#messyministry

[confessionsofcalling]

Sometimes ministry looks like collecting donated items for refugees

Sometimes ministry looks like coffee with a friend

And sometimes ministry looks like trying our best to get a flamingo shaped kite to fly with some very lovely small people

God is good, I love my job ❤️

[confessionsofcalling]

Broken Liturgy

We need more broken liturgy

We need the story of a lowly table and group of friends that reminds us that beauty can come from the breaking

We need more words that flow freely from the common tongue, words that invite us to a communion of beer and snacks on a Saturday night because maybe that's where God is dwelling

A nurse's comfort when someone's world is falling apart is anointed ground

It is not simply something we repeat, relate over and over to generations

Our worshipping words matter, to develop as we grow, to be shaped by the miracles of God in our everyday crying and crawling

We need more broken liturgy

Words that encourage me and you, rough around the edges, into endless relationship with the divine

We need more broken liturgy because God is a champion of the quirky, unlikely, hurt and hurting, a champion of all the people and things we could never expect to be Holy

And yet, here we are, a group of broken people, each bringing our own baggage to the altar

We should be able to see our stories there

[confessionsofcalling]

What do you feel you are called to be or do?

Messy, complicated and afraid - but showing up anyway.

It almost seems like the opposite of calling right? Surely when you're called to ministry, when you feel called by God, that requires some sort of perfection, some sort of speciality, something that means you'll get it right and always follow God in the right way, no slip ups, no wrong turns, no wandering off the path. I believe this idea of holier than thou is one of the major problems we have as a community of believers today, which is why, call it my mission statement if you will, I always want to be messy, complicated and sometimes afraid - but never failing to show up anyway.

I'm not sure where this idea that being a person of faith, that being someone who is called, has ever required perfection or being put together or always knowing the answer. God makes beauty out of brokenness, so why would we ever hide our brokenness?

Look to the Bible - how many messy, complicated and yet unbelievably faithful people do we see?

Take heart, God doesn’t call qualified people, He qualifies the people He calls. 

God called liars, cheats, unfaithful husbands and wives, those who were cast out from society, He looked at them in all of their mess and said “yes, those are the people I want”.

And most of all, He showed us it's okay to be messy, complicated and afraid and still show up, He showed that He gets what it’s like to be human, gets what it’s like to feel drawn to getting your hands dirty and doing the work no one else wants to do. We know He knows how it feels, because that is exactly what Jesus did.

He dined with sinners, He took His place as the lowest among society and told them that they were good enough already, told then their mess is just as much of a message as anyone else's. Jesus was messy, He laughed with His friends, He did the dirty work, He cried and mourned and questioned, just like we do. He looked at the world and knew it was hard, knew it was painful, knew there were many things we would never get, but He still showed up, He still thought we were all worth it. Phillip Yancey talks about the fact that Jesus was the first world leader to propagate a kingdom with a heroic world for losers. Speaking to a nation raised on stories of mighty kings and triumphant armies, He positioned Himself with the messy and the complicated and the afraid, the prodigal, not the obedient son, Lazarus a loved and lowly friend, not the rich man. Building on Spurgeon, the church’s duty, the duty I feel called to position the church towards, is to set aside her dignity and respectability, counting it glory to gather together the outcasts.

So I feel called to be messy, to have a messy ministry, to find the diamonds in the rough, to bring the church out of the shadow of its steeples and bring it however much kicking and screaming into a new light. The church has been refuge for me, it has been a family and home and it has done that for so many before me and it will continue to do that for so many after, but also, for too long it has been a source of darkness in people’s lives, somewhere they felt unloved and and unwelcome and I think that is one of the saddest things I’ve ever witness - a church so bogged down in everything from petty gripes to abuses of power and it’s left in a situation where it can get stuck or it can move on, learn it’s lessons and do better. I live the church so much, and that why it needs to change, that's why it needs people like me who are determined, who have fresh ideas and also love tradition, who cares about its old and its young, who cares about seeing the church thriving and not dying, who wants each church to have a place for all.

