Core Values: Taking Risks

One of the Core Values of our church says this, “We want to step out in faith and take risks in following Jesus.”

I am impressed that we said, “We want…”.  This is the only Core Value that does that.  The others begin with “We welcome…” and “We seek…”.   The deliberate intention of the  phrase, “We want…”, makes this a real goal of our church life.  In other words from the beginning of our cooperative church life, our intention was to step outside of the normal secure behaviour of traditional churches, and have a go at applying our faith in ways that might be outside the box; that might take us into territory that would make us feel uncomfortable; that might cause controversy and even conflict, because we want to apply our faith in new ways.

This is not far from what Jesus did. Jesus mission was to reveal the Kingdom of God; the will of God through his words and his deeds.  He was constantly revealing that God loves all his children and showed them this love in very practical ways. He cared for the poor, outcasts, women, children, gentiles, the sick and mad in ways that were confrontational in his culture.  He applied his faith and relationship with God in ways that not only caused controversy and conflict, but also anger and hatred.  He was aware of the risk, and understood that the result would be death on a cross.  The challenge for us is that he said to his disciples, “Take up your cross and follow me.”  Therefore he was saying that, he expected us to take the same risk.  He wants us to look for those people who either don’t know they are loved and love them in God’s name, or look for those people who others, even Christians doubt are loved by God and love them in practical ways because God loves them all.

Many of us might see the Cross as simply an intentional sacrifice by God, to save people from their sins, but that is not a cross we can carry.  Jesus has already done that.  For Jesus the cross is also the risk of a life lived, faithful to God’s Kingdom and God’s mission of loving the loveless, regardless of how angry and vengeful the culture or the tradition might be.

And this is what, “We want…”, to do!

Adrian