Are you a chicken?

Recently, I felt God speaking to me through some fun and games with the latest addition to our household.

Last year we bought two chickens, which we ironically named “Butter” and “Tandoori”. It hasn’t taken them long to claim the yard as their own and likewise dominate the dog, although she has learnt to chase them away from eating her food! The other day, however, they decided that our acreage was not enough and took themselves out for a wander down our semi-rural street. It took us some time to find them, amid our concerns about foxes and vehicles. They had found their way down to the overgrown driveway a couple of houses away, and were having a lovely time, totally unperturbed about our concern.

A day or so later, we suddenly had two extra chickens in our yard. It seems our neighbour’s chickens had caught the restlessness and decided they’d check out if our grass really was greener.

Then, Sunday morning, things stepped up a notch. At some point in the night, I heard chickens clucking like they’d laid an egg, which was unusual, but failed to concern me enough to get up and see what was going on. However, a little while after sunrise I heard them chatting away somewhere around our bedroom – the opposite side of the property to their coop, where they should have been, safe from foxes and other night predators.

The short story is that hubby went looking and eventually found them holed up under our bedroom – the space in which two of our dogs have often slept if they were out for the night. (We live on the side of a mountain, so not quite as inaccessible as you might think.) Somehow, they had managed to open their cage door and escape at some point after we had gone out for the evening. They were in no hurry to come out from under the house. Martin realised that they were in “laying mode”, but that they didn’t really want to lay their eggs where they were. In the end, he had to pick them up individually and carry them back to the coop, where they rushed straight up into the nesting boxes to lay their eggs.

Over the week, I had felt God’s prompting to pay attention to these scenarios. The idea that the chickens were breaking out, and were indeed, “flying the coop” took on a deeper meaning, especially in light of the words, “The King has left the building” that kept rattling around in my head toward the end of last year.

For those a bit younger, this statement has its origin with Elvis Presley, the “King of Rock’n’roll”. In order to calm the crowds screaming for more, or even just to get them to leave at the end of his concerts, the announcer would often say, “Ladies and gentlemen, Elvis has left the building”. This has later morphed to “the King has left the building”.

When I heard this phrase in my head, though, I immediately knew it was about King Jesus. It was a reinforcement to me that it is well and truly time we shift our thoughts away from the church being a building. The perception church is what happens on a Sunday morning must become past history. We cannot continue to try to box God into a place, into a building or even a time frame. And it is well past time for us to stop expecting people to come into a place of our choosing to encounter God.

In contrast, the chickens flying the coop is about us, His people. In the world of visions and dreams, chickens can be representative of the people of God. (I think it relates back to Jesus looking to Jerusalem and longing to gather His people under His wings as a mother hen gathers her chicks, see Matt 23:37).

Just as I sensed that God is not constrained by the buildings we have constructed for Him, I felt that God is calling us out with Him; out of those things that have constrained us, or even those places and practices that have been about our own safety or comfort. Even the behaviour of the chickens wanting to get back into the coop to lay their eggs seemed to be a counter call to us to instead take our “best work” that we have previously given to “the church” out into the world for the Kingdom. In the past, we have perhaps seen the church and the Kingdom of God as somehow being synonymous. However, I believe many of us actually need to upgrade our understanding of just what “Church” means.

The idea that the Church is not a building but people has been doing the rounds for some years now, even decades. Unfortunately, while we might have many ideas about what Church is not, I am not convinced we have really nailed what “Church” actually is. Even though we might use terms like the “Body of Christ”, or family, these also have different connotations for each of us.

Heading back to the Bible is not immediately helpful either. The word translated to church was, in the original Greek language, “ecclesia”, which perhaps gives us more insight. The literal translation is “the gathering of those summoned”, and it was a term used in the secular world to indicate a political gathering of citizens. While there is a sense of governance around this, it would seem that rather than being hierarchical, all those deemed eligible had a say in the way in which the community operated and what was acceptable. It was quite democratic.

I wonder if we read our New Testament with a greater understanding of what the ecclesia meant to those first disciples it would change our view (and acceptance) of the way we tend to “run church” today?

