The Very Rev Albert Bogle considers the necessary requirements for a modern life of Christian faith.

LAST month in this column I was thinking about the place of quietness and reflection in our lives. This month as we approach the period of Lent I thought it would be valuable to start thinking about the things that really matter in our lives.

Too often we make our lives overcomplicated until our choices narrow and we are forced to understand that what we say to others and ourselves about what we require to live is not nearly the same as what we need in order to live.

Learning to be more appreciative of the basic things for living can change the way we function in relation to the world around us. And make us more grateful people. So what are our basic needs for living a fulfilled life rather than our list of requirements?

When it comes to living we need air, food and water, shelter, and a community or a sense of belonging. If we don’t have these essential things we shall die. Too often we take these for granted and it’s only when we are in danger of losing these things that we discover a correct perspective.

This got me thinking about the spiritual life. What is it that we require if we are to survive as Christians? If we have fewer ministers, fewer church buildings and church as we know it starts to begin to disappear, how will we react? What is it we need to follow Jesus, rather than what we say we require to follow Jesus? Do we still require the structures and strictures of a church shaped by 17th century presbyterian polity in the 21st century?

I started to ask myself what is the spiritual air that the Christian needs to breathe? And without hesitation like breathing, I found myself thinking about the power and place of prayer in our lives. Prayer is the air that Christians are called to breathe. When we start praying we begin to awaken the life and knowledge of the Holy Spirit which dwells in every believer in Jesus.

So if my first essential is spiritual air or prayer then the second must be nurture food and water. For Christians our spiritual food and water is the life of Jesus and the revelations we receive from reading holy scripture and praying to God. In other words, just as we need to breathe when we are eating and drinking, so we need the power of the Holy Spirit to bring the scriptures to life for us and help us interpret their meaning for our world in our situation. We may find because we have a growing interest in scripture that we begin to understand church in a more dynamic way because it is no longer tied to a building.

If humans are to survive we require shelter. So what is the equivalent of spiritual shelter? It can’t be limited to traditional church buildings, because the Christian church in the first two centuries didn’t have buildings as such. Their shelter and protection was found in the relationship they built between each other. They called themselves the body of Christ and they sheltered and sustained each other as part of that body. Their relationships were developed in small groups. In meeting together they were being sustained by the apostles, pastors, prophets and evangelists.

This was a loose network of believers who lived by the breath of the Spirit and were sustained by the scriptures and sheltered by apostles, prophets, pastors and evangelists.

So what of the belonging? What is the spiritual equivalent of belonging? It seems to me this is the work of God the Father in the believer’s life. In Isaiah we are told that we are not to be afraid of all that might happen to us. We are called by our names. It is not that God belongs to us, but rather that we belong to him. And he makes it clear to our understanding in the book of Hebrews that he will never leave us or forsake us.

So shall the church survive in the future? Of course we shall. Shall we be the same institution that we were or are now? The answer is no. God is doing a new thing and we need to start listening to the apostles and prophets and pastors and evangelists of our time. We need to understand we are in the middle of a spiritual tsunami. A tsunami which will change the whole landscape of church. And I believe it will be a church in which we will all be able to breathe fresh air again.I look forward with great expectation to what God is doing in our midst. Don’t look in the usual places or look to the usual people. Look where Jesus is looking ‘where fields are white unto harvest.’ ¤

The Very Rev Albert Bogle is a Pioneer Minister of Sanctuary First Church Online at www.sanctuaryfirst.org.uk