Friday 12 September 2008

Being comfortable!

On Tuesday evening I was in Greenside Church. I was there for a meeting of Edinburgh Presbytery because Andrew Anderson, the most gracious minister of Greenside is Moderator of Presbytery for this year. The building is on Royal Terrace and the congregation is based in and around the top of Leith Walk and the Calton Hill area of town. Andrew told us a little of Greenside's past, especially its connection with the Stevenson family who built lighthouses and Robert Louis who wrote books.

The building is different from ours in a host of ways: the pews are laid out differently, the gallery is probably bigger, the halls are downstairs. The way they do things is different: part of the meeting was a communion service and it was done differently from the way we celebrate communion in Juniper Green. Andrew's style of ministry, whilst holding to many of the principles I hold dear, is different from mine.

Do you go to Church when you're on holiday? You should, because it does you good. Variety is the spice of life, after all.

Visiting other Churches can do one of two things: either, it will convince you that the way your own church does things is far better than anything you see anywhere else, or you will leave thinking 'why can we not do that too?' There are dangers in both attitudes: if we are convinced that we are the best, there is a huge risk of becoming complacent, thinking that we have nothing to learn from anyone, and that we have no room for improvement! Simply not true! On the other hand, there is an equally huge risk that we become dissatisfied and disillusioned with our Church because we are not doing things in the way we see other churches do them.

We can be like that as individuals as well. The whole advertising industry is built around making us feel dissatisfied with the way we look or the things we possess. Being dissatisfied, we want to look like the model and the clothes she wears, or we want to have the newest car or latest gadget to keep up to date.

A few years ago, I developed the phrase with one of our students on a training placement: 'be comfortable in your own skin'. In other words, be yourself, but be the best that you can be. Ministry students don't come to Juniper Green to be made into clones of Jim Dewar, but to learn to be the best they can be for themselves. Every Church has its own unique history that has shaped it into the church it now is; every church has its own unique community to serve, its unique opportunities and challenges. Every one of us is unique, with a unique experience of life and faith, with our own skills and abilities, with our individual phobias and anxieties.

We cannot wish that our Church were like the other church we have just visited; we cannot go through life wishing that we were George Clooney or Gwynneth Paltrow. We have to learn from other churches and other people, taking some of the best from other places and people and learning from them, but not then going through life permanently disillusioned with Church or permanently dissatisfied with yourself.

What we can do is make sure that our Church is the best that we can be, in our place, meeting our challenges in the best way, and most of all in the way that God wants. We can make sure that we are the best people that we can be, not longing to be someone else, but the best 'me' I can be as a disciple of Jesus Christ.

That's enough to be going on with!