There’s a line in this week’s message I said quite quickly, and it deserved more time than I gave it. So here it is, unhurried.
About fifteen months before I preached this message, I wasn’t happy about giving up our Sunday evening meeting. I’d always seen that meeting as our holiness meeting, the one time each week we sat down and thought properly about what it means to live a holy life. Letting it go felt like letting go of something sacred.
I want to be honest with you about that resistance, because I think some of you have felt it too. Change in a corps rarely feels neutral. It touches memory, tradition and the people who taught you to love that particular meeting in the first place. Giving something like that up can feel like a small grief, even when you know, deep down, that something better might be coming.
God changed my mind over those months, and he changed it slowly, not with one dramatic moment but through watching what actually happens when six or eight people sit in someone’s front room with a cup of tea and an open Bible. I’ve watched people say things in a small group they would never say from a pew. I’ve watched holiness grow, not because we studied it harder, but because we were finally close enough to each other to be honest.
Sunday Rewind - each week I share a sermon from the Battle Ready Sermons archive. My role has shifted to training the next generation of Salvation Army officers at William Booth College, so I’m no longer preaching every Sunday, but God’s word doesn’t go out of date. These messages are here to encourage, challenge, and point you to Jesus, whenever you need them.
This week’s sermon was originally preached 1 August 2021.
That’s the pattern we see with Jesus and the twelve. He didn’t gather them into rows to teach a syllabus. He ate with them, walked with them and let them ask their half-formed questions over supper. Mark tells us the very first reason he called them was simply to accompany him. Everything else, the teaching, the sending out, the transformation, grew out of that closeness.
I still believe in gathering to worship together as a whole congregation. That won’t change. But I’ve come to see that holiness needs a smaller room too, one where there’s space to be known.
So here’s my honest question for you this week, the one I didn’t quite ask on Sunday: what would it cost you to let go of something familiar, if it meant growing closer to Jesus and to the people around you?
I’d love to hear your answer. Reply to this letter, or find me after the meeting.
Grace and peace.
Rob