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Can we learn from another time when the church was discouraged?
| There is a lot of discouragement out there in Churches. You could probably tell me stories worse than the ones I have heard! I have been networking with several groups of pastors over the past month and realised the situation is quite dire. For a while, I had been localising the problems of the church I’m leading, with its smaller turnout of families, and a smaller number at youth and kids groups as unique to us. I have come to realise that my experience is common in a lot of churches. some way How discouraging it has been for pastors who have shared, of doing exit interviews of people who they thought were friends, sometimes leaving over the position a church had taken over Covid. Many had good children and youth leaders in place but are finding that small numbers are now coming. A drop in finances was a common problem, as well as a drop-off of volunteers with one church struggling to get those who had gone into house groups, back into corporate worship. Even big churches were struggling with the pain around exit interviews and volunteers. With all the recent negative publicity via the press and social media that has been thrown at the church in NZ, we are no longer seen as the answer to life’s problems but one of the causes. Some Christian groups in institutions like universities are being banned as hate groups. We are in reality grappling as a church that is losing our place in society. So what could be a solution to the problems facing the church? I have been doing some thinking that what we are facing is a more extreme version (because of the impact of Covid) of what happened back in the 1990s. Another time of discouragement with people exiting the ministry and churches closing their doors. During this time of discouragement, we heard of community transformations around the world beginning to happen. It’s like these church communities rose in anger at the spiritual forces that were attacking the church and their society. They found powerful changes began to happen as the church rose in prayer. These stories inspired the NZ church into action. In my community, on the Kapiti Coast, in the 1990s, there was also a time of discouragement. During this time we partnered with two local Maori Christian kamātua and with them we had large groups who prayer walked our boundaries, almost all the local pastors visited Kapiti Island (where horrible things had happened to captured slaves), and on the top of the hill with one of the kamātua, we prayed for forgiveness for our community, celebrated Holy Communion and poured out the communion wine left over, symbolically to cleanse the land. Then came the Toronto Blessing into many churches. There was amazing unity until it seemed that the pull of our denominations cause us to preferentially invest our time with them. At least that’s my opinion of how I believe it became undone! My proposition, as a possible solution is to look at how a discouraged church in the 1990s began operating in the opposite spirit of their age in different places around the world. Perhaps we might take the lessons learned, as ways forward that might be applied or adapted to our age. George Otis Jnr (and his Sentinel Group) tracked 800 powerful moves of God in communities in the 1990s that he looked at and found that there were five commonalities found in 100% of these moves of God, where they all experience some kind of community transformation. There was persevering leadership in discouraging times ( 1Tim 6:11-16/ Acts 14:22)Reconciliation between Christian Communities, and the church and its community. ( John 17 11-15 ).Renewal of the priority of intercession. Prayer rooms and nights of prayer etc 2 Chron 7:14, Jer 29:13.Diagnostic research looked at the injustice or spiritual foolishness of our forefathers. Then looked at how reconciliation could happen, or at the very least, prayerful repentance on behalf of churches. Most Christians have no idea of the spiritual history of their communities or grievances that exist between us and iwi. I once asked a local iwi leader if there were any outstanding grievances between my previous church (which had existed in some way in Kapiti, since the 1840s) and was shocked by his negative response.Public power encounters Matt 18:18-20 / Acts 19:11-12 where communities pray against the obvious idols and/ or sins of their forefathers. If the police statistics in NZ say 41% of their time is spent on Family Harm and that we have one of the highest youth suicide rates in the OECD – that indicates we have a spiritual problem that needs battling with to see our community transformed for example (Ephesians 6:10 -18) If you are interested in pursuing this idea of learning from the past, click here for a move of God that happened in the 1990s in the Arctic community of Pond Inlet ( 6 minutes) complete with a tape recording of the noise that exploded in the church when the Holy Spirit came and secondly, listen to a recent update by George Otis Junior about transformational prayer Click here for George Otis(about 90 minutes). Researching YouTube, stories from George Otis Jnr or his Sentinel group you will find some very encouraging stories about the moves of God that he has documented over the 1990s. To close on an encouraging note, over Queens Birthday weekend, my church (Raumati Beach Church ) had a night of prayer, praying from 7 pm on Saturday until 9 am on Sunday in two-hour periods. We had an amazing buy-in with about 2/3rd of the congregation involved. What I worked out was that many believers were aware that our response to all the spiritual discouragement out there, was to rise in prayer to change the spiritual atmosphere. It was so encouraging. I think the Church Mobilisations Journeys ( Click here for more information ) sessions that I have been leading in churches, can easily be adapted to helping church leaders do the thinking/praying of how to get refocused now after the lockdown. If that is of any use to you, let me know? My prayer for you all is that we, the Church leaders of New Zealand, will rise up in the opposite spirit and see a new move of God in this land. |
Kind regards, |
Contact
Email: gradon@northsouth.nz
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