Another week of Lent, another blog. I thought, in fact, that I had run out of things to say and, since I have not yet finished the book I'm currently reading, I didn't even have a review I could muster to fill this (admittedly irregular) posting schedule. As always seems to be the case at the moment, however, something occurred to me - I would suggest 'was given to me', but I don't want to claim any authority I do not have - and I realised I have another post in me after all.

But first, the usual update: no fiction consumed, several more sermons listened to, prayerfulness increasing (ish), a greater knowledge of God's presence gained, an increasing eagerness to talk about faith and issues surrounding it growing within me... This isn't to say, however, that it has been easy, or that I haven't struggled with the temptation to break my Lent, or skip a Bible reading opportunity; nor is it to say that all the positive fruit seen above abound every moment or even every day. Sometimes this feels very stale. Sometimes God still feels distant. Sometimes I just don't care as I should. This is, sadly, normal for humans. It shouldn't be, but then that's why we need God's grace, which brings me neatly to my topic for today - or it will be seen to have done, by the time I have reached my conclusion, because we'll start, as we almost always do, not with grace, but with a moment of human weakness.

I'm part of a group of young men in my church who are working together, under the oversight of our Minister, to learn and to improve our preaching skills, or rather, handling the Bible in a number of different, public ministries. Part of this has involved doing a three-week stint of leading the morning services - welcoming everyone, introducing hymns, praying and generally aiding in bringing the congregation worshipfully before God.

I have not yet done this, ostensibly because of the birth of my daughter and the time commitment having a small baby entails. One morning this week, however, when the minister mentioned it to me and noted that it might be difficult to find a block for me with my Sunday School commitments, I let slip the real reason: "Also, it's terrifying!" I said.

Now, standing up in front of people is always going to pretty scary, I understand, but as I contemplated this afterwards, I realised it wasn't, primarily, stage fright that I was suffering from, but a much deeper insecurity about church leadership. I don't feel like I'm qualified to lead a congregation of Christians in anything. Now, putting aside for a moment the relevance of a concept like qualification with regard to Christian ministry, why do I feel this way?

I think there are a number of factors involved, and if you'll forgive me going on about myself like this (I'm the only person I know well enough to use as an example, after all), these are the ones I think are the biggest issues:

1) I'm acutely aware that I don't come from a Christian background and, despite the fact that I became a Christian when I was only eleven, I didn't really get heavily involved in a church community until I moved to Aberdeen to go to university. Even though that was over eleven years ago now, I still feel rather new to this.

2) I have a somewhat more liberal approach to faith and politics than many of my brothers and sisters in the congregation. I'm still very much an evangelical, and newspapers would happily label me as a conservative Christian, but I also believe that the church should not try to legislate the lives of non-Christians and so take a back seat at times in some of the more controversial debates of the day.

3) I have a scientific background. Even before I became a Christian, I thought myself to be a kind of scientist and used that as an excuse not to listen to what my Christian friends were trying to tell me about God. Once I was on the other side, however, whole other issues came up, most notably the ongoing Creation vs. Evolution debate, which hit me hard, and left me feeling rather lonely, during the evolutionary biology parts of my Zoology degree. I have since reconciled science and the Bible to my satisfaction (mostly), but I still feel a sense of separation from many I worship with when I wonder how they'd feel about my position on these issues.

4) I am a geek. I love sci-fi and fantasy, video games, graphic novels, and so on. I've kinda touched on this before and it might not sound like much of a barrier, but in my mind, knowing that I don't share the secular interests of most of the rest of my fellowship further adds to my sense of myself as 'outsider'.

Ignore, at this stage, whether or not I might be right about any of this and just imagine how I might then feel to lead any group of Christians in worship, prayer, or studying the word of God and you begin to see what kind of terror it is that I've been experiencing.

But if you're one of the people who have been shouting at the screen by this stage you'll already see why I need a radical change in my perception of the situation. All of the above presupposes several things:

1) That all kinds of spiritual leadership require qualifications beyond a saving faith in the triune God. Yes, there are helpful theological qualifications and there are gifts and talents bestowed and developed in the believer by God, but if He sends you, then you go. Many Biblical figures questioned their fitness to be leaders when God called them (Moses is the typical example) but God didn't call them because of their fitness, He called them because He knew what He would do with them and that it was good.

2) That personality traits, political views, scientific understanding, matters of conscience, hobby choices, intelligence quotient, imagination or lack thereof and any number of other supposed identity markers matter in the grand schemes of the Kingdom of God. Yes, we're all individuals, and yes what makes us different is both a part of God's gloriously diverse creation and a cause of no small amounts of frustration and strife between believers, but neither the believer nor the church acquires its identity from any of these things.

Our identity is found in our trinitarian God: God the Father, Jesus Christ His Son, our Saviour and the Holy Spirit, our comforter, counsellor and advocate. The Church is united to each other and to Christ and that means we can put aside our differences in his presence when they would threaten to separate us.

3) That it really matters what others think of me. Given the above two points, I need to keep reminding myself that though others' opinion of me can affect my witness and leadership, it should certainly not hinder my attempts at it, especially within the church. I do not present myself but point to God. If someone doesn't like the way I do that or some other facet of my being, all I can do is keep pointing to God. "Don't look at me, " I must shout, "look at Him!"

And this brings me back to the start of all this, the thing that holds all those points together, and which should be foremost in our minds when we deal with other believers. God's good grace. It is by grace that we are saved to be united with Christ as part of His Church, by grace we are called to serve and, by grace, given the gifts to carry out that calling. There is nothing of us in that save what God gave us in the first place, for we are His creatures, His children.

And we must try to treat other believers with that same loving grace, knowing that it is at work in them as in us and whatever our pasts, personalities, politics or pastimes, we would not even be in the Church without the grace of God. There but for the grace of God go I, after all.

And so to my terror. It is wrong. It is a sign of a lack of trust in God, of an insecure and worldly way of thinking that has no place in a life lived in Christ. I must put it behind me and step up to the calling that has been made, to the increase of God's glory and the diminution of the self. I know what I need to do, I just pray for the courage and commitment and, above all else, the grace - all from God - to carry it out.

Until next time, go well.