For one reason or another, I haven't got round to blogging about CU this term so far - my bad! It's become difficult to balance all the various things I'm getting up to, but as I've a bit of time now I thought it right to share some thoughts on what was a brilliant and blessing of an evening last night.
Bible Studies, Cell Groups, Support Groups, Growth Groups... Whatever you call them, they can be difficult to get right. Much more so when you're dealing with people of all sorts of backgrounds, denominational preferences, etc. So how do we do a "one-size-fits-all" Small Group at Wolves CU?
I'm not claiming to have any universal answers, but we tried something different yesterday, and the general consensus was that it worked well.
One of the ways in which I've grown since moving to Uni has been in the way I've noticed that God can't be restricted by our own personal understandings of him. In coming to Uni, it was as if I'd packed God into one of my boxes - I knew how he worked and how he would speak to me. I was a Christian, sure, but plenty of my understanding of God was on my terms, limited to what I thought was "good Christian practice" or "the right way to do things".
Since moving to Wolves, I met so so many different Christians, most of whom have had an impact on the way I now view God. Through visiting so many different churches (until that point I had only ever attended one church in my life - a fabulous and brilliant church which I miss dearly, but one church nonetheless) God opened my eyes to the many different ways in which he speaks to people.
People are different, and so the way in which God speaks to people must surely differ.
What's this got to do with last night's Small Group? Well it was in realising the many different ways we can communicate with God that we began discussing a three-pronged approach to Small Groups: Bible, Prayer, Sung Worship.
Now the first two have always had a presence, and as an evangelical I will always maintain that of the three the Bible is the most pivotal, and takes precedence over other two. But we had sidelined prayer somewhat, and the thought of singing in a place that wasn't a church service would have had me running for the door two years ago.
But the brilliant thing is, God can speak as powerfully to us through truths we sing, truths we pray, and truths we read. Last night, as we allowed people a variety of different ways in which to engage with God, we really felt that it allowed everyone a chance to meet with God in a personal way, rather than in a way which is forced by whoever's leading.
Some may prefer one of the three, and see that as the way they really connect with God - and that's fine. But I have found real joy in discovering that God isn't confined to just one or another. God is so much bigger than we can ever think, and in many ways even writing this is pointless, such does it offer on a debate about the size of our God.
But - God wants us to get to know him, and hopefully through engaging with him in such a variety of ways, we may be able to do just that.
Last night's study was challenging in a couple of ways - just thought I'd briefly share how I thought we can all be challenged. Feel free to disagree.
Firstly: If God can save Saul, then is there anyone he can't save? There are only a few verses between Saul setting out to "destroy the church" and Saul "proving that Jesus was the Christ". How awesome is that? The challenge to us is to let God be the boss of who can and can't believe, not us. Regardless of our views on the P word, God is far more loving than we often are, and so it makes far more sense for us to trust him in our outreach. Our vision statement is to "give every student on campus the chance to hear about and respond to Jesus". How well do we fulfil the "every student" part of that vision?
Secondly: We chatted for a while in our small group about the impact Saul had on the setting he was in, and discussed what we should learn from that. When we read about people's actions in the Bible, I don't think we're called to copy them to the letter. Rather, we have to identify the ways in which we can mirror the impact Saul had in Damascus and Jerusalem, and replicate that impact on our campus.
I realise this post is slightly different, but I thought throwing a load of questions out there might help us in our thinking, and might spark discussion. Feel free!
At the end of the passage we looked at last night, Luke casually drops in that, as a result of Peter's testimony, "about three thousand" were saved. 3000! Any churches fancy hosting a baptism service of that size?
When first looking at the passage, someone pointed out that we in fact should have carried it on a little longer, as we'd missed some of the best verses of the chapter. I thought I'd give it a read, and when I did I found some really quite uplifting and challenging words.
Acts 2 continues suchly:
42 They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. 43Everyone was filled with awe, and many wonders and miraculous signs were done by the apostles. 44 All the believers were together and had everything in common. 45 Selling their possessions and goods, they gave to anyone as he had need. 46 Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, 47 praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.
We're shown here several ways in which those who were baptised kept firm to what they had learnt - they devote them selves to way they're taught about Jesus, they pray regularly, and they spend plenty of time in the company of other believers. Through their steadfastness God enables them to perform miraculous signs, and this allows yet more people to know and come to faith in Jesus. One verse leapt out at me though - verse 44.
"All the believers... had everything in common." Bear in mind this comes directly after Peter's speech - a speech heard by a crowd containing representative of at least ten different countries! These were a very diverse bunch of people - what is this "everything" they have in common? It can only be their new faith in Jesus.
Peter's words of "Repent and be baptised" in v38 aren't words to be taken lightly. These are game-changing words. Repent means to turn 180, completely change the focus of your life away from serving oneself, and onto serving Jesus. Being baptised today means various things to various people, but in Luke's time it's a clear picture of people accepting Jesus' forgiveness.
The challenge for us is firstly is to make sure we treat Jesus as our "everything". The believers in Acts clearly did - their time, their money, and their energy were all motivated by a desire to know Jesus better, and also to make him better known.
