Deeper shade of grey | nuisance

Church left man to die in cold… he was
nothing more than a nuisance

I

came across an old newspaper clipping today that slapped me as hard across the face as it did when I first read it several years ago.

“A coroner has expressed amazement that a 60-strong church congregation left a naked man to die of cold outdoors while they feasted inside. The churchgoers refused to let the man in despite his pleas for help. Kenneth Clarke, 62, wandered around the Central Methodist Church in Dudley, West Midlands, for five hours before dying of hypothermia.” The Rev Ivor Sperring told the inquest: “He was nothing more than a nuisance. We felt we weren’t in a position to deal with it because of his behaviour, his nudity, and there was something sinister about the way he was breaking things.”

Before we get all judgmental about it all - look at the programmes we run; look at who we target; look at who we want in our church; look at who are held up as leading examples, the voices of church; look at our success driven mentality; look at our motivation of mission.

Ephesians 2:10 - “For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.”

I don’t want to question God’s workmanship but I wrestle with the question - is the work that he has prepared for us to do a simple case of coming up with the latest, trendiest way of presenting church. A simple case of finding the latest worship styles? A simple case of running the latest courses that are a sure-fire way of winning the world for Jesus, the latest panacea, universal remedy? That is going to save the church? A simple case of being seeker-sensitive, purpose driven, emerging? Is that it?

All this time there are people on our doorstep who are broken, who the church should be reaching out to? Not in some trendy patronising way that is this years fad, but in a way that is real, solid.

How many people do we leave outside in the cold because they’re nothing more than a nuisance?

Deeper shade of grey appears every Wednesday on theRubicon. Find past posts and a bio of Capt. Gordon Cotterill here.

No comments yet.

Leave a comment