Over the last three years my family and I have been looking for a local church to be part of. When we set off on this journey we did not anticipate it would be as hard as it has been to find a place to call our spiritual home. Before you throw down your Faithworks News and write me off as a critic of the church, let me explain what I mean.

I believe in the Church!
My family and I are passionate about the church of the Lord Jesus. We recognise that we belong to the church because we belong to Christ, but we also love to be involved in local congregational life. We are deeply committed to serving God through the local church because we believe God is deeply committed to His church. We also recognise that there are lots of different forms of church which are healthy and strong and vibrant. From the traditional to the completely innovative, God’s people have a rich diversity and variety which is incredibly exciting. When we left the sunny climes of Dorset to move to London, we were sure we would find a Christian community where we felt we could belong and our children [all four of them!] could develop strong relationships and commitments.

The search begins…
We were looking for some basic ingredients in such a community. A place where the Bible was honoured, where the style suited us [in our case contemporary and relaxed] and where there was a real sense of community and support for one another. Just as importantly, however, we wanted to find somewhere that was really keen to engage in the community. A group of Christians who would let what they believe about Jesus shape how they treated people. We were hungry for a Christian community where anyone was welcome. A place where the those who were involved were committed to making a difference in the society where God had placed them and were willing to share their lives, their resources and their faith with others.

It would be easy for me to end up criticising everything about the churches that we have tried – that wouldn’t be helpful though. We’ve met some lovely people, and experienced some warm welcomes. Friendliness, openness and genuiness are not lacking in the church! But in the words of Bono we still haven’t found what we’re looking for…

Shared lives
For us the search for a local church home is a search for authenticity. A place where people do not have their lives ‘sorted out’. We’re looking for a local Christian community that will allow us to work through our messiness, our incompleteness and our weaknesses. We don’t have our lives successfully boxed, packaged and ready to roll! Our kids are not perfect, our marriage is not perfect and we are not perfect. So if we found a ‘perfect’ congregation, I’m afraid we’d ruin it!  What has alarmed us is that we have found congregations where in order to feel like you belong you had to appear to be almost perfect!

I’ve found the search for authenticity hard. I can’t build relationships and commitments around an hour on a Sunday morning and cup of coffee afterwards. Yet that is often all that we found as we looked for a place to belong. We’d invite people for a meal, and they were too busy, we’d ask them to come and help with something in our community – and they had other plans. We’d talk about getting involved in small groups, and found that the groups were focused inward not outward. We’d wonder why we prayed for all the things that were wrong in people’s lives in the church, but rarely prayed for the people around the church. We didn’t want a neat, tidy, sown up congregation! We wanted a messy, transparent, vulnerable group of people who were willing to learn from each other.

We haven’t found it yet.

Shared Resources
This has been a big challenge for us. At the heart of what the Bible teaches about church is the commitment to exist for others. Our holiness and our commitment to Jesus as Christians calls us to be people who roll up our sleeves and get our hands dirty as we engage in the community. We find we have ‘holy’ or ‘clean’ hands by using them to serve other people. This has been the most obvious missing link in our search of for a place to belong.  We ran into congregations that told us the community knew where to find them if they wanted to come! Some told us that social action and serving the community weren’t that important – we needed to focus on getting people saved and then everything else would change. Some heard that I led Faithworks and were glad to see the back of us! We asked congregations to run Alpha courses from our home, to support the local school, to help us start a Residents’ Association, to start a litter collection service or to just pray for us as we got involved. The most normal response was – you get on with it and we’ll pray for you.

My wife and I are convinced that our family’s spirituality is not balanced if all we do is go to meetings, sing songs, hear sermons and come home again – so this issue of engagement was and is really important to us. God’s call to His Church is a call to service – to engagement, to care. That is what we are looking for.

We haven’t found it yet.

Shared Faith
We’ve also been looking for a place where people were willing to share their faith. Not to tie Jesus into a meeting, or shut the Father into the ‘sanctuary’, but instead to live out their faith – to serve unapologetically in Jesus name. To allow the truth of Scripture to shape how we handle our conversation, our conduct and our character development.  We’ve looked around in meetings as folk from all walks of life are reminded of their responsibility to build the Kingdom, then scolded for not building the attendance on a Sunday or for not attending the prayer meeting. Yet Kingdom Life is about being who you are and doing what you do to God’s glory – whether that is in an office, a school, a hospital, a factory or a pulpit!

We’ve heard plenty of sermons about the saints doing the work of the ministry, but have hung our heads in despair as we then heard ‘ministry’ being translated into what you do here in this building when we need it done. Surely the ‘ministry’ God has given us reflects our passions, our gifts and our personal style? He wouldn’t put an extrovert in a role where they never got to speak to people!

We’ve searched for a local congregation that would allow us to be the people God made us to be and enable us to help others to do the same. A congregation where folk are as comfortable talking about God in the staff room as they are in the prayer room. A place where what you do on a Monday matters as much as what you do on a Sunday.

We’re still looking.

There is hope!
We’re not the only ones looking for a spiritual home. Millions of others are too. A place where honesty, integrity, joined up thinking, whole life worship and witness all matter. All over the UK people in congregations and outside congregations are searching for the same thing. Some traditional churches are such places, as are some new churches. This is not a search for an ‘emerging church’ only. It is a search for an intelligent, engaged, relevant and credible church. They can be Baptist, Catholic, Anglican, Charismatic, Baptist, Independent or Pentecostal. They are emerging as communities of people who are re-discovering God’s purpose for them in mission and service.  Little buds of hope are springing up across the world.

Faithworks is seeking to support, encourage and serve those who are on a similar journey. We’re committed to helping people engage with God and their communities in a way that is credible, relevant and effective.  From Truro to Thurso there are churches that do share their lives, their resources and their faith! And more and more are learning how to do so. The search for those of us who have not found a congregation should not end in despair – be encouraged to keep looking. You will find it!

I’m delighted to lead the Movement forward and excited about wonderful things that God is doing as we helps us join up what we believe, what we do and who we are.

We may be on the brink of finding where we belong and so might you. This is too important a search for us to give up.  There are communities and individuals yet to be transformed by God – that’s is why we keep going. No matter, what, His Kingdom will come – and I’m determined to be part of the answer, not the problem.

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‘Excerpt from an article written by Rev Malcolm Duncan, Leader of Faithworks, for Faithworks News, September 2005.’

Rev Malcolm Duncan
Leader of Faithworks
1 Kennington Road
London SE1 7QP