Guests and another move

Moving from a large house to a small house!

6 – Developing Faith

Yatton

Twice while we were living in Yatton, Judy and I had invited people to come and live with us, coincidentally they were both called David.

One David (Davey)was trapped in a bad relationship with another man in Bristol. He was also a drug addict, but he was mild mannered. I don’t recall how we met him, I think he might have phoned our number as we had a second entry in the phone book as the contact number for Horsecastle Chapel. Davey was hoping a church in a village outside the city of Bristol might help him break free of his difficulties and move on from his past. He was at least looking in the right direction (church) and I took him several times to meetings at a house nearby where some of our old friends were meeting regularly. It didn’t end well for Davey, although he was with us for a number of weeks, perhaps even a month or two, and although he was interested in hearing about Jesus and trying to follow him, in the end his past life had a stronger call on him and one day he just disappeared, we thought to return to the bad situation in Bristol that he’d wanted to break free from. There was nobody in our little circle of friends in Yatton who had the experience or knowledge to really help him.

The second David (Dave) was from Newcastle, he was an unkind, mocking kind of person, very demanding and uncompromising. After a short stay with us, he made it very clear that in his opinion we were rather deficient by comparison with the church in Newcastle that he had left. In the end he began an affair with one of our friends. She and Dave left the area, her husband ended up having to work full time as well as looking after the children and the family home. This was a disastrous failure for which Judy and I felt at least partly to blame. I phoned the pastor of the Newcastle Church (which turned out to be Pentecostal); he was sympathetic but told me that Dave was a very difficult challenge and had left under a bit of a cloud. After these two experiences I was not inclined to invite people to come and stay again for some years, though aware that as followers of Jesus we are supposed to be willing to help people who are lost, hungry or without shelter. But Papa had other plans and found ways of easing me into inviting people to stay.

St Neots

After Judy’s death, marrying Donna, and beginning a new job in a different part of the country, when a New Zealand friend (another David) decided to return to New Zealand earlier than planned, Donna and I were happy to give a room to his daughter Emily. She needed to live in the UK just a few more weeks to finish her A levels and qualify for UK citizenship and this in turn would allow her to work later anywhere in the EU. Emily got her citizenship so has that dual nationality – British and New Zealand. But her hopes to return for work in Europe were later shattered by Brexit. Emily was an absolute delight as a house guest; she is now married, has a medical degree, and is living and working in New Zealand.

The next house guest was Ash and later his three children from time to time for short visits. Ash’s marriage had fallen apart and he was in a difficult and stressful situation. He met one of our Small Group members through an on-line dating site and when we heard he was looking for somewhere to stay and had to leave his flat near the Welsh border at short notice, Donna and I offered to help. I met Ash and his Dad who had also driven up to provide more car space and between us, we got everything into the three cars. Ash proved to be resourceful, he quickly found temporary work that he could do from home to cover his costs and soon enough found a full time job. He moved into our Small Group friend’s flat and they later married, but things went very pear-shaped in the end. Ash had a very tough time but he never lost his willingness to work hard and do whatever was necessary to win through in every situation. Ash was another success story and a pleasure to share our home with. Emily and then Ash were two people used by Papa to draw me back into a willingness to invite others. Donna also enjoyed their presence in our home so she was also ready and willing to consider more.

The next house guest was Matt. On 5th January 2014, my friend Sean and I had taken hot soup and bread rolls into Huntingdon and found Matt in the bus station there, it was a popular haunt for the homeless as it was well heated and out of the rain. We talked with Matt and learned a bit about him, but left him there in the bus station (along with a flask of soup and the remaining bread rolls). At home I discussed the situation with Donna and we decided to drive over to the bus station in the morning and bring him home. Matt was not as easy as Emily or Ash, but much less of a problem than either of the Davids. At this time I was learning about the APEST gifts to the church and was involved in some of the Newforms meetings organised by Peter Farmer in Nottingham. I had begun writing JDMC as an APEST primer text and I took Matt and another friend, Kevin, to one of the Newforms meetings. After some difficulties Matt eventually left us, but continued to be involved in the coffee shop meetings I’d started. He brought us a mix of difficulties with some hopeful and helpful aspects from time to time.

