Richard Dawson, 29 September 2015

I have taken this first part directly from Philip Yancey’s blog “Small is Large” G K Chesterton once said “The man (woman) who lives in a small community lives in a much larger world…. The reason is obvious.  In a large community we can choose our companions.  In a small community our companions are chosen for us.” Precisely!  Given a choice, I tend to hang out with folks like me: people who have college degrees, drink dark roast coffee, listen to classical music, and buy their cars based on EPA gas mileage ratings.  Yet after a while I get bored with people like me.  Smaller groups (and smaller churches) force me to rub shoulders with everybody else. Henri Nouwen defines “community” as the place where the person you least want to live with always lives.  Often we surround ourselves with the people we most want to live with, which forms a club or a clique, not a community. 
Anyone can form a club; it takes grace, shared vision, and hard work to form a community. The Christian church was the first institution in history to bring together on equal footing Jews and Gentiles, men and women, slaves and free.  The Apostle Paul waxed eloquent on this “mystery, which for ages past was kept hidden in God.”  By forming a community out of diverse members, Paul said, we have the opportunity to capture the attention of the world and even the supernatural world beyond. (Eph 3:9-10)

Leith has, to a lesser or greater degree, captured something of that unique character in the diversity of those who attend here semi-regularly, and this is great. But let’s not imagine it is going to be easy with this amount of diversity to ‘make it work.’ By this I mean not so much to make it feel good as to make it serve the Kingdom of God. The purpose of Christian community is 1. to reflect God’s deep love for all humans and 2. to serve the needy.
Are we doing this well?

Richard Dawson, 16 September 2015

Being divided is universally known to be unhelpful. Jesus said ‘Every kingdom divided against itself is laid waste, and no city or house divided against itself will stand.’ To be ’two-faced’ is to basically be one thing on the outside and another within. Even the idea of a two edged sword speaks of something inherently dangerous. The questions is, how do we avoid this? There are perhaps many different strategies we need to consider but there is one thing which I think can be incredibly helpful in keeping our hearts and minds from being divided and that is what we allow to come out of our mouths. Again the tongue is universally considered both powerful and dangerous in the Bible. James is perhaps the most strident apologist in this regard saying at one point, ‘but no one can tame the tongue—a restless evil, full of deadly poison…’ And why is the tongue so derided? Because it can so easily be the wedge that creates a divided heart in us and in those around us. Again James will say, ‘From the same mouth come blessing and cursing. My brothers and sisters, this ought not to be so.’ It is clear that if we use our tongues negatively we can so easily influence those around us—we can turn them against another or even against themselves. We can introduce quite evil ideas into the minds of many by the way we speak. What is perhaps even more dangerous is that with our tongues we can divide our own hearts and minds and create a double-mindedness which defeats any sense of purpose and drive in ourselves. I find this so often in myself. I am convinced of the righteousness of a particular course of action and then I say something to myself or even just out allowed—something slightly negative, perhaps magnifying the difficulty of such a path or the pain of a moment and suddenly I am divided about what I am doing. The answer is—be positive—accentuate the good!

Richard Dawson, 3 September 2015

Whatever we do in church it will always be, or at least seem, a little artificial. Whenever we gather and do something organised or structured it is, to a certain extent, artificial. But this needn’t mean that it is either meaningless or wrong. Sports, games, music, so much that we do appears artificial to a certain extent and yet it has great value and meaning. Some of what we do at church may appeal to me and some may not but the key to it is the goal. What is the goal of meeting this way each week? I think the goal is to establish key values in our live both individually and as a community. Christian faith though it centres on certain beliefs is a practical faith in that it is worked out through how we live. We live in certain ways, believing that love is our highest goal, that grace is the fundamental way love is expressed and that forgiveness is a duty not just a choice. We live by virtue of a gift and therefore our lives must be fundamentally about giving, about generosity and we grow through our connection with the spiritual community which is church. This means we grow through relationship and so developing relational skills and confidence is another fundamental practice for us. Finally we believe that the true nature of our community is defined by God, a God who longs to draw close to us. Thus we set aside this time weekly as a sign that we believe we must set aside time in our own lives to allow ourselves to know this God. How we live our lives is a key to this part of our faith for there are practices which help us to know God. Things like slowing down deliberately each day to let ourselves hear God; developing some time when we can be completely alone; for it is in this emptiness that God can most easily be heard. Finding out what context best suits us for sensing God’s presence is also important. How we live makes such a difference to our faith.

