a sideways glance

Aching for a new world

2012-01-29T08:57:00.002Z

It's that time when again when our church magazine hits the stands and both excited readers pore over its contents. Anyway, here's my perspective in the dark days of winter longing for spring...

In the depths of winter, you can often overhear people longing for lighter evenings and warmer days; at the bedside of a loved one, we ache for things for be different; in the tents outside St Paul’s, there’s a call for a better world; on the streets of Syria’s cities, the cry for freedom and justice grows louder despite the tank shells and bullets.

Everywhere, it seems, there is the ache for a new world. We hear it in the parents raising money for their child to receive experimental life-saving treatment only available at great cost in a far-away place. We hear it in the worker whose pay packet will not stretch to cover all the bills this month. We hear it in the middle-aged whose lives are cut short by an unexpected illness or accident. We hear it in the child drinking dirty water because there’s nothing else to slake her thirst.

And we hear it in the bible.

There’s a great moment in the movie Evan Almighty where Morgan Freeman, playing God, takes the hapless Evan, a weatherman, to show him what the Californian valley he lives in looked like when God first created it. It convinces Evan that the Freeman character really is God but leaves him perplexed. ‘Why me?’ he asks. ‘Because you want to change the world,’ God replies, ‘and so do I’

Martin Luther King expresses the same urge this way: ‘We are deeply in need of a new way beyond the darkness that seems so close around us. We must be prepared to match actions with words by seeking out every creative method of protest possible. Every man of humane convictions must decide on the protest that best suits his convictions, but we must all protest.’

In Isaiah 65, the prophet gives voice to God’s dream: ‘“See, I will create new heavens and a new earth. The former things will not be remembered, nor will they come to mind…Never again will there be in it an infant who lives but a few days, or an old person who does not live out their years; the one who dies at a hundred will be thought a mere child; the one who fails to reacha hundred will be considered accursed. They will build houses and dwell in them; they will plant vineyards and eat their fruit. No longer will they build houses and others live in them, or plant and others eat…My chosen ones will long enjoy the work of their hands. They will not labour in vain, nor will they bear children doomed to misfortune. [Isaiah 65:17-25].

It’s a wonderful vision of people at peace, families enjoying the fruit of their labour, ill health banished, hunger a memory. It’s a dream that appears in the New Testament as well. Many of its themes are taken up in the final chapters of Revelation. But the sentiment echoes through Romans 8 where Paul sees the journey to glory and new creation passing through a vale of tears and sorrow.

We ache for a new world, says the apostle, because we’ve tasted it through our faith in Jesus. The Holy Spirit, that messenger of the world to come, has taken up residence in our lives and now sings the song of that new world even as we struggle with this one. It is the Spirit’s song that fills our hearts with the hope that what we ache for will become a reality in God’s good time.

And so, we don’t only ache for the new world; we actively work for it now. We add our voice to the cries for freedom and justice echoing round the world. we feed the hungry and house the homeless, care for the young and elderly, create meaningful and fulfilling work for all people to enjoy because these things are foretaste of the new world God is dreaming.

All our Good works – those things that God has prepared beforehand for us to walk in (Ephesians 2:10) – point to what God is doing in the shadows, what he has unleashed through the cross, resurrection and enthronement of his King, Jesus, and the pouring of his Spirit on the church. We become his partners in redemption through our lives lived in accordance with the values we see in Jesus.

The trouble is that often we don’t look to see what God is doing. We see only the brokenness and despair around us that sometimes takes hold of our spirits and persuades us that life will always be like this until it stops. And the trouble is that because we’re not sure what we should be doing or that our good works could really make a difference, we sit on our hands and do nothing.

But God is in the ache we feel for a new world. And however much we can’t see how it will come about, deep down we know that the God who met us Jesus Christ, forgave and made us new, will bring that new world into being. Deep down we know that one day we will be whole, living in a renewed creation of heart-stopping and wonderful beauty. God has said it will be so and, even in our darkest moments, we can’t but believe him. And it is that tiny mustard seed of faith that gives us the strength we need to press on.

So, spring is coming, the evenings are getting lighter, the mornings warmer, the sap is rising and God’s Kingdom bursts out in unlikely ways pointing us forward to the future being dreamt up in the Father heart of God. And doesn’t it fill us with hope until we’re fit to bust!

Yet more on why austerity isn't working

2012-01-20T14:23:00.000Z

Today we can add to the roll call of Damascus-road conversions (following S&P's last week). This time it is none other than Christine Lagarde of the IMF - obviously helped by her welter of economists. When she was French economics minister, she championed austerity policies, arguing that only by driving down deficits would room be made for growth to return. Such Hayekian mumbo-jumbo seems to have been cut down by the - dare I say it - Keynsian good sense of the IMF.

At the heart of the warning issued by the IMF, World Trade Organisation, World Bank, World Health Organisation and the Organisation For Economic Cooperation and Development plus a cluster of development banks from across the continents, is a simple assertion: austerity by itself doesn't work.

Faced with decelerating growth across the globe, these representatives of the nearest thing we have to an economic establishment, argue that governments need to manage deficit reduction only in a way that promotes growth and employment. They further argue that policy responses to the mounting crisis have to focus on reducing inequality through labour market reforms and the use of the tax system to encourage job creation.

Even more surprising is that they agree with the International Labour Organisation in its assertion that governments need to invest in skills training, education of young people and social safety nets to cushion labour market transitions. The elimination of inequality is essential for generating stable growth in the world's economies.

Well, let's do that then. Messers Cameron and Osbourne are always banging on about how the OECD, IMF, WTO et al are key audiences for their policies. Well, they are listening and seem to find the UK policy path somewhat wanting.

I must say that I find it gratifying that the great Keynsian institutions - IMF and World Bank - are bringing their thinking more into line with their founder. But I am much more gratified to hear the biblical echoes in all this.

There is a strong strand in scripture that talks about equality being a goal of social and economic policy (if use of that language is not too anachronistic). We see it not only Paul's argument in 2 Corinthians 8:1-15, but the whole concept of the Jubilee, which stood at the heart of Old Testament economic thinking, Jesus' announcement in Nazareth and the early church's focus on economic sharing so that no one within the community was in need.

It is interesting that Steve Keen, an Australian economics academic, has called for a jubilee as a key tool in stabilising the world's economy. You only have to look at figures out this week showing that UK debt is currently running at 400% of GDP - that is, we owe four times the nation's total output. Most of this financial sector debt; another chunk is corporate debt; quite a bit is personal debt (mortgages, credit cards and the like); and a vanishingly small proportion is government debt.Who ever owes it, the maths indicates that we will never pay it off unless we have at least another decade of austerity, zero growth, rising unemployment and plummeting living standards.

Is there any other out of this mess than considering what a debt write-off would mean, how it would work and what shape it would leave the world's financial system in? Keen acknowledges that this is not straight-forward but since every other suggestion seems to be steering us closer to the economic rocks, someone should be crunching the numbers.

Of course, the question of living standards and perpetual growth is a question the Bible has a good deal to say about as well. But that's for another day.

Reading to give ideas a fresh hearing

2012-01-18T17:37:00.000Z

Today I have finally acquired a copy of Douglas Campbell's The Deliverance of God. I have resisted until now because of the sheer size and the vast price, so when I found a pristine copy going for a comparative song at a second hand book shop this morning, I thought 'oh, go on, then...'

I am due to teach a course on Romans from the beginning of February and since Campbell's book is seeking to make an argument about Romans, I thought it would be good to have it to refer to. I have read some bits and pieces of it before (in library copies) and remain to be convinced that his central suggestion that not all of Romans 1-4 represents the thinking of Paul but rather that of a rival teacher he is seeking to correct holds any water.

It's an intimidating read - there are 300 pages of thicket clearing before he actually gets to Romans! The introduction does contain one insight that has set me thinking, however - and augurs well for the journey ahead. He argues that 'at the heart of the conventional "Lutheran" approach to these texts...are powerful commitments to individualism, to rationalism, and to consent.' He goes on to suggest that Luther's reading of Romans (and Galatians) were heavily influenced by the prevailing renaissance culture with its strong attachment to humanism and individualism.

It is of course not new to suggest that protestant and evangelical formulations of the faith are deeply indebted to modern and even enlightenment thinking. But it is new (at least, it is to me) to have a scholar arguing that the very reading of the core texts of protestant Christianity owe more to the renaissance than they do to the apostle Paul.

I am interested to see what Campbell makes of this because one of my current study interests is the whole area of the relationship between literacy and spirituality - both in the NT world (where literacy rates were very low) and in our context (where literacy rates are high but people read less and less - especially in the areas of theology and Christian spirituality).I am wondering if we need to develop a hermeneutics of the faith that is based on oral culture rather than reading, much as the one Paul operated in; wondering if evangelical renewal will come via hearing rather than reading.

And I wondering if a 1200+ page book is going to help me!

S&P springs a surprise

2012-01-14T18:48:00.000Z

So Standard & Poor has downgraded the credit rating of half the Eurozone. This is not a surprise as it was flagged up a long way before Christmas.

But there are two surprises in all this. The first is that we still pay any attention to the credit ratings agencies. After all, they managed to give triple A ratings to securitised sub-prime mortgages that caused the 2008 credit crunch and near collapse of the financial system. Their subsequent response seems to have been a giggle and cry of 'whoops'. Sadly, it seems that Obama's plans to sue the pants off them ran into the sand.

But the second surprise is that buried in S&P's statement is reference to the fact that austerity by itself will not get the Eurozone out of the crisis it is in. Well, derr...! They have been calling for austerity to reduce government deficits to maintain low real interest rates and market confidence. And now they have recognised that by itself austerity just adds to deficits and keeps economies bumping along the edge of recession. We should all rejoice at such Damascene conversions!

Perhaps we can look forward to the agencies starting to give triple A ratings only to governments that use their deficits to stimulate growth.

Keeping baptist life fresh

2012-01-14T18:23:00.000Z

For those of you interested in where the baptist movement (I've stopped calling it the baptist family because that suggests something cosier and more settled than we should be) is going, there's a new conversation beginning at beyond400.net

Over the next few weeks baptists from all the country and in all kinds of situations will be sharing their ideas about where we're going as movement as we approach and move through the four hundredth anniversary of the founding of the first baptist community in London. It ties in with the Assembly this year (also happening in London) and aims to provide a place for creative conversation to take place.

It would be good for as many baptists (and others interested in missional discipleship of all kinds) to lend their voices to this conversation as we face challenging times and enormous opportunity to continue to embody the values of Jesus in our communities and ministries across this land.

Would St Paul the Tentmaker have camped with Occupy?

2012-01-05T17:58:00.000Z

As promised, here's the full version of my presentation at the Bank of Ideas this afternoon. We had an excellent time with some lively and imaginative thinkers who were keen to explore whether Paul the tent maker had any wisdom to share relating to changing the world. None of them were church-goers but all found Paul more interesting than they were expecting!

Anyway, here's what I said:

If St Paul walked into the building in the churchyard that bears his name, he’d struggle to make the connection between it and the movement he belonged to. So maybe he’d make a tent and pitch it alongside the others outside the Cathedral and pondered the paradox.

Paul was a craftworker who lived by making tents, shop awnings and other canvas and leather goods. He was never a religious professional; if he didn’t make and sell his goods, he didn’t eat and couldn’t pay his rent.

He lived like other craftworkers in the empire in a rented workshop, sleeping on a mezzanine floor above his bench, tools and canvas or in a room behind his workspace. He bought his food at a street café – a popina – if he’d made a sale and shared it with fellow craftworkers as they talked about Jesus and how they might embody his values in their lives.

Paul lived in a world where an elite 1-3% owned pretty much everything, called the shots and lived lives of hitherto unknown luxury. The other 97-99% got by as best they could. A few earned enough to enjoy a modest surplus – maybe a week’s cushion, a month’s in boom times; most scraped by a day at a time – if they got work today, they ate and kept the landlord happy til tomorrow.

So everything Paul says about money, he says against this background – a context that has a curiously modern ring to it.

Paul also joined a movement that already had some firm views about how the economy ought to be organised – certainly the economy over which they had a measure of control, namely their own churches. There were two abiding principles that seem to have been at work among those early followers of Jesus – mutualism and equality (the former arising from the latter).

In the opening scene of his story of the Jesus community in Acts, Luke twice tells us that the believers had everything in common and distributed to those who were in need (2:44f; 4:32, 34f). This form of social organisation is sometimes called 'love communalism', a community of shared or pooled resources motivated by love between its members. It is mutualism in practice, ‘the implicit or explicit belief that individual and collective well-being is attainable above all by mutual interdependence’ (as Justin Meggitt puts it)

Some scholars suggest that this was a social experiment that failed. Their argument hinges on the fact that when famine came to the region in the mid-40s, the Jerusalem and Judean believers did not have the resources to cope and were therefore dependent on support from elsewhere.

But such a view completely misunderstands the precarious nature of life in the first century. Few people had the resources to be able to cope with food shortages – the result of the prices of staple foods going up beyond their reach – let alone famines. The majority of Jesus followers were middling to poor people who lived at or just a little above subsistence and who were vulnerable to economic downturns.

It also fails to grasp the consistent teaching of the Bible, taken up and reinforced by Jesus and sitting at the heart of the movement that bears his name.

Economic justice, in the form of frequent acts of redistribution to ensure equality among his people – was at the heart of God’s agenda for his people from the earliest days on.

The Sabbath cycle ensured that the poor were not neglected. Every harvest was to be taken in such a way that the crops at the edge of the fields were to be left for the poor to glean. Every seven years, the land was to be left fallow, allowing anything that grew on them to be picked by those without fields to work (Exodus 23:10-11; Leviticus 25:2-7). On top of that, slaves were to be released (Exodus 23:10-11; Deuteronomy 15:12-18). And debts were to be cancelled (Deuteronomy 15:1-6). God’s idea seems to have been that no one, regardless of whether they’d brought it on themselves or not, was to be left in unsustainable debt and everlasting slavery. Grace was built into the economy.

Then every 50 years, everything was to return to how it was when the people entered the land. All the families would return to their portion of Israel. It was a reminder to the nation that the land belonged to God and they only worked it as tenants or stewards, managing it for their landlord, God (Leviticus 25:10-16).

The prophets emphasised the importance of the jubilee in the future God plans for his people (Isaiah 58, 61; Ezekiel 45:7-9; 46:16-18). At the heart of the prophetic critique of the people’s life was the fact that they had neglected justice in the land. For example, Ezekiel 16:48-50 likens Judah to Sodom, a city marked by greed and neglect of the poor; and Isaiah calls the leaders of Judah ‘Sodom’ (1:10) because they have neglected justice (1:17; 3:13-15 and especially 5:1-7).

Much of Jesus’ teaching about money and life in the Kingdom of God is rooted in the jubilee notions of release and restoration – especially his first sermon at Nazareth and the model prayer he taught his disciples with the line ‘forgive us our debts as we have already forgiven our debtors’.

Paul absorbed these radical economic values and they became the bedrock of his understanding of how the Christian community should work. And while he outlines how the principles of mutuality and equality should work within the Christian community, he does so because he believes this to be God’s blueprint for human society everywhere.

It’s interesting that Steve Keen, professor of economics and finance at the university of Western Sydney, has suggested total debt cancellation as a way of getting the global economy out of the mess it’s been pitched into by an over-reliance on debt-financing of everything! He argues that a debt jubilee is politically improbable because it would cause the failure of many banks. But the alternative is a decade of economic stagnation with the poor picking up the tab for the rich world over-dosing on debt.

I can see Paul nodding in the door of his tent…

When Paul talks about the mutualism of the small churches he wrote to, he has in mind the release from oppression at the heart of Old Testament jubilee ideas. In Galatians 2:10, 5:13-14 and 6:7-10 he outlines an ethic based on mutual sharing and seeking the good of others – especially those in the household of faith. In Philippians 2:1-4 he argues that we should seek one another’s interests rather than our own, since through Jesus we have been freed from sin and competition and he offers his own life as an example of being content with our economic circumstances because God will provide all that we need to live in the context of thanking them for sharing economically with him while he was in need (4:10-20).

And in 2 Corinthians 8:1-15 we have an outline of the heart of his thinking about money and mutualism that is based on the key jubilee principles of release and restoration. By the grace of God, the Macedonians have been released from the prevailing greed of the culture, freed to share their surplus with those in need, so that they in turn might have a measure of prosperity restored to them.

And at the heart of this vision is equality. Mutualism – which aims for those in surplus to share with those in need – is based on a fundamental principle that there should be equality between people. He says:

¹³Our desire is not that others might be relieved while you are hard pressed, but that there might be equality. ¹⁴At the present time your plenty will supply what they need, so that in turn their plenty will supply what you need. The goal is equality, ¹⁵as it is written: “The one who gathered much did not have too much, and the one who gathered little did not have too little.” (Ex 16:18)

For Paul the simple principle that everyone should have what they need and share what is left over with those who are in need determines our economic relationships. He was gathering support for believers in Judea because they were hammered by hunger and a crashing economy.

His model is that everyone should work to have something to share. So when he writes to a small group of believers in Thessalonica, he urges them to work with their hands rather than be dependent on hand-outs from wealthy patrons, so that they will have something to share. Indeed, his aim appears to be that everyone would want to be a benefactor, using their surplus for the good of those who were in need around them.

Paul’s economics are probably not directly transferable from his world to ours. But his was a world where government was weak and a wealthy minority called the shots; his was a world where the have-nots were hung out to dry by those who amassed wealth for themselves; and his was a world where the poor were squeezed by rising prices, high taxes and a lack of opportunity.

So perhaps his economic principles of mutualism and equality have something to say to our world. Perhaps he’d have spoken about this as he sat outside his tent in Paternoster Square.

Comments very welcome...

Would Paul join Occupy?

2012-01-03T10:18:00.000Z

I am doing a gig with Juliet and Rob at the Bank of Ideas on Thursday at 1pm. Details here.

I'll be reflecting on what we can learn from Paul's ideas of equality and mutuality. He was keen to 'remember the poor' (Galatians 2:10), seen particularly in his raising a redistributive collection among his churches for the hard-pressed Judean believers.

If you work in the City, please come along, bring your lunch and join in the debate; if you know people who do, invite them along. It'd be good to have an audience!

I'll post what I say after the event.

Keeping the rumour of God alive

2012-01-03T08:03:00.000Z

Peter Oborne has a timely and wide-ranging piece in the Telegraph (here), charting a rise in church attendance in recent months.He suggests 'Their Christian values stand at an angle to the brash, thrill-seeking, instant consumer culture that has become dominant in Britain over the last half-century.' I hope so.

Oborne tells stories of churches attracting large numbers in the capital but admits that the picture elsewhere in the country is less buoyant. For me the most encouraging part of his story is that there is some evidence that locally rooted churches are seeing an increase in numbers as people seek something more than shopping as a source of purpose and values in life.

He argues that one reason why London might be bucking the trend is that there are fewer churches sharing ministers, so a minister or ministry team is able to focus on a single gathered community, able to create a welcoming and stimulating environment for people of all kinds. There could be something in this.

He acknowledges that a little upturn in numbers over recent months does not assuage the haemorrhage of people the church has suffered over the past generation. He cites the statistics, well known from Peter Brierley and Callum Brown, that show the scale of the collapse in church attendance since the 60s.

But it is encouraging that in the midst of austerity and consumerism the rumour of God is being kept alive and is drawing people who are seeking something deeper. And that something is not just a desire for a 'spiritual hour' on a Sunday morning. One and a half million people are engaged in volunteering activity through their local church; this is an army of people seeking to model different values in our me-first culture - and that has to be good thing.

Hearing the Smiths again for the first time

2011-12-29T15:01:00.000Z

My beloved bought me the Smiths box set for Christmas, consisting of the four studio albums, the only live album and three compilations from the 1980s, all beautifully packaged in vinyl replica album slip cases. And it's a revelation.

Now I am a smiths fan. I have a good deal of their output - some of it on vinyl from its original released date. But listening to this is like hearing the band for the first time. Each album has been lovingly remastered by Johnny Marr. And I guess, they each sound as the band had intended they would.

We fans are used to listening to the muddy analogue recordings that were released during the band's all-too brief career (the studio albums were released between February 1984 and September 1987). They sounded great and yet... Listening to properly remastered versions of these great songs (and there have been a number of ghastly remastered collections over the past decade or so) reveals so much that was unheard on the original pressings.

The first album always sounded as if it had been recorded at the bottom of a fish tank. Now, although it is still very much a work in progress, a band finding their feet as writers and recorders, it glistens with flourishes of Hammond organ and rolling bass lines previously unheard. And the songs shine as a result - Still Ill, This Charming Man and and in Glove were already classics; now Reel around the Fountain, Miserable Lie and Suffer the Children take their place alongside them. Indeed all 11 tracks clamour for attention in a way they never used to.

