All You Ever Needed To Know About Windows

I would like us to take a moment to celebrate windows. These versatile building products possess all the attributes of greatness and genius. They are simple – glass and a frame. But they can also be intricate – tiny coloured pieces of glass and artistically shaped lead. They can be small. They can be massive. They can be found in a palace and in a hut. They let things in and keep things out. Their view can cheer a soul or strike terror in a soldier. They can be functional or they can also be stunningly beautiful. Windows done well are perfectly humble. And for all these reasons I think we not only need to take a moment to celebrate windows, but to also learn from them.

¶ “Your eyes are windows into your body. If you open your eyes wide in wonder and belief, your body fills up with light.
Matthew 6:22 THE MESSAGE

Even though windows can be dressed up with drapes, curtains, blinds or shutters, they are not there to draw attention to themselves. They serve to reveal. They make it possible to see without battling the elements of wind, rain, or glare. Windows can help let light in and thus brighten up a room. Windows facing toward the sun invite its warmth in. They reveal, they brighten, they warm, and they do it all gladly.

From the outside of a home, windows tell a passerby what kind of home this is. The passerby may see a family sitting around a dinner table enjoying a meal, each other, and their guests’ company. The passerby may look in and notice the décor and see that the occupant has an eye for colour. They may also attempt to look in and fail and thus conclude that the occupant values their privacy. 

The Church is meant to be like a window. Windows have longed formed an integral and symbolic component of church building architecture. Our new church building, due for completion some time in June, will have some bold windows facing out to our community. This too is intentionally symbolic. 

In our Western Culture, we are living in a privacy-obsessed world. Life hasn’t always been this privatised. For most of human history for most human cultures, there has been a strong sense of community, togetherness, mutuality, and a higher degree of appropriate transparency. Because of this strong cultural undertow, it is often challenging for people who are now coming to Christ and being introduced to the church family to appreciate that God wants to do something in us not just in me. In fact, the Apostle Paul told the Ephesians (a church made up of Jews and Gentiles) that by God bringing them together into one church family, that He was showing the world that His Son is more important to His children than their ethnicity, language, skin-colour, or heritage.

To me, though I am the very least of all the saints, this grace was given, to preach to the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ, and to bring to light for everyone what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God, who created all things, so that through the church the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places.
Ephesians 3:8-10

In other words, the local church is meant to be a window. As a window, the community where God has called the church to assemble can look in. When people look through the church as a window they will see the unsearchable riches of Christ deposited in people just like them! When they look at the church in their community they will see the thing they crave more than anything else (unconditional love, forgiveness, wholesome friendships, helpful instruction, grace to go on) evident in the lives of people just like them!

From inside the church looking out, the church as a window helps the believer to see the world more clearly. What was previously obscured by the elements of life, and now filtered out by the Christ-supplied window, enables the believer to see people as we’ve never seen them before. It enables to see the demands for what is abhorrent as a deep ache in the souls of those who seeking what they have not found.

Each Sunday, we webcast our service Live on the internet. It’s like watching our service on TV, only better, because you can watch it anywhere in the world on a smart-phone, tablet computer, smart-TV, or computer. This is an expression of our desire to be a window through which the world may look in. This is why it is important for all believers to gather together each Sunday and declare to the world that celebrating Christ in His House is more important to us than sport, business, or me-time. And when our service together is dismissed and the weekly webcast stops, our windows are still open for the world to look in – but not through one larger than normal window, but through the individual windows we each serve as for Christ when we go our way into our worlds.

So three cheers for the window and three cheers for Christ who has gifted us to be His window for a lost world to gaze through and behold His grace in people just like them. In this way, we are a window of hope to a person who feels there is none.

Pastor Andrew.

Leaders Are Like Windows

Kim and I rarely fight over anything. The only possible exception to this delightful fact is how we feel about windows. Kim loves to look out through them and see what’s happening outside. Everyone knows that she is very much an outdoors girl. I, on the other hand, like how curtains and blinds give a certain degree of privacy from outside peering eyes. Kim loves how the sun-light radiates warmth and lights up the room she’s in. Whereas I find the glare of direct sunlight difficult. It’s not that I don’t like natural light or even the warmth which comes from the sun’s radiance, it’s that I like how curtains and blinds allow me to control it and protect my privacy. This dilemma between unimpeded windows and curtained windows is like the dilemma that leaders have to navigate. There are times when a leader must either be fully transparent, or partly transparent, or very discreet. How we use windows teaches us some important truths about leadership.

Transparency in leadership is being open and honest. Leaders know that this is necessary for authentic leadership and connecting meaningfully with those who lend them their trust. There are times when it is necessary for a leader to have their curtains wide open, so that people can see in. Wisdom is needed to know when. Wisdom is also needed to know with who to do this. 

And David shepherded them with integrity of heart; with skillful hands he led them.
Psalm 78:72

Conversely, there are times when a leader must draw the curtains a little. A husband and father understands this kind of leadership at those times when their wife and children need reassurance during times of uncertainly and near overwhelming challenges. Then there are times when it is appropriate to close the curtains and either speak privately or not at all.

¶ Now when Jesus heard this, he withdrew from there in a boat to a desolate place by himself. But when the crowds heard it, they followed him on foot from the towns.
Matthew 14:13

But a leader loses their connection with those called to trust them when their windows are forever curtained. But this is frightening process for many leaders (parents, teachers, employers, captains, home-group leaders, pastors, politicians). It means becoming vulnerable as well as transparent. This always tests levels of insecurity. But without doing it a leader loses their authenticity. Good leaders are able to move those who trust them by their words. Great leaders are able to move those who trust them by who they are known to be by those who trust them. King David was certainly a great leader. He knew who to be transparent and vulnerable with his key trusters. But as Nathan the Prophet could have told you, when David didn’t do this, great damage was done (Second Samuel 12).

Why have you despised the word of the LORD, to do what is evil in his sight? You have struck down Uriah the Hittite with the sword and have taken his wife to be your wife and have killed him with the sword of the Ammonites.
Second Samuel 12:9

There are leaders, good leaders, and great leaders. Leaders tend to open their curtains too wide too soon to too many. Great leaders on the other hand open their curtains wide often to One. There is One, the Sovereign Omnipotent Shepherd who is veiled in mystery with Whom we can be totally transparent and open. Many of the Psalms are glimpses into the transparency which leaders gave to their Sovereign Heavenly King of Kings.

Give attention to the sound of my cry,
my King and my God,
for to you do I pray.
Psalm 5:2

Have you opened the curtains to your soul to the One Who sees through them anyway? No matter what challenges, obstacles, difficulties or problems you are facing now, the One Who Sees All sees you and longs for you to open up to Him. In doing so you may discover what I have found that there is great strength imparted simply by being transparent with the Omnipotent Shepherd.

Amen.