Richard Dawson, 27 August 2015

One of the confusing things about church is that it looks a lot like many other clubs and organisations. It even acts like quite a few of them and so it seems like it is another version of these but with a bit of a spiritual bent. It’s easy to think that church is just the Rugby Club or the Chess Club with religious stuff instead of Rugby or Chess! And it is true that many of our dynamics work the same as in other human communities or organisations, except for two things…
Firstly the Church is primarily a way of relating to another person, an unseen person, a spiritual person and that person happens to be God. So all the stuff we see is actually only there so that we might achieve something in the unseen realm. Our goal is treasure in heaven and while we take the earthly stuff very seriously we have to keep thinking in terms of the world to come and of the life after death. This sounds gruesome and unhappy but it isn’t really because we know that when we relate to God we become the people we were meant to be—we discover our true selves and we find peace.
The second thing that is so different about church is that our primary imperative is love. The goal of love as defined by Jesus is what defines our ‘win’ as a church. When we love one another and love the world Jesus died for we have completed the ideals of the church. Everything about church must be put through this particular filter and everything we do must have love at its heart. As Carlo Coletto once said, I can only say, “Live love, let love invade you. It will never fail to teach you what you must do.”

Richard Dawson, 20 August 2015

So I continued to attend church into my teens largely because my family went and there was no arguing about my involvement. My very non-Christian friends would tell me that their parents had very nicely given them a choice about God and that this was the right thing to do. I often wondered why they could be that liberal over God and not so liberal over school? Church attendance was not a choice for me until Year 11. At that point and in that year I needed a place I could simply be myself and not be competing in a very aggressive peer group. I held my own at school but at the expense of my relationship with the teachers and, indeed, with myself. I ended Year 10 very unhappily though I should imagine that for my teachers, the year’s end couldn’t come soon enough! In Year 11 I discovered a small ‘cell group’ populated largely with people younger than I, though a certain young woman by the name of Fran went as well. I went to find shelter and acceptance. I went to simply forget the nightmare that was school and I went because I really appreciated the wholesomeness of the young married couple who led the group. Funnily enough I didn’t go to find Jesus but I did! In the fellowship and shelter of that group I discovered that God had been on my case from the beginning and that God wanted a relationship with me. So I began to listen for the whispers of God and though that year was also quite rough, I knew I had found a home that could be trusted. I hung in there and gave more of myself to church than I ever had before. This time, however, I was there because I was finally interested in Jesus.

Richard Dawson, 12 August 2015

Church was a habit throughout my childhood. I didn’t struggle with the concept of God—this seemed to be taken for granted in my family, but I did wonder about families who didn’t know about this God. They seemed, on the one hand, to be able to have great fun on Sundays and on the other, to be able to sit apart from some of the values I picked up from Church. I also didn’t understand the antagonism the notion of God provoked when it was raised with some of these people. When some of my friends began to seriously attack my churchgoing I would listen to them and analyse their approach. Most of it seemed pretty shallow to me. ‘The church is full of hypocrites’ sounds OK until you realise that the rest of society has a few of them too. ‘What’s God doing about world poverty and disease’ - was a tough one until I learned that whatever God was doing about it, the Church had initiated some significantly world-changing approaches to these issues throughout its history. Inventing a medical system for treating the wounded in war and instituting a school system-for-all in Britain were just two examples.
The real challenge for me came through times when I was asked what I was doing about these things. This was perhaps the greatest lesson and puzzle for me, for I constantly found that at Church I couldn’t escape this question. What was my decision in regard to both Christ and His world? What would I do about them?

