It’s the easiest thing in the world to poke fun at this thing we call church. To reject it as being irrelevant, outdated. So many people though – so many people, the same people who reject church – are looking for something, hungering for something, aching for … something. Hmm.   The Book and Its Cover My favourite definition of marketing is this – that it’s the ultimate triumph of style over substance. Not sure where I first heard that – but it’s stuck with me for a good many years now. Marketing – the ultimate triumph of style over substance. And you see it all the time – big impersonal banks, where the customer is just a number and our needs and problems have to fit into their systems and products, and where increasingly the only way that we can interact with them is through disempowered and sometimes poorly trained, anonymous operators, jammed into their cubicles like battery hens in some call centre – those same banks will run adds on TV with families and happy smiling faces and friendly bank managers. There’s a complete discontinuity between the substance of who they are and what they provide and the style that they hold out in their advertising and marketing campaigns. But that doesn’t stop them – because after all, marketing is the ultimate triumph of style over substance. Well – perhaps that’s a little cynical, but you know what I mean. Spin doctors and advertising agencies are paid trillions of dollars each year to put a friendly face on unfriendly corporations, and to put a positive spin on the most awful of realities. And they do such a great job of it that Mr or Mrs Consumer out here in consumer–land – well we struggle to know the difference anymore between style and substance. The two have blurred – reality is a combination not only of the service provided, but of how we feel about the provider – and that latter bit was shaped by the marketing. What’s the truth, what’s reality? Who cares. Many of us have in fact, given up caring. It’s all too hard. And so – we kind of tacitly, implicitly accept the blurring of style and substance we don’t think about it too much anymore and so we carry this blurred reality into our experience of church. Now – there are so many different forms of church. From the small group that will be meeting in my family room and backyard this coming Sunday, through to a big, traditional cathedral with a prayer–book liturgy and hymns sung to organ music, through to the contemporary mega church down the road with seven services of 5000 people each packed into every Sunday, to the community church of 80 or so people in our local suburb … and anything and everything in between. Some seem good at developing contemporary packaging and branding and signage and websites. Others seem stuck in a time–warp. Some seem to have dynamic preachers up front – talking about things that appear relevant. Others have these men droning out a sermon that goes on interminably and doesn’t appear to have anything to say for my life and yours in the coming week. Some churches appear to be steeped in the tradition of religion – men in gowns and set prayers and specific terminology like sanctification and propitiation. Others talk in plain language and you’d be flat out recognising the full time minister because that person looks just like all the other people. Do you see what I’m saying? There are so many different styles of church. Some follow almost a rock concert approach or style for their weekly meetings or services, others use a liturgy that was developed in the 1600’s. The array of approaches and styles – the packaging if you like – is so incredibly diverse. Some churches are huge – some are tiny. An incredible array. One of the questions people often ask me when they first give their lives over to Jesus – when they accept him as the one who saves them from their sin and when they accept Him as the Lord of their lives – they ask me which church should I go to? And in one sense, that’s a bit like asking me which shirt should I buy? Which pair of shoes should I buy? Should I live in a house or an apartment? The answer is – I don’t know – because churches come in all different shapes and sizes. Different styles. And the church that represents a good fit with who I am and where I’m at, may be entirely different to the one that’s a good fit with you, given who you are and where you’re at. For instance – being a baby boomer, the whole idea of denominationalism doesn’t fit well with me. Nothing wrong with having denominations per se – in fact there can be some very good things that come along with that. It’s just not me. I’m concerned more with who we are as a church in the suburb where we live, and how we can be the hands and the feet and the heart and the voice of Jesus in the context of our local community. You may have an entirely different viewpoint – and that’s just fine and dandy. So the first thing – the first thing to recognise is that books can have a similar message, even though they have quite different covers and even if the authors have different styles and different ways of telling the story. And rather than dismissing that reality – I think it’s something we should deal with – directly and openly because it’s a reality. There are quite a number of styles of church that I don’t plug into easily. The sooner I accept that reality, the sooner I’m going to discover the place that God means me to be. But as important as it is to recognise the differences and to figure out where we’re a good fit and where we aren’t there’s something more important than the style – and that’s the substance. I’ve seen plenty of churches that have a great contemporary style that I think I can plug into – in fact, I went to one for a while. But after a few months, I realised that there was something significant lacking there when it came to substance. The first was this: I realised I could give up taking my Bible with me to church each Sunday – because I was never called to open it. And secondly, I realised – and this is what we were chatting about yesterday on the program – that the only way to become part of the church was to participate in programs – community was program driven, it wasn’t genuine and organic and heart felt. Now in a few weeks time, we’re going to be chatting about things to look for in a church. And we’ll be going into this in a whole lot more detail. But I think the substance of a church – what lies at the heart of the church – is really important. And the three things that I look for when it comes to this whole thing about substance are these: (1) First – I want to see that this is a bunch of people who are passionate about Jesus – whose trust is in Him, whose lives are bowed down to Him – and whose love flows out of them. That’s the first thing. The Apostle Paul talked about this sort of substance versus style. He said to the church in Corinth When I came to you – I didn’t come with a bunch of fancy words and great ideas. I came imperfectly, I came to tell you about Jesus – I wanted you to know His wisdom and His power. That’s what I’m looking for first and foremost – people passionate about Jesus, people who believe that Jesus can and is and will make a real difference in their lives (1 Corinthians 2:1–5) (2) That they actually open their Bibles. That when they gather together, not only do they worship God with their lips, but they want to hear what God has to say to them today. Gods Word is alive and active and sharper than any two edged sword. I’m looking for a bunch of people who are serious about learning from G...

Released on 10 Oct 2021