The two-sentence version: Healthy churches are very committed
churches: their text is the middle two verses of the Bible – ‘Bless
the Lord O my soul and all that is within me bless his holy name’
(Psalm 103:1-2). ‘All that is within me’ / ‘from head to toe’ (the
Message), ‘all that I am… with my whole heart’ (New Living
Translation). Healthy churches are whole-hearted churches; they expect
very high commitment; they do things with fervour – and with
excellence (both, by the way: you can be fervent and stupid; or do
stuff with excellence because you’re clever).

Are highly committed churches which pursue excellence always large?
No, but they’re mostly growing. Some may stay small because they give
themselves away all the time – sending their best people to start
other communities, etc.

Item 1: There are over 40,000 Christian denominations around the world
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_denomination). Half of them
are independent groups with no desire to link with other Christian
denominations. You can put them into various categories – according to
their name/denomination, or within meta-groups (Protestant, Roman
Catholic, Orthodox, Anglican etc.), or their theological belief-system
(Calvinist, Arminian etc.), religious family (Baptist, Lutheran,
Pentecostal etc.) or ideological ‘wing’ (fundamentalist, conservative,
mainline, liberal etc.)

Item 2: 2003 was the first year in history in which we could say ‘More
committed Christians in Western countries are not “in church”
worshipping this week than are actually attending!’ (Researcher George
Barna). Why is that? (P.S. Many of them ‘worship’ via TV, radio, or
the Internet). More…http://jmm.org.au/articles/12328.htm

****

HEALTHY CHURCHES I HAVE KNOWN

Note: these congregations were healthy in the one or two categories I
mention here. It doesn’t mean they were robust in other areas…

First, some communion services:

* I was brought up in what is known as a ‘(Plymouth) Brethren’ assembly.
Throughout my childhood I have memories of the forty or so of us
sitting in a circle, and one or another (of the men!) would pray, or
read the Scriptures or announce a hymn. About 45 minutes into the
service someone would pray a prayer of thanksgiving for the bread, and
would then go to the table and break the loaf into several pieces and
it would be distributed. Then the wine – it was real wine, I remember.
But my most vivid memories are the tears of gratitude that
occasionally flowed down the cheeks of some of the elders as they
talked about the sacrifice of our Lord for us. (And I used to wonder
why those same elders would fight one another about their
interpretations of various doctrines and practices!)….

* A few years ago I attended a Brethren church in India, where the
people got up one by one to put their tithes and offerings on the
communion table at the front. I thought it was a most meaningful way
to offer their gifts to Christ who had offered himself for them….

* Then in Brazil, I visited a group of poverty-stricken Christians in a
Rio de Janeiro favela: they were a cooperative and made and sold bread
to keep themselves alive. An important part of the service, before
they shared bread and wine, involved a discussion about whether they
should all go hungry for a while to invest in a second bread-making
machine….

* Or in Papua New Guinea, where a young man dressed in football outfit
leads the communion: ‘Larim mipela holim ting ting long Krais…. bai em
I kam bek na kisim mipela….’ which was Pidgin for ‘Let us remember
Christ…. one day he will come back and take us to be with him….’ A
deacon cuts the kau kau (sweet potato or yam) with his bush knife,
puts the pieces on an army plate, and hands it around: ‘This is my
body broken for you….’ Then after dropping a few cups onto the ground
to shake out the dust and dead flies, watered down orange juice is
poured into them: ‘This cup is the new covenant in my blood….’

After the 45-minute service celebrated the way the Australian
missionaries had taught them, the indigenous Christians enjoyed
‘jumping in the Spirit’ for half an hour – a by-product of one of the
three ‘spiritual renewal’ movements which had swept through PNG
highland churches. An elder took me to a holy mountain. We paused at
the stile for a very serious minute of prayer, then walked to the top
– where a large crowd of PNG Christians had once seen a sign written
by God in the sky (the missionaries didn’t see it!).

* Then (quite a contrast!) – a eucharistic service in Chester Cathedral
in England: the three celebrants dressed in green cassocks were way up
at the altar with their backs to us. . They swung their incense-thing,
and rang bells – it could have been a thousand years earlier. It was
very moving when the visiting choir sang the great Anglican communion
hymn, ‘And now O Father mindful of the love….’