But it's The Queen is Dead that is the biggest surprise here. The sound on the new version is spacious and deep allowing the songs to take on a new life, providing the proper sonic backdrop to what I think is Morrissey's best set of lyrics.

Meat is Murder is still a bit of a disappointment - but I never really rated it their best (unlike a lot of critics) - the sound is crisper but some of the tunes are still limp and the title track is as preposterous now as it was then. Morrissey should stick to what he knows best - yearning love songs and wry observations on the lure and emptiness of celebrity. Still, The Headmaster Ritual, Rusholme Ruffians and That Joke isn't Funny anymore are still crackers.

If you got vouchers or cash for Christmas, do yourself a favour and get this; it's £30 really well spent.

the 2011 festive fifteen

2011-12-23T19:26:00.001Z

Well, it’s high time for my festive fifteen, the stand-out albums of the year fast slipping away. One record secured its place in the top spot early in the year and, as expected, nothing has dislodged it. But other artists have produced music of outstanding quality this year. So before we get to the top of the spot, here’s ten of the best in no particular order.

Early in the year, Radiohead surprised with a download only release of startling quality. King of Limbs has since made it to all formats and is a joy (if you can use that term of a Radiohead album), full of great tunes and packing an emotional punch.

American Justin McRoberts has been putting out a multi-EP collection called CMY, of which C and M have emerged. Thoughtful lyrics swinging from robust and beautifully played tunes make these collections worth repeated listenings. There’s also great digital booklets available for each on the artist’s website (here).

Another find from the States are Civil Wars, a sublime country-tinged duo with amazing voices and guitar led tunes that are to die for. They’ve justifiably won some awards this year; they are destined for great things.

The ever reliable and permanently touring (though I can’t get him to the UK!), Bill Mallonnee released a new proper studio album – after a string of works in progress. The Power and the Glory is majestic and muscular, full of wry observations set to electric guitar heavy music and is quite lovely.

Ron Sexsmith, after years of working away in the shadow of lesser song writers, emerged with a mature collection of finely crafted tunes, Long Player Late Bloomer.

Still in the States, the Decemberists followed their epic The Hazards of Love, with an altogether lighter and at first blush rather ordinary record, The King is Dead. Repeated listens, however, reveal it to be a work of great depth with infectiously catchy tunes.

From our side of the pond, Elbow turned out another classic full of songs of aching beauty and wry observation from a writer hitting the heights of his powers. Build a Rocket Boys is full of reflections on growing up, of losing and finding love, of lessons learned along the way that barely misses a beat.

Fold produced an EP with proceeds going to the tax justice campaign. As if that wasn’t reason for buying it, the fact that it’s full of samples of great speeches over a fine electronic wash that provoke thought and conversation certainly is.

This year saw the passing of REM. Athens, Georgia’s finest called it a day seemingly at the height of their powers. Collapse into Now, the last studio record, is full of great tunes and Michael Stipe’s voice sounding wonderful. Then they top it with a career retrospective of 37 of their best songs and three new ones that show they’ve lost none of their magic. If you only buy one REM record, make it Part lies, part heart, part truth, part garbage1982-2011.

And fast becoming a favourite is Bon Iver’s second, self-titled work. I found his first record a trifle twee and annoying with its half-finished songs and chilly arrangements. This more than makes up for it, demonstrating that Justin Vernon is a fine song writer, not afraid to push the boat out on arrangements that range from folk to jazz, gospel to ambient which all fit snugly together in a hugely enjoyable 40 minutes.

And now to the top five.

Find of the year is split between two American Christian-hued artists, Josh Garrels and the Afterlife Parade. Both show a lyrical maturity and questing, evening questioning and imaginative faith that so rare in Christian music. Garrels is giving his album away at Noisetrade but don’t let that put you off. Afterlife Parade’s two EPs meditating on death and life are sonically and lyrically a treat. The stand out track is Simple off the death EP, a song that captures the longing of the human heart for connection with God like nothing I’ve heard before.

The other new band that I got to see live this year at a gig in St Giles in the Fields church in November is the wonderful Other Lives. Think Fleet Foxes with depth and attitude (and I like Fleet Foxes – Helplessness Blues almost made the cut). Each song on Tamer Animals is musical adventure with the five members of the band playing a cornucopia of instruments to create little pop symphonies. It’s fabulous.

Paul Simon released his best album since… well, maybe his best album ever. With songs reflecting on life well lived and awash with the possibility of God, So Beautiful or so What would have been the hands-down best album of the year, but… It’s full of wonderful turns of phrase and is incredibly funky.

But album of the year is P J Harvey’s Let England Shake. This is an indescribably beautiful and heart-breaking record. It is also fiercely intelligent and serious. It’s a suite of songs that reflect on how England, a land Polly Jean loves with a passion, has been shaped by war and conflict. She takes words from world war one veterans – especially the Dardanelles campaign – and weaves them with brief, episodic reflections on the shape of English character. It is an album as deep as an ocean, at turns desperately sad and wryly funny, played with panache and skill by a tight circle of musicians. It’s been described as her masterpiece, won the Mercury prize and is, quite simply the best record of the year bar none.

The weakness of black box Christianity

2011-12-18T08:26:00.000Z

Two cheers for David Cameron. It is a bold politician who speaks of the centrality of the Christian faith in our culture and calls for Christians to be bold advocates of it. I am grateful to him for the debate it has provoked.

His sharpest insight, as far as I was concerned, was this: 'the tolerance that Christianity demands of our society provides greater space for other religious faiths too'. This is an argument that Vinoth Ramachandra makes about the Christian faith in a world of faiths and is well made.

The problem with the speech, though, is a problem that has beset politicians of all hues for a generation. It is the tendency to treat Christianity as a sort of black box of cultural and moral values. It is as if the nation has crash landed in some moral wilderness and rescuers searching for survivors have come across the black box flight recorder that tells us that prior to the crash we were heading one way, according to one compass setting of rules or values, then we suddenly changed course and hit a mountainside.

It is very appealing to a lot of traditional and conservative Christians (with both a small and a big 'C'). But I think Cameron's comments that he was a 'committed' but 'only vaguely practising' Christian and that he was 'full of doubts' about big theological questions betrays the problem here. The Christian faith is not a black box that can be consulted when we need a bit of moral guidance.

It is first and foremost a call to discipleship, a call to follow Jesus, to embody his way of living in communities of like-minded disciples. Yes, Christian values are good and should be given a hearing in the public square; they speak to the human condition in a way that other systems do not. But to be Christian is follow Christ, to be caught up in the adventure of discovering who we are in him and to embody his revolution in our lives and communities. This is a radical call to remember the poor, to live for justice, to welcome the stranger and signpost the coming of his Kingdom of peace and equity.

So, let's hope David Cameron has begun a conversation. Let's join him in it and sees where it leads us.

Sniffing out influence

2011-12-10T19:37:00.000Z

I've been chuckling today because I have appeared on the dessert menu or coffee course of a list of influential baptists. You can check it out here at Neil Brighton's blog (I don't appear until the comments kick in!). It's a good list - the dinner one, that is. But I share Paul Lavender's concern and would want to ask a broader question.

What do we mean by influence and where is that influence best felt? To be fair, Neil's post has come out of conversations about where the Baptist family in England (particularly) is going. We face times of austerity like everyone else and have to make choices about the use of resources. We also face declining numbers - not everywhere, but overall. There are also exciting things happening but these tend to be on the margins, in places where the centre of Baptist life isn't really looking. And they tend to be happenings that defy easy definition and corralling into tidy pigeon holes.

As a movement, we have tended to struggle with pioneers. How do we train them, how do we resource them and how do we give them time to explore and find new maps for our mission? Our current list of ministerial competencies doesn't seem to have much space for anything that doesn't look like church as we've done it for the past century. That clearly won't help us chart a way to mission for the current situation we face, let alone the future.

Our current models are all resource intensive - costly buildings, costly ministers, costly initiatives to attract people, costly technical specs for our outreach. Now, I am one of those costs - a minister who gets paid for it in a church that spends a small third world country's debt on our buildings. But I see the writing on the wall for us and all like us and we have got to find better, more organic ways of engaging with people in our communities; a way that puts the Kingdom before the empire (our empire that is).

So I have a feeling that influence is something that is going to emerge at the margins, probably from those margins that we're not paying any attention to. I have a feeling that what emerges that will be influential will, in the first instance, be very difficult to see or understand. The move of the Spirit and the emergence of the Kingdom tend to be somewhat shadowy and hard to pin down at first. They certainly do not lend themselves to easy measurement or categorisation. A bit like Jesus, really.

So, if I was going to name influential baptists, I'd begin with Peter Dominey and Ivan King and church from scratch precisely because it is so difficult to get a handle on what it is and yet it has the reek of authenticity, the aroma of the Kingdom. That'd be a good place to go an sniff.

Advent and the coming of the Kingdom

2011-12-04T09:06:00.000Z

We had a great time on Wednesday. All our girls - daughters and grand-daughters - were with us and we went off into London to visit two sites - the Occupy London Stock Exchange camp at St Paul's and the Christmas market on the South Bank.

I was hugely impressed with the Occupy LSX site. It's well organised, clean and very friendly. We spent some time at the tent university, chatting about the revised general assembly's economics working statement with a couple of the people who hold things together there.

I was invited to come and do a session on New Testament economics, something I hope to do in the New Year. There was an openness to fresh thinking and debate about ideas that was really refreshing. Here is a group of people looking for a new world. I was reminded of the context into which Jesus came - a world of injustice, dominated by a powerful one per cent, a world at war, a world where the poor are disenfranchised and struggle to make ends meet (sound familiar?).

It seems to me that during Advent we should be asking questions about where our world is going and how it is going to be renewed. Some have pitted the Occupy LSX group with the church on whose doorstep it is camped. But this is a huge mistake.

As I chatted with occupiers, I was reminded of the encounter Jesus had with a teacher of the Law about what really mattered (which is the greatest commandment). The encounter ends with Jesus saying to the man that he's not far from the Kingdom of God (Mark 12:28-34).

What strikes me about this conversation is the sense of the Kingdom's porous borders, of the fact that the Kingdom is looking to sweep into its embrace all who are looking for a new world. I am also struck by the fact that Jesus is open to insights from those who are apparently his enemies or at least those who are challenging his right to interpret the way things are. The teacher of the Law says that love of neighbour is more important than religious rectitude and Jesus says 'you're not far from the Kingdom.' I suspect he would say the same thing to the mixed and energetic group camped around the steps of St Paul's.

At advent we listen for the voice of the Kingdom - wherever it comes from.

Beginning with Advent

2011-11-27T08:44:00.000Z

Today is advent Sunday. So I'd like to wish a happy new year to all my readers.

Advent is the beginning of the Christian year year because it's the time when we get ready for the coming of Jesus, bringer of the Kingdom of God

There's a great post on a blog I hadn't come across before but will be checking out now. You can find it here. It's by an American writer and reflects on whose calendar we live our lives by - Caesar's or God's? The Christian calendar reminds us that we live our lives by a different story, the story of the coming of our king, his crucifixion and call to live our ordinary time as his disciples rather than as followers of some other value system.

I have often pondered shifting our church year from the three-term academic treadmill we currently follow to the ebb and flow of Christian year, beginning today with a period of reflection and preparation before the celebrations of Christmas, proclaiming through our programme the Lord whose values shape our lives.

Advent gives shape to the longing for change we see all around us at the moment - in the occupy movement, in the conversations with people talking about their daily struggles, in the dreaming of young people for a life that matters. Advent is the time when we reflect on what life is about and how God has promised to come and deliver us from the sins and chains that prevent us from experiencing lives of justice and hope.

Advent reminds us that God has heard and seen, that he is responding to the cries of his people by sending a saviour, a redeemer, a liberator, one who will fulfil the great prophetic hope that God will come to set things right. Advent reminds us that there is an alternative that flows from the heart of our creating, coming God.

And for Christians, advent gives shape to the story we live by, a story dreamed in the heart of God and told in a baby in Bethlehem; a story embodied and articulated in the life and teaching of Jesus; a story realised through the cross that breaks the power of injustice and inequity and in the resurrection that announces new creation starts here: see, says your God, I am making all things new.

As we mark advent, we are preparing ourselves to be part of that game-changing story. What a great to start the year.

Other Lives soars to other places

2011-11-23T08:07:00.000Z

On Monday night we went to see Other Lives at St Giles in the Fields. It was one of the best gigs I've been to for ages.

Other Lives are one of this year's most exciting break-through band (check them out here). They've been around a while but new album, Tamer Animals, is a step up from everything that preceded it. It's a wonderful collection.

Live the band are tight and slightly ramshackle; everyone plays a variety of instruments, sometimes many in the course of a single song, diving between keys, brass, autoharp, cello, tom toms, pump organ, guitars and violins. Even the drummer was seen playing a clarinet while keeping the rhythm at one point.

But Monday evening was not just a display of dexterous virtuosity, it was also an emotional roller-coaster ride. Other Lives produce music of romantic and epic sweep. I don't if it was the venue - St Giles is a beautifully appointed seventeenth century church - but the gig felt like something more than just a concert (though doesn't great music always create that potential?). Things came to a head with a cover version of Leonard Cohen's epic cri de coeur the Partisan, played with a fragile energy that really suited singer Jesse Tabish's voice. As he sang 'Oh, the wind, the wind is blowing, through the graves the wind is blowing, freedom soon will come; then we'll come from the shadows' and I thought about the news from Egypt and Occupy London, I found myself in tears.

Great songs articulate feelings too deep for conversation. I was in Romans 8 territory, the Spirit of God urging the birth of a new world of peace and justice, finding words for our longing for change. I don't what my fellow gig goers were feeling...!

This was a great gig in a truly wonderful venue. I hope St Giles will continue to develop as a place where good music is put on for medium-sized and appreciative audiences.

Bursting at the seams at Messy Church

2011-11-20T16:25:00.000Z

We had a wonderful messy church today. It was our third birthday, so we threw a party and nearly a hundred people turned up. This is the most we've had and is probably the most the hall can hold. There was a great party atmosphere, lots of good conversations and the sense that we were really connecting with a number of families for whom this is their only church.

Afterwards one mum who's not been coming for long, came and told us that it had been wonderful and that church should always be like this.

Then we had a good messy talk, using some DVD material from the Ugly Duckling company that seemed to work pretty well.

I think I'm learning through messy church that it is possible to do serious things in an all-age context and that we shouldn't be afraid to mix activities aimed at children and conversation between adults (which is what happens at a regular children's party, after all).

It bodes well for our continued thinking about neighbourhood groups and refocusing church on smaller units built around families.

I also discovered some blindingly good new music yesterday. it's by a band called afterlife parade, the brain child of singer-songwriter Quinn Erwin. They've released two EPs this year called respectively death and rebirth ans they are both really beautiful. The song, simple on the Death EP is one of the best songs I've heard all year. Both EPs are a collection of thoughtful, faith-questing songs. You can check them out here and download both EPs for under a tenner. That's got to be good.

Getting to grips with holiness

2011-11-18T15:57:00.001Z

Giles Fraser is at his mouth-watering best in today's Guardian, reflecting on where the church should be and whether we've understood holiness properly.

It reminded me why it matters what we think and say about Jesus. I have been putting the finishing touches to a session on Christology for Spurgeon's next week which has been a little like herding cats with material refusing to fit neatly in my pre-planned scheme. Ah well.

But Fraser's piece brought to mind some words of Richard Bauckham that I will be sharing with my students. Reflecting on Philippians 2:5-11, he says: 'the passage amounts to a Christological statement of the identity of God. The exaltation of Christ to participation in the unique divine sovereignty shows him to be included in the unique divine identity. But since the exalted Christ is first the humiliated Christ, since indeed it is because of his self-abnegation that he is exalted, his humiliation belongs to the identity of God as truly as his exaltation does…The God who is high can also be low, because God is God not in seeking his own advantage but in self-giving.'

The question is what does the self-abasement and cross of Christ tell us about God? The answer is eloquently given by Bauckham. But it begs another question what does it mean for us to have the same mind that was in Christ Jesus? The very question Paul asks as the introduction to this amazing portrait of our servant God.

And it seems to me that Giles Fraser has put in finger on where an answer begins.

Sorting out who we are devoted to

2011-11-16T14:22:00.000Z

Sometimes something in a scholarly article that is otherwise dealing with rather arcane points of ancient history or Christian theology, leaps off the page and socks you between the eyes. It's a reminder that there is a close and vital link between academic study and Christian living.

I'm preparing a class on Christology, basing most of my reflections on the work of Richard Bauckham and Larry Hurtado who argue for a Christology of divine identity, derived from second temple Judaism. It's good stuff that helpfully moves beyond the rather arid discussion of ontological categories.

Towards the end of a review paper, where Larry Hurtado has assessed the impact that devotion to Jesus made on the first Christians and the surrounding society, he asserts 'In an understandable but probably misguided effort to make Christian faith as undemanding as possible, have churches by and large ill-prepared believers for anything in the nature of serious opposition, criticism, or worse? More positively, has the banal simulacrum that passes for Christian faith too widely today anything of the fervour and passion of the Jesus-devotion that empowered early believers to live, think, work, and even die for Jesus?'

And as we ministers are still smarting from that he adds: 'How well does the comfortable and low-demand Western Christianity of today (whether of ‘liberal’ or ‘Evangelical’ stripe) equip believers to engage their own social setting and political circumstances meaningfully and positively?'

Who says NT scholarship lives in an ivory tower, divorced from the reality of issues facing followers of Jesus today? Hurtado's observation that the power of the early church to leave a mark on its culture came from its devotion to Jesus. In a world of gods, the early Christians proclaimed that Jesus was the one through whom God had decisively acted, so God had shown him to be worthy of worship. And that devotion spilled over in their daily social, working and political lives. If Jesus is Lord, then no one else is. Such a profession cost many of these committed their livelihoods and even their lives. But from very early on, such a profession turned the world upside down (Acts 17:6).

If we want to do the same in our day, then maybe we need to sort out who we are really devoted to.

RIP REM

2011-11-16T11:33:00.000Z

I was away when REM announced they were calling it a day. In homage to one of the world's greatest ever rock bands, I downloaded their end of career retrospective yesterday. Part Lies, Part Heart, Part Truth, Part Garbage 1982 to 2011 is a collection of 37 previously released tracks and three new ones. And they are all blinders!

Some critics suggest that REM went off the boil after Automatic for the People but I rate this year's Collapse into Now as one of the best records they ever made. It seems they quit at the top of their game. These 40 songs remind us what a potent force they were, Peter Buck's guitar the perfect foil for Michael Stipe's sometimes fragile, sometimes gritty vocals.

Listening to this retrospective makes me grateful for all the music and sad that they'll not do another album.

Showing there is an alternative - while we work out what it is

2011-11-16T10:00:00.001Z

The great John Gray weighed into the debate over the future of our current form of capitalism in yesterday's guardian. The former LSE professor and author of False Dawn, among a slew of other prescient works, suggests that the protesters outside St Paul's Cathedral - and camped in other cities across the globe - are engaging with reality somewhat more effectively than our political leaders who remain in thrall to 'a defunct market utopia'.

It's hard to disagree. He points out that the calamity facing the Eurozone - with French bond yields now twice those of Germany and edging closer to the danger zone - is mainly because political leaders have no idea what to do. Unlike previous global crises of the same magnitude - and there haven't been that many - there is no global institution with sufficient cash and clout to sort out the mess - by knocking heads together if necessary.

Some people suggest, of course, that the markets over which governments have no control, are the ultimate expression of democracy, millions of individual investors exercising their choices through buy and sell orders. This is self-serving rot trotted out by brokers and politicians in thrall to their every whim.I might have a pension with a provider who bundles lots of pensions together and buys and sells on world financial markets, but I have no effective say in those buying and selling decisions. All I can do is vote for governments whose sovereignty is severely compromised by the operation of the markets. Every time I hear the Chancellor say that our economic policies are keeping the markets happy, I know that the UK's austerity workout is dictated by people I am not offered a chance to elect.

Gray argues that Europe's elites 'have yet to face the fact that radical change is unavoidable'. This is because they remain in thrall to a busted market utopia. The question is what kind of radical change is needed? And I come back to what I talked about last week - that at root this is a moral not an economic crisis. Gordon Gecko said greed is good in the film Wall Street but Paul points out that greed is idolatry and idolatry always brings calamity on its practitioners. So the radical change needed? Groups of Jesus followers taking him at his word and showing by their actions that it is possible to live in a way where our actions are not driven by greed but by generosity, not by hubris but humility. If as followers of Jesus we can learn to be content and live out of that contentment, we might show our neighbours that there is an alternative.

