Lent Study and Discussion, 2002

In The Rise of Christianity, Rodney Stark shows that in the first three centuries Christianity maintained a growth rate of 40% each year. He adduces many reasons for the early church's ability to achieve this remarkable growth in membership. In one chapter, he discusses the role of martyrdom in the process. He writes:

"By voluntarily accepting torture and death rather than defecting, a person sets the highest imaginable value upon a religion, and communicates that value to others… Christian martyrs typically had the opportunity to display their steadfastness to large numbers of other Christians, and the value of Christianity they thereby communicated often deeply impressed pagan observers as well."

In a more general way we can say that outsiders are impressed by the dedication and commitment of the members of a movement, and this is a strong factor in the growth of the movement. Surely the converse is also true. We in the west are experiencing decline in most of our churches. Some of the blame for that has to be laid at the door of the low value placed on our faith by many of our own members.

Part of the problem lies in a social reality of our time and culture. In our usual binary vision, we have divided life into two spheres, work and leisure. Productive work, whether it be in office, factory, building site, school or home, is what life is primarily about. It is how we define ourselves. "I am an engineer, a construction worker, a doctor or a homemaker", we are likely to say to some one who wants to know who we are. All else, golf, travel, country cottage, curling, tennis, music, literature, theatre or cinema is leisure. Save for a few professionals, religion is also fitted into the class of leisure, often taking quite a low place in a priority list of other such activities. It is small wonder that our culture sets little value upon it.

But central to the teaching of Christianity, as to all of the world's great faiths, is the proposition that our relationship with God is the primary factor in our self-definition. If we are committed to our faith, our first answer to the question "Who are you?" should be "I am a child of God, and a follower of the way of Jesus, Krishna, the Buddha or the prophet Mohamed." All else, including our choice of work or career should follow from that.

If Christian people in the west were more serious about the role of faith in their lives and in their inter-reactions with the world, we might not be facing the religious decline of our present time. As someone put it, "If you were arrested for being a Christian, would there be enough evidence to convict you?"

In our Christian tradition, Lent is a time when we think about taking our faith seriously, and this is far more important than the small renunciations we often speak so much about. The base story of Lent is the story of Jesus, on retreat in the wilderness, wrestling with God and the devil about the definition of his role in the world.

In the Acts of the Apostles Luke sometimes refers to the new faith as "The Way". By this he refers to the teachings, life and worship of the community. At the end of Lent we focus on the way of the cross, Jesus' total commitment to humanity. 

On the first five Sundays of Lent, there will be an opportunity for all who wish to take part in a time of reflection and discussion about how we can tread more faithfully the way of Christian faith in our lives, and how we can bring others into the way. These sessions will take place after the 10 am service, and last to about 2.15 pm, with soup, bread and cheese served in a pause half way through. 

After a brief introduction each week, most of the time will be devoted to small group discussion. The starting point of these reflections will be changes people perceive in the world's outlook since the events which started last September. We shall therefore be looking at different ways of reacting to the world of today within the way of following Jesus. The aim will be to help each other along the Christian path and to identify specific ways in which we as a community can walk the path together. The titles of each week's reflection and discussion will be as follows:

Sunday 17th February	The way of openness, and the problem of Christian exclusiveness
Sunday 24th February	The way of action, serving and transforming the world
Sunday 3rd March	The way of personal prayer and liturgical celebration
Sunday 10th March	The way of building a counter culture
Sunday 17 March	Inviting others into the way