Coming back to what I am specifically sensing from God around these two phrases, I have to mention the dreaded virus. As we slowly emerged from a lengthy lockdown last year, many were complaining that we couldn’t get back to “church as normal”. However, in our community, we had such a strong sense that we are not meant to. We have this amazing opportunity for substantial change in what is implied by the term “church”. I personally have loved the gatherings we have held outside our buildings, even though we have had a cold summer. It has felt so wonderful to connect with the outside world as we worship – both creation, as well as being visible and perhaps more accessible to the community around us, with people walking past getting a glimpse of what we are about and occasionally even joining us.

I believe with all my heart that God wants us to move out of our places of safety and comfort, out of hiding. I also believe that He wants a shift in our focus, from being a “church” that simply gathers together for our own needs, getting our weekly fix of spiritual input, to a people who, like the Israelites coming out of Egypt followed only where God was going. They didn’t follow a program, a formula, what seemed logical or even those who had come before them. They learnt to be wholly dependent on God.

In the season we are in, where there are so many differing opinions and ideas, where we seem to be in something of a minefield, it is ever more important for us to only go where He is going.

Will you follow?

Awaken, My Bride: A message to the Church (Part 3)

As I read Isaiah 52 a few weeks back, I felt and heard Jesus’ heart-cry for the Church, His Bride. This is my sense of what He is saying:

Awake, awake, my precious, beautiful Bride, My Church.
For too long, you have dressed in the way of the world,
Trying to look like the world
In the ineffective hope you will become more acceptable, more attractive.
But it is time for you to cast aside these garments,
Which are shabby rags in comparison
To the glorious, majestic robes of My love and power
I have already provided you with.
In My garments
You will rise up as the magnificent, noble Queen I have longed for,
Shining in My glory.
My deep desire, the ache of My heart, is for your purification,
Your cleansing from those who refuse to have their hearts circumcised,
Who refuse to allow My blood to cleanse them.
This is not about outward appearances,
But about the deep affairs of the heart.
Only those whose hearts are purified,
Whose hearts are set on Me alone
Can truly be My Bride.
Oh that you would Come away with Me.
Allow Me to break off the chains that have held you captive to the world
For far too long.
Shake off the dust of the past, allow the chains of the world to fall from your neck,
It’s time for you to step out of the world’s control, direction and domination.
It’s time for you to step up onto the throne I have for you to share with Me alone.
Although you allowed yourself to be sold for no gain,
Remember that I have purchased you, redeemed and restored you,
Not with money, or anything the world deems valuable,
But with My Blood.
I am calling you out from your dwelling place in the world,
From living in that place of slavery,
Although you have longed to fit in, longed to adapt and conform,
It’s time to recognise you are actually an alien, a foreigner, there.
It’s time to make the move, to come and live with Me permanently,
Under the protection of My Name,
Really knowing Me,
Knowing intimately who I AM.

Preparing the ground: A message for the Church (Part 2)

I often sense God speaking to me through spiritual parallels of what I see going on in the natural world around me. A little while back I felt Him speaking to me about the Church as I overhauled a section of our garden.

We live in a cottage that is over 100 years old, situated on around an acre of land. Although the garden is well-established, it ended up in disarray as the previous owner aged and was no longer able to keep up. It has taken much time and effort to restore and rebuild, as has the house. Although there are some “good bones” to it all, including some amazingly beautiful specimen trees of great height and strength, there have been many areas which ivy, blackberries, wisteria, “weed trees” - those growing in the wrong places - and a myriad of other weeds and pest plants had overtaken. Some plants lacked proper tending or pruning and have grown crookedly or in an unbalanced way. While we have been able to salvage many, others have needed complete removal.

In the past, my gardening had consisted of merely adding plants to fill the gaps just to keep the garden going and provide less space for weeds. It gave me little overall satisfaction. More recently, I have felt energised to make a fresh start on some areas.

I began completely revamping one of the garden beds removing many weeds and unhelpful or struggling plants that were in the wrong place. Much of the area had very little growing in it, and those things I had planted were generally quite unproductive. As I started digging over the soil, I found the reason:

The soil was choked and hardened by masses of tangled roots from previous plants long since gone.

It took a great deal of work to get it ready for re-planting. This was the prompt for the thoughts that follow.

As I removed new plants from their pots and placed them in the hole in the garden bed, which was now very easy to dig due to our excellent mountain soil, I thought about how much joy there is in planting:

Most of us love to plant, but how little do we enjoy the hard work preparing the soil for the planting.