(More… http://jmm.org.au/articles/2295.htm )

*****

Other churches I’ve visited – a miscellany of memories:

* At the end of the service in a wealthy Baptist church in Stockholm
(I was in Sweden for the 1975 Baptist World Alliance conference)
everyone’s heads were bowed in silent prayer. Then the pianist at the
grand piano started playing the introduction to the best-known version
of The Lord’s Prayer (or as the Catholics call it the Our Father. A
soloist sang the first strophe: ‘Our Father who art in heaven,
hallowed be thy Name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as
it is in heaven.’ The congregation quietly joined in the second strophe
where the pronouns become plural: ‘Give us this day our daily bread,
and forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors; and lead us not
into temptation, but deliver us from evil…’ Then the whole
congregation stood, and with hands upraised sang the great ascription
of praise to our God: ‘For thine is the Kingdom, and the power, and
glory, for ever. A-a-amen’. It was very moving. (As were the deep bass
voices of the Russians in the balcony: for all of them it was the
first time the Communist authorities had allowed them out of the USSR).

* Which reminds of another very moving experience: preaching in the
Moscow Baptist Church. Those people (most of them older believers) had
kept the faith for a couple of generations during very trying times.
The church had three morning services – all packed with people, many
standing in a cruciform pattern in the centre-aisles I preached on
‘How do we know how much we love God?’ (See
http://jmm.org.au/articles/3786.htm ). At the end of the service,
the pastor especially invited young people who desired more of God, to
carry the torch into the future to come forward to the front. A large
number pushed through the crowd… very moving…

* A West Indian service in London was memorable because of the quality
of the music. A leader simply started singing something and the
musicians took up the song – in the key the leader sang in. Lots of
movement and dancing… very inspiring…

* The Full Gospel Central Church (Seoul, Korea) has been the largest church in the world for a few decades. I was privileged to speak at a Pentecostal Conference with its pastor Paul Yonggi Cho, and remember him saying ‘Every miracle in the Book of Acts has happened in the churches in Korea, including the raising of the dead. But we’re “believing God” for some new miracles – like replacing a limb that’s not there!’ I spent a week in this church in the late 1970s – went with a plane-load of Pentecostal pastors and their wives. Prayed with the all-nighters in a chapel, visited Prayer Mountain where 1000 members are praying at any one time. And visited a small group: they knew everyone in their downtown Seoul block, and during the prayer-time mentioned various neighbours who were sick. They told me no-one minds being prayed for if they’re sick! And many are added to the church when they’re the recipients of this sort of neighbourly love. 80% of the church’s home groups are led by women. The Sunday services were amazing – 20,000 people all praying aloud at the same time (until Dr Cho rings a little bell!). When a child I used to wonder how the worship of heaven in the Book of Revelation was like ‘the sound of many waters’. Now I know. I was prayed for by a dear brother from Sydney, received the ‘gift of tongues’ (if it’s a real human language I feel sorry for the tribe which speaks this language!) and generated quite a bit of interest at Blackburn Baptist Church in the packed evening service where I ‘reported back’. It was the beginning of a ‘Spiritual release’ in that church which continues to this day (it’s now called Crossway).

* I remember visiting Chuck Swindoll’s church in Anaheim in the early 1980s – they queued to get in to each of the three morning services, and locked people out due to fire regulations! It’s been one of the few churches in the Western world which grew largely as a result of the giftedness of the main preacher. These days you can see gifted preachers on TV, and don’t have to travel to, say, downtown city churches to hear them. Chuck concluded the service with a benediction, then softly singing ‘When Peace Like a River’ and the congregation joined in. Beautiful!

