What on earth is Paul up to?

Paul and Mind the Gap Ministries are wrestling with the rapid decline of the Christian faith in the UK culture.  This decline is especially apparent amongst younger generations and has a gender imbalance (with men representing about 40% of church attendees and women about 60%). 

Paul loves the church of Jesus - he has served as a leader in churches for over 20 years.  Paul believes passionately that the message and presence of Jesus has the power to transform every single life on this planet.  Yet, Paul has also seen the disconnect between many of his friends, family, colleagues and neighbours from the church and the Christian faith and has felt led by God to find a way to respond. 

Below is an attempt to explain how Paul is responding to this challenge in a way that is different to many churches by looking at how churches work and contrasting that to how society works in the 21^st century.  Paul’s Mind the Gap Ministries is one way that God is sending ‘pioneers’ from the churches into society at large to rediscover how to communicate the gospel of Jesus in an age of individualism and consumerism, but in which people’s basic needs for relationship have not changed.

 

A model of most Western Protestant churches (whatever it says above the door!) 

 

 

 

 

At the Core

In the Western Protestant world, churches tend to be gathered around two things:

• A set of core values (e.g. a particular way of interpreting the Bible, ways of thinking about God, and ways of thinking about and relating to other people)
• A visionary leader (who may be employed, a volunteer leader or just a really powerful person in the church community) who acts as a catalyst and a mobiliser
  
  

Working with the committed

Core leaders identify their key people (whether staff or volunteers) and build an organisation to deliver certain ministries which are important to the core values of that church (e.g. worship, children, youth, families, men and/or women, older persons, pastoral, etc … and maybe certain outreach activities).  Committed Christians have a set of expectations about what a ‘good church’ will deliver, and in most churches the majority of energy, time and budget is spent meeting the needs of the committed.

 

Gathering the church-goers

Despite what is said many churches have a ‘come’ mentality becoming focused on the size of their membership. 

For many church leaders this is a key metric, alongside balancing budgets, number of ‘converts’ or baptisms, and the age profile of the church.  As a consequence, churches often try to attract as many people as possible, especially on a Sunday morning, which remains the key time of the church week.  Church-goers may include people at many different places – some are just looking and are curious, others are bemused invitees, others are broken and hurting and looking for help, others have recently received the promise of new life through Jesus, and many are the worn out and harassed people just trying to make it through life week by week.

 

The arrows …

Whilst we seek to do all that we can to engage with those outside of the fabric of the church so much energy is taken up with those already in attendance that the focus all to often is to grow the Committed, by teaching and discipling the Church-goers.  The desired direction of travel, then, is always ‘inward’, towards the Core.  The Core is the place where the key drivers are – the leaders and the values.  Of course, in reality there are many, many arrows, and very few will follow a straight line!  Some may go backwards as well as forwards.  Some will go part of the way, and then stop.  This model represents the desire, hope and expectation of church leaders … not reality!

These drivers serve the church community well.  However all to often this leaves little time for authentic connections with those outside of church community.  In addition we tend to apply the same logic to endeavours that seek to bridge the gap between christian community and those as yet to discover anything of the truth of the gospel.  Running events, putting on courses, social action and evangelist endeavours all to often take on the same ‘come’ culture centred around a core group of people or an already established programme based model.  Many of these endeavours achieve little in allowing people to journey prior to an expected outcome of attending church.  The gap for most non believers is simply just to big for church to have any relevance to their lives.  

 

 

A model of what Paul is doing (to help explain what is really quite tricky to explain – especially to Christians who are used to thinking about churches) 

 

 

Paul (the four-pronged star – you have to find him, it’s a bit like ‘Where’s Wally’) lives in a world surrounded by stars (although not all of them realise that yet!).  Most of those stars (five-pronged) do not know Jesus, and that it is Jesus that makes them the fullest kind of star (six-pronged).  There are some six-pronged stars around too that Paul has met through various Christian churches (including his own) and ministries.

Now, Paul, knows a bunch of people – different ages, genders, backgrounds, sizes, etc.  So, Paul invests in his relationships with people he knows (black lines – two-way arrows because it is a genuine mutual relationship – and some relationships are straight-forward and some are just a bit wiggly).  And then he finds out that some of his friends are talking to their friends about what they do with Paul (blue lines).  And some of their friends are talking to their friends, families, colleagues, and neighbours about what Paul is doing (red lines).   Funnily enough, there are people Paul does not know who are talking about what Paul is doing, who have heard it from two or three of their mutual friends – it’s kind of like a viral thing!

The thing is, Paul is investing in genuine, authentic relationships – in relationships that build trust and accountability – relationships where people can be real about the stuff of life – and enjoy the company of others as they do it.  

What Paul is doing can be described in many ways but is perhaps best understood as a ‘neural network’ – many pathways of relationships each heading in different directions and making connections where they will.  For the network to grow, it requires other parts of the ‘brain’ to become connected in – some of these are currently five-pronged and some six-pronged stars.  The network is not within the ‘church’ – it has connections to the churches that Paul has connections with – but most of it lives outside, beyond the ‘wall’, in the world inhabited by most people.

This is where Paul builds on his experience and talents to creatively find ways to engage with people and help others to do the same.  For them in turn to start to build their own Gap Bridging relationships.

Paul didn't set out to  build an organisation or an institution or a charity or a church or a para-church or anything like that.  However, Paul has now met many others who, like him, have the same desire to form authentic relationships with others and inviting God to be part of those relationships.  Paul, and now others (The Underground),  wants to walk with people in the way that Jesus walked with people, and to work with them to find the love and will of God in each of their lives (including letting them help him see this for himself).  By keeping it intentionally small and relational there are real opportunities to make a difference in a number of people’s lives – small means being constantly adaptable, spontaneously responsive, and always innovative and creative.  

 

Mind the Gap

Paul loves to share life … and shares his vision of what walking with God looks like for him in the changing world of the 21^st century after Jesus.  Paul’s vision continues to evolve through his encounters with God and people – he understands more today than last year, and by next year will have added more to this emerging ministry.  If you understand this vision and sense that God might be stirring something similar in you, or you want someone to talk a similar idea through with, then Paul would love to hear from you.  If this is not your thing, but you sense God prompting you to support what Paul, and others like him, are doing, and would like to be kept in touch with developments or prayer requests, then please get in touch.