Gallows humour and searching questions

2011-11-10T08:22:00.000Z

Economist Paul Krugman shows the lighter side of the dull science in his ditty:
This is the way the euro ends.
This is the way the euro ends.
This is the way the euro ends.
Not with a bang but with bunga-bunga.

Gallows humour is essential in a time of crisis. The Nobel Price winning economist puts his finger (maybe unwittingly) on something important - that in the midst of all the necessary focus on numbers, there is a serious moral dimension to this crisis.

There is a tiny group of people around the world who have seen their wealth rise exponentially during the last decade - even while economies have been crashing and burning. In some ways Italian PM Silvio Berlusconi, media mogul, billionaire, playboy, party-thrower, is a symbol and symptom of a moral failure at the heart of the financial catastrophe.

When I read about him, I think about the prophet Micah describing the glitterati of his day in these words - brought vividly to life in the Message translation (6:10-16):

"Do you expect me to overlook obscene wealth
   you've piled up by cheating and fraud?
Do you think I'll tolerate shady deals
   and shifty scheming?
I'm tired of the violent rich
   bullying their way with bluffs and lies.
I'm fed up. Beginning now, you're finished.
   You'll pay for your sins down to your last cent.
No matter how much you get, it will never be enough—
   hollow stomachs, empty hearts.
No matter how hard you work, you'll have nothing to show for it—
   bankrupt lives, wasted souls.
You'll plant grass
   but never get a lawn.
You'll make jelly
   but never spread it on your bread.
You'll press apples
   but never drink the cider.
You have lived by the standards of your king, Omri,
   the decadent lifestyle of the family of Ahab.
Because you've slavishly followed their fashions,
   I'm forcing you into bankruptcy.
Your way of life will be laughed at, a tasteless joke.
   Your lives will be derided as futile and fake."

Berlusconi is a joke and yet he's the epitome of the lifestyle our culture lauds and apes. And we will all pay the price of his folly and the folly of the one per cent of the world who live like him. But the joke could also be on us who have lived by the mantra 'there by the grace of the market, it could have been me...'

But Micah tells us how we should live:

[God's] already made it plain how to live, what to do,
   what God is looking for in men and women.
It's quite simple: Do what is fair and just to your neighbour,
   be compassionate and loyal in your love,
And don't take yourself too seriously—
   take God seriously.

And he goes on to remind us 'Attention! God calls out to the city! If you know what's good for you, you'll listen. So listen, all of you! This is serious business.'

I think the market makers know how serious this is - with bond yields for Italy above a crisis level 7% and stock markets falling. But I wonder if we do. Do we believe there is a technical fix that means we can return to business as usual? Or do we need to ask more searching questions about the kind of economy, the kind of politics we need to ensure justice and equity for all the world's citizens?

For all its incoherence, the Occupy movement suggests that there are growing numbers of ordinary people from all walks of life who are beginning to ask for a better way. Where are the leaders rising to this challenge, harnessing this energy, articulating this cry for change?

The sound of protest

2011-11-04T12:55:00.000Z

I've been listening to some great new music this week from an outfit called Fold. You can check them out and pay whatever you like to download their output here and here. What's more, when you buy their music, some of your money will distributed to organisations working for greater justice in our society.

One of the tracks - We must speak - puts these prophetic words of Martin Luther King over a wash of beats and vocals:

'I speak as a citizen of the world, for the world as it stands aghast at the path we have taken. A time comes when silence is betrayal. The truth of these words is beyond doubt, but the mission to which they call us is a most difficult one. Some of us who have already begun to break the silence of the night have found that the calling to speak is often a vocation of agony, but we must speak. We are called to speak for the weak, for the voiceless, for the victims of our nation, for those that call us enemy. For no document from human hands can make these humans any less our brothers. We are deeply in need of a new way beyond the darkness that seems so close around us. We must be prepared to match actions with words by seeking out every creative method of protest possible. Every man of humane convictions must decide on the protest that best suits his convictions, but we must all protest.'

It's that last sentence that has been niggling at me since I first heard it on Tuesday. And it is those words that came to mind when read these two great stories about different kinds of protesters - one at St Paul's and one in the States

Questions about church (again...)

2011-11-04T09:32:00.000Z

There's an interesting post over on Mike Bird's blog (euanggelion) about the church. It's called 'In praise of the visible church' and suggests that people who question institutional Christianity are engaging in 'a ridiculous cop-out'.

But I find myself confused over what it is that Mike is defending here because one of his favourite quotes on the church is from Rick Warren who says 'the church is the people, not the steeple'. I say a hearty amen to that. And so would many of the people engaged in debates over what he dismisses as 'churchless Christianity'.

The issue is not can you be a Christian without a church - I think Jesus calls us to a life of discipleship in community; the question is 'what kind of community constitutes church?' It seems to me that a lot of critics of emerging church are wedded to a view of church that owes much to the Victorian era and precious little to the New Testament.

I think a good question to ask about what we do in the name of church is this one: 'would Paul recognise our gatherings as church?' I suspect for the most part, he wouldn't.

Over the past couple of weeks some people have been asking where is the church around the area of St Paul's and Paternoster Square in the City of London? Some have offered the somewhat pat answer that of course the church is in the tents on the steps. That doesn't really address the question because to be church, a community has got to consciously be shaping itself around the life and values of Jesus.So maybe the answer to the question is along the lines that both the cathedral and the protesters offer some pointers to what church might be but neither actually embody it.

I'll be teaching on New Testament ecclesiology in a couple of weeks time and am really looking forward to teasing out some of these issues - not least the key one of the relationship between mission and church. I hope Mike will post again (rather more fully) on what he means by church.

A kinder, gentler capitalism?

2011-11-02T15:54:00.000Z

I bought the Financial Times today to read Rowan Williams' article and found beneath it an excellent piece by John Kay which you can read on the veteran economist's own website here.

I especially warmed to his sentiment that many people agree with the protest at St Paul's but few with what the protesters actually say. The reason for this is that we all think something's wrong but can't quite put our finger on what it is. He suggests the following:

'The incoherence results from a political void. Europe’s political left lacks any convincing narrative in the post-socialist world. The right tells a story in which greed is the dominant human motivation, government an incubus on the spirit of free enterprise. News “from the markets” is not of new products and services, but of the fluctuations of the FTSE. This rhetoric views doctors and teachers as parasites, not producers, and has provided cover for an unhealthy expansion of the influence of established large corporations.'

I think he might be on to something here. I was reading this as I listened to the World at One discuss the latest manoeuvres in the public sector pension wrangle. I found myself wondering why we are caught up in a race to the bottom; why the task seems to be to leave everyone without a pension. A number of experts were saying that the public sector workers need to realise that their private sector counterparts have virtually no guaranteed pension, so they should accept the same fate. The upshot of this, of course, is that the state picks up all our bills for retirement.

So how about changing company law to say that instead of maximising share holder value and ensuring that board directors retain their gold-plated pensions, companies have a legal obligation to invest in the retirements of all the people who have contributed to them making profits. If people are enriched by the labour of others, they should contribute to those people's well-being by paying them a salary and contributing to a pension for when they retire.

Further, all pensions should be set at what is needed for a person to live on when most of their major costs have been met (ie housing, school fees, two cars, etc). No one needs a pension of £750,000 a year and no one should be expected to make do with one of £7,500 a year.

And how about companies being legally obliged to maximise innovation and invention, quality in manufacturing, sustainability in investment and the use of resources? Then the news from the FTSE would not be about share prices and PE ratios but about new products and services that were genuinely adding value to society as well as company balance sheets.

John Kay argues that no one wants an end to capitalism; they just want a capitalism that is not about greed and gambling. I think we can all say 'amen' to that. As Rowan Williams points out, it is not just protesters who think the Robin Hood Tax is a good idea; Bill Gates and George Soros are supporters - neither men noted for their left-leaning sympathies.

What is becoming clear is that there is a growing chorus of voices saying that the false choice between austerity and bankruptcy needs to be replaced by a sensible conversation about how we can order our society, including the important financial sector, in such a way that everyone benefits and not just a few ridiculously rich people at the top of the pile.

It all sounds like motherhood and apple pie, I know. But of course mums are essential to the good ordering of society and apple pie fuels many a good conversation and fills a belly in a most agreeable way. So what exactly is wrong with that?

Honest talk about the seasons of life

2011-10-31T13:27:00.000Z

I thought I'd share the thoughts from our church magazine with a wider audience as it's generally applicable and quite a few of my people don't read the magazine but do read the blog.

So here it is

We Brits thrive on talking about the weather. I’m sure others cultures do it, but we seem to have it down to a fine art. In particular, we look for the good in every season. We love Spring because of all the evidence of new life bursting out all over, summer because of long balmy evenings stretching out in the garden, autumn because of the riot of colours in the trees. We even have good things to say about crisp, cold winter days when the light is sharp and intense and our breath clouds as we walk.

Just as the seasons pass and we find something in each one, so there is a seasonal aspect to our lives and something good happens in each season we experience. Often people talk of something they are involved in with church or in the wider Christian community as being ‘just for a season’. There is a sense in which nothing that we are called to do is necessarily for the whole of our lives.

Of course, some things are: following Jesus is for life, as is devoting ourselves to the regular reading of scripture and prayer. If we pay close attention to James, helping the poor and marginalised and avoiding becoming embroiled in the world’s ways of doing things are also habits that should last our whole lives (James 1:27). And always being ready to give an account of the hope we have is something that we do from cradle to grave (1 Peter 3:15); indeed the call to mission is the call to a lifelong way of living that seeks to help others to see Jesus and find faith in him.

But other things are seasonal. And there’s good reason for this. Sometimes it’s right for us to serve on a committee or in a team of folk leading some enterprise or other – be it youth work, teaching in Sunday School, playing music, taking the offering, whatever – for a period of time, before we move on to do something else. Sometimes, it’s right to do something for a while and then take stock of where we are and what God is saying to us and perhaps move on from activity to a new one.

It’s good for there to be vacancies in the groups that run our church ministries so that new blood and new thinking can come into them. If we hang around for too long, all we end up doing is blocking to door, preventing others from getting in. If we stay doing one thing for too long, we can become stale, bereft of ideas, wedded to ways of doing things that are easy for us but which stop new ideas coming into the group we’re a part of.

But recognising the seasonal aspect of our own Christian life can be tricky. So we need to develop ways of talking about spiritual seasons just as we have all learned the art of talking about the weather. The danger is that some people want to give up a role they have because they are having a bit of a crisis of confidence and what they need is an encouraging word from someone who urges them to carry them on and promises to pray for them. The opposite danger is that people refuse to talk about what they do in church for fear of others asking whether it wasn’t high time they stopped and allowed someone else to have a turn.

We need to learn the art of forming relationships where we can share our feelings about what we’re doing in church and beyond, where we can ask others to be praying for us, and helping us to work out whether it’s time for us to seek fresh challenges, respond to new opportunities. The New Testament talks about this in terms of discernment. It’s a gift that is rooted in prayer and the Holy Spirit.

It works when a number of aspects of healthy Christian living come together. The first is that each one of us is open to hearing the voice of God as we spend time praying. This entails leaving silences in our times of intercession for the church and the world so that God can respond. Sometimes that response will be what can only be described as a vision – such as Ananias had in Acts 9:10 (though God needed to be pretty emphatic with Ananias since he was asking him to make room for the church’s worst enemy and persecutor to join them!). Most often, it’s a nudge or a feeling that we ought to talk to someone about how they’re doing and whether they’re still engaged in the activities that God wants them to be doing.

The second is that we develop honest and open relationships with one another. Now, we are not going to have relationships of the same depth with everyone in the church. We will relate to some people much more deeply than we do to the majority of our friends. But it is important that we each have a handful of close, warm and deep friendships, the kind that allow us to speak the truth in love into one another’s lives. Within those relationships, we occasionally find that when we sense that God has nudged us about something in our friend’s life, he has also been nudging our friend along the same lines; we find that what we speak about confirms what our friend has already begun to think about.

The third is to pray together, asking that God will confirm the sense that we each have that change is on the way. It helps if having prayed that we give it a few days to settle as we both get on with living and keep the matter in our prayers. When we chat again, we could well each have a sense that God is definitely telling our friend that a fresh challenge awaits them and that they need to relinquish a particular role or focus on something new.

In this process we’ve discerned the change of seasons in a person’s life and as with the weather, there is something good about every spiritual season that God leads us into if we go into it prayerfully and with our eyes open. Let’s get as good at talking about these seasons as we are about the weather.

Nailing the issue

2011-10-29T11:54:00.000+01:00

This is a great quote for a Lutheran pastor Tom Gaulke from Chicago who has been spending time with those occupying Chicago in the way that people are occupying London (around St Paul's).

"The more the corporations focus on the wealthy, the more they worship the god of wealth, the more they're sacrificing the 99 percent, The crisis isn't just economic or political. Really, it's a spiritual crisis. For Christians, it's a matter of idolatry," he says.

That seems to nail it. We look for political and economic solutions to the mess we're in and that's right and proper because it is part of our mandate as stewards of creation. But in order to solve a problem we have to identify it properly. And Gaulke has put his finger succinctly on the issue - idolatry.

And idolatry is a spiritual problem requiring a spiritual solution. Whatever politics and economics we conjure to extract ourselves from this mess, without repentance and humility, they are sticking plasters placed over an arterial burst.

You can read the rest of piece where Gaulke's quoted here.

Approaching the heart of the matter in the camp at St Paul's

2011-10-28T11:05:00.000+01:00

So St Paul's will open again as the health and safety issues have been dealt with apparently by moving a couple of bikes and re-siting a handful of tents. It's good that this grand Wren landmark will reopen for people to marvel at the space.

But let's not confuse this building with the Christian faith. As its outgoing canon chancellor, Giles Fraser, so aptly put it yesterday: "Ironically the church is a church of the incarnation. That means it has to address things to do with everyday life, including money. Christopher Wren's forte was not 'Jesus born in a stable'. What the camp does is challenge the church with the problem of the incarnation – that you have God who is grand and almighty, who gets born in a stable. St Paul was a tent maker. If you tried to recreate where Jesus would have been born, for me I could imagine Jesus being born in the camp."

Its reopening will coincide with the publication of the protesters' demands. Interestingly, they have to do with bringing democracy to the City of London. The manifesto has not made to the Occupy London website yet but details of the demands can be found here.

They seem to be a pretty coherent agenda for change. Maurice Glassman, the labour peer behind the blue labour initiative welcomed the proposals, saying: "By declaring that the point of their protest is the democratisation of London the meaning of the occupation is transformed. It opens a prospect for civic renewal and the challenging of unaccountable power elites.The protesters have stumbled upon the source of financial power within the British state. This could get interesting,"

I think his last statement is the one that resonates with me. This could get interesting. In a world dominated by soundbite politics, people have been critical of the protesters for being against everything and for nothing. Many of their spokespeople have been sadly inarticulate when appearing before the cameras with news people demanding a 30 second soundbite that sums up their reason for being there. This, linked with criticism that they tweet and drink lattes, indicating that they take capitalism's goodies while rejecting its ethos, has made people dismiss them as middle class slackers.

Now we are beginning to see some interesting thinking emerging from the tented village. These are ideas that the political establishment ought to discuss with those putting them up. As Giles Fraser says "A great many people think that something has gone wrong in the City of London and that the wealth generated by the City does not exist for the benefit of us all."

The trouble is that the establishment just wants to man the barricades, clear the embarrassing blot off our streets and return to business as usual. The trouble is that on the day when it's revealed that the remuneration packages of the FTSE 100 companies have risen by an average of 49% at a time when their work forces are seeing real incomes fall, business as usual is just not acceptable.

Yesterday figures from the US revealed that the richest 1% have seen their wealth grow considerably over the past year while the 99% have seen theirs fall. It is clear that there is something broken at the heart of our system.

What is quite encouraging is that there are a number of business people and thinkers who are seeing this. Umair Huque (and others blogging at the Harvard Business School) argues for an end to trading and raiding and a return to creating and building. People at the heart of capitalism recognise that it is in crisis, failing to deliver for the majority what it has increasingly hoarded for a tiny minority. The trouble is that the financial crisis of the last three years demonstrates that the costs of this to everyone else is far too high.

So today is the day when the protests get interesting. The Corporation of London should save the money it will be shelling out on lawyers seeking injunctions and spend it instead on coffee and muffins to fuel proper conversations with those camped on their streets.

If democracy means anything, it surely means that we need to find mechanisms for hearing the voices of everyone; that those voices are listened to, ideas weighed, new thinking allowed to emerge. If it is rule of the people, by the people, for the people, then decisions need to be made by more than just a coterie of the great and the good being rubber stamped by their hangers-on in Parliament.

Why paying our dues is a sign of love

2011-10-24T10:01:00.000+01:00

Richard Murphy is an interesting accountant. That's a sentence I don't write very often! Murphy has been quietly gaining a reputation as a commentator on what is happening in our economy and wider society from the perspective of taxation. Now, this doesn't sound riveting but just consider these two observations.

First, the Greek financial crisis is partly - if not mainly - a crisis of the non-payment of tax by the rich, by businesses and, by example, of anyone who can get away with it. If government coffers are denied income, spending will inevitably lead to problems.

Second, that the £50bn evaded or avoided by UK tax payers - corporate and individual - would go quite a long way to solving our own deficit problems without punishing the poor for the sins of the wealthy.

I believe that paying tax is a sign that we love our neighbours - as Paul says in Romans 13:6-7 as he reflects on what it means to love one another. So, I confess that I read the article and commentary by Nick Cohen in yesterday's Observer with my jaw in my breakfast cereal this morning (you can read it here and here).

In short, he is reporting a pretty significant spat in the House of Commons over the behaviour of the head of the Inland Revenue. MPs on the Public Accounts Select Committee have accused Dave Hartnett of lying to them and called on Gus O'Donnell, the cabinet secretary, to sack him. Why? Because he has cut deals enabling some of the richest institutions in the UK so they can avoid paying billions of pounds worth of tax. The list of beneficiaries includes Goldman Sachs and Vodafone. The fact that he has enjoyed 107 lunches over the past two years with large corporations, the big four accountancy firms and countless merchant and investment adds to the picture of a somewhat cosy relationship between Britain's tax collector-in-chief and many of the groups who pay little or no tax.

This at a time when a number of PAYE customers of HMRC are being hounded for underpaid tax because the Revenue seems incapable of doing something as simple as programming its computers correctly. We should not be surprised if people lose faith in the tax system because they feel they are paying their due while those with influence and sharp-suited accountants are robbing us blind. Isn't this what has happened in Greece?

Which brings us back to Richard Murphy, a man who thinks that we need to bring capitalism back under democratic control. We need to note that he's not anti-capitalist (a term that is so devoid of meaning as to be completely useless in describing anything or anyone). He thinks that this begins (though doesn't end) with a just, accountable and transparent tax system where people and corporations pay what they owe. He blogs here and anyone interested in charting a way to a saner, more just society ought to read his stuff.

Is it 1968 again?

2011-10-15T19:46:00.001+01:00

I was too young to take to the streets in 1968 - though I remember the heady days of that year quite well - and I'm probably too old to occupy the City now (though, I'm not sure of that).

It is heartening to see countless thousands of young people taking to the streets in cities across the globe. And totally understandable: in Spain, where the movement started in May, unemployment among the young is touching 50%; even in the UK it's almost 20%. In virtually every economy the young and the poor are paying for the reckless activities of the so-called masters of the universe.

It's a shame that the demonstrations in Rome turned troublesome, with tear gas and water canon being deployed. But it is still thrilling to think that in 80 cities across the world, people are standing up (or should say, sitting down?) and saying enough is enough. And that the young are leading the way for all of us. We cannot continue running the world in the interests of a minority of rich people, arguing that their profits will generate funds that will trickle down to the poor at their gates. It's time to nail this lie: trickle down doesn't work, it never has and never will.

It's also time to say that ordinary workers and young people at the start of their working lives should not be asked to pick up the bill for an economic meltdown that arose in the financial sector because of the actions of a small group of people who got above themselves.

We'll know we're approaching 1968 when the airwaves fill with songs about the possibility of a new world order and the movie theatres run films that offer an alternative to business as usual (sadly Hollywood seems incapable of producing anything with a brain at the moment). There are hints of this. The new BBC drama Hidden appears to be asking questions about the rich and their effect on the rest of us. But one swallow doesn't make a spring. Has anyone heard any political pop recently?

At least what today's news shows us is that not every young person on planet earth is gripped by apathy and sitting in front of the X Factor!