* When interviewed by the Blackburn Baptist Church ‘search committee’ in 1972 I said I’d only go to a pastorate where I was given a free hand in the Sunday night services to do whatever it takes to reach students/young people. (The morning services would experience few changes, at least initially). That was my area of strength, after the Narwee Baptist pastoral experience, (where we appointed a full-time youth pastor) and the five years following, with the InterVarsity Fellowship, relating to students around Australia and elsewhere. They were delighted to recommend that to the church, as the PM services had dwindled in numbers (down to eight people some recalled) because they were an echo of the morning worship-times. So we introduced discussions, debates, questions from the floor of the church, band/orchestra (I still get goose-bumps when I recall the hundreds of people singing along with the musos as they found a seat before the service ‘proper’ – whatever that means – began. Or the orchestra – conducted by the maestro of the Salvation Army Staff Band Owen Harris – playing ‘Crown Him with Many Crowns’ – with the trumpets playing a descant).

* I was invited to preach at a charismatic German Presbyterian Church in Pennsylvania (how’s all that for a bundle of contradictions?). My main memory was the way the offering was collected. The stewards were dressed in a special uniform, and (if I recall correctly) wore white gloves. There were three aisles. As the offering-plate came back to the stewards they stood to attention until the last plate was received to their left or right, then – wait for it – without looking sideways took a military step forward, and, with precision, reached out to the nearest person in the next row. I was sitting on the platform, and wondered how they could synchronize this without looking sideways – and then noticed the head usher at the back of the auditorium. When all the plates were received, he would bow, and when he was upright again, that was the signal for each steward to put their right foot forward! (Confession: I was secretly hoping someone would drop an offering-plate and shambolize it all!).

* I’ve had the privilege of speaking at a few Australian Aboriginal Christian conventions. At one – in Alice Springs – I remember a few of the leaders asking why they’d never heard anything about Christian social justice from the missionaries. Another time I sat under a tree with a small group of elders who wanted to consult with me about their church. We sat in silence for about ten minutes, then the senior elder told me they’d sent their best and brightest young man for pastoral training to a mainline seminary, and he’d come back uttering words they didn’t understand. What should they do? Perhaps the highlight was a night-time convention meeting on the outskirts of Port Augusta, South Australia. A few whites were there, but the program was run by aboriginal leaders, who said to me during the earlier prayer-time ‘It’s up to us to run this thing now, not the missionaries’. They felt the weight of that responsibility. People had come from the Kimberleys, from Elcho Island and from other far-distant places, and sat in tribal and clan groups around camp-fires, way into the night. A band led some singing, and just before I was to speak an elder came and whispered ‘We’ve counted the people here, and there’s over one thousand. So far as we know 1000 aboriginal people have never before attended a Christian meeting anywhere: we’re not even sure whether a crowd like this has ever assembled for anything in our history… We’ll be praying for you!’

* While visiting World Vision projects in South Africa in the early 1980s (before apartheid was dismantled) I’ll never forget some grandmothers (minding small children) in one of the ‘Homelands’ crocheting a quilt to sell in a Johannesburg market. As they worked around a large table they sang tribal songs and hymns: it was a continual church service: beautiful! Where were the men? They were away working in the mines, and only came back to their families for a short time once or twice a year. (Unfortunately many of them had deserted their wives and families, to ‘shack up’ with someone closer to the mine). This ‘homeland’: what’s that? It’s a barren hill a thousand miles from their ancestral homeland (which had value because of its agricultural potential for white farmers): these people were put on to buses and simply dumped in these new strange places. World Vision supplied the raw materials for rug-making etc. (and one meal a day), and these women kept the faith there in these barren places…

* One of the challenges of ‘colonizers’ is to respect/understand the cultures of the peoples they’re missionizing. I visited an Anglican Cathedral in Nairobi, Kenya, in the early 1980s – and they were using 1662 Prayer Book! Most of the Africans were dressed in suits and ties! At the Yung Nuk Presbyterian Church Seoul Korea in the late 1970s you could close your eyes, and except for the Korean language you might be in Edinburgh. At Blackburn Baptist Church in the 1970s we tried, in our evening services, to replicate what happens on university campuses – where students are actually allowed to ask questions of their teachers! And our music began to include some songs (the better ones) composed in the last couple of decades!

* ===>>> More to come about Romania – pastors’ conference, and the lawyer-pastor Talosz visiting a local official every week to get permission to extend the church building…

Watch this space!

Shalom!/Salaam!/Pax!

Rowland Croucher