Yesterday I spent most of the day in Basingstoke with Roy Crowne. We were there to talk with local church leaders about what a YFC centres could look like in the area and how to progress this vision. There was a passion here to reach the lost.

After lunch, and incredibly creative youth worker from Yeovil called Adam met with us in a very low key way to start to consider what a Yeovil YFC might look like f the church leaders there decided it was a thing to do. Adam had a clear passion for young people who had not yet heard about Jesus.

This sort of enquiry is becoming a weekly occurrence. It’s amazing – at a time when the church is in decline, it seems that YFC is growing. I find that interesting; at a time when the church is declining due to lack of mission, the church is looking ‘outside’ for help as it starts to re-state it’s mission focus.

In my recent assignment I quoted Kirk ‘if the church stops mission, it ceases to be church’. Is that was has happened in some places, geographical, mentally and practically – have churches ceased to be churches?

The whole centre of church, if we agree with Missio Dei, that mission is the very nature of God, is mission. That is what we breathe, that is what we feed on, that is what we are there for. When it stops, we lose our reason for being church. When our mission stops, we are no longer a church.

So, what is left in its place. A group of people who play church in safe comfortable surroundings. A group of people who have lost the (gospel) plot. A group of people whose passion for the lost has been replaced by a passion for the new carpet in church. Passion for the lost replaced by passion for the cleanliness of the new church hall. Passion for the lost replaced by passion for church events. Passion for the lost replaced by passion for doing it correctly. Passion for the lost replaced by passion for the correct style of worship. Passion for the lost replaced but passion for easy worship and powerpoint.

We cease to be church, and start to be social club. We lose biblical priorities and replace them with our own. Jesus’ challenge to reach the poor, the needy, the lost is becomes too uncomfortable to consider because it does not sit comfortably with where we are anymore.

I hope this little indication of a new mission focus that we are seeing around the country is an indication of things to come. I hope it means that Christian social clubs are waking up and realising that they need to become churches again. I hope it means the church re-engaging, Jesus being met, and lives being transformed.