This is the second part of our challenge. As we embark on a term where we reach out to people and give them the opportunity to know the Jesus we know, we must make sure they can see that Jesus is our number one. If we can begin to do that then perhaps the second half of verse 47 can be as true for us in Wolves as it was for them in Jerusalem.
We've seen a lot lately, in Luke especially, about people being lost. A few things have struck me about the way in which this impacts us.
If you've ever been lost, you'll know it's not great. Recently I foolishly trusted my brother's navigational skills around Blackburn town centre - it didn't go well. I was happy to let him drive on - up until the point he turned to me and asked "do you know where we are?". Ah. Oh dear.
It's only when we realised that neither of us knew what way we were heading that we got the map out and were able to navigate our way to where we were supposed to be going. With the aid of a map, there was no problem - we arrived at the right place, albeit at the wrong time.
It's a bit like that with the people we've looked at in Luke. Whilst Dan and I assumed we knew where we were going there was no need for the map. Various people Jesus encounters are showing all the signs of being lost, but plenty of them don't realise how much they need to be shown the way.
It's only when we realise we're lost that we look for help, and in Luke's gospel the people we've seen Jesus save are those who have recognised the error of their ways, and know they need someone to offer them a way out. It's only when we realise we're lost that we can be found - found by a God who "came to seek and save what was lost".
There's another beautiful aspect to this. The word "lost" implies that the thing which has gone missing belonged to someone in the first place. When we lose something, we go looking for it - because it's ours, and because we quite like having it in our lives. God seeks us for much the same reasons. Our amazing God dies for his runaway children at the time they are most lost, all because he longs to make them found, and bring them home.
"Two men were in debt to a banker. One owed five hundred silver pieces, the other fifty. Neither of them could pay up, and so the banker canceled both debts. Which of the two would be more grateful?"
The above is taken from Luke 7, and the passage we studied last night. But what exactly is Jesus saying here? The obvious answer to his question is the man who owed more, but we can take more from this with a closer look.
Our Uncover notes say this:
"Jesus often taught in parables - stories cleverly designed to uncover a truth. In this parable, he is trying to help Simon see that the woman has been forgiven because she recognised her sin and received God's message of grace. But Simon's self-righteousness and spiritual pride makes him blind to his own sin. Simon doesn't grasp that God loves sinners (himself included!), and that forgiveness is offered to all who sincerely repent."
In the story, the difference between Simon and the sinful woman isn't that one is more sinful than the other - both have rejected God's rule, just as every other person who's ever lived has. The difference between the two is that only the sinful woman has grasped how serious her sin problem is.
Simon thinks he's sorted. As a Pharisee, he would have made use of rituals and practices which enabled God's people to become right with him. The problem with the Pharisees was that whilst their attention to detail was brilliant, they'd lost sight of the reason behind their religious practices - God, and his promise of deliverance. They'd replaced God's promise with their own practice.
The sinful woman? She throws herself on Jesus' mercy and gives him the most expensive thing she owns. What a picture! She is more grateful for Jesus' forgiveness because she knows what it means to have the slate wiped clean. Simon cannot be as grateful because he cannot see past his pride to see that his own sinful heart needs cleaning.
My living for Jesus needs to be motivated by what he's done, rather than by what I fail to do. Getting this wrong turns the gospel on its head - it becomes all about us working our way up. His sacrifice is of far greater significance than any sin we could ever commit - and thank God for that!
So the challenge to us is two-fold: Firstly we need to be aware of how sinful we are, and secondly we need to be aware of how far Jesus' forgiveness stretches. Once we grasp these two, the message of the cross looks all the more awesome.
The wait was finally over, and my favourite meetings at CU started last night: small groups. It's a pretty self-explanatory term - we split off into three different groups in order to support one another more thoroughly, and to enjoy a deeper, more application-based look at the Bible. Both of those aims were certainly met in the small group I was a part of last night.
Last year's small groups were fantastic for us freshers to grow close together alongside second- and third-years with slightly more experience of being a Christian on campus. Hopefully the same will be true this year - with a CU which is looking significantly larger than last year's it will be important for us to grow in groups where we can pray for one anothers' individual needs, and discuss personal ways in which we can apply the parts of the Bible we read together.
Not that small group is a forum for discussing people's problems of course, but getting to know a small bunch of Christians well gives you the option of other believers being able to help you out. It's also a chance to hang out and have fun together - we met in a house, ate Pringles, and played PlayStation too.
Last night's study was an introduction to the gospel of Luke. Luke's account of Jesus take a different tack to the other gospels - his scientific approach allows us to look at Jesus' life by examining facts and deducing conclusions. We can be sure of Luke's diligence in bringing us the facts - he tell the brilliantly named and "most excellent" Theophilus that the facts he brings us have been "carefully investigated" - this certainly holds up when comparing his writings to the writing from Jesus' eyewitnesses.
We then looked at Luke 2:22-38.
Jesus certainly caused quite a stir for an 8-day-old! One thing which can cause us to look forward to studying the rest of Luke is considering this: if he causes that much of a stir when he was a newborn, imagine how much of a stir he must've caused as a grown man. We don't have to imagine, of course - God reveals this to us in the rest of the gospel, and I've got a feeling that the rest of what we discover will be more than worthy to be blogged.
