Beautiful Africa

Tuesday, May 21st, 2013 · Comments (1)

This weekend we were richly blessed in my town.

We were blessed by the presence of children, children who have very different lives than we have.

Watoto - Beautiful AfricaOn Sunday morning people from about 6 different churches came together to worship on Pentecost Sunday. Why? Because we had some special guests among us. And boy did the Spirit of God ever move among us!

The Watoto Children’s Choir from Uganda came to our town and led us in worship. And what powerful worship it was.

The children are all orphans, mostly due to losing parents to AIDS. They have been taken in by a loving Christian community called Watoto. Here the children are in homes with 7 other children and one “mother”. Some have power, some do not. Some remember their parents, some do not.

But this morning they came, they sang praise to Jesus. They told stories that brought tears to the eyes of people listening. They celebrated life, and they celebrated the future to come in Africa as these young people dream of becoming great leaders in their continent, bringing about change and hope in the name of Jesus.

In the end, we raised over $3700 for the ministry. As we have been blessed, we returned a blessing back to them from our abundance as people really opened up their hearts, their homes, and their wallets to help those in need.

Our town has its struggles. No doubt about it. But there is also no doubt that we are a generous people.

It’s my hope that some day, these children won’t need to tour any more to share their stories, because God will have brought about healing and hope, change and transformation to a part of the world in great need.

Thank you again to Watoto and their amazing ministry and music. A tour that began in January in Vancouver and has taken them completely across this nation as they now make their way to Newfoundland.

Blessings be upon them, their families and their journey.

Brought back down to earth

Monday, May 13th, 2013 · Comments (1)

“Decide in your heart of hearts what really excites and challenges you, and start moving your life in that direction. Every decision you make, from what you eat to what you do with your time tonight turns you into who you are tomorrow, and the day after that. Look at who you want to be, and start sculpting yourself into that person. You may not get exactly where you thought you’d be, but you will be doing things that suit you in a profession you believe in. Don’t let life randomly kick you into the adult you don’t want to become.”
~ Chris Hadfield, Commander, Expedition 35, International Space Station

Today a Canadian hero returns to the earth. Commander Chris Hadfield completes his five month mission aboard the International Space Station and comes literally crashing back to earth. At one point he offered the above words of wisdom as he described what drove him to become an astronaut.

These are words we need to take to heart.

It’s a question many of us may want to ask ourselves, “What drives me? What am I passionate about?”

What drives you… what forms you as a person is the environment you place yourself in. And to be honest, the world is telling us we can sustain ourselves. That we are in control of our own destiny. But where has that led us? Huge corporations have crumbled to the ground because of the greed of the leadership, even banks! Much of the world lives in poverty and violence as we feed our desire for more power and more money.

Is this what God created the world to be?

God desires for us to be loved and to love. To share with our neighbours, and to care for those less fortunate than we are. This is what He showed us Himself when His Son came to the earth in Jesus.

Sometimes it takes a new perspective on our lives and our planet to help us see it. Commander Chris Hadfield has inspired many to think about the earth and how we care for it from the perspective of someone who spent 5 months watching from above. To see the full beauty of creation without walls our borders, just simply the beauty of this planet in stunning imagery.

God has far greater plans for us than we think. God has eternal plans for those who follow Him.

“What no eye has seen, nor ear heard,
nor the heart of man imagined,
what God has prepared for those who love him” ~ 1 Corinthians 2:9

 

Prayers for and of the church

Tuesday, May 7th, 2013 · Comments (1)
Photo by http://www.sxc.hu/profile/TheUsher

Photo by http://www.sxc.hu/profile/TheUsher

The church is going through significant change, at least in the mainline denominations. Whether they like it or not.

Today, in the United Church of Canada we’ve heard that 28 people will be notified they will be without work in our national office. 14 through direct layoffs, and 14 through some sort of attrition. We hold all those affected in prayer. It’s not good when someone loses a job.

It’s no secret that this denomination is up against the wall financially. We must find ways to cut costs. Unfortunately one way is through workforce reduction. And as much as I don’t like to see people lose their job, it’s come to this. Having worked in the technology industry when the “bubble” burst just over 10 years ago, I know it’s unpleasant and can even be ugly at times.

But getting back to the church, and I mean no disrespect to those who are going home to their families today with broken hearts, we need to cut national and even conference budgets drastically.

We’ve built up this national bureaucracy that literally takes millions of dollars to maintain each and every year. At the same time our churches struggle each and every day to keep their own mission going.

The shift needs to return to local mission. It needs to return to serving our own communities in the name of Jesus Christ as the head of our church. We need to re-engage with our neighbours, not supporting a structure and waiting for it to tell us how to think and act.