The wider lessons of the Fox hunt

2011-10-15T17:35:00.000+01:00

I've not blogged about Dr Fox. I'm glad he's resigned but I haven't felt that I've anything to add to the acres of comment that is available elsewhere. The Guardian has done a good job chasing this one down but so has the Times and the FT.

What really swung it for me was the evidence that Fox and Werrity were effectively running an alternative foreign in their meetings in Sri Lanka. There is a government that we need to be very cautious of, a government that still has questions to answer about the death toll at the end of the civil (questions that it doesn't seem to want to ask, let alone answer). And here are messers Fox and Werrity lobbying for influence and possibly contracts in a way that contradicted what the Foreign Office is trying to do.

It seems to me that one of the key things that this whole sorry affair raises is about the role of the civil service (who Fox and Werrity appear to have sidelined on a number of occasions). And this issue comes into even starker relief with the news from earlier this week (all but lost in the frenzy over the defence secretary) that Gus O'Donnell is stepping down as Cabinet Office Secretary and head of the home civil service and his job is being split up.

This is a major constitutional change and just appears to be being nodded through. It takes from the heart of the government machine a single pair of eyes watching over how the civil service and ministers are working together. Even Peter Oborne - not a man I often agree with - sees the danger of this as he explains here. He is also hugely critical of the appointment of Jeremy Hayward - a man as much a banker as a civil servant - to the role Sir Gus is vacating.

The Fox affair reveals a government at risk of blurring the lines between government and business, between a division of powers carefully balanced in our constitution and policy increasingly driven by lobby and special interest groups.

Whatever way we vote, whatever we think of the government, we need to be concerned when it seems that unaccountable people have more power and influence in our system than those properly recruited and trained to run the government machine alongside ministers.

Asking the right question

2011-10-14T08:32:00.000+01:00

In the middle of the hand-wringing that's accompanied the Care Quality Commission report on the horrendous way that many elderly people are treated in our hospitals, Joan Bakewell asked a simple question on this morning's Today programme.

She asked where people learned to care in our society in view of the decline of religion. She said that she learned compassion in Sunday School and church and asked where children and young people learn it today. It's a good question.

I hope it gets a good answer

New beginnings and rethinks

2011-10-13T09:13:00.000+01:00

Autumn might be the season of mist and mellow fruitfulness but in church and at college, it's a bit of a frantic time of new beginnings and initiatives.I'm really enjoying teaching New Testament Theology - though feel a good way beyond my comfort zone - and have a really good group to work with.

At church this week we reviewed how our home groups were going. An instant poll revealed that some 70 people attended the groups last week - more than I was expecting. It suggests that we are doing something right in a time when people are busy and have many calls on their time and commitments that they are keen to prioritise meeting together for study and mutual support.

We also began to talk about a fresh vision for home groups. This has been generated by my reading of Alan Roxburgh's recent book and by a small group of us exploring what it means to get back into our neighbourhoods as the focus of our activities as followers of Jesus. But it has mainly been stimulated by the fact that I am having a growing number of conversations with people who want to engage mid-week but aren't looking for a home group or church-based bible study and prayer activity. These people say they want to do something.

So we are looking at how some of our groups could feel their way to being more missional and neighbourhood focused. To this end, we have cleared the mid-week evening programme of everything but home groups (with the exception of a monthly Bible study that is attracting 25 people) to allow groups to explore what shape they might take on if they were more missional and neighbourhood based.

It will take some time but I was encouraged by the response both at the meeting and subsequently. People seem to be up for a challenge, recognising that a one-size-fits-all approach doesn't really work and seeing the need for the church to be more engaged with its community.So, let's hope that this autumn sows the seeds for future fruitfulness.

Fresh insights into 1 Corinthians

2011-10-04T18:00:00.000+01:00

Picked up Kenneth Bailey's new book, Paul Through Mediterranean Eyes: Cultural Studies in 1 Corinthians (SPCK 2011). I love Bailey's work - his writing on the parables is wonderful - but he doesn't write enough about Paul. So this is a welcome arrival.

I shall be recommending it to my students on the introduction to Paul course that I've just started teaching at Spurgeon's because it will offer a unique and helpful insight into this most intriguing letter. I hope they enjoy it

There was a lovely moment in my class on Monday morning when, after the mid session break, one student strode in bearing a copy of my World of the Early Church that he had just bought from the bookstall. I suspect that he'll do well and go far!

A summer reading report

2011-10-02T08:25:00.000+01:00

Among my holiday reading highlights this year were two excellent books: William Gibson's Zero History continues to confirm Gibson as one of the best novelists around. It's a taut, wonderfully constructed thriller with savvy observations about contemporary culture and a truly sympathetic central cast of characters.

And Richard Sennett's Respect: The formation of character in an age of inequality confirms his status as one of the leading thinkers of our day. The book is a wide-ranging, historically erudite exploration of how we build respect in an unequal society. He leaves countless loose ends but provides a mountain of stimulating ideas and insights. I await delivery of his slightly older book on work.

Tomorrow I start teaching again at Spurgeon's - two slots this semester as I'm covering for a sabbaticalling colleague. So, it's Introduction to Paul at 8:30am tomorrow (what a great way to start the week!) and New Testament Theology at 8:30am on Tuesday. I've been frantically reminding myself over the past 48 hours what these two courses are about - especially NTT which I have not taught before. Looking forward to being stimulated by a set of lively students.

I have also written a review of the Blackwell Companion to Paul for Regents' Reviews. This is an excellent and wide-ranging resource covering all bases in the area of Pauline studies. But it's so eye-poppingly expensive (£110 for a 600 page book) that I wonder who will benefit from its insights!

second stop-over

2011-09-28T16:35:00.000+01:00

Arrived at our second stop-over on the journey back - Amiens, possibly our favourite city in North East France. Having wondered around town and around the fabulous canal and water park area, we are getting ready to go and eat at a restaurant overlooking the river - which just happens to be the Somme.

It's an incredibly beautiful town with a lovely cathedral - one that rivals all the good ones, I reckon - and a great atmosphere which I suspect has something to do to the blend of history and the hordes of young people studying at the large university. There's a chilled vibrancy (if that's not an oxymoron) about the place.

Then tomorrow, we top up with wine, hop on the ferry and will be home to swelter in London's heat wave!

breaklng our journey home

2011-09-27T17:47:00.000+01:00

In Chartres at the end of our lovely two week break in la belle France. We have been on the northern edge of the Dordogne, visited Rocamador, Terrasson, Martel, Sarlat and other lovely places. Tonight in Chartres, tomorrow in Amiens and home on Thursday.

Dropped into the cathedral this afternoon but it's still not finished! Well, there's a whole lot of restoration going on which means that half of it is closed. This greatly affects the amount of light in the building and hence the lustre of the windows. A bit disappointing really.

Still, sitting with my feet up before we go for dinner. Lovely

Paper cities

2011-09-11T08:37:00.000+01:00

I've been listening to a song by Other Lives and pondering 9/11. It seems to me these words capture something of what think about the event and its aftermath.

paper cities

we sent them all across the ocean
many lives were taken
but i didn't cry, i didn't know them
and i just looked on with no expression

this land was once a home
of friends and family
we used to know
they are all gone now
they are now gone
and for what i cannot tell

put down your banners and flags
this war you've made won't last
your country, just lines on a map
they're drawn up, they don't last

the paper cities burning
the ashes fell like rain
when the fire was over
everything had changed

and people come together
reminds us we're the same

put down banners and flags
this war you've made won't last
your country, just lines on a map
they're' drawn up, but they don't last

I was in Sainsbury's in Dog Kennel Hill when the first plane hit the tower. Shoppers at checkouts looked uncomprehendingly at TV screens with the sound muted. The buzz of conversation was that there'd been a terrible accident in New York. When I got home and turned on the TV, I knew the world had changed: a plane struck the second tower and seemingly minutes later the whole edifice came crashing down.

Ten years on 300,000 innocent lives have been added to the 3000 that died that day; the world is locked in an apparently never-ending war on terror. Yesterday Tony Blair on the BBC recited the mantras of ten years ago as if we have have not lived the horror of the last decade.

Other Lives' Paper Cities seems to capture something of pathos of these last years.

Voting for Robin Hood

2011-09-08T09:29:00.000+01:00

The day after 50 economists call for a cut in the 50p tax rate, 1,000 economists are urging the G20 to adopt the Robin Hood Tax, a 0.05% levy on every financial transaction.

Also known as the Tobin tax, it's estimated that it would raise 20bn a year in the UK alone. such money could be used to create jobs, invest in the health service and youth work across the nation.

It's good to see that there are some economists committed to the public good. A recent poll carried out by Oxfam suggests that 51% of the UK population think this is a good idea. And the even the IMF, which has reservations about it, has published a report suggesting that it could raise significant sums without unduly affecting the health of the financial services sector.

Let's vote for Robin Hood, I say....

Polly receives her just deserts

2011-09-07T18:43:00.001+01:00

Congratulations to P J Harvey for winning a second Mercury Prize for her stunning album Let England Shake. She is a deserving winner for a record that could well be the album not just of 2011, but of the decade.

It is particularly fitting that she lifts this award on almost the tenth anniversary of 9/11. She won the prize the first time on 9/11 and was stuck in Washington as a result of it. This new work is in many ways born of the aftermath of that horrific event. It is a meditation on what it means to be English and how our character as a nation has been forged in war; a character that is as dark as it is bright.

Let England Shake is profound, unsettling, musically and lyrically witty and adventurous. It isn't just about our experience of war - containing songs based on stories of First World War battles as well as reflections on our recent adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan; it's also about how those experiences have shaped the nation in which we live, left its stain on our character and landscape.

It repays repeated listens and grows richer with each one. So well done Polly Jean!

Another day, another remedy

2011-09-06T07:50:00.000+01:00

Ken Clarke's analysis of the riots is a broken penal system (today's Guardian). He bases this observation on the fact that three quarters of those charged already had a criminal record. He calls for a rehabilitation revolution. Amen to that.

Of course, it's hard to rehabilitate offenders if the economy is broken because a key factor in successful rehabilitation is being able to find ex-offenders jobs on their release. As the economy flatlines and recession returns to most of our overseas markets, and unemployment rises, there are few jobs for those coming out of prison and young offender institutions, so very little hope of a rehabilitation revolution.

The trouble with Clarke's analysis - as with that of Cameron's broken Britain rhetoric - is that it is strong on blaming the poor and weak on helping to put things right. Rhetoric is not what's needed. What is needed is something that addresses the issue of worklessness and the only remedy to that is creating more jobs. And as Keynes demonstrated in the 1930s, when the private sector is incapable or unwilling to do this, the public sector has to step in.

In the medium term, this is cheaper than public support for the long-term unemployed. So the issue is not do we spend public money in this area but how. We can spend vast amounts tackling a problem or we can spend sensibly to prevent it. Creating economic growth and jobs for all seems to be a better way of spending that money than on more prisons and endless mean benefits.

We need more than Ken Clarke's remedy: 'Addressing unemployment means making progress on the economy by getting the deficit under control and pressing ahead with welfare reform and work programmes.' Because his remedy lacks any reference to how jobs might be created.

The cost of extraordinary rendition

2011-09-05T19:02:00.000+01:00

Bizarrely, plane operators offering rendition flights to the US government have to comply with US equal opportunities legislation. They also have to offer good value for money and submit detailed expense claims which include the sandwiches purchased by the flight crew at various airports around the world.

This information about this hitherto murky world, has come to light in papers posted in a US court by one operator who is suing another in a dispute over payments. I reread the whole sorry saga today (you can do so here) as the news emerged from Libya that our government has been complicit in this trade.

Now we need to be clear what we're talking about here. People suspected of being bad guys are snatched off the streets of the city where they live, trussed up with a sedative inserted in their anus, dressed in big nappies and orange jump suits and flown to destinations in Eastern Europe and the Middle East where the prison system is expert in enhanced interrogation techniques (that's torture to you and me). It's called extraordinary rendition because that sounds so much better than kidnap for torture.

One such destination was Libya. It emerged in papers found in the ransacked Tripoli prisons that the UK government has been complicit in this trade. And while it's true, as David Cameron told the House today, that this started under the previous government, it seems to have been happening until February this year. This means that while our government has been calling for democracy, freedom and the rule of law for the people of Libya, it has been happy to use the Libyan prison system to extract information from people it suspects of being terrorists, one of whom is now the rebel commander in Tripoli, a man NATO has bombed into power..

Words fail me...

Shane: the aftermath...

2011-09-05T09:37:00.000+01:00

Shane Claiborne was great, the Rend Collective excellent and our church was heaving (probably the most people squeezed into it for many a year). But while putting on a good show was important, what matters is what effect the evening will have on the lives of those present.

So since Wednesday I have been having many interesting conversations with people about difference hearing Shane might make to their lives and to the life of the church. And while it's early days, the signs are encouraging.

Not only have I been surprised by the range of people who have told me what a powerful and challenging evening it was, but I have also been struck by the thoughtful way in which people are processing what they heard. Often at such events the response is very emotional and immediate. Sometimes this is good. It seems that the response to this event is more considered; people have gone away asking 'if this is true, what does it mean for the way I express my walk with Jesus at home, at work, in church, etc'

So I had a number of conversations over the weekend about what implications Shane's message might have for home groups, possible social action projects and involvement in mission more generally. This is enormously encouraging. I'm hoping that those conversations will continue and lead to action with Kingdom consequences in the coming weeks.

All in all, I think was a great evening with real potential to lead to lasting change in people's lives and our neighbourhood.

Getting ready for Shane

2011-08-30T11:27:00.000+01:00

We're just over 24 hours away from hosting Shane Claiborne and the Rend Collective Experiment on their Upside Down Kingdom Tour.

Tickets are selling like hot cakes which is very gratifying in late August), but there are some still left.If you're in Bromley and are intending to come, let us know. It's going to be a fab night.

Getting to grips with the vision thing to turn the world upside down

2011-08-27T18:33:00.003+01:00

Here's the piece from our church magazine that hits the racks this Sunday - for those not given to read print media or not able to pick up a copy because of distance from the building (forgive the parochial nature of some of the references....)

George Bush senior famously intimated during an election campaign that he didn’t get the vision thing. The Queen on a visit to the London School of Economics in the autumn of 2008, as the credit crunch was sending global markets into free-fall, asked ‘why did no one see it coming?’ Both those issues came to the fore in responses to the disturbances on London’s streets in August. Why did no one see it coming and who has the vision to lead us to a better place for all our citizens? Such questions will rumble on through the coming months.

They were questions that were probably being asked, though in different terms, in Jesus’ day as people responded to economic injustice and occupation. They were certainly in the mind of Luke as he told the story not only of Jesus but also of his earliest followers. It’s that latter part of the story that we are going to pick up in the autumn to see what it might be saying to us at this time in our city.

In particular, we will be looking at the subject of vision. The Acts of the Apostles is built around a number of stories where God’s people saw, heard and responded to vision. Indeed, the story that Luke tells in this second volume is not the story of a well-drilled army of people working from a plan to take over the empire. Rather it is the story of how a ramshackle band of people who loved Jesus were led by a vision from heaven to share the good news about him across the world, to found communities shaped by his values and welcome any and everyone who came to explore what the life of God’s Kingdom might be like. So, this autumn we’re going to be exploring these vision passages in Acts because we too want to be people led by a vision from heaven.

Which brings us back to this summer on the streets of London and other cities around the UK. The Queen’s question is a good one and lots of people have been trying to answer it and will no doubt continue to do so. But for God’s people it’s the vision thing that matters. We are not called in the first instance to respond to a set of circumstances on the ground. We are called to respond to and live by a vision.

As Paul told Agrippa ‘I was not disobedient to the vision from heaven.’ That vision showed Paul who Jesus was and is and sent him on a life-long mission to share that Jesus with the Roman world. It led him to plant churches and proclaim the gospel in every city he visited. It led him to take up a great collection among the nations to take to the followers of Jesus living in poverty in Judea. And it led him to his death in Rome having first preached the gospel in that city for at last two years. Paul would not have been the man he became but for the vision from heaven.

And so it is with us: as we seek to be faithful disciples of Jesus in Bromley in 2011 and beyond we too need to see and hear and respond to the vision from heaven. All that we do as a church in seeking to embody the good news of Jesus in our lives and our activities needs to grow out of the vision from heaven.

The vision with which Acts opens is a vision of the risen Jesus telling his followers that the Kingdom will be restored through their lives of witness beginning at home and stretching to the ends of the earth. It’s the vision that holds good for us here and now.

If we want to respond well to the events in our city over the summer, we will be fired by this vision to make Jesus known in word and work in our community. It will mean that our programme as a church will be focussed on embodying and imparting the values of God’s Kingdom on the streets where we live and the places where we work.

Our neighbourhoods need to see that there is a way of living where all people are valued, where we can work together for the common good, where the weak can be supported, the fallen set back on their feet, the poor helped and the love of Christ shed abroad in all our hearts by the Holy Spirit working in, with and alongside us.

For this reason, we’ll be continuing to deepen our links with JusB and Street Pastors; and we’ll continue to explore the possibility of setting up a debt project with CAP, a foodbank with Trussell Trust and neighbourhood groups that will share the good news of Jesus with those around them through parties and practical action.

Paul lived in obedience to the vision from heaven and was accused by people in Thessalonica of having turned the world upside down. We too have the opportunity to be accused of doing the same if we too are obedient to the vision from heaven. Are we up for it?

Enjoying our full pot of beans

2011-08-26T09:24:00.000+01:00

Glen Campbell was on the Today programme this morning talking about living and touring with Alzheimer's (I guess that's something we'll get used to hearing in the coming years). It was an uplifting interview with a man whose voice has travelled with me over a number of years.

I'm not a big Campbell fan, though I think Wichita Lineman is one of the greatest songs Jimmy Webb ever penned, but I thought his line this morning about how he views life was just priceless. He said: 'God's going to give me my full pot of beans; I'm sure of that'.

Wonderful.

Can we do better than blaming the parents?

2011-08-19T10:11:00.000+01:00

There's an excellent leader in yesterday's New York Times that you can check out here. It touches on the issue of parenting in relation to our recent disturbances and the government's response to them and asks the question whether the parents of those who caused the banking crisis, led the hacking of innocent people's phones or over-claimed their expenses in parliament will be similarly called to account.

It's a good question, one also asked by the comedian Nathaniel Tapley in an open letter to David Cameron's parents (here). It's easy to blame parents, providing they don't mean us.But where did our children learn the values of consumerism, competitive individualism and careerism, the story that lies at the heart of our acquisitive, me-first culture from, if not partly from us? Of course, they also learned it from their peers, the media and the very educational system that countless parents were praising as they lauded their children's achievements in exams yesterday.

More specifically, do we hold the parents of bankers to account for their off-spring living all-out for profits (especially for themselves in ever-inflating bonuses) that come at the expense of competitors and are paid for ultimately by the poor who suffer most in the ensuing busts that follow the champagne-glugging booms? Or do we call the parents of those involved in phone hacking (an ever-widening circle, it seems) to explain why their children seem to think it's OK criminally invading the privacy of other people? Or do haul the parents of MPs over the coals for instilling in their little darlings the value of grabbing as much as they can for themselves while purporting to serve the interests of others?

Of course not; the suggestion is absurd. So why do we always blame the poor and the parents of the poor for their plight and actions in response to it? We could say that the off-spring concerned (mainly 16-25 year old males) are young enough to be under their parent's authority, as was David Cameron and his ilk when they engaged in the high jnks associated with the Bullingdon Club (here)

Perhaps there are other narratives that we need to be telling our children so that they will grow to model the values we want everyone in our society to live by. When Jesus met a rich young ruler he told him to sell what he had and give it to the poor (because that was the logical outworking of the set of values the rich young man said he had learned from his parents). It was not part of the deal for the rich man to blame the poor for being poor or to say that his wealth was the result of his hard work, careful planning and astute investment planning (see Luke 18:18-30).

Jesus offers a story for us to live by that isn't the one of competitive individualism, consumerism and careerism that we grow up hearing from our mother's knee. It's a story of community, sharing and looking out for the interests of others, a story that's rooted in the cross that deals with all the reasons why we can't live this way and written in our hearts by the Spirit who tells us that we can live this way if we keep in step with her.

As I said in a post recently, what God expects of us is pretty simple - that we love him and we love our neighbours (you can read it here). That's the story of the Kingdom of God that Jesus announced through his living, story-telling and dying on our behalf; a story that's written on our hearts by the Spirit God gives us; a story that our hurting neighbourhoods urgently need to see and hear from us.

Counting down to Shane Claiborne and the Rend Collective

2011-08-18T15:05:00.000+01:00

Well, excitement is growing here as we're only two weeks away from our big night with Shane Claiborne and the Rend Collective Experiment. That's right 31 August, 7:30pm, Bromley Baptist Church. Be there or miss it (and live with the regrets...).

