Are you looking for a church or thinking about visiting for the first time?
Our Glasgow Church family hope that you are enjoying our great website but our greater hope is that you’ll want to come along and meet the church family behind the website.
What Should I Expect To Find At Glasgow Church Of Christ?
Most people have some kind of idea, or pre-conception, of what church is. Some churches have high stained-glass windows and old long pews with a characteristic ‘churchy’ creak and smell. Some meet in newer buildings and maybe focus more on the personal aspects of Christianity. Some are lively; others less so. Some are comprised almost entirely of people from one nationality or ethnic group – or one age profile even. Some are more mixed. Some talk a lot about the bible; some talk more about social justice; some talk about the Spirit. A multitude of different combinations are available.
If you are new to the Glasgow Church of Christ, then you may realistically and reasonably want to know what we are like. Where do we fit on the church spectrum?
Here are some pictures of our church community. We didn’t buy these pictures from an image library we took them ourselves. These are people you will meet if you come to church. We like to think we are a friendly bunch: other people say that we are, too.
So, if you come along, we’d very much like to get to know you. We try hard not to be cliquey, so if you join us the likelihood is that you will be ‘chatted up’ by quite a number of people (of both sexes, and in the nicest possible way!) and you might even be invited along to some other events.
We Think Church Is A Community.
Here are 3 of our favourite definitions of church that we have learned over the years. I like all of them and I think all describe our church in one way or another.
The Storytelling Community [Acts 11:19-26]
I first heard this term used by a preacher at a Christian conference in Budapest. This is a great and simple description of what church should be like.
It is the community of people who have discovered the Good News about Jesus and want to share it with others. Meanwhile, they are filled with agape* love for their ‘sisters’ and ‘brothers’ in the faith. With this strong loving foundation, the community of believers can truly depend on one another and carry each other’s burdens in life. All the time, even though they have trials in life the same as everyone else does, they are grateful for becoming reconciled to God; and for that reason, they are eager to help others within and without the fellowship. Hence it is a Storytelling Community.
It is the close-knit community of believers who want to share the story of how much God loves them and how powerful he is to help them. In fact, the Greek word used in the bible which translates into English as “church”; is ‘Eklesia’, and this just means “assembly”. In the context of, say, the book of Acts, it is the assembly of people who want to follow God.
[*agape is one of the four Greek words for love (the others being phileo, storge and eros). It describes the totally selfless kind of love that would help the other person even if it means greater harm for the person doing the loving.]
The Ministry Of Reconciliation [2 Corinthians 5:18-20]
No, this is not a government department from a dystopian novel!
It is how the apostle Paul describes his life’s work – and therefore it is a good description of the church. A basic tenet of the Christian faith is that we are reconciled with God through Jesus. According to the online Cambridge Dictionary, to reconcile is “to find a way in which two situations or beliefs that are opposed to each other can agree and exist together”.
The bible tells us that the human situation is opposed to God’s. When Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden, they were choosing to apply their own personal definitions of right and wrong to their lives, and therefore reject God’s definition of right and wrong. The human definition of right and wrong (as seen in the media all the time) tells us to follow our hearts; do what you feel; treat yourself – you’re worth it! While God likes us to do a bit of this, the scripture says that the heart* is deceitful above all things and beyond cure (Jeremiah 17:9) The human following his or her own heart often leads to hurt, jealousy, addiction, rejection, and many other painful things. Jesus led the very opposite kind of life – always attending to the needs of others by denying himself but in doing so, bringing a deep joy to both himself and those around him. We can see that these two paradigms are difficult to reconcile, but Jesus does it through his church.
Verse 20 of 2 Corinthians chapter 5 goes on to talk about Christians being ambassadors for Christ. In the Glasgow Church of Christ, we like to be ambassadors: we like treating people to plush dinner receptions (or just nice home-cooked meals) and explaining what our (heavenly) government is thinking about various issues of the day. Or maybe this is just another way of saying we’d like to sit down and study the bible with you – in order for you to share in the diplomatic benefits that we have found in being in Jesus ‘overseas’ mission (Eph 3:20)!
[*Strangely, the bible talks about the ‘heart’ being the emotional decision-centre of the body. Today nutritionists (my wife is a nutritionist) tell us that the gut communicates with the brain in much more sophisticated ways than we previously thought – you never feel quite on-the-ball mentally when your gut is thinking “I shouldn’t have eaten that third sausage roll”, are you?]
The Hospital For Sinners [Matthew 9:10-13 & Luke 5:30-32]
This scripture in Matthew 9 is interesting because it describes an interaction between Jesus and some fuddy-duddy religious teachers (Jesus met and tussled with a lot of these).
They complain that Jesus is interacting with real people: “tax collectors and sinners”. The bible tells us that we are in fact all sinners (including the fuddy-duddy religious teachers), and the gospel writer, Matthew, is using humour here in a slightly self-effacing way because he himself was a tax collector. This passage shows us ordinary people (and tax collectors) coming to Jesus and starting the process of getting their lives healed (like in a hospital).
Some people say that Christians are hypocrites and that a lot of the bad things in the world are done by Christians…
I would say 2 things to that:
- Firstly, not everyone who calls themself a Christian actually is one. I can call myself a cardboard box but that doesn’t mean that I am grey and square and would go soggy if left out in the rain (well, I am a bit square sometimes).
- Secondly, where would you expect to find healthier people – in a library or a hospital? A library of course! People in hospital are being slowly healed, by which sometimes you will find signs of serious spiritual illness about them [and of course the people in the library Googling their symptoms might find some cures too – but I think it’ll take longer].
What Our Church Is Like
So, where do we fit in on the spectrum we talked about above?
- We don’t have a stained-glass type building. We rent places as necessary – this saves on roof-fundraisers, etc.
- We do focus on the personal aspects of Christianity. Except for Ephesians 2:21 (which is a metaphor), the bible never talks about the church as a building. We are a fairly lively bunch (for Scottish people)!
- We are a mixed, ethnically and age-wise group and I think the first-century church would have been as well (look in Acts chapter 2 – they were so nationally mixed that God had to give them the miraculous gift of talking in one another’s languages).
- We don’t have ministers who wear flouncy robes or talk in an ancient language. God’s word, work, and salvation are for this present age, and we can rejoice in that! We do talk a lot about the bible, social justice, and the Spirit. And we believe that our views and understanding of social justice and the Spirit will be honed best by reflecting on the Bible.
- An important part of our church fellowship is our small groups. This is where we can meet in a more intimate setting to help and support one another through our ups and downs in our daily lives. Our goal is to encourage each other to live as disciples of Jesus, becoming more like Him. We realise that Christian counselling must be done with empathy and compassion (respecting the autonomy of the individual) and with the understanding that ALL of us are sinners. Most of us appreciate having a spiritual mentor who can gently help us along the way.
Anyway, we hope this gives you a good view of what our wee friendly church is like. We hope someday it will be a big friendly church – so come along and meet us and swell the numbers.
You can be as involved as much or as little as you want – it is quite okay to just come and sit with us on a Sunday and listen. But we think you’ll want to come back again!
All are welcome and we hope to see you soon at the Glasgow Church of Christ!