Church is local. Mission starts locally.

We need to re-envision our church. Strengthening local ministries by becoming locally focused, not by centralizing functions in central offices where someone can do the work for us, whether it be at a national office or in conference offices.

Jesus walked the streets feeding, healing and offering hope.

These things can’t happen in a bureaucracy.

They happen in community.

For friends and colleagues who are learning they are losing their job today, I pray for support and direction forward. For our church, I pray we embrace our local missions, which is our congregations, and empower them to release the Spirit into our communities in the name of Jesus Christ.

Please join me in these prayers.

Amen.

Thirsty

Thursday, April 18th, 2013 · Comments (0)

“You never know how thirsty you are until you come to the well.”

These words came to me as we prayed during one of our times of worship last week at the Cruxifusion conference.

There were many moments where it felt the Holy Spirit was completely enveloping the conference. God was definitely among us.

As clergy, our work is wide and varied. There’s preparing for Sunday worship. There’s visiting people in their homes or other places. There’s way to much administrative work. There’s funerals, weddings, baptisms. There’s meetings, meetings and more meetings. I can’t speak for others, but there are times when I might even forget just how present the Spirit of God can be.

“You never know how thirsty you are until you come to the well”

Well, at times I felt like I was drinking from a firehose.

Worship was passionate and powerful.

Our guest speakers challenged us, told us wonderful stories, inspired us, and made us think.

The fellowship with other Christ loving ministers was life-giving.

The food gave us food poisoning… oh wait… that’s a bad thing… but not even that could slow us down! (for long)

There are a number of things I am bringing home with me:

  1. Hope – Hope in the church because there are many people who love Jesus Christ and are willing to work hard to bring our congregations back to Him as our focus, despite any other theological or ecclesial differences we may have.
  2. Self-reflection – How am I maintaining my relationship with Jesus Christ in the in-between time until the next conference? How am I feeding my soul? And how is it reflecting the ministry I am involved with here in Sydney Mines and the surrounding area?
  3. Friendship - I made a number of new friends over the week, and reconnected and deepened friendships with those I already knew. Friends from coast to coast in this country. Literally from Newfoundland to Victoria Island. Good friends. Friends I will pray for, and friends who will pray for me. Valuable friends. Trusted friends.

All of these are important as we move forward as a church in the world today. We need to know we are not alone. We need to know there are churches out there who struggle like we do, who seek the Living Christ among them like we do, and pray for direction by the Holy Spirit so they can reach the community around them like we do.

If you are in a church seeking these things; if you are a church struggling with what it means to be solely focused on Jesus Christ as our Risen Lord, then get to know the people of Cruxifusion. We want to lift Jesus high within the United Church of Canada.

We aren’t political. We aren’t wanting to see the church reorganized or changed, we just want to focus on Jesus.

As we found out at the conference, we are not a renewal movement, we are a confessing movement.

We confess Jesus Christ as Lord of His church, and we seek to follow Him.

Church: The Next Generation

Thursday, April 4th, 2013 · Comments (2)

derelict church-smallOver the last few weeks… months… years… (decades?)… there have been people writing articles saying that the church is dead or dying. Nothing new here. We’ve heard it before, we’ll keep hearing it over and over again.

But here’s my question. If we know this, then WHY are we still doing the same thing? Why do we keep repeating the exact same patterns and expect a different result? Didn’t Einstein call this the definition of insanity?

Yet here we are insanely propping up structures that are falling down all around us. We need to face the facts. The church of today, built by our parents and grandparents means nothing to young adults today (as a generalization). If this weren’t true, then our churches would still be flourishing, full of young families. I don’t know about your church, but my church doesn’t have more than 3 young families on any given Sunday.

Don’t get me wrong. I love the traditional church. I think it still has an important role to play. But… things have to change. We need to get out of our doom and gloom attitudes and look forward. We need to live in hope that God is not done with us yet.

And we need to take risks.

How many young people have you talked to about their spiritual needs in the last week? How about month? Year?

Unless we start to engage with these young people, and start to work along side them in their spiritual journeys, then nothing will change.

I can speak from personal experience that these young adults want to engage in the Big Questions of life, but the church is unable to welcome or communicate with them.

This has to change.

The way we think of church has to change. 

We need new ministries. New ideas. New structures.

Or when our traditional churches finally close, there will be nothing left.

We’ve just celebrated Easter, let the resurrection work within each and every one of us!

 

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about.me

Nick Phillips

Nick Phillips

Minister in the United Church of Canada, blogger, musician, ex-technology employee. Loving life and the blessings of family and friends.

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