A history of Cumberland Uni Church through chairs #3

This is the third post in a series. #1 - Grey chairs. #2 - Orange Chairs.

A history of Cumberland Uni Church through chairs.

There is a little echo from Exodus that has been playing in my mind of late;

God rescues Israel from Egypt but they get a little thirsty...

Grumble, grumble, grumble.

The Israelites get a little hungry...

Grumble, grumble, grumble.

Moses is delayed in coming down the mountain...

Grumble, grumble, grumble.

There is great frustration in half starting a church. I would call Cumberland Uni Church a half church plant. I say this because from my perspective, while never denying the generosity of our backers, nor the commitment of the workers, there was never really a long-term view as to who was going to do the hard yards of the work.

I hope I'm not promulgating an unhelpful view of church here. I remember Gordon Cheng once preaching at Uni Church giving opposing views of what the church is like. Church is not like a bus, with the driver the sole person directing the course with the rest of the people passively sitting and following along. The church is more like an orchestra, where the conductor ensures all are playing together but it only works if each member plays their role. The model that most western churches operate under in most situations requires an employed pastor to run smoothly. Uni Church needed a conductor. We were a church plant, but we had a unique set of circumstances. We needed a vision-setter. We needed a preacher. We needed a pastor.

Instead we employed Dave.

Now please don't hear me bagging out on Dave. No one poured more into Cumberland Uni Church over the first few years than Dave Keun. And to some extent he fulfilled each of those needs. But Dave just wasn't able to conduct. He was valiantly trying to get through Bible College with a young family. While he wisely used his available time, Dave just physically couldn't keep everything working to the same beat with the time he had. What pulled us through was the DNA from St Paul's Carlingford. That is, St Paul's as a godly evangelical church with heavenly priorities transplanted to us a framework of doing church which was driven not by pure pragmatism but by the Scriptures. We simply repeated the model of congregation that our mother church had inseminated us with, which was enough to keep things ticking along. But we were a different church. A different model for St Paul's. We needed to be playing a different song. But seeing as we couldn't set our own timing we simply followed the beat of someone else. And as good as the St Paul's model of church was, it never quite clicked without a sole leader with time to invest. And believe me, this frustrated no one more than Dave.

I'm not a hypochondriac, but with Sarah and I having trained in the medical field we often talk about horrible medical issues. There's a medical condition which can arise from a stroke, called "locked-in syndrome". I'm always sceptical when someone begins a sentence with the words "this is the worst..." because what is 'the worst' is notoriously hard to quantify. Yet I'm fairly certain that locked-in syndrome would be the worst thing medically that a person would have to endure. Following a stroke, the patient remains with all their mental faculties, they're aware and conscious, yet through paralysis, they are rendered unable to communicate. Their minds remain sharp, they hear and understand, but the stroke means they can't move. I cannot imagine it. The anger at not being able to talk. The complete frustration at not even being able to write your thoughts. The exasperation of people saying things you disagree with but not being able to respond. Or the way nurses speak at you as if you were a child. Oftentimes the only movement people with locked-in syndrome have is the ability to blink. I just cannot imagine being in this predicament.

In a weird kind of way, these images seem to capture the frustration of the remaining core team at Uni Church. We could see what could be done, or even more what needed to be done. Follow-up, evangelism, pastoral care, yet with a makeshift team it felt as if none of us were able with the time we had available, to do anything about it. At times for myself it felt as if I was taking in the situation, but powerless in many ways to exert enough energy and influence to change anything, to be involved enough.

Grumble, grumble, grumble.

It became clear soon enough that as Dave moved towards the end of Bible College, Uni Church were not going to be able to employ him as a full-time minister. St Paul's could have left Uni Church to our own devices, or simply let things dwindle away to nothing. Instead they sent to us James. James Davidson was an experienced minister of one of the St Paul's morning congregations. Dave was fairly well over the moon about this development. Finally, someone who could do the hard yards of the ministry that Dave and others saw needed to be done, but were bound by time. Someone who wasn't limited to a day and a half a week. James however, had been given other instructions. He was working towards a new plant from his morning congregation. This new initiative was where the majority of his energies were to be spent. James' presence at Uni Church was as a figure head. Someone to be pastor in name, but primarily to encourage the core to do the work. In other words, James was given the same instruction as Dave was all those years earlier. Keep the doors open. And not surprisingly, again we hit our target. The doors were open.

The pattern of frustration remained. Except now not only was Dave and the core exasperated by the inability to invest the time needed to grow the church humanly speaking, but now James with just 15% of his time allocated to Uni Church was frustrated as well.

Grumble, grumble, grumble.

They say the best sight is hindsight. So with a tiring and shrinking core, a handover of leadership to an equally time poor pastor and general exhaustion setting in, what would be the wisest thing to do? I know, surely it would be a good idea to move to a new venue, which virtually tripled the workload of each member of the core. It seems so obvious. So that's exactly what we did.