On 21st August 2015, Peter and Dadka came to stay with us, using our spare bedroom. Donna and I already knew Dadka from the Open Door Small Group we were part of, sometimes meeting at our house. Peter and Dadka were Slovakians and Dadka’s mother also lived in St Neots. They were still with us when we sold our house in order to move across the country to Cirencester in the Cotswolds. In the end we pretty much had to throw them out in order to redecorate their bedroom, they were very reluctant to leave but push really had come to shove. They’d known for a long time that we needed to empty the house, but were not good at dealing with deadlines. Dadka had been a heroin addict but very much to her credit decided to give up the habit and was determined enough to succeed. We helped by providing all the necessary aids, and we also managed to get them an offer to stay at a nearby Emmaeus Community facility in Carlton, not far from St Neots. However, they turned the offer down at the last moment. In the end they returned to Slovakia and we’ve lost touch with them.

We learned a lot through making these attempts of welcoming strangers with a variety of needs into our home. Donna and I are wiser now (it comes through experience) and I understand that welcoming people with difficulties will always work better for a community of, say, ten or more people than it will for a single household. The early church held everything in common and supported one another socially, financially, and in dealing with difficulties. That depth of support was something we lacked and I do believe the community aspect is something we need to recover if we’re to be truly successful in following Jesus. We need to demonstrate and model community in a world that is largely forgetting what that looks like.

Making a start with APEST

This was an important time in my church journey during which I began to understand much more about the patterns of life and ministry within church. The practical aspects were being lived by Peter and Marsha Farmer and their friends in Nottingham and around the UK, much of the background theory was being understood and taught by Alan Hirsch and others in the USA and elsewhere. I’d already learned a great deal from people like Alan, Michael Frost, Tony and Felicity Dale, an online email community called the Koinonia Life Discussion Forum, Paul Young (author of ‘The Shack’), Peter and Marsha Farmer (Newforms) and many other people trying their best to live church community life more fully including the Community of Celebration and the Fisherfolk. Taking all of this together along with what I was experiencing in St Neots and previously in Yatton was illuminating, very encouraging, and frankly character-building.

After reading a number of books about the topic and trying some things out in practical ways, I felt the need for an accessible, lightweight and introductory study guide to help people work through the basic ideas together in small communities. I called it Jesus, Disciple, Mission, Church or JDMC. It’s a free download from Journeys of heart and mind. It’s still being downloaded regularly, perhaps 10 or 12 times a week on average. Visit the article JDMC in the See also: section below if you’d like to read it or use it in a study group. The title is the pattern followed in the early church, though today we often change the sequence. We tend to begin with a church that is already established, send out missions, usually in other parts of the world, and feel we should ‘disciple’ the church members (even though disciple is not a verb, but a noun) and all too often we forget to include Jesus. The correct sequence is to share the great news about who Jesus is and what he does among the many people in our society who do not yet know him, show them how to join us in following him (becoming disciples), help them to fulfil the same mission (going out into the world telling people about Jesus and helping them make more disciples), and then get the new believers meeting and living as communities of Jesus followers. It begins with Jesus, and it ends with church. The free use of spiritual gifts (and the APEST gifts in particular) is essential for this process to succeed.

A mix of patterns

The Open Door Small Group we were in towards the end of our time in St Neots was a real example of this kind of community. We didn’t live together, but we cooperated a lot and not just one day a week, we were all good friends and accepted our differences as mostly positive things, recognising that our different strengths and weaknesses complemented one another so where one had a lack another might fill it. This experience too, added to the mix of discovered and lived patterns that I now believe to be truly essential for a deep and true walk through life in company with Jesus and a group of his followers. It’s something the church has a desperate need for, but rarely understands. It’s really something we have forgotten over the eighty or so generations since Jesus called his first disciples on the shore of Galilee. We need to get it back, and because we live in a time of civilizational churn and change we need to get it back urgently.