In the past, I have often been in too much hurry to see the end result of planting without doing the preparation. I had really not put in the effort to establish a good environment for the plant to grow well. Sometimes I have put plants in inappropriate places simply because I like them, not because they are right for the environment or position. Subsequently they have really struggled and not grown well, or simply died.

What I felt from God was something of a caution, or advice.

We are living in a season where many are sensing a great move of God. Things are stirring and shifting and the hunger for revival is rising. In among all this, I sense what God is showing me through my garden is not only what He is doing in the Church, but also about how we need to cooperate with Him if we want the change to be lasting.

Preparation is an essential beginning.

For at least the last decade or more, there has been a sense for me that God has been pruning, removing, digging up, stirring up, relocating His people. It has came with the feeling that the time for us to get on board and work with Him in this had a limit: if we refuse to move, or to allow the pruning, we will get left out/behind in what He is going to do next – such an important part of preparing His Bride. Just as with my garden,

God wants a Church that is well-prepared so it can grow well.

I believe church communities must be prepared to reassess what they are doing, to be prepared to rein some activities in, to prune them back and decrease the focus on them. Others simply need to go completely – they are either total weeds, taking over a distracting from God’s work, or they are in the wrong place – might be lovely somewhere else, but not for what God is doing in that particular community.

There are other places where there are still roots from things long gone. These are more difficult to remove. They might be belief systems about “how church works” or structures within church systems that no longer feed anything, but simply cause a blockage and prevent further growth and sustenance. They may have once been good, but are now simply a hindrance to further growth.

In a nutshell, I believe that while there are aspects of our faith communities that are like my strong, beautiful trees, that give structure and form, there are many aspects of how we “do church” that are past their prime and are no longer functioning or productive to our purpose. They may have simply been “place fillers”, or even worse, weeds; things we did to look productive or fill our space. Some of them were things we just wanted to do because we liked them, or they looked good in another church community, but in the long run they have either had no purpose, or not been productive in the way we might have wished.

As I mentioned in Part 1, we really need to reassess how we “do church” as a whole – come back to our true vision and calling, as The Church and as church communities and even as individuals. Along with the previous questions, we might ask these:

What is our calling in the community we are part of and how is the best way to do this with our resources, both human and otherwise?

Are we prepared to scrutinise every aspect of our church life in partnership with the Holy Spirit to determine our best way forward to be the most effective we can for the Kingdom?

Are there areas of our community life that we declare “untouchable” – sacred cows that tolerate no reassessment? These are often the areas in most need of change!

No going back: A message for the Church (Part 1)

As I have been watching churches scramble to bring some sense of normalcy and connection into their congregations at this time, when everything seems to have been tipped upside down, I am reminded of a dream I had just over two years ago.

It was quite a graphic and disturbing dream and everything was in full colour. In the dream, I was in something like an observation room overlooking a surgical theatre. All was pristine white, and there was a very large man lying on a gurney or operating table. Even as I looked, I realised he was fat because he was pregnant, and indeed, was in the process of birthing. It disturbed me and I was thinking, “That’s unnatural, but I guess it is to be expected these days”.

As I watched, there were three or four other men around him, all in white coats (like doctors), and as I wondered how he could physically give birth, they started to cut him open. They were behind him, and started cutting up along his spine starting at his buttocks and then, to my further horror, started peeling off his skin. He was screaming out in pain, and as I watched in revulsion the men were saying, it’s ok, he’ll be all right as we have another skin to replace this one with. At this point, there was another man standing in with them, watching, and I understood that they were going to give his skin to the original man. At this point, the dream was disturbing me so much I woke up.

Creative Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wings_Laparoscopic_operating_theatre.jpg

Reflecting and praying into what this dream means, I have sensed is that it is a message about the Church. There are several points that stand out to me.

Over the last few decades, as many branches of the Church have struggled with decline in numbers, various groups have investigated what needs to change to remain relevant or in touch with the general population, to bring people back in or keep them from leaving. To this end,

there have been numerous attempts to “birth” something new.

While not all of this has been negative, in a number of circumstances, all we have really been doing is changing the outward appearance (the “skin”) without actually changing the fact that underneath we are still operating out of “man’s” flesh or the ways of the world. In short, I believe we have often been trying to birth the things of man, rather than things of the spirit. It reminds me of Jesus’ parable of the new wine in old wineskins, except this is trying to put new wineskins on old wine. However, I believe the old ways of doing things will no longer work; they are causing too much pain  - it is time for the Church to come into a new season of the Spirit in every way.

