Where There’s Blayze

Recently I have found myself becoming far more politically minded rather than being oblivious of what is going on around the world. This is for two reasons, firstly everyone appears to have an opinion on politics, whether it be about Donald Trump, Brexit or the NHS. Yet when I question people on why they believe such things they don’t seem to be able to offer much of a defense. As a Christian it annoys me when atheists only response to why they do not believe in God is, ‘because it is stupid.’ They have clearly never thought about the question of God’s existence otherwise they would be able to offer a better argument. Equally it annoys me when Christians believe in God but have no idea why they believe in God. I don’t think it is a very good witness to people outside of the Church if we ourselves don’t know why we would believe and dedicate our lives to God. Naturally we should be able to point to an experience of God being at work in our lives and be able to back that up with a certain level of biblical knowledge. I also believe we should study those tough questions that are often posed to Christians such as, ‘Why would an all loving God allow suffering.’ If you have only just become a Christian then you can be forgiven for not knowing as much but we should always be striving to know more. I personally don’t usually vote, because I struggle to find a political party that truly represents my beliefs coupled with the fact that my general knowledge on current politics is not very good. Given that this year we are celebrating 100 years since women were allowed to vote I felt I should take that privilege far more seriously and learn a little more about current affairs. Having done this, I have found myself getting somewhat baffled that even politicians seem to struggle to defend their point of view with any real evidence which inclines me to not believe them and align my thoughts with an opposing party. I have decided to take this as an opportunity to reflect on myself. Often in these blogs I will say a great many things and not back them up with any real evidence. So I am going to look at my Sermon for the 18th February, ‘is the Church dangerous’, and reflect on that here in this blog whilst trying to offer some genuine evidence for why I am preaching on it and why I think it is such a relevant question.

United Kingdoms view on Church

In preparation for this sermon that I am writing I posted a few questions on Facebook for people to answer. These questions were regarding how Christians view the Church, how non-Church goers viewed the Church and if we believed the Church was seen in a positive or negative light in the United Kingdom. The answers really astonished me. I was very fortunate that I had a diverse group of people answer. There were preachers answering, Christians answering, agnostics answering and even atheists answering. I had some very encouraging answers given about how people view the Church as a wondrous place for messy people and how many felt blessed to have met such lovely individuals through Christ and through the Church. Sadly these positives were greatly outnumbered by the comments regarding the negatives of Church. The one that really stood out to me was, ‘most Churches are in a rut and the only difference between a rut and a grave is the depth.’ This comment really got me thinking about the current state of the Church and that if we do not seek to reform it and do something about the decline of the Church, then this rut will indeed turn into a grave. This comment was surrounded with many others of negative connotations that are innately attached to the Church in this country. The final question of whether we believed the Church was seen in a mostly positive or negative light in this country really saddened me. Not one person believed that the Church was viewed in a mostly positive way in this country. All of them believed the general consensus was that the feelings were mostly negative. But where are the facts to support this claim? Well I went to study recent polls, studies and census’ to see if this was indeed reflected by the UK population. It showed that in 1930 Church attendance was at roughly 30% in the UK. That equates to 10.6 million people. Personally I thought it would have been higher than that, but indeed it was only 30%. By 2010 that figure dropped to 11.2%, which equates to 5.5 million. That is quite a severe drop. By 2013 that figure had again dropped to 10.3%. This shows that we are indeed in a decline and that for some reason people are getting put off Church. Studies show that if trends continue that by 2025 it will fall to 8.4%, and in England alone it will drop to 4.3%. To put that into context, according to the 2011 census the muslim population is at roughly 5% and rising and the majority of muslims do attend a regular place of worship. By that logic, in 2025 there will be more muslims attending regular worship than Christians. These are quite alarming results, especially given that Jesus’ last words to the Disciples were, ‘go therefore and make disciples of all nations.’ Despite this, we as a Christian country have made Church only for a very small minority. Many may argue that this is only true of Church attendance and that the number of Christians in the country will be much higher. This is indeed true, the 2001 census shows that 72% of the country recognised themselves as Christians. This too is suffering a similar fate to that of the Church insofar as that number then dropped to 59% by 2011. If we follow that trend then it is fair to say that we are now below half of the population. We are now a minority and not a majority. Lets also remember that this census only asks you if you recognise yourself as a Christian. I have spoken to plenty of teenagers, children and even adults who have no belief in God and yet believe they are Christians simply because they were baptised. Therefore it is fair to assume that the actual number of people in this country who do believe in God and are genuine believing Christians will be even lower than that statistic.

