Advent #14 Lens

'Lens'
So this one's more for my churchy friends...
   It's all about the lens through which you look at things!! Your own experiences and story. strongly held or intuitively felt beliefs, hopes, desire for stability, need for change and what worked for you... these both inform but can also hold us back from a future.
   In a time where change is called for we need to be aware of the lens we look through at things and be ready to decide whether our 'picture' of things takes us forward or holds us back. In Advent the story attempts to surprise, to change how people saw things and how we might be called to see things into the future...
   A huge connection with this is how the community around us has changed and rendered our lens cloudy or irrelevant... It's time to interrupt normal transmission... It does challenge our central values because who we are as 'church' has been shaped by the society we've been part of. What? Well, denominational corner store local branches were not necessarily the model envisaged in the Epistles. Don't underestimate the need for suburban and main street branches, collecting offerings and maintaining a facility at which it's raft of invitational activities could be carried out. Don't underestimate the social convention of joining churches as family creating multiage teams to run things. At some point, for many, this became the relatively harmless pursuit of values for your kids, until people stopped listening or finding the expression of church less relevant, life giving, hopeful and/or demanding...
   This model still works where some ingredients are still present and/or the leadership are able to connect core message with the questions people are asking in their lives. Places where kids are welcomed [and not criticised behind parents backs], where energy is put into things that bring life to people.
   But what of places where no invitation is being responded to [and some where none is given]... what needs to happen to their lens? If those places participated in their community in just one legendary act of 'serving' the hurts and/or hopes of others in their community, then a. they would have something to celebrate and offer as worship and b. might just find a community of people with whom they can ask... what does 'church' look like here...
   The old lens has them asking, how will this get these people joining us on Sunday morning? It's not working in so many places... Learn more about the lens, then figure out if it's a clear and accurate view of your world. Where it's not, what needs to change... who do you need help from to do the changing?

   This is all motivated by our own call to follow and a vision of what the world could be like if we lived 'for the common good' collaborating together around God's values. Individuals will emphasise different parts of that story and call but that's just different emphasis not greater or lesser truth... some emphases recapture the old lens and make us more comfortable, some create a new future and draw us into holy mischief and uncertainty...