Shane Claiborne is undoubtedly one of the most exciting voices to have emerged from the American Christian scene in recent years. In the mould of Jim Wallis and Tony Campolo, Shane Claiborne is a great communicator with a bold message - simply that we need to take Jesus seriously.

One of the founders of the Simple Way in Philadelphia, he seeks to live as a disciple of Jesus among the poor and marginalised of that city. It's out of that life that he speaks of God's upside down Kingdom and urges followers of Jesus everywhere to take it seriously.

So, if you're anywhere near Bromley on Wednesday 31 August, then you need to get to Bromley Baptist Church clutching a fiver (and maybe a little more to buy a coffee, a book and CD) and hear something that might just make you think in a whole new way about your life. More than that, it might make you live differently - and let's face it, in the wake of recent events, we need people living the Kingdom of God in our communities.

There will be music from the Rend Collective Experiment, vibrant, mumford-like, intelligent worship music from Northern Ireland. You can check them out on their website here.

And you can find out more about the Upside Down Kingdom tour from our website here (there's even a link to a brief film of Shane to whet your appetite). See you on the thirty-first....

Getting to grips with some thinking about our current problems

2011-08-17T18:26:00.000+01:00

I'm reading Chavs: the Demonization of the Working Class by Owen Jones. I've had it a while but events have pushed it to the top of the pile and I'm glad it has. It's a great read - I'm 90 pages in and learning stuff from virtually every page. So I heartily recommend it if you want an insight into those often blamed for being poor, feckless and responsible for everything that's wrong with our society.

And over in Canada business leaders have suggested that inequality might be a bad thing. “High inequality can diminish economic growth if it means that the country is not fully using the skills and capabilities of all its citizens or if it undermines social cohesion, leading to increased social tensions. Second, high inequality raises a moral question about fairness and social justice,” they say in a report published this week. You can read a full account of it here.

I found it sobering and full of good sense on the day when the unemployment figures rose in the UK and that unemployment in London, focused on some of the poorest boroughs in the city, rose above 400,000 for the first time in 15 years. This is not good for social cohesion. Neither is the fact that there are nearly a million 16-24s out of work, that's 20% of people in that age group.

Along with Lord Harris of Peckham, I think the Government ought to be doing something about this - but maybe we're both missing something.

Digging below the surface of our recent troubles

2011-08-16T15:11:00.000+01:00

OK, I know I said no more riot comment, but I just wanted to alert you all to this superb analysis by King's College's Luke Bretherton. It's on ABC's Religion and Ethics site (click here). Profound theology meets sharp social commentary.

He cites Peter Oborne's piece in the Telegraph which is also worth checking out.

Buffetting (sic) the rich...

2011-08-15T18:35:00.000+01:00

I wasn't going to blog again today (it's my wedding anniversary - 30 wonderful years!) but I came across two things that I wanted to pass on.

the first is a great piece by Warren Buffett, the veteran investor, a billionaire whose favourite drink, I gather, is Cherry Coke! He's written about the nonsense that politicians speak about the effect of high taxes on investment and where rich people live. You can read it here. It's great stuff.

The other is a simple fact that I came across in Will Hutton's book on fairness that I'm reading again. Talking about the madness of the market fundamentalism that has dominated economic thinking for the past 30 years - pretty much as long as I've been married! - Hutton points out that governments around the world - but mainly in the West - shelled out $14 trillion to shore up the banking system when bankers crashed it into the buffers.

That amount is virtually the same as the US government's debt. That debt resulted in Standard & Poor downgrading US credit-worthiness (that's the same ratings agency that gave triple A ratings to all the bundles of toxic sub prime mortgages that drove the banking system to its knees) and much hand-wringing about the need to slash spending on government programmes to keep the markets happy.

Which brings us back to Warren Buffett...

A final word on the riots (for now...)

2011-08-15T10:44:00.000+01:00

I can't quite believe I'm saying this, but there's a very thoughtful and thought-provoking piece by Boris Johnson in today's Telegraph (posted on line late last night here). He is making the government's response look more and more flat-footed and uncertain.His mix of tough policing and the creation of hope for those left behind in our society looks like a promising way forward.

I do think his dismissal of any linkage between the looters and MPs and bankers is a little glib, however. For twenty-plus years we have lived in a culture where those at the top told us there is no such thing as society and that people needed to be set free to acquire because that would result in everyone being better off.

This has turned out to be a cruel lie but it has spawned a culture that idolises material gain. The only measure of whether you are somebody is the size of your bank balance and the ostentation of your home. From the National Lottery to the Million Pound Drop the message is that the good life is only possible with a heap of cash and all the gizmos that cash can buy. Only last night I saw an ad for yet another TV show offering to make someone a millionaire.

And our papers are full of stories of celebrities flaunting their bling and yet behaving pretty badly - as we saw on the first day of the new football season yesterday with players earning £70,000 a week behaving like street brawlers in front of their fan-base - and lambasting bankers bonuses while simultaneously calling for tax cuts for the rich.

It's little wonder the Bishop of Manchester talks of a moral vacuum from top to bottom of our society. Perhaps the rioter who said he was helping himself the way the bankers and MPs had done had a point.

Boris talks about the need to create jobs - and I applaud him for that (as I do Lord Harris who said the same in the wake of his carpet store going up in flames in Tottenham) - but we need to pay attention to the kind of jobs we are creating and the structure of rewards in those jobs. It cannot be true that a fund manager is worth 400 times a care worker in a nursery or old people's home. This pay gap is as much as illustration of the moral vacuum as the silly greed of the gossip pages and the criminal action of looters.

As long as we undervalue those who offer care and nurture in our society, while offering excessive rewards to those who move money from one place to another, we will breed a deep sense of injustice and unfairness. This is not an easy issue to tackle but Will Hutton goes some of the way in his book on how we create a fairer society (Them and Us: Changing Britain - Why we need a fair society) as well as the excellent Spirit Level: Why Equality is Better for Everyone (by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett).

One place to start would be to replace minimum wage with a living wage (putting the wage floor at least £2 an hour above the current one - something Boris supports for London). At the same time you'd have to change corporate governance rules so that maximising shareholder return was not the number one duty of board rooms. We could do this; we just need politicians with vision and balls. And we need to raise the amount the amount national and local government paid care homes.

I'll leave the last word to David Cameron: 'Research by Richard Wilkinson and Katie Pickett has shown that among the richest countries, it's the more unequal ones that do worse according to almost every quality of life indicator. In "The Spirit Level", they show that per capita GDP is much less significant for a country's life expectancy, crime levels, literacy and health than the size of the gap between the richest and poorest in the population. So the best indicator of a country's rank on these measures of general well-being is not the difference in wealth between them, but the difference in wealth within them.'

He said that before the election - maybe he'd like to act on it now.

Supporting parents, creating community

2011-08-11T18:41:00.000+01:00

The attempt to create a narrative (as the pundits call it) about the recent riots is in full swing. There is one narrative that majors on criminality and another that majors on social deprivation made worse by cuts. It has to be said that neither are entirely convincing.

Both refer to parenting and the Guardian has an excellent piece on that issue today (here). The narratives talk about the inadequacy of parenting or the struggles of parents. And listening to some of the stories emerging from the estates where the overwhelming majority of those involved in the riots came is heart-breaking.

I don't know what the answer is beyond something really obvious that I'll mention in a moment. I'm fairly sure the answer isn't to evict people from their homes because a family member is convicted of involvement in looting. I know that sounds reasonable - why should society provide homes for the ungrateful? But a moment's thought suggests that pushing the poor beyond the reach of services that might be able to help them get their lives together doesn't sound sensible; punishing a whole family because one member was caught up in a night of madness seems guaranteed to increase a sense of not being part of the community we are all so keen to build.

And as a Christian I have to say that it lacks grace. Most of the narratives lack grace. And so most of the narratives envision a society where only the deserving can belong. I struggle with this because we'd all be up to our chests in the brown stuff if God treated us this way and I think we are called to be like God (Matthew 5:48 etc).

So, my simple, obvious thought is this. Let's not rush to set up parenting courses where experts tell the inadequate how to bring up baby (there's a place for classes and courses and groups, but they tend only to reach those who know they've got a 'problem' and are prepared to admit that to at least one other person). Rather, let's get to know parents and offer them the support that comes through a network of friendship.

I know from having a six month baby in the house that being a parent can be demanding and stressful - and our granddaughter has four adults responding her every cry! I also know from our work offering parent and toddler groups through the church that every parent is grateful for help and advice that grows out of friendship. That is part of being community. Lots of my friends are part of a wide network of friends and family who offer support just by being around.

Most of the families where I am cope just fine - mum and dad are together, the home is secure, money is plentiful, life has its stresses but is generally good. But there are some families that are on the edge, living in poor housing, subsisting on benefits or minimum wage, working unsocial hours, lacking the support of an extended family network. How might our friendship help them? What could the offer of a meal or having the children for an hour or two, organising a picnic for a group of families to be together with something organised for the kids for an hour or so do for such families? Who know where it might lead...

I keep coming back to the realisation that what God expects of us is pretty simple - that we love him and we love our neighbour. Such love is essentially very practical and involves offering grace to others as God has offered it to us. And because this is pretty simple, anyone can get involved. It doesn't require a bevy of experts or expensive project apparatus to function. It requires people giving time to forming relationships with those around them - people like them and people very different from them - and so making community that works and is mutually supportive.

Of course, more is needed; of course, some problems are deep and require deep wells of grace, experience and expertise to tackle; of course, some people will be impervious to our offer of friendship; of course, we can find all sorts of reasons to throw our hands up and say 'someone other than me must do something.'

But as Jesus said to the baffled twelve when they were faced by a mob of hungry men, spoiling for a revolution, 'you give them something to eat'. He says the same to us. And we know - because we've read the story in Luke 9 - that Jesus will help us do it once we've knuckled down to attempt the impossible.

What would Jesus do?

2011-08-09T14:30:00.000+01:00

There's been far too much pontificating on the riots already, largely by people who don't live in the affected areas and didn't experience what was going on (like me) and I'm reluctant to join in. But following the response to my facebook status this morning, I thought I'd offer a reflection on how I'm feeling and pass on a comment or two that I've found really helpful as I've tried to process how I'm feeling.

I feel sad and pretty helpless. I feel for those who've lost their businesses and homes. I feel for the police officers bearing the brunt of an inchoate anger. I feel for those who've been left fearful in their communities. The stock response when something like this happens is to find someone to blame. In this situation it's easy: the rioters are to blame for mindless criminality for which there's no excuse. Yes and no.

In one news report, a young man in Tottenham was asked if rioting really achieved anything:

"Yes," he replied. "You wouldn't be talking to me now if we didn't riot, would you?" He went on:

"Two months ago we marched to Scotland Yard, more than 2,000 of us, all blacks, and it was peaceful and calm and you know what? Not a word in the press. Last night a bit of rioting and looting and look around you." (you'll find it here - along with some helpful reflections on events).

He has a point. And his point is not that rioting is a good thing. His point is that he comes from a community that is invisible to us, disregarded by us, not part of the big society that we all feel a sense of belonging to.

In today's Independent, Camila Batmanghelidjh, founder of Kid's Company and long-time champion of neglected communities, offers this insight: 'Young, intelligent citizens of the ghetto seek an explanation for why they are at the receiving end of bleak Britain, condemned to a darkness where their humanity is not even valued enough to be helped'. And she backs it up with stories of families at breaking point, receiving little or no help, being made to feel that they are just a problem with nothing to contribute to society and so having no stake in society. Her piece is well worth reading (it's here)

There is a need for a good tough policing response to this disorder; those who have committed crimes - and that's what they are - need to be brought to book. But what then? Will these young people, the vast majority of whom have no qualifications, come from challenging backgrounds, face a future devoid of opportunity, just fade back into invisibility (after they've served time) until the next long hot summer?

Jesus told his disciples that stumbling blocks will come our way but woe to those who put a stumbling block in the way of any of these little ones (Luke 17:1-2). To whom is he referring? Surely to those who have been the subject of his stories from 14:1 onwards - the poor, the neglected, those on the edge, invisible to the god-fearing community of his day, and yet very visible and very loved by God.

So, I think if we are followers of Jesus, we have a part to play in raising the visibility of the unseen communities in our country and working to show that they matter to us because they matter to God. This means that we will resource and run good quality youth work - and press our local authorities to join us in that (by reversing cuts to provision if necessary). For baptists in London, it means asking why our association has no regional minister responsible for youth work in post to enable churches to rise to this challenge. It means that we will dedicate resources to helping those who struggle to make ends meet, cope as parents, achieve at school through projects (which is just a short-hand for motivated, mobilised and managed individuals) offering to get alongside those in need of help. Again we will do this with all sorts of people of good will, including local authorities who need to be pressed to take their responsibilities to the poor seriously.

And first of all, it means listening to those who are rarely heard, hearing what their lives are like, what struggle they face and, most importantly, what they have to offer as a contribution to making the kind of society we all want to live in.

What we've had enough of is hand-wringing and finger pointing. We're all to blame. But much more importantly we can all play a part of making things better. I think it's what Jesus would do. What do you think?

There's nothing wrong with 'ian' but he won't save anyone...

2011-08-05T12:58:00.001+01:00

There's a fascinating and sobering piece on the BBC website about Dutch Christianity. You can check it out here. It has all the hallmarks of a silly season piece - though there's enough happening on the world's stock markets to have squeezed it out - if it wasn't so serious.

Robert Pigott reflects on how some Dutch churchmen are offering a version of the Christian faith without either Christ or faith - so I guess all they're offering is 'ian' (nice boy but he's hardly going to save the world!). The puzzling thing is that the congregations of Klaas Hendrikse and other ministers like him seem to lap up their 'God isn't real, Jesus is a myth, it's all over when you die' version of the faith.

Now, I'm no die hard traditionalist (as many know only too well) but it seems to me that it's a complete failure of the imagination to strip everything difficult out of the Christian faith and yet still go to church. There are plenty of places where people who are not theists, do not believe that Jesus is of anything other than passing historical interest, believe that this life is all that's on offer, can gather to chew the fat and work out the meaning of our time here on planet earth.

Jesus' teaching is not easy - unless you strip it down to a vacuous 'be nice to each other' message that these guys seem to hold to; it is not for those who are not prepared to grapple with the deep mysteries of life, not prepared to face the injustices of the world and protest that there must be a better way to live. To come to church and engage with Jesus is a bold act of the imagination that demands of every participant a willingness to lay aside our easy perceptions of the world and wrestle with what else might be going on within and around us.

Merely to gather people together to tell them that there's no God and nothing to look forward to when we die, so make the most of life here, seems to be a waste of everyone's time - not to mention the cash poured into the utility bills and upkeep of the buildings.

A thought on when it's a good time to take a holiday

2011-08-05T09:51:00.000+01:00

The world's stock markets are going south and so, apparently, have our leaders. As economy's tank all over the world and the prospects of recession loom ever larger, the prime minister, deputy prime minister and chancellor have all gone on holiday, leaving the hapless chief secretary to the treasury to defend the UK's totally irrelevant deficit reduction plan, as if our protestations of austerity will save us from the financial tsunami brewing off-shore.

The current crisis is a political one born of our inability to reform financial markets in the wake of the credit crunch. So it is not a time for our politicians to take their eyes of the ball and head for the beach. A massive restructuring of the way money of all kinds is managed around the globe is urgently required so that the poor stop bailing out the rich every time there's a market panic.

We need a more creative approach to getting out of the mess we're in than the slash and burn policies of the IMF, EU and our own governments, cheered on by the nutters in he US tea party movement which merely lead to rising unemployment, falling output and a squeeze on the incomes of those least able to cope in the hope that the system will magically correct itself.

Now is maybe not the best time for our leaders to be on the beach.

Sharp stories of a salty alternative to tower building and war mongering

2011-08-01T15:41:00.000+01:00

A couple of weeks ago I was preaching on the end of Luke 14. At first sight it seems to be just a general call to discipleship, wrapped up in a couple of think-about-it stories. It comes after the parables of the great banquet but seems to have little connection with them. Furthermore, Jesus speaks off his own bat rather than in response to a question or observation from the crowd. Luke reminds us that Jesus still had a big audience and that they were 'travelling' - ie Jerusalem is getting closer and we all know what will happen there.

And maybe that should alert us to the fact that there's a sharper focus to these words than just a general call to serious discipleship. It also suggests the link with what's gone before. At the end of chapter 13 we have Jesus words about Herod and his tears for Jerusalem. Now we have stories about tower builders and war-mongers. Perhaps we are in the same territory. Tom Wright helpfully suggests that Herod the great was probably the tower builder and that the tower in question was the still unfinished temple and that those plotting rebellion against Rome were the war mongers. Suddenly the story is freighted with spiritual and political urgency.

The parables of the great banquet have strongly suggested that the party God will throw at the end time is for the poor, the marginalised, the dispossessed, those with no stake in the current order who are always being pushed around by what a writer in today's Guardian wonderfully called 'the feral elite'. Followers of Jesus ought to be concerned about the poor and not the dreams of the tower builders and war mongers.

This throws light on the puzzling little saying about salt in 14:34f. God's people were supposed to be showing the world a different set of values, an alternative lifestyle. They are meant to be - in the words of American historian and cultural critic Theodore Roszak who sadly died last week - a counter culture. The trouble is that Jesus looks around at Israel and he sees that it's anything but. That is why he weeps over the city, why he longs to be able to gather it to himself like a hen gathers her chicks. That is what lies behind his despairing comment that what should be salty is just bland and indistinguishable from the surrounding cultures; it's just another empire of tower builders and war mongers. And Jesus weeps.

Having told the story of the banquet, he calls people to join his revolution, his counter culture, his way of being that embodies the values of the God who reigns. Hence he ends by asking those with ears to hear what he's saying.I don't think it's an accident that this is immediately followed in Luke's account by the parables of lost things (sheep, coins, sons) that are kicked off by the Pharisees grumbling that Jesus models these values in who he offers his hospitality to; nor that the apparently mystifying parable of the unjust steward (the subject of another post to come) follows immediately on with no change of audience or pause for breath.

I was thinking all this when the postman arrived with my copy of Kavin Rowe's World Upside Down: Reading Acts in the Graeco-Roman Age. I've been looking forward to reading this for ages, having read a couple of Rowe's papers on Acts, because he argues a political reading of acts that is based on God's apocalypse in Jesus and treads the fine line between being a counter culture that turns the world upside down and fermenting a revolution that seeks to replace one tyranny with another. I'll keep you posted on how it shapes up.

It's lovely to be noticed

2011-07-29T18:58:00.000+01:00

I came across the first review of my recent book, the World of the Early Church, yesterday. It's in the Theological Book Review, a twice-yearly publication from Liverpool Hope University - indeed it's one of the four books highlighted on the cover! It's written by Daniel Jeyaraj, the professor of World Christianity at the university and director of the Andrew Walls Centre for the study of African and Asian Christianity.And I think it's true to say that he liked it.

It's particularly gratifying to have one's work reviewed in places where a key target market for the book will be found. As professor Jeyaraj says: 'Every reader of this book, whether an expert or a beginner or a student, who wishes to better understand the socio-cultural world of the persons mentioned in the New Testament better, will gain new insights.' Well, that's precisely why I wrote it. I hope lots of people read and benefit from it in the way the reviewer suggests.

Here's hoping it gets reviewed elsewhere...

Remembering John Stott

2011-07-28T18:37:00.000+01:00

I never met John Stott but I heard him preach a few times in the 1970s and early 1980s. He was always clear and gracious and my dim memory of it is that he always pointed people to Jesus rather than to the Bible. So I am really pleased to see in an interview with Tim Stafford in Christianity Today (available here) that he says: 'the really distinctive emphasis is on Christ. I want to shift conviction from a book, if you like, to a person. As Jesus himself said, the Scriptures bear witness to me. Their main function is to witness to Christ.' That's well said.

Stott's greatest contribution to evangelicalism, I reckon, was that in the 1970s he was one of the key evangelical leaders who put us back in touch with the world and social action as a key part of the mission of the church. Through the first Lausanne Conference in 1974 - which he was instrumental in making happen - evangelicals rediscovered the core gospel truth that God loves the world and that his people are called to be active in that world bringing good news to all, especially the poor, the marginalised, the excluded, the suffering.

Stott wrote a seminal book (Issues Facing Christians Today) on the Christian response to social issues that informed a growing number of eager evangelicals that there was more to proclaiming Christ than just calling people to faith. It was a book that shaped my early thinking on social action and encouraged me to integrate my faith and my working life, my love of Jesus with my involvement in seeking justice for all and engaging in social and even political activity to further the coming of the Kingdom.

