James Duff December 20th 2015

The church exists for nothing else but to draw men into Christ, to make them little Christs.  If they are not doing that, all the cathedrals, clergy, missions, sermons, even the Bible itself, are simply a waste of time.  God became a Man for no other purpose.  C.S. Lewis.I find the term used by C.S. Lewis, “Little Christs”, an interesting one.  For me that idea conjures up a picture of young men and women walking in the front of a church building and then flowing out the back door, dressed in 1st century Jewish dress, with power to heal and preach great parables about the kingdom of God.  It is as if the church is a big machine that is fed sinners and births saints - a rather obtuse and crude way of explaining the church’s role in the world.  What it does show us is that our role is significant, that our role as ‘little Jesus’ is to make disciples of Jesus.Jesus said that his job is to build the church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it.  We can so often get this around the wrong way and begin to think our role is to get more bodies in the building.  We end up counting people in our services as the measure of success.  All that says about a church is that it is getting bigger but little about the one role Jesus expects of us, to make disciples.  I am not against numbers but it is not a reliable measurement of success.  I think a greater measurement of a healthy church is to measure the church’s sending capacity rather than its seating capacity.A healthy church, as with any living thing, reproduces naturally.  We want St Philips to reproduce, to grow not just in numbers but in disciples of Jesus.  For this to be a reality we must take heed of what Paul is saying to the Philippian church in today’s reading.  The Message paraphrase puts it like this: Do me a favour: Agree with each other, love each other, be deep-spirited friends.  Don’t be obsessed with getting your own advantage.  Forget yourselves long enough to lend a helping hand.We have to be united, thinking of others, growing in deep friendship. Why?  The answer is, the Gospel.  We have been set free from sin and death because a perfect Proxy, sent from a loving God, died in our place and then rose from the dead!  How can we not love each other, help each other and tell people and grow people in this powerful and surprising truth?  We represent Jesus to a watching world and, by loving each other and others, people will know that we are His disciples.I’m looking forward to next year.  I know some of you are just flat out worrying about the in-laws coming on Christmas day from the country and how on earth you are going to feed your brother who hasn’t stopped eating since last Christmas.  I am looking forward to sharing with you some of our dreams, how we want to see the church multiply in a range of ways by empowering discipleship.  I’m looking forward to hearing your dreams and your sense of what God is calling St Philips to be and how you can lend a helping hand as we grow as deep-spirited friends because of the gospel.BlessingsJames