Feeding the Five Thousand

Today I was preaching in my home church, Amlwch English Methodist Church. The subject was as I have captioned above. Unfortunately I preached on the Gospel for next Sunday in error, so I emailed next week's preacher to apologise.

I have long believed that the five loaves and two fishes acted as the start and that everyone else shared what they too had brought with them. Is really likely that the boy was the only one in 5,000 who had a spot of lunch with him? The people were following (almost hounding) Jesus everywhere so they would make sure they had food plans too. I think that what happened was that when the people saw Jesus blessing the loves and fishes they wanted their food blessed too and then shared it ungrudgingly as the boy had done.

This instance is one where a small start grows into something on a large scale. The boy's contribution was the acorn which became an oak tree in no time at all as people saw the possibilities. After the service today one of the congregation was telling me about a very bad snowy day in Liverpool city centre where she worked. Traffic was at almost a standstill and many people waited a very long time to catch a bus home. They waited well past the time they had expected to eat. As one person said they were hungry there was a response from others who had biscuits with them and chocolates. The whole crowd ended up swapping the food they had. Vera was reminded of the feeding of the five thousand when she experienced this.

There is a great tendency to think that because the numbers attending church in the United Kingdom have fallen so far that the church is spiralling down to a finish. I dispute this! I can see signs of renewal as some churches stop to consider what being church means. Small experiments are happening which take the church into the High Street. There is now a perception that people will not come to church so the church must go out to where they are and where they feel most comfortable. Drop in centres in redundant shops, cafes where people can meet and discuss what concerns them, mid week services being held etc.

These are small starts which could just grow into great ventures. The church today is finally beginning to see that its primary task is to attempt to introduce people to God through Jesus Christ and not to get them to come to church. Filling seats has never been our objective if we have got it right.

As the contemporary representatives of Jesus Christ we are called upon as Peter was to feed the sheep. Jesus had, as portrayed by John in his Gospel, compared himself with the shepherds of his time. He declared that he was the Good Shepherd. This Good Shepherd sat on the shore of Lake Galilee sharing a simple barbecue meal with his close friends after his resurrection. On that occasion he commissioned Peter "Feed my sheep." That has been the task of the church over the centuries and remains so. There was never any commission to maintain pretty rural churches and city cathedrals to attract visitors. Saying this, I am a keen visitor of cathedrals all over the UK. My most recent visit was to Wells Cathedral and it was a wonderful experience for me. But I only visit out of an interest in matters mediaeval including what caused the Bishops of that time to build such huge places to the glory of God.

This is purely a personal architectural interest and has nothing to do with my faith which involves introducing people to Jesus. There are many churches which are kept officially active because they are historic buildings erected for a purpose. One case that springs to mind is St Padrig's Church near Cemaes which stands on a site where a church was started in the fifth century. It is a unique church in that it has many decorative items that are part of the Islamic tradition. But then, its benefactor was a Christian who became a Muslim.

There is an incredible amount of history represented by our Mediaeval churches and cathedrals but this is quite separate from the reason for their use today. In more recent times my own church has a unique history but this is not something we consider when determining our role as Christian advocates in our locality and community.

As Area Representative for Mission Aviation Fellowship I am part of a large, worldwide organisation that plays a key role in bringing the Gospel and all kinds of relief to people living in the most inaccessible places of this world. When MAF celebrated fifty years of service at Biggin Hill airfield its chief guest was the Archbishop of Canterbury. The wife of one of the founders of MAf remarked that it was such a small activity at the beginning. The Archbishop's comment was that all God's projects start in small ways.

This church of Christianity began with one man and twelve disciples. Look how it has grown! Looking at ageing congregatiuons there are some who will say we are soon going to fall off the map. They are wrong. Using another MAF story I can demonstrate how this is wrong. When the missionaries and MAf were expelled from Chad, the Sudan and Ethiopia because their governments were afraid of their capability there was a tearful farewell to the people they had served. Some years later they were able to return and to their surprise they found more committed Christians than they had left previously. The flame, in danger of being snuffed out, had fanned into a blaze despite persecution from governments.

Just because things are based on small efforts is no reason to write them off as failures. If God's blessing is on them they will grow! We are simply the instruments or the gardeners who tend the young plants. As gardeners we know what the garden will look like if tended well. It is up to us to decide if we will take a spade and till the land.