So, he was a towering figure who lived a good and fruitful life and has now - at a ripe old age - gone to his reward. The best memorial for him is that a new generation of Jesus followers will rise up to bring good news to the poor in our villages, towns and cities and create vibrant communities that embody the life and values of our Lord and his.

The passing of a great saint

2011-07-27T20:40:00.000+01:00

News has come through that the great John Stott died this afternoon. He was a stalwart defender of the faith and an all round lovely Christian man. There are tributes here; I'm sure lots more will follow.

Reading scripture together

2011-07-27T15:14:00.000+01:00

A while back I mused on how we communicate to our churches the developments happening in the world of theology, in my case New Testament studies.The issue came up again last night at our church Bible study when someone asked how they were supposed to keep up when the interpretations of the bible - we were looking at Romans 7-8 - keep changing. I've been troubled by this question most of the day.

Baptists have always believed that the Lord has yet more light and truth to break forth from his word. It is a key plank in baptist hermeneutics. But when it happens it can be unsettling. Are interpretations changing - meaning we have to forget old readings - or is our understanding deepening and broadening - meaning that we are grasping more of God's big picture?

I hope that the latter is happening. In relation to Romans I'd like to think that we are moving from a reading - popular among evangelicals for a long time - that the letter is just about justification by faith. Even more bluntly, many Christians have read the letter as being all about them, how God loves me and sent Jesus to die for my sins so I could be saved and go to heaven when I die.Now, of course, Romans has always been about more than that - even Luther, who stressed justification by faith, saw that - but that has been the central reading of it since the birth of evangelicalism.

I'd like to think that as we deepen our appreciation of the context in which Romans was written, the language used, the themes developed in what is a highly complex and magnificently written letter, so our understanding of the themes of the letter deepen and broaden. It seems to me that at the very least Romans is about God and Israel, about how God acts in covenant faithfulness to his people and through them to the rest of the world. Within that, of course, is an explanation of how I can be part of all that.

The issue that arose last night is two fold. The first has to do with the scope of scripture and the second is about the tools we need to understand an ancient text. They are closely related.

One of the great strengths of evangelicalism is that it has sought to put the Bible into the hands of ordinary Christians and encourage them to hear God speaking directly to them through it. It has always been a faith of the literate. This is a problem in contexts where rates of literacy are not high but that's an issue for a different post.

The trouble is that this has led to a focus in our reading of scripture that means we are always looking for what it is saying to me about me. We risk missing all the important things that scripture is telling us about God, the world around us and other people; worse, we see all those things only in relation in to me; I become the centre of attention. This is not helpful.

But this is allied to the second issue: namely, can anyone pick up an ancient text and expect to understand it without help? As we get further and further away from the work shops in Rome's back streets where this letter was first heard by a motley collection of craft workers and others, is it not the role of teachers in the church to help Christians understand the context in which this letter would have been heard and what the language would have meant to those first hearers?

Of course, to many this sounds elitist (maybe it is); worse, it sounds like an attempt to take the scriptures away from the ordinary believer and put them in the hands of an educated minority, indeed back into the hands of the 'priests' that the Reformation fought so hard to wrest them from all those years ago. The trouble is that this reading of the reformation misses the extent to which the movement across Europe in the sixteenth emptied the churches and appealed only to a literate minority of Christians, the very people who pored over books, discussed new ideas, listened to erudite sermons and asked searching questions of the preacher in a desire to greater understand the text under discussion (but that's a subject for a different post).

My fear is that the church like the rest of the culture has dumbed down somewhat, settled for a lowest common denominator equality that means anyone can read an ancient text and instruct others on its meaning. we only have to look at some churches to see where that leads us!

Thoughts about Amy

2011-07-25T19:13:00.001+01:00

I was was going to post some thoughts on the death of Amy Winehouse but Jim Gordon over at Living Wittily has said it so much better than I ever could. So go and check it out.

When the news drives you to your knees

2011-07-23T18:16:00.000+01:00

Words cannot do justice to the horror that visited Norway yesterday. Let's pray for the country, especially those caught up in this ghastly event. It is heart-breaking that the perpetrator is associated with the Christian faith. His action is in no way motivated by Jesus of Nazareth and his followers need to stress this in the days to come as we pray for him and his victims.

And I've just heard that Amy Winehouse has been found dead. What a shame! Such a talented singer, such a troubled soul. The former prime minister's wife Sarah Brown speaks for us all when she tweeted "Sad sad news of Amy Winehouse - great talent, extraordinary voice, and tragic death, condolences to her family."

So much to pray about

Hacking is not just the province of newspapers

2011-07-20T18:25:00.000+01:00

There's a good piece by my friend Steve in today's Society section of the Guardian. He's a bit of an expert on keeping young people safe on line and has some important things to say about how young people without good literacy skills and supportive adults are at some risk of finding themselves 'hacked' and their futures left in threads.

I particularly liked his image of the social web created by new mobile media as an incubator rather than merely a platform. 'It is a place where communication is captured, aggregated, added to, morphed, changed and rehatched as a new broadcast or "ping"'. His article is based on an extensive report he's written on the subject for the government's training and development agency.

Check it out here. And you can download the full report here.

It is a reminder that information is currency, often highly sought-after, not just for those seeking to grab better headlines than their rivals. Perhaps it's yet another reason why what's happened at News International over the past years has affected the environment in which all of us live.

Riding the roller coaster

2011-07-18T09:55:00.000+01:00

It's been a busy, roller coaster of a week. On Friday I took the funeral of my sister-in-law, Trish, who finally succumbed to cancer after a five year battle. On Sunday, my youngest daughter, Olivia, got engaged to Joe. So the Jones household has run the gamut of emotions!

Trish's funeral went as well as these things can. the chapel was full to hear moving tributes from both her boys and a poem/prayer from one of her oldest friends. What struck me was that there were people from all aspects of her life present in good numbers to mark her passing. It is testament to her ability to make friends and keep them. She'll be missed.

Olivia's news was not unexpected as Joe had given us a heads-up ahead of popping the question and we are thrilled and delighted for them both. They are a great couple and wonderful parents to Sophia.

While all this was going on, we had the biggest Messy Church of the year (when we were expecting people to be away). We had first-timers and returners who've not been for a while. Messy Talk also went really well - the final instalment of how we experience God. In the autumn we're trialling another Ugly Duckling Company tool which includes DVD material. We're looking forward to it.

Maybe this week will give me chance to pause and catch my breath.

The place of faith in public life

2011-07-09T18:33:00.000+01:00

Two great pieces in today's papers about religion in public life. There's a superb interview with Rowan Williams in the guardian magazine conducted by David Hare which is online here and there's a great piece on Maurice Glassman, the man behind Blue Labour in the Times. It is on-line but behind the Murdoch pay wall.

Both make a strong case for the involvement of Christians - and religion more generally - in public life. Williams is very moving on his recent visit to Congo and Kenya and the vital role that the church plays in creating civil society and safe places for those caught up in the horrors of violence in those countries.

In his speech to General Synod last week, reflecting on that trip, he said: ‘If it wasn’t for the Church, no-one, absolutely no-one, would have cared, and they would be lost still. It was almost a fierce sense, almost an angry feeling, this knowledge that the Church mattered so intensely.' (you can read the whole speech here).

Glassman is an orthodox Jew and stresses in the interview in the Times how important religion is in shaping his life and in shaping the labour party. We all knew the latter but he goes on to say that religion is vital for reshaping and renewing the Labour Party now. It's a bold thing for a man of the left (even the centre left where he is) to say but it's really good to hear it being said. More power to his elbow, I say

Lancing the boil?

2011-07-07T18:15:00.001+01:00

So, the Murdochs have decided that the solution to the News of the World phone hacking horror is to close the newspaper. So, lots of people are going to lose their jobs while the people responsible for the culture at the paper make the announcement in sackcloth and ashes, assuming that sweeping away the title gets rid of the problem.

Astonishingly, the Government thinks it's the right decision. Hopefully, it won't dissuade the government from holding the enquiries that David Cameron promised yesterday.

What we've seen today is the combined effect of advertisers, figures from public life and even outraged readers attacking Murdoch's bottom line. His response is to remove the running sore. But it doesn't do anything to deal with the infection at the heart of this company. The boil is still waiting to be lanced.

At the very least all those who have had editorial control of the paper in the last decade should be sacked - whatever job they currently hold - and investigated by the police as part of their wide-ranging enquiry. After all, it is they, not the News of the World's current staff, who bear responsibility for dragging the paper into the sewer and beyond.

And surely no one can now think Murdoch is fit and proper person to run yet more of Britain's media. The company's desire to control all of BSkyB must be thwarted. It's turnover makes that of the News of the World look like petty cash. Over to you Jeremy Hunt; try to do the right thing; seek help if you're not sure what that is.

Refreshed, relaxed and returned

2011-07-02T19:30:00.000+01:00

Gramping's quite good fun, all things considered. We had a great time with the grandchildren, children and partners in Hope Cove. The best thing about it was that we no internet access (unless we went to the nearby hotel for cream teas - tough!) and no mobile phone signal. So we had to talk to each other and make our own entertainment. Fab.

We swam in the sea and walked on the beach. Hope Cove is one of my most favourite places on planet earth. I've had some good times there with God and at least one blazing row with him on a damp October morning. This time, in the sunshine and warmth, it was good to soak up the wonder of his creation and the company of my family.

Tomorrow it's back to work with a church meeting and a service saying farewell to our GB captain. Should be a good day - not as good as swimming in sea and going back to the house for a barbie - ah well!

We're off gramping

2011-06-24T21:10:00.000+01:00

We're off to Hope Cove tomorrow with our whole family - daughters, grand-daughters and partners. The weather forecast is good and we have a four bed-roomed house 150 yards from the beach for a week; can't be bad.

Apparently what we're doing is called 'gramping' - where grandparents provide the basis for a holiday for the whole family. We're really looking forward it: Hope Cove is gorgeous and it'll be great to be away from the study and the landline for a week! Best of all, we'll have lots of opportunity for inter-generational bonding.

So postings will be in short supply for the next few days.

The choppy waters coming from Greece

2011-06-24T10:11:00.000+01:00

The ever prescient Jon Snow has some sobering words on the Greek crisis over on his Channel 4 News blog. You can read it here.

It might be at the alarmist end of the spectrum but it does highlight a salient point in all this: the city of London is still at the centre of the spider's web of international finance. In particular, we are the hub of the world's insurance and reinsurance business and there'll be a hefty bill when the Greek's go belly up. But that bill will be dwarfed by the one coming our way when Ireland and Portugal hit the buffers.

Instead of tinkering at the edges of serious banking reform, perhaps the EU leaders gathering in Brussels today might sink their teeth into the issue of how we can make the sector more accountable and transparent so that we can see the scale of the waves heading our way before they break over us.

I wondered about the consequences about Greek default yesterday. I still think it's inevitable; whether it's desirable is in the hands of our leaders: it could just be the wake up call we all need and failed to heed when Lehman's and Iceland went down.

I am pondering the parable of the rich fool from Luke 12. It's not an exact parallel to our situation but I am always chastened by the fact that Jesus introduced the sobering tale with the words: 'watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; life does not consist in an abundance of possessions' (v15).

We're good at applying this verse and the parable that follows to us as individuals (well, to other individuals), but it clearly also applies to us as a culture. We live in a system that says 'greed is good' and rewards that greed with all the stuff that we think is essential for the good life. Unfortunately, as in the parable, such a way of life is not sustainable; eventually God comes calling.

Sadly, unlike in the parable, it is not the paragons of greed who suffer when the wheels come off but the ordinary people, struggling to grab a bit of the action for themselves, who get a kicking; and the poor of the planet who see the little they have swept away in the flood.

So let's pray for the people of Greece, the ordinary people who, like us, have tried to grab the most they can, often in the least sustainable way, and who now face ruin. And let's pray for the leaders gathered in Brussels that they will own responsibility for the mess we're in and actually do something to sort it out in the interests of the poorest rather than the richest.

And let's pray that we all realise that 'life does not consist in an abundance of possessions'

Giving credit where credit is due

2011-06-23T14:46:00.000+01:00

Excellent to see Amartya Sen taking a pop at the rating agencies in today's Guardian. He argues that despite their abysmal track record on rating financial instruments, they are calling the shots over the fate of nations that is genuinely harmful for the future of democracy.

Sen points out that UK policy makers feel themselves beholden to the credit agencies and so have taken decisions on deficit reduction and austerity to placate them. But, he points out, at least in the UK we can debate the wisdom of the policy and the government can claim that part at least of its programme was put to the people in an election.

This is not the case in Greece. Economic policy and the fate of the government is in the hands of the IMF and credit ratings agencies, not the Greek people. Now we could say that the Greeks have had their chance and blown it. But if the generals return as a result of this crisis, part of the blame should be laid at the door of the international, unelected, undemocratic financial institutions.

It's really sad that Congress backed off from suing the ratings agencies over the collapse of Lehman's and the financial meltdown that occurred in its wake. After all, these organisations had given triple A ratings to all the dodgy financial instruments - including the bundles of sub-prime mortgages at the heart of the system's toxicity - being traded around the globe before the crash, instruments that had precipitated the mega-crisis in confidence that led to collapsing banks and bloating deficits across the western world.

I wonder where we'd end up if Greece called the credit ratings agencies' bluff, gave the IMF a couple of suggestions about what it could do with its austerity package and carried on as before. If nothing else it would wipe the Cheshire cat grins off the faces of the men in suits no one voted for. Maybe it would be the first step in a genuine reform of the world's financial system in favour of one that gave a damn about the people at the bottom of the pile.

At the end of the day, Bruce Cockburn had the IMF well and truly summed up in his song Call it Democracy - you can check it out here and see what I mean...

Sensing a move of the Spirit

2011-06-20T18:35:00.000+01:00

We finished our series on the gifts of the Spirit last night and good things happened at the later service with people beginning to have the confidence to share possibly prophetic words with one another as we shared food around our tables. This is a good development. Notes and audio files are on the church website now - you can access them here.

I've discovered some more great new and free music! American singer Josh Garrels has made an 18 track album called Love & War & the sea in between. It's a glorious mixture of folk, electronica, Americana, even acoustic rap. His blog said that he sensed the Lord saying to him that he should make this album free; so it is - and I, for one, am very grateful.

You can download it here and I recommend that you do because it's not only wonderfully played and produced but it boasts lyrics that have real depth and breadth. He also has a lovely voice. Garrels is the latest US Christian artist I've discovered through Noisetrade (you really must sign up for its alerts if you haven't already - it offers a ton of free and really cheap, excellent quality new music). Others include Justin McRoberts, whose album Deconstruction is great, Sandra McCracken, Sleeping at Last and Jenny & Tyler.

The Spirit seems to be at work in Christian music from across the pond in slightly hidden and out-of-the-way places - but then, that's always the way with the Spirit, avoiding the mainstream, side-stepping the crowd, stirring up a storm on the margins. Put yourself in the way of it; let it wash over you and refresh your soul...

So Beautiful or So What

2011-06-16T08:47:00.005+01:00

I'm listening to the new Paul Simon album. So Beautiful or So What confirms Simon's place at the top of the pile of lyricists. Building on Surprise - one of my favourite albums of all time - So Beautiful or So What contains reflections and ruminations on mortality, the meaning of life and what happens when we die.

The lyrics ride on wonderful tunes, played by some great musicians and are shot through with a fierce and playful wit, making the album a delight to listen to.

Simon has been quoted as saying that he's not much interested in religion. But he's certainly interested in God and what God might have do with us. It opens with Getting Ready for Christmas Day (not exactly seasonal for an album released in June - but that's part of the playfulness!) which contains the line: 'Getting ready, oh we’re getting ready/For the power and the glory and the story of the Christmas Day' intercut with samples from a black preacher and poignant reflections on family as the song's narrator has a nephew in Iraq.

And in many ways this playful, witty, scatter-gun opener sets the scene for the rest of the album. It's a roller coaster of tuneful intelligence and rhythm. Check it out

Being good neighbours in a blandified world

2011-06-13T10:18:00.001+01:00

I've just finished an excellent book on cities. Anna Minton's Ground Control: Fear and Happiness in the twenty-first century city (Penguin 2009) is an examination of how there's been a major shift in ownership of our city spaces from the public to the private. She tells the story of how the redevelopment of London's docklands provided governments with a template of how urban regeneration could be privatised and hence, in the eye of its proponents, delivered more quickly and efficiently.

The upshot, Minton argues, is that public space is being increasingly privatised and blandified. we see it in mammoth shopping centre developments where streets are glassed over and ownership shifts to the property company whose uniformed security people rule the roost and have the right to refuse entry to people they think are undesirable - young people in hoodies, groups of pensioners killing time but not buying.

Maybe this is the reason why all retail parks seem the same, boasting the same rosta of shops and cafes, lacking in local flavour or identity. And it isn't just covered centres that are privately owned. Liverpool One, the redeveloped heart of that great city, is also privately owned and policed by people other than the boys in blue.

Apart from leading to bland and soulless spaces at the heart of our cities, these trends have coincided with the rise of gated communities and the previous government's desire to secure even social housing developments by design that makes the areas difficult to access or pass through. More and more land is fenced off and gated, rendered inaccessible to the general public despite the fact that it seems to be 'public' land.

It has also coincided with the rise of CCTV - the UK has more cameras than the whole of western Europe put together and yet fear of crime in our country is vastly higher than in any of our EU partners. Minton's argument is that the more we separate ourselves from one another, the more fearful we become of 'the stranger' and 'the outsider'.

I think that theologically she is on to something here; something that feeds into what I was blogging about recently in relation to neighbourhood mission. It's simply this: do we have a role, as people who believe in communities comprised of a rich mix of people of all types (since that is what the church is or ought to be), in helping to create neighbourhoods that reflect that where we live?

Minton is iffy about the notion of social capital (for interesting reasons that I can't go into here) but I wonder if Christians have a role in balancing financial capital with the creation of social capital (which I understand to be simply to be the creation of connections and relationships between people in society); and in so doing, helping to create neighbourhoods where there are just collections of houses and flats.

A final word on my MA

2011-06-09T09:54:00.001+01:00

I thought I'd share a link to the Church of England website detailing my graduation on Monday. You can find it here. And here some more pictures. I thought I'd post these as I don't get pictured with Rowan Williams very often!

And there's a group shot with all three recipients of awards with Maureen Palmer (third from the left) and Martin Kitchen (on the far right but only in this picture!) who run the programme.

And a final word on Rowan, do check out this week's New Statesman, which he has guest edited, and in which he says some trenchant but sensible things about the government as well as a range of other issues that affect our culture at this time.

Graduating in historic splendour

2011-06-07T11:48:00.000+01:00

Yesterday, I had the great joy of receiving my MA from the Archbishop of Canterbury in a service at Lambeth Palace. The ceremony was full of fabulously arcane language, involved me swearing an oath of allegiance and resulted in me being created 'an actual Master of Arts' and being admitted 'into the number of Masters of Arts of this Realm.' But I don't get my certificate until the Queen's approved it which could take some time!

It was a lovely day, shared with Linda and her mum and dad (as in the picture) and good friends Anne and Alan from church. The highlight was a long conversation with Rowan Williams. It was good to get an insight into the pressures that he's under and hear his enthusiasm for sharing the good news of Jesus with ordinary people. We also discussed the detail of my thesis, in particular, the levels of literacy among first century craft workers that the light this throws on how we approach group hermeneutics in today's world. He is a warm and wise man.

Jesus' mission to his neighbours

2011-06-06T09:05:00.001+01:00

The theme of the mission conference in the Canaries was taken from Matthew 4:19: ‘come, follow me and I will send you out to fish for people’ (TNIV). As I reflected on that verse and my experience in the Canaries, I noticed something that I’d not really spotted or appreciated before. What follows is a rough outworking of that thought.

It centres on Jesus’ relationship with Capernaum as the centre for his mission activity. And what we see is that Jesus is a model for us: what he does is what he sends us to do Luke 10:1-11 (see previous post here).

So, what do we learn from this

Firstly, Jesus calls people to follow him, to be with him. In Mark’s account of the gathering of the Twelve, he tells us that Jesus ‘appointed twelve that they might be with him and that he might send them out’ (Mk 3:14a). In other words, discipleship is about being with Jesus and learning his lifestyle. So, what in particular stands out?

Jesus chose a base. Capernaum was a border town of 10,000 people; a trading and garrison town, a centre for tax gathering. It worth noting that Jesus lived there for long enough to get to know his neighbours and be known by them. So he mingles with fishermen (4:18); a soldier (8:5); tax collectors (17:24ff). It seems that he was based in Capernaum, while making forays out into other places.