What are we not allowed to talk about in Church

All of this then begs the question, why are we declining? why is there such a difference in those who recognise as Christians and those who go to Church? Why are there so many negative views attached to the Church? I was in Kilburn junior school the other day and in the staff room I noticed a picture of an Albert Einstein quote that really got me thinking. it said, ‘the only thing that interferes with my learning is my education.’ What a brilliant quote. I could not help but think it was indeed relevant to the Church, if I were to change just two words in that quote then it would directly apply to us. What if it was, ‘the only thing that interferes with my discipleship is my Church.’ Is that an appropriate question? Is this something that the Church is indeed guilty of, has the Church become little more than a stumbling block in our quest to know more of God. has the Church become dangerous. In one sense you can argue that it has and that this is due to the fact that we are so indoctrinated into our denominations, that we inherently believe in the stance that our Church makes rather than what is in the Bible. This is true of many examples, but to give another example, if your denomination were to decide tomorrow that as a Church you were not going to practice forgiveness anymore, because in society its not practiced then you would not be able to go against that. Even if you could point to biblical evidence as to why we should forgive others and even if you could show that most biblical scholars agree with your view, you would no longer be able to preach a message of forgiveness without facing certain consequences. I have been to many Churches that will not let me preach on anything that contradicts their denominations set belief. It does not matter what Biblical evidence I can show in favour of my view. This is very much true of the Methodist Church as well, If I were to preach on my belief on abortion, transgenderism or gay marriage then I would probably get into a great deal of trouble as it now contradicts the Methodist Church belief. Now I am not saying that I am right, more I am trying to show that I am not allowed, there is not even a debate about whether my view is biblical, I am only allowed to preach on what the Methodist Church believes. This then begs the question, do we follow the Bible or the Church? If we follow the Church more than the Bible then it is no wonder that we are declining. We have lost our foundation and our authenticity. Are Churches just pushing us to a place where we believe exactly what they tell us to believe. There is evidence for this. Stephen Fry recently spoke about how he is in favour of the Church of England being the established Church and having influence in Britain’s politics with Bishops in the house of Lords. A somewhat strange belief for an outspoken atheist to have. He believes this because he argues that the Church of England is full of secular people, that they have turned away from what is biblical so much just to align themselves with society’s view that they are no longer truly Christian. Whether you believe this or not there is evidence of the Church being more of a political tool than a place of biblical teaching. The most recent example I can think of is the fact that Meghan Markle needs to be baptised before she marries Prince Harry in May. Meghan has agreed to this, despite the fact that in numerous interviews she has said that she is not a Christian and does not believe in the Christian God. So why is she being baptised? Not for spiritual or biblical reasons, but rather for social political reasons. Now if I were to go and preach in a Church of England and talk on how I think this is wrong, I would be told off and face certain consequences. Once again it doesn’t matter what biblical evidence I can show to support my argument, I would be told I am wrong and not allowed to preach on that subject because the Church has decided its ok. When the Church start to police us on what we can and can’t preach on, even if it is biblical, then it becomes dangerous. It strikes me as odd that many people tell me they don’t like the Church when it challenges them and gives definitive response on what they believe is right or wrong, given that those Churches are rising. If we generalise for the sake of this study, we can see that the Churches that are more associated with society and that are seen as more liberal towards their interpretation of the Bible such as, C of E, Methodist and presbyterian Churches are in fact declining. Compare this to the Churches that tend to be more conservative in how they view the Bible with denominations such as, AOG, Elim, Orthodox and new Churches and we can see that those Churches are actually growing. Now I am not saying that those denominations are right and the others wrong in the way they operate, but it does show that people respond better to a consistency in following the BIble. I have spoken to someone who converted from Christianity to Islam and when I asked them why they moved over they told me it was because Christians did not seem to know what they believed. They claim to follow the Bible but don’t agree with a lot of what it written in it. In the muslim faith the Quran is not to be questioned. This is the view of most Christian to muslim converts. Surely this shows that people do not want us to mirror the thoughts and morality of society today but they want to see an authenticity from Christians. The moment we move away from what is Biblical we lose our authenticity.

