Take the Gopel to the world
with passion and creativity
by Ana Watts
Lay aside this dreary, soul-sapping, energy-burning enterprise of trying to save the church. It wears you out, grinds you down, and there is no end to it … Go into God’s world … Go from talking and teaching about God to helping people experience God. People have hungrier hearts than heads — their hearts desire deeply to be put in touch with God. If the church can help them with that, they will come — they want to feel connected with God at worship. With these words, Canon Harold Percy launched an encouraging address to members of Diocesan Council on March 23.
“Don’t wonder ‘How can we save the church?’ Wonder ‘How can the church save the world?’ Then take the gospel to world with passion and creativity,” he continued. We need to offer people who come to our churches “a clear picture of the kind of people they can become with Christ – of the things they can do as followers of Jesus. A healthy church cares and loves its people, is pastoral, but that is not the major job of educated and ordained clergy — their major job is to equip people as followers of Jesus.”
Canon Percy undoubtedly expressed similar sentiments during the Lenten Mission he led in the Parish of the Nerepis & St. John the three days before the council meeting, at the St. Andrews deanery clericus meeting held later on March 23, and at myriad other events throughout the country during his 34 years (and counting) of growing congregations and nurturing passionate Christians. The founding director of the Wycliffe Institute for Evangelism and newly-retired rector of Trinity Streetsville (one of the largest and most active congregations in the Anglican Church of Canada) is anxious to share his years of experience and insight in congregational leadership with clergy and congregations who seek to become more effective in their ministry — who are serious about congregational development, evangelism, health, and vitality — and who feel the need to get more focused in what they are seeking to accomplish.
He sees evidence of that attitude in this diocese under the Nicodemus Program.
“Nicodemus is the Pharisee who came to Jesus and Jesus talked to him about being born again.” The Pharisees were waiting for the messiah to bring the Kingdom of God, and they believed that could not happen until all of Israel obeyed all the laws perfectly. So in effect they built a fence around the law to keep people from even getting close to breaking it. They weren’t necessarily mean-spirited, they did what they did so God could bless Israel. So when Jesus came along and broke the laws they were upset and confused. They could see by the results of Jesus teaching and actions that he came from God, but that didn’t square with what they understood. Jesus told Nicodemus “You are so busy looking backwards you can’t see what the future might hold. You can’t be happy about a miracle or a healing if it is on the Sabbath. The message got through, because Nicodemus was at the crucifixion and stepped up. So Nicodemus is a great name for your project. And I am glad to see you pursuing transformational change. I would love to give you four steps to achieving it, but if I knew them I might not tell you, I would put them in a book and make a lot of money!”
He went on to tell council that we in the church must see things with new eyes (yet another reason the Nicodemus name suits so well, he says) and he prays God will help the council overcome any negativity toward the project and bless their efforts. Churches are places where people feel supported, whether they are drug dealers or pregnant 15-year-olds. “Churches can be fuzzy at the edges but they must be solid at the centre, so nothing that anyone does disqualifies him from the church. Then there’s a chance that some day people will drop by your church at worship and you will hear them say ‘There’s a lot of energy in this place, it’s really humming.’ And the last time you really looked you thought you were just trying to get by. But because you went out into the world, took some baby steps, then big steps, now you do have energy and people find you attractive.”
Canon Percy’s words were well-received by council and he was asked by several members (and perhaps not completely in jest) if he might be interested in the recently created Diocesan Congregational Development Officer position that was accepting applications at that time.