An image that really stuck with  me was a picture of Jesus, embracing a rainbow haired punk, their face showing a level of disbelief, it made me realise just how much the church could gain from being messy, complicated and afraid and showing up anyway - because and ill sound like broken record till it sticks, that’s what Jesus did. It hurts me that seeing a loving and passionate follower of Jesus, could be rare enough that it can strike disbelief, that hearing or experience the truth of Jesus could be so wildly different from what many have been led to believe about Him. Jesus didn’t hate people, He loved people more than we could ever understand. We need to look at these divinely, including ourselves, chaotic people out there that are such an asset to our family and welcome them in, not shut them out. I cannot boast of my love for God, but I can boast of His love for me and for everyone, which is why when I look to being the lead of a church, I don’t want to be ordained so I can be high and mighty, I want to be ordained because that's the path I can see to make great change, by being someone in a position, someone who has voice, not to get myself heard but to get others heard, to do the big things and the small things.

Welcoming new lives into God’s family, and welcoming older lives anew, witnessing to love and both starting it’s journey with a wedding ring or ending its journey with a goodbye, to stand with a church family, holding their hands and saying “who’s not in the room?”. There are so many times when I’ve wanted to walk away, when I didn't want to step out in faith and be messy for everyone to see, but it felt as though God’s hand held me by shoulder and said “No, you’ve got work to do”

Can I conclude such a multifaceted thing about what I feel called too? Certainly not neatly but I guess that's the whole point -  being messy, complicated and afraid and showing up anyway means bringing out the God colours in the world, it means cradling a broken church full of broken people, not telling them that their brokenness equals hopelessness but going with them, even when we’re afraid, to heal and to learn and see all the opportunities we have to be a world-changing church, because we have a world changing God, who gets the messiness, the fear and the complexity, and looking lovingly on the diversity of His creation and His church, urging us forward to embrace an ethos that matches His heart for radical inclusion and reckless love.

[confessionsofcalling]

A pastor walks up to their church doors early one Sunday holding a sign. They lovingly place it on the old wood, stepping back with a sense of triumph, it reads "sinners welcome here".

A few hours later as they fiddle with papers by the pulpit, thier fixation is interrupted by a tap at their shoulder, three members of the congregation were standing before them "Pastor, we've seen your sign, are you sure we want those sorts of people in our church?"

And therein lies the problem. Too often church is seen as a house for the already holy, a place for the perfect, for those who fully understand and are fully embraced by the divine for their effort and outward perfection, not the sinners, not the outcasts.

Too often the culture of church dictates, only happy things are spoken of here, no sadness, no depression, that's an abstract problem, something to pray for, something that doesn't happen here. There's a belief that accepting Jesus somehow makes your life all sunshine and daisies, and if you're still suffering you're doing something wrong.

I can't tell you how much that upsets me.

Look to the Bible, look at David's depression in the Psalms, Job's suffering, the persecution of the disciples - look at how time and time again God encouraged us to embrace the full range of emotions He granted us as humans, made in His image, and tell me that God wouldn't want a messy church, wouldn't want us to have a messy ministry.

I want to have a messy ministry, why? Because life is unbelievably messy! But my eternal joy and hope lies in the fact that God is right there with us in the mess, of course He'd welcome sinners into his church, because each and every one of us is just that, a sinner, a messy human, but loved so unbelievably either way. God doesn't call for our perfection, His love for us makes us worthy even in the lowest of valleys. Every Saint has a past and every sinner have a future, that's how transformative our God is, and yet we forget that so often.

We hide in the shadows of our steeples and our ceremonies, and forget that our real mission, that the focus of our ministry and our job as the body of Christ is to go out into the mess, get our hands dirty, and find all the holiness amongst the wreckage.

I want a messy church, that reflects each beautifully messy and broken part of humanity, that knows that life can be tough, that knows that life can be miserable, that says "it's okay, your tears are welcome here" that says, whatever illness, whatever trouble, whatever hope and hurt you have, bring it here, sit down, hear us talk about the man who died for us, let us show you His love, let us embrace each of your broken parts and say - it's okay not to be okay, God's got you!

Because, I think Rachel Held Evans says it best "This is what God's kingdom is like: a bunch of outcasts and oddballs gathered at a table, not because they are rich or worthy or good, but because they are hungry, because they said yes. And there's always room for more..."

[confessionsofcalling]

It's okay to have Jesus and a therapist, Jesus and psyc meds, Jesus and experiencing hospitalisation, you're still here, you're still standing, God loves you so so much and you're not any less faithful no matter what your mental or physical state - hugs and prayers to anyone struggling ♥️🙏🏻