Introduction to the Flippin Church

There are probably very few things in this world more known about, but less understood, than the church. 

Within Christianity there are more arguments about the church than any other subject. Many times in our history one part of the church or other has slaughtered those who dare to disagree with them on even minor doctrinal matters. Still today families break up because of church, and good friends become enemies over night.

The question which I have wrestled with, even before I became a Christian, is “How come we get it so wrong?” After all, there are only 109 mentions of church in 106 verses in the English Standard Version of the New Testament. Surely we must be able to distill something we can all agree on from those verses.

The subject of church has fascinated me all of my life. My family were not church goers at all, although my two brothers and I were ‘christened’ in a local Methodist chapel. My father came from an Exclusive Brethren family who, when I was five years old, followed their leader’s teaching which provoked my grandparents and three aunts, along with all of their families, to cease any relationships with anyone outside of their church, which included us. Overnight, we felt the very great pain of being effectually cut off from all of my fathers relatives! Oddly my brothers and I were sent to a local Church of England primary school where daily assemblies meant a crocodile of children walking to the parish church for a communion service first thing every morning. At different times the three of us also joined the local Boys’ Brigade run by the Methodist chapel. In my last year at primary school I was made a server at the daily communion service where I wore a red cassock and white ruff. By the time I reached secondary school I could have told you a lot about church, but everything I knew was entirely contradictory and certainly didn't lead me to think about God, let alone Jesus Christ and his love for me.

As you read this you will probably think that, with all of this early contact with all kinds of church, God must have had his hand on my life. I couldn't agree with you more, but I was too blind to see it. Only a few years later I met my wife to be, Ruth, who was a christian and belonged to the local United Reformed Church. If I wanted to see Ruth on any given Sunday morning it meant going to her church. The plus factor of the URC over my Methodist and Church of England experiences was that the building was warm, light and modern. Apart from that, and Ruth aside, there were no obvious attractions for me and I would still say that for me, although Jesus was mentioned in the hymns, readings, prayers and sermons, neither the meetings or church members communicated that Jesus was alive and, was truly Lord.

Now I have to be fair to those saints who were part of the churches I had experienced as a young man. They were never pushy and were nearly always sincere, friendly and welcoming to me, but so were the people down at the local pub or in the various bands I played with. Church just seemed a duller version of life than the one I was looking for.

When Ruth and I married we tried to go to church most Sundays depending on where I was stationed in the Royal Air Force. Most often it would be the chapel on the RAF base, but sometimes it would be a local town’s URC. Nevertheless, my view of church was only reinforced by these largely dull encounters. Most of these churches and chapels were made of up of very similar people who did much the same type of stuff. Looking back it was truly amazing how much they let me do in their fellowships. I got to read the lessons, say written prayers, hand out hymn books, help with sunday school, talk to youth groups, serve communion and man stalls at fetes and jumble sales. What fun we all had, these Christians and me the confused agnostic! But all of this changed very rapidly in 1982 when, shortly after the Falklands war, a new Chaplain was posted to RAF Marham where I was stationed in Norfolk at the time.

To cut to the chase, I became a Christian. I was utterly convinced of God’s love for me demonstrated in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. I won’t go into the details of my conversion here, that’s for another time, but what was remarkable about my coming to faith was that it felt like God put something inside me that day, a vision which I couldn't quite see, and certainly wouldn't begin to be able to articulate for many years, which was about church. It was almost as though he had down loaded a blueprint for church which would be revealed to me from time to time so that I got tantalisingly brief glimpses of the plan. Not clear enough views for me to immediately build what I saw, but detailed and exciting enough for me to know that I was aiming for something very different to the church I had experienced up until that point.

Over the rest of my life so far, God has been revealing to me what that church looks like. Sometimes its been whilst praying and reading scripture, at other times its come through listening to sermons, or going to conferences, or reading books, but most often it has come through talking with people. As we have chatted its been like something inside of me, deep down, has understood and a light has come on. My problem with this has been twofold. Firstly how to put into words what I am seeing and secondly how to connect the various parts of the picture so that it makes sense when put into practice in a local Christian fellowship.

In 1987 I left the RAF and went to college to train for ministry in the URC. When I was ordained I went straight back to the RAF as a chaplain where, in the Forces environment, I was able to build church as I understood it. 

As the years past and I became more aware of the vision of the church God had given me, I tweaked and changed various things, but this usually resulted in something else not fitting. It wasn’t unlike my attempts at doing a Rubicks cube. Change one side, but then the others don’t match anymore. With the cube I would end up throwing it down (I have never completed it), but with church it merely caused me to seek how to fix the next bit. And so round and round I have gone, and have taken with me some very patient and loving Christians to whom I owe a tremendous debt and huge apologies as they have put up with my tweaking.

Some of the sides of the church Rubicks cube that I have been twisting and turning have been, ministry, authority, congregation, legislation, unity, relationships, scripture, and other less obvious faces. One thing is clear to me now, the Bible has a great deal to say about church, but what we have built over the last 2,000 years has little to do with it. Nevertheless, God in his wonderful grace and mercy hasn’t abandoned us and will never do so. Jesus loves his flippin’ church!

Over the next few weeks I want to explore my thoughts on church through history, the bible, the church today and the world we live in. I welcome your thoughts as I post.