Richard Dawson, 30 July 2015

Whether people admit it or not most of us live out of a story which tries to make sense of the world. Some call this narrative a ‘world-view’ though I suspect it isn’t nearly as neat and tidy as that title tends to make it sound. We live ‘through’ such a story because there is a deep instinct within us towards understanding –towards making sense of things. Something in us rejects the notion that the universe and everything within it is an accident and so is fundamentally irrational. From toddlers whose every second question is ‘Why?’ to adults who rail at the senseless death of a loved one we are all deeply challenged by the need to make sense of the universe… but how?
The Christian narrative, once understood in it’s wholeness has satisfied my deep need to do this. From its beginning with a loving God who creates in love a universe designed to reflect the nature of God to the injection of a dark poisonous draft of irrationality we call sin which has infected every part of that creation and especially us, to the redeeming work of the Son of God whose life, death and resurrection has swallowed up that darkness and made it light again by virtue of the same love which created the universe in the first place—the Christian story makes sense of everything. Which is not the same as saying everything that happens is sensible or right. Quite the opposite. The universe must still be recreated in the image of Christ; the story is not complete, darkness still reigns in certain areas and must still be resisted. But, as they say, Sunday is coming! And on that day we rejoice in a new creation that makes perfect sense!

Richard Dawson, 22 July 2015

I discovered early on that faith was never just about me. Rather faith was a corporate reality which worked to create not just redeemed individuals but redeemed and redeeming communities. There is a saying which goes ‘It takes a village to raise a child.’ While there may be some who use this to justify there own politics the heart, I believe, of the saying revolves around the importance of community for individual human health. As individuals we find our being and hence our meaning in communities. This begins, of course, with our families which is one reason why preserving and promoting families should be so important for the Church. But the family is just a preparation for involvement in much bigger communities such as school and work communities and, finally in the ultimate community, the Church. The Church is the special community God has ordained to be the community through which our relationship with Christ is mediated. Now this doesn’t mean that we have no access to God apart from the Church but that our very relationship with Christ needs the communal aspect which is the Church. The two go hand in hand. I believe today because many people in the Church have contributed to keeping me faithful to Christ. And yes, the Church is a very human institution as well and as such it can be very frustrating and, at times, even the opposite of what it was meant to be. But in the end it is the place the Spirit has created to be active with the purposes of God. For all it’s imperfections the Church has nurtured and continues to nurture my faith.

Richard Dawson, 22 July 2015

As a new Christian and even as one who has believed for almost 40 years now I have found it easy to replace the grace of God for my own efforts to follow and obey God. This has worked well in short bursts but it always founders on the rocks of my own shallow human shore. I have found that over and over again I fail to follow God as I should and I must come back to God in reliance on His mercy and grace and for forgiveness. Indeed reliance on my human ability to follow God is deeply flawed in two very simple ways. Firstly, it is never something I can maintain as being adequate for long. Sooner or later I will ‘blow it’ with God or with others and do something which is not reflective of God’s life within me. Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, however, even when I do get it right and am acting in a manner which is in accordance with God’s ways I discover that this is not really the most important thing in God’s eyes. Rather what God is after isn’t so much my ‘goodness’ as my friendship. God is looking for a relationship. A relationship isn’t based on whether we are doing just enough for another person but on whether we love the other. Love lifts our actions above the moral into grace. When we love another we will extend to them grace and we will act towards them in a manner which is good for them rather than simply the ‘right’ thing to do. And so I discovered a God who was far less concerned about my doing the right thing and far more concerned about having a real relationship with me. And the great thing about that was that as I focused on that relationship righteousness flowed from it.

Richard Dawson, 9 July 2015

As a child I was fortunate to grow up in a believing family and for many years I did not question the existence of God but I also simply assumed that somehow that belief made me a child of God. I never questioned whether how I lived matched the call of God on my life. And so I travelled into teenage years with a kind of naïve confidence that all was well with my life when, frankly, it wasn’t. To cut a rather long story short I was hard on other people. I had an eye for their inconsistencies and mistakes and I was never too shy to remind them, especially if they choose to point out some of my many mistakes. This came to a crisis in my teenage years when I realised I was not living as I should but found no power within myself to change. When I finally was led to a relationship with Jesus I found that power and I began to live in a manner which was easier both on others and myself. That power is still vital to me today for I find that even as a Minister my ability to get things completely wrong is still alive and well and I can easily live in unloving and unhelpful ways. Only the living Word of Christ which comes to me through the Church and my reading of the Bible keeps me living as I believe I should. And this is a power which extends beyond myself to those I care about and to the community within which I have been placed. It is a power which I believe has changed circumstances in my life miraculously and enabled me to find a peace which passes all understanding. I believe because I have found that God struggles with me in my present darkness to bring light to one who needs