Book Review of Breakout

Breakout

One Church’s Amazing Story of Growth Through Mission-Shaped Communities

By Mark Stibbe (Vicar) and Andrew Williams (Associate Vicar)

“Breakout” is the story of St Andrew’s, Chorleywood from the time when Andrew joined Mark in 2003 through to Mark’s call to leave for pastures new in 2008: during this time the church grew from about 600 in 2005 to around 1400 in 2006.



Mark and Andrew’s view was that the church had become an Ocean cruiser taking its cosseted flock to heaven with little regard for the ‘lost’ struggling in life’s stormy seas; their vision was that church members should get into lifeboats and rescue them by “ministering the Father’s love and making disciples of Jesus in Chorleywood and beyond”, the catalyst was the renovation of St Andrew’s which required it to be closed for most of 2005.



In the months prior to the church’s closure they felt a strong call not to hire a large hall and meet as one body, but to give the church back to God and practise ‘every member ministry’ (1 Peter 2 v 9) by forming Mission-Shaped Communities (MSC) that would meet, in the parish and beyond, wherever they felt their mission was. Venues included: Starbucks, School Halls, Sports clubs etc – what the MSCs found was that people in the communities they were worshipping in came along and quite often stayed.



The book is at pains to point out that these were not church plants but followed the following guidelines:

• MSC’s remained integral to St Andrew’s through a monthly service that all would attend.

• The overall vision and bible teaching was set by the sending church – but the individual leaders were given the freedom how best to present this and encouraged to use interactive methods.

• The MSC leaders are voluntary and not paid, returning their “tithes” to the sending church

• Once an MSC reached 35 members it had to make plans on how to form another MSC when membership reached 50.

• The sending church was responsible for providing the MSCs with the necessary resources.

• People who felt an MSC was not for them continued to meet centrally.



Interestingly St Andrew’s had a number of successful groups e.g. Mothers & Toddlers who they did not want to force the MSC format upon, however, many of these existing groups felt that their ‘mission’ was the area that they were already working in and asked if they could form into an MSC!



It is worth noting that in the period leading up to setting up the MSCs Mark and Andrew felt that the church had huge potential, but was very fragmented, membership of small groups was dwindling and the leaders were struggling to carry on. Their solution was to offer an amnesty which allowed leaders to step down and rejuvenate prior to the MSC being formed.



Realistically a church going through this magnitude of change will have issues with its members, adjacent parishes and the diocese: the final chapters cover these along with the theology behind restructuring a church in this manner and how Mark & Andrew perceive St Andrew’s experience fitting into the history of revival.



This is an easy and enjoyable book to read which challenges not only the way we do church but also how we should expect The Holy Spirit to work in each of our lives.

The Persecuted Church

Persecution

Why, this discussion arose was that the overriding message I got from a sermon on persecution was that if you are a Christian you will be persecuted: this has not been my experience to date (nor when I challenged the preacher was it theirs).



I used these points as a framework for my thinking:

• History of Biblical persecution

• Whilst the Bible is the word of God can we directly apply verses written to specific groups, at a specific time in a specific culture to our lives today?

• What is persecution?

• Am I a Christian if I am not persecuted?



History of Biblical persecution

The IVP New Bible Dictionary made some interesting points on persecution:

a) At the time of Christ the Jews had been constantly persecuted, sometimes to death, from the time of Isaiah (700B.C.), the early church therefore inherited this expectation that the Jewish faith and its Christian offshoot would face persecution.

b) There is no satisfactory evidence for believing that there was any general action against Christians throughout the empire under Nero, though the sects seem to have become illicita in Rome itself.

c) Persecution was therefore restricted by 3 factors: (i) that the Roman governors were reluctant to admit charges concerning private religious opinions and tried to confine their attentions to real offences; (ii) that accusations had to be made personally and publicly - and to bring a capital charge was both dangerous and difficult (iii) that in each provenance only one man, the governor, could pass the death sentence.


The 3 factors in point (c) combined to protect the majority of Christians long enough for the church to become firmly established (I think Paul before Felix in Acts 24 shows these in operation).


I believe all the New Testament letters were written not only to encourage but also to help churches in some kind of trouble, I can’t think of a letter that basically says ‘you doing very well keep up the good work’. So is our view point distorted because we only see the problem letters? For instance in the letters to the 7 churches in Revelation, persecution only seems to be implied at 3: Smyrna, Pergamum and Phiadelphia and checking the concordance reveals that Luke and 15 of the New Testament letters do not mention persecution at all – both findings supporting point (b) above.


Moving forward, from Biblical times, the Christian church has both been persecuted, persecuted itself and persecuted others: the European wars between Catholics and Protestants and before that the Crusades. In more recent times we have had sectarianism in Ireland, ethnic cleansing in Serbia and the secularism of communism. In short wherever there is a major imbalance of power persecution can occur.