Then he picked a team. Jesus is an outsider (he moved north east from Nazareth to Capernaum) and he picks a mixed bag of people to work with: Peter & Andrew are economic migrants from Bethsaida who’ve come over the border into Galilee because the fishing’s good and there are mouths to feed; Matthew, a local tax collector (9:9), local and probably unloved; James and John appear to have been locals working in their family business.

The church always works best when it makes use of those who are insiders, born and bred locally, bringing an insider’s sensitivity to the community’s needs; and outsiders who bring a different eye to the situation, a different set of experiences. It is when we blend these two perspectives that we stand most chance of hearing God and seeing how he wants us to fulfil the mission he’s given us.

And then he shared his story. I wonder whether Jesus made things in Capernaum as well as preached; is there anything that precludes us thinking that he was a carpenter in that town as well as a preacher of the Kingdom? I have never seen that question discussed in the commentaries and I’d quite like someone to weigh the evidence. After all, Paul remained a tent maker for his whole ministry and while Jesus clearly devoted his whole life to preaching towards the end of his time, what about the early stages of his ministry in Capernaum. Certainly he lived and ate with his neighbours and shared his story with them. And what he shared was two-fold:

revolution: the Kingdom of God is a revolution in our lives, a new allegiance and a new set of values live by; it’s results in a lifestyle of light for our neighbours (v10; cf 5:14);

repent: this is not a feeling but an action: we look at Jesus and say ‘that’s how I want to live’ and Jesus says to us ‘if you agree with what I’m saying, join my band.’ We repent, not when we feel bad about our behaviour, but when we change our minds about how we are living and what we are living for.

Secondly, Jesus tells his new friends that they will be fishing for people. Now this is an ironic play on the previous jobs of Andrew and Peter, James and John. He probably didn’t invite tax collectors to fish for people! His call is also an ironic reversal of the prophetic tradition – where fishing was an image of judgement: Jer 16:16; Hab 1:14f. As ever Jesus turns a well-known image on its head. How does Jesus want us to go about this task? Three thoughts come to mind.
The first is that we can only do this as we follow in his footsteps. Discipleship is key to doing mission. We cannot share what we do not know and live; mission grows out of knowing Jesus, knowing his word and living his life. It is not a technique that we learn or campaigns that we run for short periods.

The second is that we do this in his power. As we follow, he fishes through us. How can we do what Jesus asks us to do in Luke 10? By living our lives and allowing Jesus to draw people to us for those life-changing conversations & encounters and trusting him to speak through our words and our lives in such a way that they begin to change their minds about how they should be living their lives.

And finally, all this happens in his time. This means that we can be both confident and relaxed about all this, knowing that if we’re living as his disciples, he’ll be fishing through us. We also need to recognise that the response will be mixed: Peter, Andrew, James and John responded pretty quickly, though 4:18-20 was probably not the first time they had met. The centurion that we read about in chapter 8 had been Jesus’ neighbour for a while, he’d seen who he was and what he stood for and, when he had a particular need that he couldn’t get addressed any other way, he came to Jesus. The collectors of the temple tax who engaged Jesus in discussion in17:24ff – possibly friends of Matthew – knew enough about Jesus to know that he had interesting views on the payment of taxes! Some rejected it, apparently (11:23f).

I saw this way of working as I visited churches and communities in the Canary Islands. I was struck by the mixture of insider and outsider, those born and bred on the islands and those who have come as missionaries. All the churches are a rich mixture of nationalities, each of which are bringing their own perspectives on life and discipleship.

Picking up the threads after my travels

2011-06-02T17:57:00.000+01:00

Back safe and sound, sitting at my desk, sifting through the emails I didn't answer while I was away and opening the post. But most importantly, catching up with Linda and home. I love travelling, meeting new people and being involved in ministry in different cultures. But I also love coming home.

Among the goodies awaiting my return were two books. Richard Longenecker's Introducing Romans: Critical Issues in Paul's Most Famous Letter looks to be an essential addition to the bibliography for my Romans course at Spurgeons. It's a 500 page compendium of all the issues a reader of Romans has to consider and has been published ahead of his forthcoming commentary.

The other is The Blackwell Companion to Paul edited by Stephen Westerholm which I've been asked to review. I'm excited to see this for a couple of reasons. The first is that, not only does it deal with Paul and his letters against their first century cultural and historical background, but it also looks at how Paul has been read through the ages and a little bit across the cultures. The second is the sheer quality of scholars, established and rising, who have contributed to this volume - Rainer Riesner, Beverley Gaventa, Ross Wagner, Gerd Theissen, Tony Lane, Robin Jensen. I hope it lives up to its billing.

Attempting ministry amidst a spectacle

2011-06-01T09:09:00.000+01:00

My 24 hours in La Palma was great. I spent just over half of it with a wonderful missionary couple from Germany who lead a single baptist church that meets in three places around this small island. The reason for this is obvious as soon as you get in a car.

La Palma is the greenest, most mountainous and, I think, most beautiful of the islands in the group, Dominated by a rangle of mountains in the centre of the island, reaching heights of 2,500 metres (just shy of 10,000 feet), the people live in towns and villages dotted around the coastline and just inland (but even these are at the top of steep inclines. The towns tend to be separated by both hills and deep gorges, meaning that journeys of a few kilometres take an hour or more on windy roads. Even recent investment in bridges and tunnels has only cut journey times a little.

So, getting from place to place for ministry means that folk spend hours in their cars. Those without cars are dependent on buses that take an hour or more to get to the neighbouring town and are not that frequent. None of this matters when you come here as a tourist and take advantage of the black sandy beaches or the breath-taking mountain scenery. But it does if you are trying to plant and nurture churches.

However, Pedro and Dorles are doing a fantastic job. They are full of creative ideas and after 17 years are firm fixtures in the community in Los Llanos where they live (this is a lovely town with wide streets, varied architecture and art of all kinds dotted around). Their colleague in Santa Cruz is more traditional in his approach but still has a significant ministry - especially in the local prison.

The churches here - as well as elsewhere on the islands - are very buildings focused and their buildings tend to be quite traditional. My feeling is that they need to think about how they can make better use of their homes backed up by the internet for teaching. But I'd need to reflect more on this.

Yesterday morning we drove up to the highest point on La Palma. The winding road leads up through dense forest into the clouds and then, beyond the cloud cover, into a sparse landscape of volcanic peaks up to the string of observatories built to take advantage of the clear skies. Standing on the peak you look down a thousand feet to the clouds lying like a fluffy blanket over the landscape. It's like the view from an aircraft window when at cruising height. It's truly spectacular.

Back for a day chilling in Lanzarote before my flight home this evening.

Seeing God at work in the sun

2011-05-29T21:38:00.000+01:00

Greetings from Gran Canaria - Las Palmas, to be precise. The contrast with Lanzarote couldn't be more pronounced. Whereas Lanzarote is relatively sparsley populated with uniformly white houses collected in small and medium sized hamlets, Las Palmas is a sprawling city of multi-coloured high rises and bustling streets. Las Palmas is the commercial centre and political capital of the group of islands but I'm not sure how it sustains its population of half a million people.

Today I have been in two contrasting but wonderfully vibrant churches. This morning I was in a suburb in a church that was built about twenty years ago and is at the moment in the throes of creating a basement about the same size as the church containing a lounge, accommodation for both sexes, bathrooms and a kitchen capable of catering for large numbers. They hope to use it for conferences - especially of young people - but more importantly, as a base for social outreach. They are planning a food bank and already have the local Spar lined up to supply some food, clothes distribution and possibly a medical work of some kind as they have family doctors and nurses in the church keen to do something.

This evening I was in a city centre church in Las Palmas, squeezed into a rented hall used by two other churches and a host of other groups. But they took me to their new building, a shop front, round the corner from their hall at the foot of an apartment block. They have just secured the bank loan needed to complete the job and hope to have it done in three months, but this being Spain, a month is a flexible measure of time.

Both churches are not short of faith and energy, vision and a desire to reach out to their immediate neighbourhoods. It is heartening to see God at work in a context that we Brits usually only see as a holiday destination, not a place where locals live. I've been blessed to share a little of the lives of the people who live here all the time.

So tomorrow I'm off to La Palma (not to be confused with Las Palmas), the Westerly-most island, the greenest and most difficult to navigate, to link up with a German/Spanish church planting couple who are working in three centres across the island. Their daughter has been one of my translators at the conference and this morning, and probably the best. The translators have each done a great job for me; I'm grateful to them and to God for the skills and gifts they've put at my and his disposal.

And so to bed...

A good congress

2011-05-28T21:37:00.000+01:00

The congress is over., Yesterday went really well with about 20 people responding at the end of the evening session on Luke 10. Tomorrow, I fly to Gran Canaria to preach in two churches, stay overnight nd then on to La Palma to meet the team there, led by a wonderful German/Spanish couple, and then back to Lanzarote on Tuesday evening. Should be fun.

It's been great to meet so many wonderful people over the past couple of days and intriguing that so many are from places other than the Canaries - quite a few from Argentina, some from Chile and Columbia. Indeed many have commented on how transnational the churches are here, often to the extent that there are very few Canary Islanders among them!

I've had a number iof invitations to return, so it might not be my last visit here. Next time, I'll combine with a holiday and bring Linda, however.

Celebrating the God who's with us all the days

2011-05-26T17:59:00.000+01:00

Greeings from the Canary Islands. It's been lovely walking in the sunshine, sharing conversation with new friends here on Lanzarote. Now I am pondering what to say to the ministers this evening at their gathering ahead of the conference starting properly tomorrow. I think I'm going to reflect a little on Matthew 28 as tomorrow I am going to focus on Luke 10 in the two sessions I am doing.

There are so many things I could say in the light of today's conversions but I have to stick to something manageable which I can deliver with confidence in about 20 minutes because with translation that will make a forty minute session - plenty long enough in this heat, I think (it's about 25 degrees).

I shall reflect on how Matthew 28 offers us resources for a missional lifestyle, supported by the promise that Jesus is with us 'all the days' - the good ones and the grotty ones, the ones when everything goes well and our minsitries are flying and the ones when everything comes apart and our ministries feel like so much hot air and the majority of them when things are pottering along, and it's all ok but we're not sure what it amounts to.

I'll let you know how it goes.

Sharing missional thoughts in the Canaries

2011-05-24T17:57:00.000+01:00

Tomorrow I'm off to Lanzarote to speak at the Canary Islands Baptist Mission Conference (it's a tough job but someone really has to do it!). I shall be delivering four sessions - one to ministers, the other three to the conference as a whole.

I'm sure that Roxburgh's thinking will feature heavily in what I share from Luke 10. It will be interesting to see how churches in a very context to mine respond to these ideas.

One of the challenges for us in what Roxburgh says about mission is how we see the people who live next door and across the street as 'neighbours'. It's a challenge because lots of them live in networks rather than neighbourhoods; they mix with the people they know and like from their leisure pursuits or workplaces, from the links that have been made via their children.

Now some of these network links look suspiciously like neighbourly relations. But others aren't because interaction will take place miles from home. The challenge of Roxburgh's thinking is whether we can model the life of faith where we live with those among whom we live. But I think there's another challenge here that has to do with how we can contribute to making the streets we live in into neighbourhoods where people interact with one another, look out for each other, laugh and cry with each other.

Sociologists talk of this in terms of social capital. Robert Putnam in Bowling Alone argued that the growing individualism and consumerism of our culture was leading to a decline in social capital. Does the Christian community have a role in reversing this decline? Is this part of being a missional people? I think the answer to this is probably 'yes'. But I am not sure how.

I'll be reflecting on this as I sip sangria watching the sun set over the sea with new friends in the coming week and as I share coffee and glasses of wine with various friends through this coming summer in gardens, cafes and pubs around here. Perhaps, I'll stumble on an insight or two. I'd be interested to know your thoughts...

Joining God in the neighbourhood

2011-05-23T10:50:00.000+01:00

Having finished Alan Roxburgh's book, I thought I'd reflect on how I feel his analysis of our situation and Luke's writings is shaping how I think about my task in Bromley.

The first thing to note is that I agree absolutely with the thrust of his argument. 'The road onto which we are being called is counter-intuitive; it calls us to leave behind our bags filled with methods and models of how to make the church work by creating programmes that will attract and catch people. The way of the Spirit involves going on the road as a stranger, needing to receive hospitality from the other. This is a strange inversion of categories and actions - it does not fit with the way of life we have developed as middle-class individualists living in a "make yourself" capitalist culture.' (p130 - that last sentence certainly describes the church I lead!)

He argues for a resolutely neighbourhood-based approach to living our Christian story. He suggests that the way we have done church over the past 100+ years in the west has alienated us from our neighbours. This combined with the rise of the network society that has led to mission theologies putting network and connections ahead of where we live, has led to a chronic level of disconnection between Christians and their neighbours and, tragically, our neighbours and the Christian life.

Roxburgh ruefully asks: 'can we grasp the implications of what we've become when we have to train people how to have conversations with neighbours or set times aside to talk with another human being? What kind of inhuman world have we created for ourselves, and how has the church managed to accept it and develop the marketing skills to manage it? Can we be that far away from the gospel of our Lord that we don't see what we have become?' (p146) Ouch!

I confess to having waxed lyrical in the past about our need to capitalise on our networks, how our neighbours really no longer understand themselves to be neighbourhood people but rather people who live in a world of connections that arise through work, shared interests, etc. I don't doubt that this is true. But I agree with Roxburgh that we have allowed ourselves to be shaped by a world that judges relationships this way rather than fashioned by a gospel that asks us to look for and act as 'a neighbour' (Luke 10:36).

Clearly we need to relate to those we work with, people who often live miles from where we do. But equally clearly, Roxburgh seems to be on to something when he says that the focus of our living should be local. In particular, it means that the focus of what the church does should be local, centred on the places where church people live, shop, find entertainment and education for their children. Instead of inviting people to join our programme in our building, is God saying to us 'see what's going in your street, among your neighbours; look at what I'm doing there and come and join me'?

This, of course, involves big changes in the way we disciple people and the way we organise church. It also raises questions about our role in generating neighbourhood-based social captial in the communities where we live, seeing the church, Christians, as a key means of bringing people together and creating a sense of neighbourhood identity. I'll reflect on that later.

Apocalypse postponed

2011-05-22T08:46:00.000+01:00

So the apocalypse is postponed and the after rapture parties are still in full swing across the US. And it's all a good laugh and we can roll our eyes in disbelief and mutter 'only in America'.

Harold Camping should, of course, take the Bible more seriously and see that when Jesus says that about that day or hour no one knows, not even angels or Jesus himself (Mark 13:32), he means that no one knows, not even clever people using dubious maths to find underlying patterns in the text.

Perhaps the lesson from all this is two-fold. First let's learn to listen to and trust what Jesus actually said. And second let's be careful spouting nonsense in his name that brings the gospel into disrepute

Sharing the story with our neighbours

2011-05-20T20:57:00.001+01:00

As promised, here's my church magazine musings on uke 10. I haven't edited it, so you'll have to forgive the one or details that are specific to my situtation. Just read it as contextual theology!

At the church meeting in early May, the leaders gave some details of what they’d talked about at their awayday in March. Part of our focus then was on how the church needed to look for new ways to engage in mission.

We did not return from Southend with a blueprint for the future (churches should always be sceptical of leaders with blueprints!). But we did come back pretty convinced that we needed to look for ways to give opportunities for groups to form that are committed sharing the good news of Jesus with people who don’t and won’t come to church as we currently do it.

Looking at Luke 10 recently on Sunday morning, I suggested that Luke was telling us something profound about our mission. Clearly Luke told this story – a very specific one about a detail of Jesus’ journey south from Galilee to Jerusalem – because it offered an insight for his original audience – mainly small Gentile churches scattered across the Roman empire – into how they should approach mission.

A summary of the story is that mission is simply about living our lives where our neighbours live theirs. Simple though this summary is, it has profound implications for the way we organise ourselves as a church. It seems to me that there are six key things we need to learn from Luke 10:1-11 (a fuller version of this is posted on the church website along with the recording of the sermon on which it’s based).

1) pray: all our living starts in prayer. We are who we are because we pray; we discover our identity in God through praying on our own and with others. Here in verse 2, Jesus tells his followers to see the problem they faced – that the harvest is ready, but there are few workers to bring it in – and to pray. They can do nothing to solve this problem unless they pray. Likewise, we will not discern the way forward as a church unless we pray. All effective mission begins in prayer. But we also need to remember that as we pray, God will almost certainly invite us to be the answer to that prayer.

2) go: Jesus sends us to share story we live by with those who do not know it. People no longer come to church because they simply have no idea what church is for. So Jesus gives his followers two instructions as he sends them to their neighbours. The first is that we need to travel light. For us this means that we shouldn’t see mission as being about programmes and strategies. Jesus invites us to ‘leave all that at door, go empty handed and see what I’m already doing in your neighbourhood.’ It was the way he himself did mission as he tells us in John 5:17.

Secondly, he says that we should accept hospitality from our neighbours. Of course, in our society this is not always easy and often we will create spaces and occasions where we can interact with our neighbours. But the important principle here is that we need to let our neighbours set the agenda for this and not us. We often want to tell people information they are not seeking and answer questions they’re not asking – and hence we don’t connect with them.

3) eat: real connection between people happens at the dinner table: people open up to each other’s stories in the shared conviviality of sharing a meal. In this regard, all meals are a bit like communion.

4) work: why does Jesus tell these missionaries that ‘ a worker is worth is worth their hire?’ (v7b). It’s not to make a case for paid ministry but merely to recognise that in the culture in which Luke is writing, when people stayed with other people, they mucked in with the household tasks.

This suggests something really important about our mission: we will work alongside people who don’t share our view of life in order to create public good. We do this in the workplace with our work colleagues; we also do it in joint projects that seek to address a social need; and we’ll do it in organising events that bring neighbours together round a BBQ or street party or a gardening project that enables the able bodied to help those less able to look after their gardens because of age or infirmity.

5) stay: (v7): mission is not really about doing events, one-offs. Rather, it’s about going and staying, about making relationships over the long haul, sharing the ups and downs of our neighbours’ lives, being there with and for them. In short, mission is about being the Kingdom of God in the streets where we live.

6) share our story: finally mission is about sharing the story of our lives as they have been transformed and shaped by the story of Jesus – but this is the final part of engaging in mission. Mission is not about learning a whole load of techniques – how to answer certain tricky questions, steer the conversation round to the four spiritual laws. Mission is always about relationship: tell me your story, I’ll tell you mine.

Inevitably my story grows from my relationship with Jesus fed by the Word, prayer and fellowship (this is why we gather on Sundays!). And we believe that our story can bring peace and healing to our neighbours, most of whom are not looking for answers to difficult philosophical questions. Most people want to know they’re loved by us and possibly by God; that they are not alone; that their lives can make sense…

This is why mission is about living our lives where our neighbours live theirs. Doing this could lead to people hearing the story that is making our lives what they are.

Living in the story that shapes our lives

2011-05-20T20:50:00.000+01:00

Well, what a week! interviewing for a youth worker, teaching Romans 9-11 at Spurgeon's, reflecting on a spirituality of ageing for church on Sunday and in between all that finishing Roxburgh's excellent book. In fact, I got through the major sections on Luke 10 in time to reflect on this passage as a 'great commission' for the times we live in at church last Sunday morning. I was able to condense those thoughts into my piece for next month's church magazine. I will post that shortly.

First, however, I want to comment on something Roxburgh does a lot which I have found really helpful. He suggests that we seek to dwell in the story we are reading - in this case Luke 10. It seems to me to be a great way of ensuring that we don't rush to judgement on a passage, find what our excitement has told us we will obviously find there. Dwelling is about slowing down, reading the passage carefully, reading it again in a different version, pondering the language.

Roxburgh recommends reading the passage until it starts to live inside us and we in it. It is only then that we begin to hear the Spirit speaking to us in and through the text. This way of reading saves us from using scripture as a kind of marketing manual, getting away from seeing this missional approach that Roxburgh is recommending as just another technique that is going to save the church. It isn't and it won't.

The other key thing to bear in mind as we come to Luke 10 is that this story is told in the context of Luke using the story of Jesus' relationship with his followers to teach us about discipleship. Mission flows out of discipleship. It is not a technique learned by people who want to keep themselves busy in a religious way.

I am writing this on my new laptop, by the way.It's a rather nice Acer Aspire, fast with excellent graphics.

My thoughts on Luke 10 follow shortly.

Exhilarating reading

2011-05-09T11:31:00.000+01:00

So I am continuing to read Alan Roxburgh's Missional: Joining God in the Neighbourhood with a smile on my face and sense of anticipation in my spirit. It's not that I agree with everything he says but that he provides a way of thinking about the mission God calls us to that is rich and plausible and rooted in scripture in a way that so much missional thinking isn't.

