and abroad. For example, the Alpha Course is one new wineskin which we have picked up from a church in London.
3. The giftedness of our current leadership, clergy, staff and lay.
In fact within these last ten years, we have evolved. If we can recall, there was a time when we did not wear cassocks, where we did not observe Lent or Advent etc.
Moving from here in our new church at Leedon, I sense we need to help each Service sharpens its focus in terms of worship and ministry values, culture and effectiveness. While we do not need to try to reach everyone, there is a scope that we could explore, guided by with the three guidelines mentioned above.
In the month of Feb, we will begin via various ministry teams to work through some of these and within the first quarter of the year, we can expect to see changes. Some changes will be in the forms. Better use of multimedia is one. Or an approach to worship and music that widens our ability to connect with an unchurched world.
Others will be about underlying values and attitude. For example, we can grow in the way we communicate warmth and love in our increasingly international city. We need to learn to communicate across cultures. And we can be more intentional and prayerful in our preparations for oru Services.
What will help us manage this change effectively? We need to keep a clear focus on the essence of our ministry and not the channels or forms. If our relationship with God is real and alive, we will recognize real passion (and encourage them) when we see it. If we love Him and is alive to what the Spirit is doing, it will change the way we see the church life and ministry. If not, we see problems and imperfections everywhere. What we criticize often reflects what is going on in our lives. We recall the teaching of the Lord regarding the huge log stuck to our eyeballs!
I found this to be true in my personal experience. I have been able to worship the Lord anywhere, Pentecostal or high church, fellowship with like-minded brothers and sisters irregardless of their church background when I am walking closely with the Lord.
How Anglican is this? Very! An Anglican church is not a denomination. It became what it is as she sought in her history not to conform with some of the Medieval excesses. Within the limits of orthodoxy, she becomes a microcosm of the Body of Christ, as she is today. This explains why, inspite of your different church background, you could fit somehow fit in here. Having done that, we need to allow SJC to be what she is called to be.
As we often sing:
Open up my eyes to the things unseen
Show me how to love like you have loved me
Break my heart from what breaks yours
Everything I am for your kingdoms cause
How will it change for us if we mean each sentence we sing in this song?
Continue to be prayerful and let’s open our hearts to the new as we discern His will together.