Yet while the Christian Church has been persecuted since its foundation, it is also true that large numbers of Christian communities have been free from persecution in specific areas for centuries e.g. Europe from the adoption of Christianity by the Romans till the late Middle ages, Russia until the 20th Century, America and Europe 18th to 20th Centuries. These communities suffered wars, famines and plagues but were not obviously persecuted for their faith. To dismiss their faith because they were not persecuted seems highly contentious.



Can we apply specific Bible verses directly to situations today?

At church the preacher quoted 4 verses to support the fact that Christians will always be persecuted (John 15, Philippians 1, 1 Peter 3 and 2 Timothy 3) all but Timothy could be covered by the argument that they are targeted at specific people at specific times i.e. in John 15 Jesus is speaking to his disciples and goes on in John 16v13 to say how the Spirit will guide them in truth (which is commonly held to apply specifically to the disciples to prove the apostolic truth of scripture). However, in 2 Tim 3 v 12 Paul seems very specific ‘In fact everyone who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted’ which is not explained away by my previous argument, nor can I explain it; is it another Paul ‘I not the Lord’ moment (1 Cor 7 v 10) and if it is from the Lord and important why didn’t Paul mention it in 1 Timothy?


Hopefully in the summary I square the circle but I feel we should be very wary about directly applying verses to how we live today e.g. I believe the following statements, whilst currently held by (some) Christian based churches, are misinterpretations of scripture:


Christians deliberately handling of poisonous snakes (Mark 16 and Acts 28 v 5)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_of_God_with_Signs_Following


Catholicism’s belief, that at communion, the bread and the wine become the actual body or blood of Christ (N.B. I got lost on the first line of this!)http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/05573a.htm#3


Financial wealth for believers – which seems at odds with persecution
http://www.newwine.co.uk/rec03_02_16.htm Rebuking the Devourer - (Which Starts: God makes it abundantly clear in the pages of the bible, that it is His desire to bless and prosper his children financially. Deuteronomy 8:18; Psalm 35:27; Isaiah 48:17; 3 John 2.)




What is persecution?

Persecution is defined as continually oppression or harassment usually on account of one’s religion or race.


Clearly denying someone work, or threatening them with violence for their beliefs constitutes persecution, but in other cases is one man’s meat another man’s poison? For instance I enjoy debate, my wife doesn’t: trying to win an argument against someone who is aggressive towards Christianity for me could be fun for her hell.


And is all persecution, religious persecution? When I started work in London at 16, I was mercilessly bullied (beaten up, tied up with duct tape, cold tea thrown over me) at the time I thought it was because I was a Christian, in hindsight my Christian upbringing made it harder for me to fit in to the rough and tumble of an engineering environment but the bullying wasn’t per see about my faith (One of the bully’s, who later became a friend, said they often picked on me because I overreacted – as William Golding shows in ‘Lord of the Flies’ children can naturally be very cruel).


I don’t think persecution is the difficult things in life that everyone goes through: pain, death, loss. But I do believe God often works through these things to bring us closer to Him and to help others in their difficulties.


I also believe that some times Christian cry Persecution, when common sense should have stopped them long before it became an issue: i.e. ‘The Silver ring thing’ which encourages teenagers to remain virgins until marriage by wearing a ring on their wedding finger http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/04/28/nring28.xml. Does a wedding ring keep a married person faithful or their thoughts pure?



Summary

Christians, around the world, are at this moment being persecuted for their faith; we need to individually and collectively in prayer and practical support stand alongside them and raise awareness of their plight with the world wide church and international community. I do not believe that all Christians will necessarily experience physical persecution during their lives on earth because the historic evidence does not back this up.

Maybe it is more helpful to regard persecution more holistically; all Christians together form the Church, the bride of Christ. Satan has always opposed the Church and where possible uses people to persecute Christians, so when one member suffers we all suffer (1 Cor 12 v 26): this does not mean individually we are all persecuted, or indeed will ever be persecuted. As Christian we are called to stand firm for Christ and if this attracts opposition and even persecution so be it (e.g. Bishop Nazir-Ali and his stance on the effects of fundamentalist Islam in the UK http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article3292032.ece), but seeking persecution for persecutions sake just to prove our spiritual mettle - to me - falls under the ‘Do not test the Lord your God’ (Matt 4 v7).

Equally, the Church is made up of individual members, us; therefore, if Satan can not attack us physically he will attack us spiritually. As the old hymn goes ‘When Satan drives me to despair’. Satan will seek ways to persecute us as he knows our future and we remind him of his.

To me there seems a real danger that in naval gazing at what constitutes suffering in the West and whether we are or are not persecuted (or should be), we lose sight of the very real trials and tribulations of the persecuted church in the world.


Finally, I believe where Christians in the West struggle is knowing how to stand firm for Christ: 20 years ago a Christian could be defined by what they did or didn't do: Don't smoke, Don't drink, don't shop on Sundays, don't gamble, don't wear makeup, go to church, tithe etc. Thankfully salvation by works has been replaced by salvation by faith, but this has left a vacuum of exactly how do we live to show our faith at work. Another question I fear!