Categories: uncategorized
Date: 31 May 2009 13:58:36
Today I officially swapped codes and became a member of the Methodist church.
As part of the service I gave the following testimony. Explains why I think this has been a good move for me:
Today I want to briefly tell you some of my story and how becoming a Methodist is part of the latest adventure God has taken me on.
At 14 I was baptised by full immersion and became a member of a local Baptist church. It was a quite a conservative evangelical church with a very lively youth group. It was here I was taught the value of scripture and prayer. At the same time my unbelieving parents, particularly my dad, made sure I was regularly challenged to think about what I believed and why. In his attempts to support me whilst challenging some of the ideas I was getting from church he taught me about social justice, and the role of the church in the 19th and 20th centuries as both political oppressor and liberator. This mix of influences God provided me with helped shape the adult I was to become. However, this mix of influences has been the source of some ongoing tension...tension that has only recently been resolved through discovering in Methodism an inclusive church which believes in the use of scripture, tradition, reason and experience in developing our relationship with God.
Another tension I had came from discovering that the neatly packaged faith I had grown up with from church was more messy. This tension developed when I was in my mid 20’s, newly divorced and battling depression as I got used to life as a single mum living on benefit. This was a time of my life where I discovered that being a Christian and trying to do what the church teaches is the right thing isn’t an insurance policy against the stuff that affects everybody else in the world. In this situation I have to be honest, sometimes I really struggled to find God. However, throughout that whole time he never let go of me and left me to it. Whilst I may have failed to recognise it sometimes God was there carrying my brokenness through the darkness. Over the next few years he did a huge work of healing and transformation putting me back together. He helped me to see that we are all individuals who need to experience God’s grace...it is freely given to us all, rather than something a select few are given or can earn. Again something I have found Methodism reflects.
A final tension emerged for me during my early 30’s when I was successfully building a career in teaching. I was looking at the world around me, the lives of the students I was talking stuff through with, my own life experience and the society I was teaching about and it all seemed very disconnected from the neatly packaged answers and rather trite worship songs I encountered at church. I knew God was there very much in the messy reality but I sometimes wasn’t so sure where he was at church. Don’t get me wrong, I loved the church I was a part of; the people were amazing and really were family to me and Immy, but on Sunday mornings I often really struggled with it all. The tension between the messy reality of life and the words we were singing at church is something else God has taken away by leading me into Methodism. It appears you think about the theology of what you are singing.
Whether the discontentment I was feeling through these tensions came from the Holy Spirit or whether the Spirit used the discontentment within to prompt me I don’t know...whichever way round God used this discontentment to lead me into giving up my climb up the career ladder, atleast for a while, and letting God take me on a rather unexpected adventure. That’s how I’ve ended up in Durham doing post-grad research in Practical Theology.
In my experience God has used very ordinary people and things to make quite remarkable changes in my life. Things like trying out a local Baptist Church because some of my friends went there or wandering in to try out a local Methodist church simply because it was a protestant church in walking distance. This encounter with Methodism has enabled me to dump an awful lot of baggage and get back to being focused on God in worship. So as I move into taking this latest step on the journey I just want to encourage you by saying God really has used you and your witness here to bless me over the last few months. I’m becoming a member of the Methodist church because I want to grow in faith, worshipping, serving and journeying in connection with you and with God...witnessing to his love for our rather messy world.