As a church group we had a one-way ticket to burnout.

Leaving the grey and orange chairs behind, we were on the move again - to the local community centre. For the first time, we were in a location that was of our choosing. Unfortunately, the only facilities offered by the new building was red chairs. Thus the new location's weekly setup required a greatly increased amount of manpower (to the pure, all things are pure). At this same time, the big decrease in the number of our core began its full impact. Though positionally the new venue was great, the demands of bringing everything in every week except for the seats was fatiguing. The thing about transplanting a method of running a congregation from a larger gathering is that the number of jobs is pretty much the same. Someone needs to design and print outlines, read the Bible, lead in prayer, lead the service, do overheads, organise camps, lead small groups, lead the singing, set up the chairs, bring supper, set up supper, welcome people to church, do the follow up, greet visitors, do pastoral care, organise outreach. The handful of us did what we could, but when the move meant that as well as doing each of these things, each week we had to bring in every item we needed apart from chairs just meant by the time church kicked off at 7PM, the five or six of us were pretty well had it. We had no storage at the new venue and instead were required to store everything at our homes and then bring it with us on Sunday. Coffee cups, hot water jug, Bibles, advertising sandwich boards, music stands, overhead projector, overhead screen, lecturn, guitar amp, a piano and stand. It was harking back to the days when Uni Church began and Dave would drive to Carlingford before church (1/2 hour away) to swap cars with James Warren. They would stack as many chairs as possible into James Warren's station wagon for Dave to drive down to the school to be unloaded for the service then reloaded into the car, for Dave to drive back to Carlingford, unload the chairs and swap back cars.

Grumble, grumble, grumble.

It's good to see God has a sense of humour about the whole thing though. You see, the council wanted to trial a new electronic key to enter the building. These are expensive, so they couldn't just give us one. Instead we had to pick up the key from the council every Friday afternoon, and drop it back each Monday morning. As it happened, the two of us who were available to pick up the key, didn't have access to a vehicle. As such, twice a week one of us would have to make the 50 minute round trip on foot to the council to make sure we could get in the building come Sunday. Trials inevitably have teething problems. So in the 6 months we were there, four times we were locked out of the building. A couple of times, the keys didn't work, or there was confusion over who was meant to pick up the key. One Friday, the council decided to have a picnic day and thus were closed and unable to be contacted to get the key. It's a weird mixture of feelings that well up inside you as you stand at the darkened entrance to a community centre at 6.55 on a Sunday night, standing in close proximity to around 20 people, each of whom needed to have the situation explained as they approached. It's mainly embarrassment, mixed with frustration and a hint of anger. I guess this is partly because of the hurt to your pride. Thankfully the rented home which two of the girls from the core lived in, had a huge living area where we could all fit. I still feel for those poor visitors who came for the first time on those weeks only to be shuffled into a stranger's suburban house. Amateur hour at its finest.

It wasn't long until the mere thought of the room at the community centre would cause us labourers to heave with exhaustion and fall in a blubbering mess on the floor, crouched in the fetal position rocking gently back and forth murmuring curses about Auburn council.

Grumble, grumble, grumble.

At this point, the overall number of people started to decline slightly (25~). Actually, while I say it declined slightly, this doesn't give a true picture. The move to the red chairs halved the congregation. The 25 each week at the new venue was virtually half completely new contacts since the move. The turnover was due to the natural end of year leaving for a uni congregation, partly due to the move being an excuse for some fringe attenders to completely break free. For others who had longed for more from a church, it was as good a time as any to start shopping for a different gathering. It was never spoken aloud but for the remaining core, it really hurt to see people constantly leaving. It was especially hard when they left for lousy reasons. Even though the numbers were similar, it felt like we were shrinking, because our friends had gone. I don't think we worked as hard as we could to address the concerns of those who left. Overall though I think we were just too exhausted to care.

Grumble, grumble, grumble.

Again it is to my shame I have never been more convicted of my unthankfulness than during this period of Uni Church. Grumble, grumble, grumble. Jesus will build his church. The Christians continued to be taught the Bible to the highest degree, as a community we cared for each others as best we were able, we got to preach the gospel every week. I would suggest that there was almost never a week in which a handful of non-Christians were not present. The thirteen pioneers who by then had dwindled to three had just about exhausted all our efforts. Yet I'm still amazed that in four and a half years thus far, God had brought well over 300 people through the doors.

For all its failings, there is wisdom in keeping the doors open.

Despite all the obstacles associated with the new location, things hadn't been working at the school. All in all I'm still convinced it was the wise decision to move. The problem was, we needed to shake up how we were organising our church. But without someone dedicating time to the wider strategic thinking of the church, nor the time to implement big changes, we had simply managed to transport the same old unworkable beat from St Paul's to the school to the community centre. The chairs had changed colour, but we hadn't changed ours.