When Did God Become a Sparkling Beverage?

An article from The Living Church, to which I recently posted a link on Anglicans Ablaze, is titled, “'Filling People with God': Fresh Expressions Connects with the Unchurched.”  The title of the article is taken from a statement made by Jon Davis, an Episcopal priest, mission strategist, and trainer with Fresh Expressions US. He stated, “Fresh Expressions is the medicine that’s needed to make the church healthy and strong again in its mission. We thought the mission was to fill the pews with people, but that’s not the mission. The mission of the church is to fill people with God.”

Fresh Expressions was launched as a joint initiative of the Church of England and the Methodist Church in September 2005. Fresh Expressions UK  and Fresh Expressions US are independent organizations and have their own websites. Fresh Expressions has its critics and its supporters. 

I found Jon Davis’ statement remarkable because, while filling pews with people is not the mission of the church, “filling people with God” is also not the church’s mission. God is not a sparkling beverage which can be poured into people like wine into a glass. We cannot fill people with God. God can fill people with himself, but we cannot fill them with God. I had to wonder where the Rev. Davis had gotten such a view of the church’s mission. It was certainly not from the Bible.

From the New Testament we learn the mission of the church is to make disciples from all people groups, to baptize them in the name of the Holy Trinity, and to instruct them in Jesus’ teaching; to proclaim eternal salvation; to go into the world and to spread the good news to all creation; to proclaim repentance and forgiveness of sins to the entire world; and to make Jesus know so that all may believe in him and have eternal life. The four gospels offer us different accounts of what is called the “Great Commission.” They sketch out different aspects of the same mission.

We can point people to Jesus. We can help pave the way for them to meet Jesus. If they turn to Jesus and believe in him, we can disciple and mentor them. We can help form and shape them as Jesus followers. We can encourage them. But we cannot fill them with God. Only God alone can fill them with himself. The things that we can do, we do because God, through his grace, enables us to do them. God gives us the desire to do them and the power to do them.

The gift of God’s presence and power in us, the gift of the Holy Spirit, is God’s doing. We have nothing to do with it. God is sovereign in that matter as he is in all matters.