How did we lose it? By processes of dilution, encrustation, lack of imagination, a lost sense of purpose, and a grasping after power over simple love, and of position over simple gifting, and trusting ourselves more than we trust Jesus and his Spirit. We haven’t thrown it all away, at least not just yet. But we’ve rejected a lot of precious truth and replaced it with our best attempt to find ways that are less demanding and make it possible for us to swap challenging situations for more comfortable ones, to replace struggle with laziness. And, perhaps most damaging of all, we have accepted easy lives where we don’t even have to think daily about our motives or our willingness to follow Jesus in both attitudes and actions.

We have learned to judge as a form of self-defence because we don’t like being judged, and we’ve learned to run from effort because like lazy schoolchildren we prefer to avoid the work required.

Cirencester

And so the time came to move from St Neots to Cirencester. We packed our stuff, Donna drove over first with our cat, Erin. I saw the final items loaded on the removals van and then drove to the new house in our small, second car. Donna and Erin were already there, and we used the enclosed porch as a catlock: open the front door and enter the porch, check the cat hasn’t snuck in as well; after depositing her back into the house or confirming her absence from the porch, open the door to either the back garden or the street and leave the house. Pretty soon we discovered Cirencester Baptist Church and decided it was the best choice in town. We looked at the Small Group options as well but found our first option was not meeting during the summer and would be unavailable until September. In the meantime I began meeting with another CBC Small Group and became quite friendly with some of the people there, but it was frustrating for me to be so immersed in Bible study and prayer but with little or no opportunity to use spiritual gifts or talk about APEST and other matters. It felt like playing a piano with most of the black keys missing so being able to play in at most two or three keys. Very limiting.

In the autumn we joined the original group we’d had in mind, but Donna dropped out over time and for several years I was involved with both groups as one met on Tuesdays while the other met on Thursdays. More new friends and a bit more freedom in the meetings this time, I felt; so I stuck with the second group and still meet with them most Tuesdays. But I still want to use my gifts more fully and I’m not entirely sure how to move forward. But I know that Jesus knows and will lead me in whatever direction he chooses for me. I must wait to see what that will be.

So, what does Jesus think?

This is where the chickens come home to roost. If we asked Jesus about church today in Britain (or indeed, almost anywhere) what would he say about it? Would he commend us? In most cases, I don’t think so. He might ask us where we think he fits in to all that we are doing. He might re-commend us to pay attention to what he has commanded us. He might re-command us to go out and do everything he commanded the disciples, to teach people everywhere to fulfil everything he commanded us (and them) to do.

Then Jesus came to them and said, ‘All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptise them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teach them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.’ (Matthew 28:16-20)

Where are we failing? Everywhere! We do none of the things he wants us to do. At best we watch while priests, vicars, pastors and elders do these things while the rest of us are spectators. The standard church seating arrangement announces and ensures that; but Jesus is our authority and we are all called by him to go, make, baptise and teach.

When did we lose our way?

Almost at the very beginning. Think about Paul’s letters to the Corinthians, the people there were already a derailment of what Jesus taught and commanded. Paul wrote to try to get them back on track. We, too, are a bit of a train-crash. We need to hear what Paul says, and especially we need to hear what Jesus says. Sometimes it seems almost too late for us. But it’s not too late, despair is not the way forward for us, obedience is. The only part of the train that still stands on the tracks is Jesus himself, all the carriages and trucks lie scattered and broken where they fell. We need to repair and rebuild according to the original design and plan, then get everything properly back onto the track behind Jesus and every part connected to him and to one another. And then, when Jesus moves we will all move in the right direction because the track is firm and ensures that the entire Matthew 28:16-20 train follows him, moving in the right direction.

Signals and points

Railways also need signals and points (switches if you’re North American). Sometimes the train should pause to avoid a collision, and sometimes we need a change of direction. The Holy Spirit, (the Spirit of Christ) provides both control and direction. Once the train’s back on the track and moving we must pay attention to the Holy Spirit for both safety and direction. He will tell us, ‘Wait a moment, I’ll tell you when to start moving again’ or he’ll say, ‘The track divides here, we’re heading left (or right)’. We ignore his guidance at our peril. Having been restored following a train-crash, believe me – you do not want to provoke another one.

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Author: Chris Jefferies

I live in the west of England, worked in IT, and previously in biological science. View all posts by Chris Jefferies