(This is, more or less, the middle section of the Manifesto document.)

Prophetic teaching

Heaven: the Bible says the Kingdom of Heaven is the place where God’s will is done, and we are to inhabit it and work and pray to make it a reality for others here and now; but we teach people that Heaven is the place we go to when we die. We turn the Kingdom of heaven from a vital instrument for social change into a final destination which is totally disconnected from how we live here and now.

Hell: the Bible says that the ultimate fate of those who choose to reject God is destruction; but we teach people that God will torment them for all eternity, and we have to be happy about this, which has the effect of turning the loving Heavenly Father of the Bible into a sadistic monster.  I have written a book about this: you can find out more on 'The Other Place' page.

Gospel: the Bible tells us that the Kingdom of Heaven is coming, so we must turn our back on the ways of this world and follow Jesus in living the ways of the Kingdom; but we tell people the gospel is about believing the right doctrines, about believing that I am a sinner and that Jesus died for me.

Salvation: the Bible says that salvation is about loving God with everything I have and loving my neighbour as I love myself, it is about growing in wholeness and relationship with God and neighbour; but we teach that salvation is about me as an individual believing the right doctrines, trying not to do bad things and going to Heaven when I die.

Evangelism: the Bible says that evangelism is about communicating the good news of the Kingdom with love and power and calling people to a life of sacrificial love in the community of God’s family; but our evangelism training teaches people to explain a few selected doctrines, telling people about a God of love in a carefully prepackaged way and offering them an individual ticket to Heaven which enables them to live almost exactly the way they did before – apart from attending some extra meetings.

Prophetic action

Faith has to be put into practice by loving and serving both God and neighbour. We have to love our fellow believers because we are called to love everyone, because this visible love is a witness to the people currently outside God’s family, and because the nature of the love they see being expressed by us will reveal the character of the God we are telling them about and make Him real for them.

Action must be both motivated and shaped by our faith. Christian Action Bristol seeks to support Christian social action projects in many ways;  it helps Christians communicate that our faith not only motivates our work, but also shapes the way we do that work. It also seeks to counter the view that expressing our faith can only be done through evangelism, and encourages individual Christians to be active in all forms of social action, whether they are explicitly Christian or not.

Love your neighbour is the bottom line activity of the Church: we are not followers of Jesus if we don’t do this. Yet many churches struggle to really connect with people in their local community – partly because they are struggling to put the love into practice, and partly because they think that evangelism should be the occasion of their contact with people, instead of a natural outworking of the relationship being built with them. Local Friends (http://localfriends.pbworks.com) is a practical scheme which can address both these problems. Loving people is not about experiencing warm, fuzzy feelings when we think of them, but about acting in their best interests: helping them to flourish and grow, helping them to become strong, compassionate and connected to the people around them.

Making disciples is the function of our church life, training the followers of Jesus, equipping them for increasingly effective service and preparing them to speak and act for Jesus in a society which is increasingly hostile to the public expression of faith, partly as a consequence of a misguided totalitarian ‘secular’ movement which masquerades as liberalism.

Perspective

The Bible is mostly written for believers and includes many issues important in discipleship and practical living; but the way we approach it often assumes that it is mostly about salvation, how to get to Heaven and the doctrines we need to believe in order to get there; so what we teach is mostly true, but often unbalanced and without the necessary context for a clear understanding.

The Bible also tells us that we meet God in and though Jesus, and that He shows us perfectly what God is like; but we teach people that the whole Bible is inspired by God (which is true) and therefore all of equal importance, relevance and significance (which is false), or we focus more on the early church than we do on the Jesus they were (imperfectly) seeking to follow.

The Father, Son and Holy Spirit are all vital in our work and worship: the loving Heavenly Father we are called to love and worship, the Son Who reveals Him and invites us to know Him (in experience as well as head knowledge) and the Spirit Who guards, guides, transforms and empowers us and Who gives us the power to make all this real; but we reduce the Trinity to a test of doctrinal orthodoxy.

Jesus is the full and final revelation of God, which means that nobody and nothing else is. Jesus calls us to follow Him, which means ongoing and continual fellowship with Him, in community with our fellow followers; it means acknowledging that Jesus is both our master (our Lord Who we must obey) and our model (Who we must emulate, in both His mission and His methods).

Jesus fulfilled the law, so the things the law was given for are still important, but a slavish obedience to the letter of the law while ignoring its purpose is not acceptable. We are called to a growing, loving relationship, and we cannot achieve this through following a set of rules, no matter how well crafted they might be.

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