Another Tuesday

This past weekend was the annual high school retreat here at BFA. All of the high school students go away for the weekend and a speaker and a worship band come in and, well, it is a bit like a mini youth conference. They need a large number of adults to go along as small group leaders and general supervisors, but it is by no means mandatory. I almost did not go, but at the last minute I decided that I would sign up, and I am quite glad that I did.
This year’s retreat was held in Nurnberg (or, as it is known in English, Nuremberg). The history buffs among you will know that this is the city that held the famous war trials after World War Two where they convicted many of the higher up Nazis of crimes against humanity. They were the first such trials in the world and were the blueprint for such trials as the recent one for Saddam Hussein. More on that in a later post.
The retreat itself was quite good in my opinion, though I heard some people say otherwise. I don’t have other retreats to compare it to so I can’t say whether it was better or worse than other years, but I thought it was a solid weekend. The speaker’s message revolved around the idea that we are God’s hands here on earth, His co-workers in this life. He spoke of the kingdom of God and how it is not just a future place in heaven to which we can look forward, but it is a present reality, here and now. It was Paul (we are saved not by works but by grace) meets James (faith without works is dead).
Part way through the weekend I heard a couple of the other adults talking about what the speaker had already said and they were not overly excited. They said that this idea of the church being here to do the good deeds on earth was one that was being brought up by many different speakers and churches and that it was not necessarily a bad idea but they felt that the works were being over-emphasised and that preaching the salvation message was as important or more important still. They seemed to be critical of what was being said in the sessions, and truth be told it bothered me a little what they were saying and how they were saying it. I got the sense that all they had heard the speaker say was that the church was here to do good things for people, to help the poor and downtrodden and that was our greatest mission. But one of the first things the speaker had said was talking about two different extremes of churches: one that does nothing but preach the salvation message, and one that does nothing but do good works. The first is good up to the point of conversion, but then it really has nothing for the new believer. The second is good for helping people, but doesn’t really do much to save them from their sin. And then he said there needed to be a middle ground, one he called (and I think he got this term from someone else) a confessional church. That is a church which is committed to turning to God in all cases, to seeking Him first and foremost and then obeying His word to His people. But these adults I heard speaking didn’t seem to remember that.
I only mention them because it frustrated me that the message which seemed so clear to me was completely missed by these guys. They are not bad men or ungodly or anything like that. Maybe this was just a new idea and they aren’t the sort of people to easily embrace the new or something, I don’t know. I guess I’m getting tired of Christians resisting change and burying their heads in the sand and just criticising and complaining about the new things they hear. On the other hand, I don’t think it is a good idea to blindly accept all new ideas and follow the latest trend (WWJD? He would buy the Prayer of Jabez Bible, obviously).
Maybe I was just feeling sensitive because the message that was being preached was following what has been on my mind lately as well. I sometimes feel that the church just isn’t right at the moment. That is the best way I can think of putting it. It is as though the emphasis is on the wrong thing completely. I feel like we have circled our wagons and are very good at focussing on the world inside our circle, but the only ones inside are those who are already part of our group. We seem to ignore the world around us. Our Christian books are for Christians. Our Christian music is for Christians. We look at the world around us and think “hey, everything is terrible. It is a good thing we are already saved.” It can’t be right.
So what the speaker was saying was that God expects us to be His hands here on earth, to be doing His works. But he never once said that the works were the goal. They are more of a result of a heart and mind that is turned towards God. He did not say that the good works we can do will curry favour with God. God does not desire sacrifice. His main idea was that we must, individually and corporately, turn to God in all things, confess to Him and to each other when we have sinned, and even when we haven’t sinned but we are feeling distant, which I thought was a cool point to make. There are times when we aren’t necessarily caught in un-confessed sin, but we are just feeling a bit disconnected from God. I think this is normal because we are human and we have, at the moment, imperfect minds and spirits. Our first instinct is to carry on and try to push through on our own until we can get better. But he said that it is better to turn to each other and share our hearts, and that is times when the Holy Spirit will really move in power.
He also raised the point that the disciples were just ordinary guys, no one special until they heard the call of Jesus and obeyed. That is what made them special, that is why we know the names of some ancient Galilean fishermen. And in our lives, we didn’t have to be great people to do works in the kingdom of God. In fact, rarely does God actually use the great. He seems to prefer the ordinary. He said that in our lives we may not be called (and probably won’t be) to appear to millions and to be famous, rich, and powerful. But we are called to the small moments of obedience, of doing the little, almost insignificant things in the world around us. God wants us to take care of this world that He created. It does not seem that His plan is to eventually get rid of it all so that we can live in the clouds. He speaks clearly of the new heaven and the new earth.
All in all it was a good conference for me at least. There were many moments where I just had to look up at God and smile ruefully because something that was said was completely and immediately directed at me. Maybe not me alone, probably not, but definitely something I needed to hear. Some of our guys mentioned that it wasn’t the greatest conference they had been to, but I think there were many students who were positively affected. Sometimes it is hard to gauge how effective these sorts of things are right away because many times high school students are too cool to let ideas into their hearts right away. But years later they may look back and think about what they have heard, and I think this might be one of those times.