The Thin Edge

Our church is launching 40 Days of Community this Sunday: virtually the same time as last year's 40 Days of Purpose. My attitude towards anything Saddleback has not improved since I left the United States; in fact, I came to the United Kingdom hoping to get away from the bravado of such ultra-American evangelical cheesiness. But God evidently has a sense of humor and so here I am, the director of a Saddleback campaign: a 40-day program to bring "community" to the local church. I've never liked bandwagons or jumping on the nearest one.

If you asked me—I know you didn't, but if you did—Saddleback could take some lessons from our small community of faith. Most of our members (less than 100) are actively involved in three to four different ministries each week, plus a dozen or so fly to Uganda several times a year at their own expense to work alongside a sister church in Mbale. When we did the "ministry fair" in last year's campaign, we discovered that our members were engaged in 45 on-going ministries, some based within the church and others shared within our larger Christian community. We see "the church" in our town as one organism, so we work together whenever and wherever possible.

This past Sunday, an alcoholic showed up after our morning service looking for something to eat. A few weeks ago, he found his way into the Christian bookshop that my wife manages and asked for a glass of water so that he could take a handful of pills and end his life. She called me on the phone and I phoned the police, who quickly responded and intervened in his suicide mission. I had never met this man, but he appeared this past Sunday and confessed that he had not eaten in three or four days because he spent his government-funded, weekly allowance on booze instead of food. Within minutes, a family in our church invited him to their home for Sunday dinner, treating him with dignity and respect and meeting his physical need for food. He knows where to go when he's hungry: we will not give him money to buy alcohol, but he's always welcome for a meal.

I'm struggling to understand why churches in Britain are enamored with the programs being marketed by American mega-churches. Many churches here would actually have to take several large steps backward to do just 40 days of community, because they have been doing community—like a lot of small-town churches all over Britain—for a lot longer than, well…since before a group of Pilgrims sailed from England to America.

If you ever visit me, I'll take you to a rural location where a group of Anglicans meet weekly for worship and show you the original location (AD 714) of their congregation, 100 yards into the forest behind their present building (circa 1870). It's staggering to stand in those quiet woods and imagine the voices of God's people gathering as a community 1,300 years ago to encourage and equip one another to love and good deeds. [Feel free to click on the above photo and view the photos taken at the Vaynor Church near Merthyr Tydfil, just twenty minutes north of Pontypridd.]