In Depth:  Stephen Ridgeway

Coming to the end of one pastor’s ministry and finding a new man need not be so problematic!

On February 20 2010, Winston Saunders preached his last sermon as pastor of Selhurst Evangelical Church (SEC) in Croydon.

So, what’s your personal vision statement for this coming year? You don’t have one yet? But we’re on the brink of 2010!

OK, what about your ministry aims? Can you outline them to me in the space of three seconds without breaking into a sweat? No?! Alright then, let me loosen the noose a bit: can you present the projected outcomes of your personal discipleship programme (preferably using bullet points) for the next three years? What do you mean, you can’t even see beyond the coming week you PowerPointless wonder? Take me to your seminar leader — on the double!

Every so often someone appears who manages to embody all that is wrong with popular Christianity: mindless sloganeering, an unhelpful emphasis on unusual phenomena and flawed theology.

Sadly, that person is usually embraced by a large section of the Christian community. This is true of Todd Bentley, the 32-year-old leader of Fresh Fire Ministries. With his colourful preaching and larger than life personality He is currently taking the charismatic / Pentecostal scene by storm.

Picture the scene: it’s 1993 and a fresh-faced art student sits on the floor of his painting studio next to a cross-legged Buddhist.

For the last half-hour they’ve been talking ‘God’. To the outside listener the conversation seems an incoherent ramble. Yet the student knows better. There’s method in his glibness. Unknown to his ‘enlightened’ subject he’s carefully preparing the ground for an evangelistic piéce de resistance.

In the first part of this article (see July EN) we were introduced to ‘Sal’, a fictional character whose recent experiences led to her becoming deeply disaffected with the local church.

We also saw how many Christians have shared her pain and at times wondered whether it might be easier to leave rather than love the imperfect church. We went on to suggest a few things it would be useful for people like Sal to hear as they come to terms with life in the imperfect church. Among other things we saw that the local church is a work in progress — a gathering of redeemed sinners who are all at varying levels of maturity. Yet we also saw that despite all its imperfections the church is still central to God’s plans and purposes for our world. Most importantly we were reminded that God is often more patient with his people than we are! With these things in mind we now look at some practical steps we can take as we seek to love rather than leave the imperfect church.

Attending the local evangelical church had been a revelation to Sal. Brought up in a one-parent home with an agnostic mother, and brothers who were self-confessed atheists, it had been a new world to her.

What struck her first — before anything the preacher said — was the people’s warmth. Unlike other people she’d known, these Christians were unconditionally kind and accepting.

In the 1960s pop artist Andy Warhol famously declared that one day everyone would have their 15 minutes of fame.

Since then Warhol’s prophecy has almost been fulfilled. Our TV screens are saturated with reality TV shows that give ordinary people the indiscriminate celebrity status he once predicted.