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

Richard Dawson, 23 June 2015

Time is one thing none of can escape from. As the old saying goes… ‘Time and tide wait for no man!’ Time is an unconquerable boundary for most of us and yet there are tantalising clues within the material world that time is not nearly as fixed as we might think. Time, according to Einstein, is relative. It changes according to how space is filled and the faster one goes the slower goes time for the person travelling, though this effect is only noticeable when one gets close to the speed of light. The Bible affirms that God is Lord of Time—God is over time—God is not limited by time and we see this in action largely through the Spirit. It is the Spirit who announces ‘ahead of time’ what will happen (prophecy). It is the Spirit who pronounces ‘ahead of time’ the purpose of a person or an event (word of knowledge) and it is the Spirit who takes past events and makes them illuminate present situations (interpretation). The Spirit moves in and out of times to reveal God and to proclaim God’s glory and if we are to understand God we shall have to move in the ‘things of the Spirit.’ This is why relationship with the Spirit is so central to discipleship in the New Testament. Peter is described as being ‘filled with the Holy Spirit’ in Acts 4 as he defends his actions before the Sanhedrin. Paul says ‘Be filled with the Spirit and go on being filled with the Spirit’ in Ephesians 5. Only in the Spirit, who is not limited by time, may we relate properly to the God who is above all time and who works in all times to bring all people revelation of the purposes of the Kingdom of God.

Richard Dawson, 4 June 2015

The story of the Christian Church begins of course with the work of Jesus—His life, death and resurrection. But the birth of the Church is always considered to be coincidental with the events in Acts which are associated with the Holy Spirit’s coming on to the gathered disciples and empowering them to witness to Jesus in languages they had never learned. This was called the ‘infilling with the Spirit’ and from then on it was considered normal for all followers of Jesus to be ‘filled with the Spirit.’ But what does this mean? It means that when we become Christians we are to be open to taking on the personality of Jesus for the ‘Spirit’ is, in fact, the Spirit of Jesus. We are, perhaps, used to thinking that our personalities are unique and immutable (unchangeable) but this is not the case. There is as much will involved in the people we become as there is predisposition. We spend much of our early life having our personalities shaped by our parents—usually quite appropriately but sometimes not. When we become Christians we begin a new process of having our personality changed and of taking on the characteristics of Christ and this is, in fact, a never ending process. I am continuing even now after many years of being a Christian to learn how best to love others and, indeed, even to love myself. With this taking on of another Spirit comes a new confidence in God because this Spirit knows God intimately and it is this knowledge which releases the power of Christ to work in ways we could never imagine to bring that love to others. Are you open to the Spirit of Christ? Ask God that you might be today!

Richard Dawson, 29 April 2015

I wrote last week about how important it is for us to understand the reverse logic of the Christian faith demonstrated most significantly in the Cross. The Cross, an instrument of torture and inhumanity—now the symbol of the Faith of God’s peace and the love of God’s Grace. And this upside down symbol represents all that we should be in the world and, indeed, the way God continues to work in the world, raising up the poor and powerless and bringing down the rich and powerful.
A further indication of how contrary our faith is to the way the world works is found in the remark Paul makes about the young Corinthian church made up as it was with… ‘not many [who] were wise by human standards, not many [who] were powerful, not many [who] were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong;’ (1 Cor 1v26.) The question must arise in our minds, ‘Are we among the ‘not many?’ And the answer must be ‘No’ since if we truly know ourselves we will know that whatever our strengths, we come to God always out of our weakness and need. The question then arises—Who then is among the ‘not many?’ and the truth of this answer is that we may all be if we do not recognise the weakness in which we come to Christ. For even the wealthy and the noble if they come to Christ can only come in the knowledge of their sin and need and when they do so on this basis then they are no longer among the ‘not many’ but among those whose weakness has become their salvation.