It’s time for NEW wine in NEW wineskins!

I see that this way of operating, looking to ideas of human origin has invaded many branches of the Church, whether traditional, charismatic, Pentecostal or otherwise alternative. Wherever we are tangled up in the difference between what we “should do” and how to “be” the people of God we will continue to struggle. This is both at a personal and corporate level, although in many scenarios, what some leadership carry can infect the congregation adversely as well.

To me, the underlying issue is whether our mode of operation is from the perspective of the knowledge of good and evil (i.e. “this is right, this is wrong”, “do this to be a “good Christian”, to have the “favour of God””) or whether we are truly connecting people with the life source, allowing Holy Spirit to be their Guide and Counsellor, helping people to be connected first to God and then to each other, so that each person’s identity is firmly in relationship with God, rather than looking constantly to church leaders to know how we must behave and whether or not we are on the “right path”.

Over the last few years, it has become very clear that we are moving into a new era. The era of the Church being the primary focus in relation to our faith is quite abruptly over, I believe. With COVID-19 and the lockdowns, we have been catapulted out of the comfortable nest of “church-life” into the air, to living out “Kingdom life”. This is not to say that Church is over, but I certainly believe it is being stripped of all that needs to go. We are being released from all those things that have tied us to the ground and prevented us soaring as we are meant to.

The KINGDOM ERA has begun!

Part of another dream I had a couple of months back also relates in here. In the dream, I was hanging out washing (just doing normal life), and as I did, I became aware of a swirling mist coming down through the trees. (We live in the mountains, with tall forest around us.) Just as I was wondering if it was actually mist or whether it was smoke from someone burning off (either of which was going to disrupt what I was doing!), I smelt the smoke, but also started hearing the crackling of burning green leaves. Things then happened very rapidly, with the crackling getting louder and louder and then the very large (20+m) pittosporum trees across the road from us suddenly bursting into flame. Even as I called 000, emergency services, I got a text on my phone stating, “we are aware of an incident in your area”. Straight after this, I got a call from a firefighter (I could see him in uniform – whoever said dreams had to be practical!), asking what was going on. As I looked back to the trees, I realised that the fire had already gone out. All that was left was blackened branches against the sky, with one central branch still burning.

As I explored the meaning of this dream, which again, I felt was about the Church, I feel the important part for this discussion is about the leaves. As I was looking into the significance of the type of trees burning (which didn’t really turn up much for me), what I was aware of is the fact that they are very prolifically leafy, which has its benefits. However, it reminded me that when trees produce a great deal of leaves, this can inhibit their ability to produce fruit. In fact, leafiness, to an extent, can be inversely proportional to fruitfulness.

The message to the Church as I see it is that much of what we have been doing has been producing leaves not fruit. God, in His gracious mercy, is giving us the opportunity for radical change. In this time of inability to continue with “business as usual”, we have a unique opportunity to really dig deep and reassess what is important for the Church, the Body perhaps especially down to how we are structured. As restrictions pare us back to the bare bones, will we continue to desperately scramble to work out how we can continue with “business as usual”, or are we ready to go on the Holy Spirit ride of our lives for something completely new?

“Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.” Is 43:19

As others have observed, the time for “cookie cutter” or “church franchising” is over. It is time to stop looking to what has worked elsewhere and simply adding it to our own model and hoping for the same results.

We have to look to God alone for our unique way forward.

To help us move ahead and find the new that God for us, the questions below are a starting point:

“What is God’s vision for our village/town/region?”

“What has God placed in our area is unique or particular to us in our role to enlarge and release the Kingdom of God where we are?” 

“What is already going on that doesn’t match up with that vision?”

“What are the gifts and abilities God has already placed in our community to bring about this vision, that illuminate our role in this?”

“How can we work with the other communities of God in our area to bring about this vision?”

Can the dry bones of the Church live again?

At the beginning of the year, I heard the rattling of dry bones in the spiritual realm. I felt the wind of the Spirit blowing over God’s people, urging us to movement, to move with Him. He was urging us to get out of our comfy spots with their clearly defined boundaries and parameters. There was a call to be prepared to move into spaces that feel ill-defined and even unsafe or scary because we have never been there before, because we don’t know what it looks like and even how to live in those spaces. 