This is shown in the Bible

This is not the first time that people have moved away from what the Scriptures have said, if we look to Matthew 23 we can see Jesus rebuking the Pharisees and Scribes. For those of you who do not know what a Pharisee or scribe is then they were the supposed experts of the sacred texts and meant to be very holy people. This would then mean that their modern day equivalent is a minister, vicar, bishop or even an archbishop. Those are the people we look to today to teach us on what the sacred text says (the Bible) and many of us assume that they are holy people because they have studied the Bible. Despite all this Jesus branded the Pharisees and scribes as hypocrites. He accused them of no practicing what they were preaching and in fact abusing their position to elevate themselves above others. This shows that they were using the texts wrongly simply for their own gain. Churches today often turn away from what is Biblical just so we can agree with what society says and appear more popular, are we any different? Jesus goes on to call them blind fools, serpents, a brood of vipers and even whitewashed tombs that look nice from the outside but are full of dead peoples bones and uncleanness. If I were to say that to someone in the Church who was using the Bible to their own gain I would be accused of not being very Christ like, ironic isn’t it. Don’t get me wrong I am not suggesting we go out and shout at everyone insulting them all, Jesus tells us that our most important commandments are about love (Mark 12:30-31). But this does not mean that we sit idly by, Jesus also tells us that if someone sins then we are to go to them and tell them their fault, if they will not listen to you then go away and come back with one or two more witnesses to show them that they are indeed sinning. Jesus even goes so far to say that if they still do not listen to you then they should be like a gentile or tax collector to us, in other words, cut off from us. How do we know what sin is? Because the Bible tells us. In other words if people or Churches are not living in accordance to scripture then we should rebuke them, and if they do not listen then we should come and be separate from them. Why, because we do not want to align ourselves with someone who is against God. Many might argue that it is not very loving to go up to someone and tell them that they are sinning or doing something wrong, but I would argue quite the opposite. I became a Christian when I was seventeen and subsequently did not have any biblical understanding, this meant that I did a lot that was wrong. It was only through people coming to me at Cliff college and telling me that what I was doing was not Biblical that I was able to grow in my understanding of scripture and God. I am grateful that they did this, I do not think it is very loving that if my goal is to be as Christ like as I can be and to live in accordance to the Bible and yet you neglect to share with me how I could improve. Why would you keep that information away from me, are we not all in the same boat striving to be more Christ like? Are we not all on this journey together and grateful for each others help? If you were a starving individual looking for food in the wrong places, it is not loving of me to not tell you where there is food just because that would mean telling you that you are wrong. The loving thing to do is to tell you you are wrong and show you the right path.

Is there an answer to this question

This then brings us back to our initial question, is the Church dangerous? Well it is a difficult question and not so simple as to say yes or no. I am a big believer in the Church and think all Christians should go to Church because it can be such a wonderful place. I think there are loads of examples around the world of the Church doing some amazing things, but as we can tell from the answers I got on facebook, it can also put people off God. So is the Church dangerous, only if we let it be. We should be reading our Bibles everyday to try and learn more about God and what he wants for us. We should study some of the difficult questions posed to us as Christians so that our faith will be made stronger. It is my belief that if we do this, if we follow the Bible, disciple one another, hold each other accountable and not put our own thoughts above Gods, then the Church will start to grow.