The light of the World

What is the purpose of fasting?
Not detox, encourage you to have a go and if it’s only one day a week you might like to consider Fridayprayer for London.

Church Planting Movement – growing churches 7 characteristics

1. Heart attitudes.
Passion for God and the Lost – relentless pursuit of God.

Vision for reaching the Whole people group/city region with the gospel.

Who would you like God to impact this year? (Neighbours, work colleagues). Do you have a vision for London or your area of London?

Servant heart and Kingdom mentality.
Faith.
Boldness and willingness to suffer.

Constant listening to and radical obeying of Gods Word.
Integrity

Fasting – restore our hearts, passion for god and the lost, vision for reaching North London, Boldness, obedience, integrity.

Chesterton quote - The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untried - What's Wrong with the World.

Being a disciple of Jesus in 21st century North London is going to continue to be difficult, fasting is difficult, planting a church that doesn’t look like the church we’ve grown up in, that tries to challenge the consumer mentality around us and genuinely seeks to reach those who’ve never known Jesus is going to be difficult.

Fasting reminds us of the centrality of discipleship. The challenge we face is that in many ways we’ve grown up in a Christian context which has worked against discipleship and towards consumerism.

A quote from Alan Hirsch
If one could put the God dynamics aside (or to say it another way, to test church growth practice from a purely sociological perspective) we can say the following: If you wish to grow a contemporary church following good church growth principles, there are several areas which you must constantly focus on and improve:

    * Expand the building to allow for growth and redesign it as an open semi circle not unlike that of a good theatre.
    * Ensure excellent preaching in contemporary style dealing with subjects that relate to the life of the hearers
    * Develop an inspiring worship experience (here limited to ‘praise and worship’) by having an excellent band and positive worship leaders.
    * An absolutely critical area is children’s and youth ministry. Ensure excellent programs here and people will put up with less elsewhere in the mix.
    * Develop a good program of cell groups built around a Christian education model to ensure pastoral care and a sense of community.
    * Make certain you have excellent car parking facilities, with friendly car park attendants, to ensure minimum inconvenience in finding a car park
    * Make sure that next week is better than last week to keep the people coming.

This is what church growth practitioners call the ‘ministry mix’. Improvement in one area benefits the whole and constant attention to elements of the mix will ensure growth and maximize impact. The problem with all this caters right into consumerism. And the church with the best programs and the sexiest appeal tends to get more customers.

Let’s test this: what do you think will happen if elements of the mix deteriorate or another new church with better programming locates itself within your region? Statistics right across the western world where this model holds sway indicate that the vast majority of the church’s growth comes from ‘switchers’—people who move from one church to another based on the perception and experience of the programming. There is precious little conversion growth in it at all. The problem is that no-one really gets to see the problem because it ‘feels so right’ and it ‘works for me’. In fact, the church is on the decline right across the western world and we have had at least 40 years of church growth principles and practice.

We can’t seem to make disciples based on a consumerist approach to the faith. We plainly cannot consume our way into discipleship. All of us must become much more active in the equation of becoming lifelong followers of Jesus than what consumption can produce. Here’s the problem at least as I see it; consumerism is detrimental to discipleship and church growth in its conteporary form is almost completely built on a consumeristic model. That’s just one of the reasons why we must move from it to a more missional model that values the centrality of discipleship in the central element in the equation of church.

Here’s a question how long do you want to be a Christian? So what are you going to do about lifelong discipleship and how are you going to get involved in changing the world around you.

Fasting – a reminder about being a disciple, an opportunity to ask God about the issues that you should be helping the rest of us to engage with. Issues like how we use our money, where we buy our clothes, how much alcohol we drink, what demonstrations we attend.

Matthew 10:37-39
37"Anyone who loves his father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; anyone who loves his son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me; 38and anyone who does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me. 39Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.

Matthew 11: 30For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.

My hope and prayer is that it will be rewarding and that it will be an adventure. At times it’s going to be frustrating at times disappointing, but hopefully more often than not we’ll feel more alive and more purposeful than we’ve ever felt before. It feels like we’ve made a good start but it’s only the start, scratching at the surface, we’ve done some things that have been great and this year is full of potential.

Today the church of England celebrates the feast of Epiphany (from the Greek appearance/miraculous phenomenon) intended to celebrate the ‘shining forth’ or revelation to mankind of God in human form in the person of Jesus.

One of the readings for today is Isaiah 60

1 "Arise, shine, for your light has come,
       and the glory of the LORD rises upon you.
2 See, darkness covers the earth
       and thick darkness is over the peoples,
       but the LORD rises upon you
       and his glory appears over you.
3 Nations will come to your light,
       and kings to the brightness of your dawn.
4 "Lift up your eyes and look about you:
       All assemble and come to you;
       your sons come from afar,
       and your daughters are carried on the arm.
5 Then you will look and be radiant,
       your heart will throb and swell with joy;
       the wealth on the seas will be brought to you,
       to you the riches of the nations will come.
6 Herds of camels will cover your land,
       young camels of Midian and Ephah.
       And all from Sheba will come,
       bearing gold and incense
       and proclaiming the praise of the LORD.

These verses are read today as the prophecy of the coming light of Christ.

This verse was given prophetically to some of us who are here and others when we launched Space. Are we ready to arise are we ready to prepare the way of Christ for others.

I’ve been reading this week about John the Baptist preparing the way for Jesus, and there’s a great question in John 1v21 ‘Who are you?”

Jesus came to the people of God to remind them who they were and to confront them with their God given destiny of being salt and light.

He came as light so we could be light.

Who are you? You’re the light of the world. Matt 5v14 You are the light of the world.

It may not feel like it this morning as we sit a relatively small number in this huge expanse of north London. We are the light of the world.

Got to remember that with a few exceptions most of Jesus message was to religious people reminding them that they were God’s body on earth to fulfil his purposes. Jesus confronts and challenges hard hearts and invites flesh and blood people to step into their God given destiny.

Jesus the light of the world invites you this morning to step into your destiny. You were destined for such a time as this, you’re not on this earth by accident and I don’t believe you’re here today by accident.

There’s no one else God has called to fulfil our calling.

Isaiah 49v6 I will also make you a light for the Gentiles,
       that you may bring my salvation to the ends of the earth."

So here’s the deal. God wants his people to lead such devoted and compelling lives that the whole world would say there is a God.

we need to introduce people to Jesus who brings freedom and makes life dangerous again. Jesus wants to rescue us from slavery whether it’s to debt, addiction, shopping, anger, or just bloated indifference.

He wants to rescue us not so that we build a kingdom of comfort, but so that he can lead us to a place where we are building the kind of kingdom that lasts forever.