This is a copy of my talk given at a Joint Service at Saint Stephen’s in the Anglican Church of Paphos on Sunday 30 June 2024. The Bible reading was 1 Corinthians 12:12-30a.

Prayer

Heavenly Father
I thank You for Your word
By the power of the Holy Spirit
May You speak to my heart
And change my life
In the precious name of Jesus I pray
Amen.

On Wednesday Carolyn (church warden at Ayia Kyriaki) suggested I should incorporate Bishop Sean’s ‘charge’ into my talk – and I have! But be warned – what he had to say was rather challenging! Bishop Sean Charge 22 June 2024

Bishop Sean:

The Diocese has the privilege of encompassing the biblical land of Cyprus, and the Gulf countries … It is situated at a global crossroad where East meets West, and South meets North. This is perhaps best seen by considering that our neighbouring Anglican Dioceses are Jerusalem, Iran, Egypt, and Europe! At this busy spiritual and geopolitical crossroad, we offer migrants and pilgrims a meeting place with God and one another. We are a most unique and precious Diocese. … I invite you as its clergy and people to be my “co-workers, working together” to build up God’s Church in Cyprus and the Gulf.

The Importance of BALANCE.

Our reading from 1 Corinthians 12 reminds us that the church is a living organism, and all living things grow if they’re healthy. But if a church is not growing (such as fellowship, discipleship, ministry, mission and prayer) just as in nature, it’s dying. What then is the secret of church health? How do we become a healthy church? I think it’s to do with balance!

God is a God of balance. He created our world to be perfectly balanced. It’s at just the right angle in its axis to support life. It rotates at a speed that minimizes vibration. If earth were just a little closer to the sun, we’d burn up and, if it were just a few miles further away from the sun, we’d freeze to death. God created human beings to be perfectly balanced. Our body has nine different systems (circulatory, respiratory, digestive, skeletal, etc.). When these systems are in equal balance, it produces a healthy body.

It’s God’s desire that His church should also be perfectly balanced too – that’s what the passage from 1 Corinthians 12 teaches. It seems to me that effective growth occurs when the Body of Christ is balanced. But when the Body of Christ becomes unbalanced, things start to go wrong. And because we are imperfect people, balance does not happen naturally: it’s something we must continually strive to correct.

And this was recognised by Bishop Sean: … our calling as a diocese is to hold and balance our differences and natural tensions.

This morning, I want to suggest five areas of church life which are worth considering if we are going to become the healthy, well balanced, church we desire to be.

1. A Healthy Church Grows Warmer through FELLOWSHIP.

A healthy church grows warmer through fellowship. We’ve had some great times together in the past six months, haven’t we? Times when the Lord has been present with us in wonderful ways. Not just on a Sunday but in the Lent and Alpha Courses. When Christians meet together, we learn together build friendships together and strengthening our fellowship together. But you know as well as I do, that we don’t always get it right. Bishop Sean recognises this when he said:

Sometimes our experience of the Church – can be so miserable and disillusioning that we wonder why we are choosing to stay … God does not inflict this misery on us – we do it to one another through our brokenness and sin.

Bishop Sean continues:

… we somehow forget the link between belief and behaviour. We use much pulpit time talking about love and neighbourliness – as we should – but we then treat people in callous, uncaring, disrespectful, and harmful ways! We do this to people outside the Church; but we also have a terrible reputation for “wounding our own soldiers.” I have known of too many people who have left the Christian faith after what the Church has done to them: there are clergy who have experienced deep and unnecessary vocational injuries; laypeople whose talents and rich life-experiences are not recognised or respected; and just too many instances of sexual, psychological, financial, and spiritual abuse.

Bishop Sean asks:

Can we make a new commitment, relying on the grace of God, to be a Diocese that is better than this? To be spiritually discerning … to set an example “in speech, in conduct, in love, in faith and in purity Timothy (4:12)?

2. A Healthy Church Grows Deeper through DISCIPLESHIP.

I think most of you are aware of how highly I place preaching/teaching as the foundation for our faith and that it shapes our Christian discipleship. It’s encouraging to know that many of you are enjoying this aspect of my ministry and I hope it encourages you in your daily walk with the Lord.

And, whilst all of us who preach and lead services, take it very seriously indeed, the issue of discipleship is also a personal one.  We can’t do it all for you – nor should we. How many of you, I wonder, will commit to attending the Bible Study group this is planned. Each one of us should take responsibility for sustaining our own faith.

3. A Healthy Church Grows Broader through MINISTRY.

I believe we’re all called to minister, albeit in different ways. Some of you might be interested to know that I was ordained in Chester Diocese 27 years ago today – 29 June 1997. What an amazing journey of joys and sorrows and tears and laughter it’s been for me and my family and the congregations I’ve served in Handforth (Chester Diocese), Chadwell Heath and Billericay (both Chelmsford Diocese) and now in Paphos (Cyprus and the Gulf).