He argues - as I've already noted - that we need to base our call to mission in texts other than Matthew 28. It's not that Matthew's account of the Great commission should be ditched, just that it should be heard alongside other texts that similarly call Jesus' followers to mission. Roxburgh chooses Luke 10 (the subject of my next post on the book and, coincidentally, the subject of next Sunday morning's sermon) and seeks to place Luke's writing in a plausible historical context to answer the question why he recounts this story of the mission of the 70 at all.

Following Bosch and Green, Roxburgh dates Luke to the second Christian generation, a time when the first wave of apostolic leaders have quit the scene. He also notes that Luke isn't just interested in recounting history; he is writing to help his first audience of small, scattered gentile churches see what God is up to in their world as well as the world of Jesus and the first apostles. Luke chose to tell his story in a way that would resonate with and offer help to his first hearers. He is also right to highlight the sense of disillusion some of these churches would be feeling. Many would have expected the second coming to have happened by now, instead of which, the power of Rome is growing and the claims of Caesar for quasi-religious allegiance ever stronger. With the first generation of eye witnesses now dead and gone, the small gentile communities of Jesus followers were asking questions about what God was really up to. I certainly agree with him on Rome, I'm not sure about expectations of the second coming being so strong in the late first century - but it's a minor quibble.

Roxburgh argues that Luke attempts to address these concerns by compiling a two-volume story that aims to locate his first hearers in a new narrative understanding of God's actions in the world. Luke shows that God took a Jewish renewal movement and grew it into a vehicle for bringing his reign to the whole world. Roxburgh uses this insight - commonly held among scholars - to question our western (he's writing for a North American audience) reliance on the Euro-centric Reformation reading of our faith. This is a vital insight. It comes at a time when New Testament scholars are questioning some of the Reformation's emphases in its reading of Paul and the nature of the gospel; in particular the intense, almost exclusive, focus on justification by faith being the be-all-and-end-all of it.

So Roxburgh retells the narrative of Acts as the story of how God breaks boundaries between peoples so that everyone can share in the good news of Jesus. He points out that this involved the conversion of the earliest Christians as they came face-to-face with the Spirit of God pushing them into mission among people they thought were not included in God's plans. This otherwise excellent chapter contains an uncharacteristic clanger referring to James, the Lord's brother, being killed in Acts 12 when it is James, the brother of John, who is executed by Herod (p111). But that doesn't in any way detract from the force of Roxburgh's argument.

Drawing a parallel between the situation of Luke's first hearers and we who live in a Reformation settlement, Roxbugh articulates the question many church leaders think, even if they don't ask out loud: what's gone wrong? How come when we are faithfully proclaiming the gospel that has come down to us from our European forefathers, is the church declining like there's no tomorrow? Roxburgh's answer is that nothing's gone wrong, the Spirit is breaking out the box in which we have confined him for countless generations and that is both scary and exhilarating.

Passing another milestone

2011-05-01T16:56:00.000+01:00

Last week I heard from Lambeth Palace that I had been awarded the Archbishop's Degree of Master of Arts (MA) by Thesis for my dissertation A Church in Every Workshop? The Economic, Physical and Social Location of the Early Pauline Communities. I will be graduating on Monday 6 June at Lambeth Palace at an event hosted by the Archbishop himself (very exciting!)

I am naturally delighted that the 50,000 words I produced was deemed worthy of the award, delighted too that I do not need to make any major revisions to the dissertation ahead of getting bound and lodged in the Lambeth Palace library! It will, however, be interesting to see what my examiners have made of the argument.

In many ways, it is the academic underpinning of the book that came out last month, The World of the Early Church (Lion Hudson), though it takes a slightly more definite line on the presence of wealthier members of Roman society (they were few and far between) and argues that the typical Pauline community - probably the overwhelming majority of the groups he planted around the empire - met in workshops or the living spaces behind or above them.

Rooting mission in the right texts

2011-05-01T09:06:00.000+01:00

Alan Roxburgh's challenge to our missional thinking goes deep. As he introduces his reflections on Luke's gospel, he paints a picture of churches in the west in thrall to a reformation settlement that has placed Matthew 28:18-20 in the driving seat as the key missional text. These are the verses people think of when we speak of the 'great commission'; these are the verses that jump-started the western missionary expansion in the late eighteenth century, that continued to fire delegates at the Edinburgh conference in 1910.

But as Roxburgh points out - as many have done before him - this text is also associated with empire (something Matthew would find richly ironic!). The missionary movement associated with this text was one that went to the world with a package of answers framed in western thought forms, geared to answer the questions western culture had been asking and assuming that this package would suit everyone; it was the classic one-size-fits-all approach to Christian mission.

Roxburgh's discussion of all this is compelling and challenging. His remedy is not to ditch to Matthew 28 but to recognise that there are other powerful mission texts within the gospels that need to be heard. He favours letting Luke 10 shape the way we approach the task God has given the followers of Jesus for reasons we'll explore after we've reflected on Roxburgh's overall approach to the setting of Luke-Acts (that's for the next post).

For now, I want to reflect on another comment he makes about how we as church leaders think about missional texts - indeed many biblical passages. He argues that 'Just as Luke does not offer the gentile Christians forms of adjustment, so our crisis of meaning as Christians will not be addressed with one more set of tactics.' This is sentence well worth pausing at and pondering long and hard. There are so many 'tactics' on offer to help churches in the UK turn the corner and step into growth again. Some are good short-term fixes - like Alpha, cafe church, even Messy Church. But the danger of them is that they assume rearranging the furniture on the Titanic will stop us hitting the iceberg.

Rather, 'we need to allow the story of what God is doing in the world to reform us all over again in a different way. Asking questions and developing new "missional" church tactics will not address this.' (p89). I argued this case in Building a Better Body (chapter 7) but not at such depth as Roxburgh does here.

Perilous steps on the journey home

2011-04-27T08:21:00.002+01:00

I thought I'd post my piece from our church magazine this month (as I do from time-to-time) because it has a bearing on my continuing reflections on Alan Roxburgh's book.

I was talking to some friends recently about their summer holiday plans. Well, it’s the time of year for it, isn’t it? The days getting longer and warmer, we’ve found our summer clothes at the back of the wardrobe and begun to daydream about sun, sea and sangria.

Our conversation was actually more about travelling to and from our summer break destination because, we agreed, that that was one of the best parts of the holiday. Journeys are often times of discovery, finding new places, seeing things we’ve never seen before, even meeting people in hotels and restaurants who pass on tips about what to go and look at.

Journeys are like this because we are away from the familiar surroundings of home, exposed to new experiences, invited to take a fresh look at our lives. As a church we are on a journey from what we were to what God wants to be. This is a permanent feature of Christian living. We only stop travelling when we reach our destination in God’s completed Kingdom.

Some people like travelling and others would rather stay put. For some the open road is a place of adventure and discovery; for others it’s a place of uncertainty and discomfort. The temptation for the latter group is to book into the nearest inn and say ‘this far and no further.’ The trouble with this is that we are in neither the familiar surroundings of home nor the promised comfort of our final destination.

It was for nervous, even unwilling travellers that Luke wrote the central section of his gospel. Uniquely among the gospel writers, Luke has a long section that is known as the ‘travel narrative’ that tells the story of Jesus’ journey from Galilee in the north down to Jerusalem in the south and his final confrontation with the powers-that-be.

He seems to have had two reasons for compiling his account the way he did. The first is that it gave him a good place to put all the material that no other gospel writer used – the parable of the prodigal son and the good Samaritan, the meetings at Mary and Martha’s home and with Zacchaeus, for example. The second is that he enabled him to spell out what following Jesus is all about. The travel narrative is a handbook on discipleship written for small groups of Christians scattered across the Roman empire in the second half of the first century, wondering how to live as followers of Jesus in a somewhat hostile and fast-changing world.

Luke 9:51-19:27 is about being a disciple of Jesus. The focus of these chapters is on the folk who are on the road with Jesus: how does he expect them to live as his followers, what will their life together be like, what kind of values will they embody in their relationships with neighbours and work colleagues?

Through this spring we will be making this journey with Jesus and his friends hoping to learn what it means to be a disciple in Bromley in 2011. We will be thinking about the nature of our life together and how we can make Jesus known to our friends and neighbours. It is a crucial journey for us to make because we live in a fast-changing and at times confusing world where the old certainties of home have been swept away and not replaced by anything so solid and sure.

Just before Easter, I was sitting outside a café in Victoria, warmed by the sun, watching office workers scurry in and out getting lunch to take back to their desks. He was with one of them, a young man, successful at work, happily married with a growing family. They had recently left their church and we were talking through the steps that had led up to that decision.

Neither he nor his wife loved Jesus any less; both wanted to continue serving him in the way they lived their life; both were keen to explore what being a disciple of Jesus meant with other followers. But neither of them could do church any more. He spoke of the decaying formality of it all, the superficial relationships, the tedious round of singing and sermons. He had been going to a lively, charismatic fellowship, and yet…

They had launched out on a somewhat perilous journey to discover Jesus on the road. They are looking for connection with a like-minded group of travellers who take Jesus seriously and want to live by the values of his Kingdom as they travel to their final destination. They also want to share what they’ve discovered about Jesus with people along the way.

In many ways they are living in Luke’s travel narrative, hearing the call of Jesus to follow and being prepared to leave the security of home to meet him and know him better. Are we prepared to make the same journey together?

Doing what we're put here for

2011-04-22T17:54:00.001+01:00

Finally managed to read last month's Q magazine, featuring some great British song writers.

Guy Garvey from Elbow is fascinating on his native Bury and the inspiration for the excellent build a rocket boys album. He says that he's started thinking about songs for the next album too, showing no sign of resting on his laurels.

And PJ Harvey confirms her status as current best song writer in England with wonderfully simple and insightful reflections on her craft. Maybe it's because it's Good Friday and I've been thinking about the job that had to be done on behalf of all of us (as so wonderfully captured by Stanley Spencer in his painting Christ carrying the cross), but this comment caught my imagination:

Asked if she'll be taking six months off to do what rock stars do, she said: 'no, because there's too much work to do. And because this is my job. This is the thing that I can do best, why I'm here on planet earth. I therefore feel that I need to keep concentrating on doing as well I can. There's a lot to be said yet. A lot to do.'

Maybe we could all take a leaf out of her book.

Travelling in Yorkshire

2011-04-22T14:45:00.001+01:00

So here we are in sunny Huddersfield after three days in a very sunny York. We're here for a friend's wedding tomorrow, so we're catching up with a load of old friends this evening over dinner.

Spring Harvest was manic - especially for the two men on the team - but worthwhile. There have been big changes at the top of the Spring Harvest tree which will probably take some time to bed down. The preaching was ok but nothing to get excited about and all a bit safe and predictable - yes, I know Spring Harvest is safe and predictable but in most years there's a surprise or two. This year felt a bit bland - despite the fact that the theme was the Bible!

York was lovely - probably helped by the sunshine and heat. We walked along the walls, checked out the shops and chilled in a selection of very acceptable tea shops and eateries. The art gallery had a show featuring David Hockney's recently painted bigger trees near Warter which is wonderful. I went to look at it every day (the gallery serves excellent coffee). The enormous work (15ft by 40ft) was painted on 50 canvases over a six week period in 2007 and then hung together to make a single large study of a group of trees. It's a rich and satisfying work.

This morning we went to the Good Friday service at the Minster. We only got to half of it due to a mix up over timings but it was a moving and effective way of remembering the passion while the shoppers and the tourists bustled round the minster much like they would have done in Jerusalem 2000 years ago when Jesus was condemned and crucified.

Another highlight of the trip was Barbican Books (part of Wesley Owen) that has a fantastic selection of second-hand theology books. I spent a most enjoyable hour in there yesterday!

Off on our travels

2011-04-13T22:02:00.000+01:00

We're off to Spring Harvest in the morning. We'll be making our annual pilgrimage to Skegness and joining somewhat diminished pastoral team for a week. It's always a blast and hopefully we do some good in the lives of those who cross our paths.

I shall be picking up my thoughts on Alan Roxborough's book while I'm there and hopefully posting them as I write them.

After Spring Harvest, we're looking forward to a few days in York chilling, and then a friend's wedding in Huddersfield (which offers the chance to catch up with a load of people we've not seen for ages). It should be a really good few days.

An arresting case for Christian faithfulness

2011-04-13T18:51:00.000+01:00

I caught last Friday's repeat of Desert Island Disc's which featured Martin Sheen and cam across the most intriguing definition of Christian faithfulness I've heard for a while. It was a very moving programme as Sheen spoke of his struggles with alcohol - and the pain of seeing his son, Charlie, succumb in a similar but more spectacular way - and his forty+ year marriage to a woman that he describes as the love of his life.

But the most moving section was where he spoke about re-embracing his catholic faith in the early 1980s. It is that more than anything that has given his life strength and focus. And it was here that he offered an intriguing view of christian faithfulness: how many times have you been arrested because of what your faith has led you into? Sheen has been arrested a load of times on demonstrations about a variety of causes that his faith has compelled him to embrace. And he speaks of it as a consequence of following Jesus that he is prepared to put up with.

I was moved and set thinking about what my faith has cost me...

Sinking into Rothko

2011-04-13T18:14:00.000+01:00

On Monday, the last day of our first mini-heatwave of the year, I went to London's South Bank to stroll among the tourists and drop into Tate Modern. I was delighted to find that the Rothko room has made a welcome return. This low-lit space houses seven enormous canvases of sombre maroons and blacks by the great abstract expressionist.

This is one of my favourite spaces in London. I spent a good hour looking deeply into and through these window shapes. Now, in one sense, these paintings are just slabs of colour. Up close you can see that Rothko took great care in how he applied the paint, going over parts of the canvas with different shades of the dominant colour which, as you step back from it, gives the painting enormous depth.

The 'windows frames' seem solid and so as you look, you are invited to fall through them into whatever lies beyond. In the swirling pale maroon of the canvas illustrated, there is the suggestion of light, as if the sun is shining behind gossamer clouds. It's also possible to feel that the light is edging towards the centre of the painting where the viewer stands as it were by the open window.

In many ways, the Rothko room is a sacred space; it's a place where people, if they've the patience to sit and look intently through one of the windows, are asked questions about where they sit in the world, the universe beyond, about whether the light approaching them will illuminate their lives. Great art gently evokes big questions and has the good grace not to provide clunking great answers.

If I were running Tate Modern, there's only one thing I'd do to make the Rothko room perfect: I'd only let people in on the understanding that they would not leave for an hour. This would prevent one's meditation being interrupted by parties of people catching the greatest collection of modern art on their cell phone cameras between elevenses and lunch!

The stories we live by

2011-04-01T20:02:00.000+01:00

Early on in part 2 of Alan Roxburgh's Missional: Joining God in the Neighbourhood which is about Luke-Acts, described as 'a narrative for shaping our time of missional formation' (p63), is this arresting statement:

Scripture is filled with amazing stories that go to the heart of the issues we're facing in our crazy, pluralist, consumer-driven cultures focused on self-actualising individuals living in instrumental relationships (in which people relate to each other out of roles or what each can get from the other. (p68)

It's not so much the idea that scripture is relevant to our context that grabbed my attention, but Roxburgh's description of that context. It's about as succinct and brilliant a snapshot of where I live as I have read in the past year! It's worth pausing to ponder.

He takes Luke as his biblical story teller because he sees Luke writing at a time when the early Christian movement was beginning to lose confidence in its story. Things hadn't turned out as these young believers thought they would and Luke writes to create a new language house that takes the context in which people live as seriously as the message they live by. So Luke is a story teller for our times too.

Roxburgh comments: 'We don't encounter this God through universal principles, formulas, visions and values but through concrete, grounded stories of God's life in the ordinary' (p72), adding that 'Luke is determined to convince them [his first hearers] that in the midst of a world of competing narratives, this is the one about Jesus and the good news of God that is worth giving their lives to because it is God's' (p73).

Our trouble is that we have turned the biblical story into a self-help guide, a handbook for making our lives work better. 'I'm aware how this orphanization of the Christian narrative has turned us ever more quickly into anxiety-laden, functional atheists needing ways to use God to make our lives work.' (p73-4) Ouch! Ponder that too...

I've always thought that Luke focuses as much on the disciples as on Jesus and mainly on their inability to let Jesus into their story in a way that would have rewritten and recast it along the lines that God intended. Being caught up in God's story and discovering where that story is being written and told in our neighbourhoods, so we can get involved, seems to me to be a hugely exciting prospect. If only we can shake off the strait jacket of our churches!

The high art of collapsing into now

2011-03-31T21:43:00.000+01:00

It's been a busy but productive week. I've been listening to the rather fine new long player from REM. Collapse into Now is one of the best records of the year, I reckon. It's certainly kept me sane

I also think that the reviews have been somewhat churlish. They tend to say that it's a good record but it's not as good as REM in their heyday. Poor REM, it seems, have to write tunes that are not only good as Losing my Religion, Night Swimming, Everyone Hurts, etc for every record but they also have to make reviewers feel as they did when they first heard those songs 15 or more years ago. This is too heavy a load to bear for any band - even one as exceptional as REM.

On its own merits Collapse into Now is a fine record, lively tunes, fabulously jangly guitars (even Peter Buck's mandolin) and intriguing lyrics. I'd say that in Blue - an extraordinary half-slurred, half sung duet with Patti Smith - Oh My Heart and It Happened Today, it boasts songs that would not be out of place on a greatest hits compilation that features the vintage tracks mentioned above.

In short it's good, so listen without prejudice (as some other singer once said).

Tweeting with Montaigne and Qohelet

2011-03-25T12:52:00.000Z

I had an interesting time at Eltham College this morning. I tweeted that I was spending a few minutes with South East London's young elite and I have to say that I was impressed by the politeness of all the pupils (only boys in my lower group group as the girls don't join until sixth form).

I was given a good hearing and very polite round of applause at the end as I swept out in the wake of the gowned teachers (slightly surreal that!) I did roughly the same as I'd done a month ago at a fee-paying girls school. I'd say it went down better with the boys than the girls!

So, here's what I said....

It was a bit of a rush this morning….but I updated my facebook status: doing assembly at Eltham College……made sure my blog was prominently promoting my new book……and tweeted where I was going…off to Eltham College. (actually I tweeted from the college reception as I was a bit early). I am just so new, up-to-date and original! Just like the lovely Stephen Fry here, tweeter extraordinaire. But actually, you know, we’re not so modern….

Meet Michel de Montaigne. Last month he celebrated his 478 birthday – He’s not looking bad for his age is he? In 1572 he began writing essays – like many of you will have to do today! But unlike the philosophers who came before him, they were all about himself. They were status updates; accounts of what he’d been doing that day, what he was thinking about and maybe some useful tips for others about how to live.

But even Montaigne was not original. Not really…2000 years before him another philosopher put down his status updates on how he was trying to make sense of life. We don’t know his name but he was known as ‘the teacher’ and his thoughts are recorded in the book of Ecclesiastes that you can find somewhere in the middle of the Hebrew Bible, what we often call the Old Testament.

He looked at the world and his life in it and drew a lot of conclusions. Like this one – there’s time to do all that we need to do. So if we run out of time, maybe we’re trying to do too much? And this one… ‘what do workers get from all their toil?’ which probably boils down to ‘is what I’m doing worthwhile?’ Hopefully, you’ll gain good grades and a better understanding of the subjects you’re studying as a result of your hard work today.

And he also said this: ‘get in touch with your creator while you’re still young’ because he came to see after all his looking and trying things out that the world made a whole lot better sense when he was in touch with God than when he wasn’t. So looking back as an older man, his advice to the young – those he was teaching – was to look for God in what you’re doing and then what you’re doing will be so much more rewarding and fulfilling

It seems updating our status, tweeting our thoughts, blogging isn’t really as new as we think it is. And, as was true for Michel de Montaigne and for the teacher who wrote Ecclesiastes, it’s so much better to put finger to keyboard when we’ve got something to say that is really worth saying. So, let’s live well today; let’s get in touch with God, be a good friend, help out those who need it and then at the end of the day, when all our chores are done, we’ll have something worth tweeting and facebooking about…

It's in the shops

2011-03-17T20:47:00.001Z

Tomorrow is the official release date for The world of the Early Church but I have it on good authority that at least one eager customer has got his hands on a copy already and is looking for a smart coffee table on which to display it.

Grab one from wesley Owen in Bromley and if you really can't travel, you don't need to go to Amazon because wesley owen's website is giving 25% off all academic titles (mine included) with free shipping on orders over £5.

You know it makes sense!