During worship recently, the leader shared how the words to the old song “these bones, these bones, these dry bones, now hear the word of the Lord” [sic] kept rising up in her mind. She sensed that it was the Word of God that brings life to the dry bones and the dry bones were numbers of people in the churches. 

As she spoke, I had a strong image of what God is doing at this time. 

We often refer to the idea of the Body of Christ as being made up of individuals. We can also see those dry bones as individuals. However, this time, the dry bones were about the various ‘parts’ of the Body which have become disconnected from each other. I felt that in our disconnection, just like limbs and appendages separated from a body, we have also lost our life.

In our disconnection, we have lost our life.

If we look back into the days of Acts when the Church first began with the coming of the Holy Spirit, it is painfully obvious that there were no denominations, no branding and no marketing.

We are given a picture of a Body that is fully alive, fully functioning.

That doesn’t mean they didn’t have their problems – Paul addresses this himself in 1 Corinthians 1-3, when it would appear people were trying to start factions based on whether they followed Paul, Apollos, Cephas or Jesus. He brings them back to the point that each of us should be followers of Jesus alone.

However, over the last two millennia, rather than working hard to keep the unity of the Spirit, (Ephesians 4:1-6) we have continued the practice of creating divisions. These have had their basis in offence, differences of opinion, and unfortunately, often due to power plays and a desire to ‘lord’ it over others or simply to have control.

What started as One Body in Christ, started to become many separate parts.

When offence or a difference of opinion occurred, *SNIP*, we hacked off a finger, or *SNIP* we chopped off a leg, and *SNIP*, we removed an arm. Over time, the *SNIP*, *SNIP*, *SNIP* has led to denominations and movements of every imaginable sort, and what started in unity is now a Body in complete disarray. (If you want some comic relief that illustrates this problem very succinctly, head here, but I’ll warn you, it is black humour!)
 
For some time I have been impacted by the prayer Jesus prayed for His disciples and for those to come (John 17). He prayed that we may be one, even as He and the Father are one. I guess He knew the temptations we would have toward offence and distrust of each other and that disconnection was all too easy.

But of course, when we pull it all apart, these disconnections are valid and important, aren’t they?

We don’t want the Gospel message distorted or corrupted. We don’t want people being led astray by false doctrines, false teachers, those dread wolves in sheep's clothing. However, I am reminded of one of those little sayings that pop up in your Facebook feed: “Would you rather be right or have relationship?”.

Too often, our being right has become a reason to abandon relationship.

Perhaps this needs some re-evaluation in light of the lengths God went to in order to have relationship with us, not even sparing His only Son!

I know there is no simple solution to this problem. There are beliefs and practices that some people have that are unconscionable to others of us. Again, we are no different to the early Church, where practices such as circumcision and eating food offered to idols threatened to destroy the fragile unity of a bunch of people brought together who had a long history of distrust and dislike toward each other. (See 1Corinthians 8 and Galatians 6 for starters).

So what is the answer? 

Maybe it is time for each of us to be the first to take a step toward those we disagree with, not to beat them up with our point of view (which seems to have been the desire of many), but in love - to show the love of Christ toward them.

And when we look at what the love of Christ was like, we might like to remember how He treated people considered unholy, wicked and sinful in His day; people like the Samaritan woman at the well, lepers, tax collectors and others judged unclean, people who had the potential to make Him unclean.

What would it look like if we tried try to find those things we are in agreement about and start there? 

Or at the very least, to start behaving in a loving way with all people, rather than sitting in judgement, (a place that lacks humility and is filled with the belief that we do not deserve any judgement ourselves, that we are perfect and have it all right). 

One of the biggest detractors to the Christian faith for those outside it would have to be the way we fight and bicker among ourselves. Imagine what it would look like from the outside if we behaved in love towards each other, with respect, grace and honour even to those we believe deserve it least. 

Are we ready to be transformed from a pile of disconnected, dead, dry bones through the transforming breath that comes from the Living Word by allowing ligaments and tendons, muscles, skin, veins, arteries, nerves and all the rest of the mess that makes life to grow between us and the other parts of the body?

What would you be prepared to lay down to take that step toward someone local to you to start to rebuild unity?

"I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one— I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.

John 17:20-23