Today in some parts of the Anglican Communion is it Vocation Sunday – when we encourage folk to consider where the Lord might be calling them to serve. In fact, that is echoed in the words of the Collect for today:

 … hear our prayer which we offer for all your faithful people, that in their vocation and ministry they may serve you in holiness and truth to the glory of your name …

I believe all of us have a strategic role to fulfil in the ministry of the church. This was highlighted in our reading from 1 Corinthians 12. I’m committed to enable each one of you to reach your full potential as an active disciple of Jesus. There’s a place for each of you to develop your gifts and talents within the ongoing life of ACP and the wider community.  But we are often not as appreciative of the ministry of others as we could be. A service is as only as good as a sermon we approved or a hymn we enjoyed. Bishop Sean (the sin of many is that)

… we assume that God wants what we want. We have deep convictions and passions that we are prepared to “die in a ditch” over, and we uncritically believe that these ideas and feelings are inspired by God. We sin by failing to do the most basic work of discernment by using Scripture or the character of Jesus Christ as a yardstick to evaluate our thinking. And then we so often end up being driven by human insecurity, ego, and ambition into much heartache.

4. A Healthy Church Grows Larger through MISSION.

The church was instigated by Jesus to be mission orientated, of reaching out with God’s love to those who are alienated and ostracized and struggling with life in our society and to draw them to the Lord through our acceptance and our love for them. Jesus last words were to go into all the world!

According to Canon Robert Warren, a former Archbishop’s advisor on Evangelism, mission should: … dominate the life and worship of a church. I think it was Archbishop William Temple who once said: … the church is the only organisation which exists for the benefit of those who are not its members.

I recognise that won’t be easy. And it isn’t always easy to see where we fit in the bigger picture. We say, “I did this once and it didn’t work.  I invited someone to a special event, but they never returned.” It’s worth bearing in mind the evidence which suggests that people need to hear the ‘gospel’ in several different settings before they consider becoming a Christian.

The way the Christian church will grow in the future is not the way it has grown in the past. Historically, the church sustained itself by internal growth, which is through children who attended Sunday school, grew up in the church and passed their faith onto the next generation. It’s a challenge in the UK and I know it’s a concern here in ACP as many of you have spoken to me with your concerns that you are not getting any younger. All this will take a change in our thinking, focus and purpose. Bishop Sean recognises this when he said:

Our Diocese will be 50 years old in 2026. There is little doubt that it will need some re-patching and perhaps re-pitching if it is to be fit-for-purpose for the next 50 years. Such renewal and reform are being underpinned by the Constitutional Review Committee* initiated by Synod. Constitutional review might sound dull, but it is how the wind of the Holy Spirit will blow the cobwebs away, and shape and enable our diocese to best continue the mission of Christ. I ask for your prayers for this process, and also for that most understated of spiritual fruit – patience.

(*FYI, I was elected to the Constitutional Review Committee by the ‘House of Clergy’ at Diocesan Synod in February 2024. not quite sure how, but they reckoned my experience as a Team Rector means I’m used to making sense of copious amounts of bumph – and they are right – but I was hoping to leave all that behind!).

5. A Healthy Church Grows Stronger through PRAYER.

This is something that I mentioned on my first Sunday in the parish. I’m not suggesting for one moment that people are not praying – because I know you are, and I have greatly appreciated the wonderful prayers of those of you who lead our intercessions and your prayers for myself and Paula.

So, I’m not talking about a lack of prayer. However, if our corporate prayer life is anything to go by, then we can’t claim to be a healthy church. There isn’t any! We have a faithful few attending Zoom prayers twice a week and a few more joining in with the WhatsApp prayer group. But it seems to me that a commitment to prayer must be the highest on the list of our priorities if we want God to move in a mighty way amongst us. I readily admit that fellowship, discipleship, ministry and mission have their attractions where prayer doesn’t. I don’t know why that is.

Conclusion

Strategies and programmes are all well and good, but they won’t resolve all the issues in our parish. The solution rests with each and every one of us. And as we look forward to what the future will bring, under a new Bishop, let us lift the name of Jesus high in our lives, with a renewed offering of ourselves in service to Him. As Bishop Sean concluded in his charge: … let us not hold back.

Let us choose to be a balanced and healthy church who are committed to: Growing warmer through fellowship; Growing deeper through discipleship; Growing broader through ministry; Growing larger through mission; Growing stronger through prayer.

COPYRIGHT DISCLAIMER The text contained in this sermon is solely owned by its author, Revd Paul A. Carr. The reproduction, or distribution of this message, or any portion of it, should include the author’s name.