Catching up with life after Spring Harvest

Well, I've been back from Spring Harvest for a couple of days, catching up with stuff and getting ready to go Studland for the weekend for a reunion with a load of friends from our days in Peckham. Should be a blast!

Spring Harvest was very busy and completely manic on the final day. Our team of 8 saw 96 people over the four days plus all those we talked and prayed with after the evening sessions.

We really enjoyed the Encounter Cafe led by Pete and Becca Brierley (who happen to be from Peckham too). It was a great mix of fun and films, interviews and discussion - just what we needed at the end of a busy day!

The other highlight was seeing Joe Fisher. He's a stand-up comedian and I've avoided him in years gone by but this year we caught his show and it's a glorious mixture of send-up and one-liners, focused on the ridiculous things that the church does and spoofs of TV shows - what's not to like? If he visits your town, check him out.

I've also nearly finished Brian Walsh's wonderful book on Bruce Cockburn - I shall be blogging about that soon. But first I have a book review to write on a book I am struggling to like (I have another one to do as well about a book I like a whole lot more but that one must take second place).

It's all hotting up in Minehead

So, it's day 4 already. Doesn't time fly when you're rushed off your feet?

It's been the usual mixed bag. The high point for me has been the Encounter Cafe. Led by Pete and Becca Brierley, it's been an eclectic mix of film, discussion, board games and interviews, nicely held together by Pete and Becca's easy style. It's what church should be, actually; a place where we can laugh and cry, have fun and be challenged in equal measure.

On the team front, we've seen a lot of people with a whole range of issues needing our attention and prayerful response. Last night I had the joy of leading a member of the Butlin's staff, a Hungarian man, to faith in Jesus, something he described as the best thing that's ever happened to him on the best day of his life!

The most unexpected sight of the week so far is of a young man walking to his chalet clutching a copy of Karl Barth's Church Dogmatics (I couldn't see which volume). I'm guessing this is something he didn't buy at the Spring Harvest bookshop.

Tonight and tomorrow will be busier - and it's been busy already!

Day one in the Spring Harvest House

Day one in the Spring Harvest House (read in Geordie accent - in memory of Steph who's not with us this year as we're too far south!). This year we are in Minehead with a smaller-than-usual pastoral team. But it's great to meet up with old friends and the layout of the site means we're all close together and right opposite the pastoral centre where we'll be based.

A quick sprint round the exhibition hall reveals the usual suspects and a less-well-stocked-than-usual bookshop which as the theme is the church about which there are copious good books, that's a bit of a disappointment. I might look at Gerard Kelly's new book which is on the main theme and looks as though it might be worth a browse.

It'll be interesting to see what kind of issues people bring to the pastoral chalet with them. Will they be things they've been storing up all year or issues that have been provoked by the programme? Watch this space....

Off on our travels

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.

Poised for the great leap forward

We're back from the best Spring Harvest for a number of years. The main sessions in the big top were consistently excellent with Ruth Dearnley, Dave Steell, Steve Holmes, Gerard Kelly, Steve Chalke and Gill Rowe each preaching on Esther.

Although our pastoral was half the size of last year's, we still saw the same number of people - so we were very busy. But it is a huge privilege to be able to walk with people through a whole range of issues. I had the joy of helping a 15 year old boy become a Christian which was great.

Yesterday our week got off to a great start with the election of nine trustee leaders, including a number of younger people - the average of the leadership is probably around 40, which is fantatstic. I've been telling people that this is year zero - not because we're planning a cull of the uncooperative - but because I believe that we have come through a long transition time and are now genuinely poised for a great leap forward.

This week will be mainly taken up with Baptist Assembly planning, catching up with people in church, preparing for the weekend and having our bathroom completely refurbished (fortunately, we've got experts coming to do that for us!)

On why it’s important to get out more

It's Day 4 in the Spring Harvest and we're all still sane. It's been a good week, Here's a story from it that the person concerned said it was okay for me to share. And I think it's worth sharing.

Anne came for prayer, feeling that she had nothing to offer, that God was distant and that she didn’t amount to anything. She’s not a sophisticated woman. She struggles with poor health, but she remains as active as she can be. After we’d prayed briefly and generally, she told me this story.

One day she was at the bus stop by the crematorium in her town. She often speaks to people at bus stops, so when she saw a slightly dishevelled elderly man, she asked if he was all right. He said he was visiting the memorial for his wife who had died recently.

She asked if he had family and he said that he only had a daughter but didn’t see her because she was a Christian. Anne thought this was a strange response and told him that she was a Christian and asked why he thought his daughter being a Christian was a problem.

He said he didn’t really know but got the impression they probably wouldn’t want him around. He added that his daughter had given him her phone number at his wife’s funeral, Anne suggested he ring her. What had he got to lose, after all?

She got her bus. That Sunday she told a leader at her church what had happened, who strongly advised her not to talk to strangers at bus stops but do something useful in the church instead.

She felt disheartened, guilty and useless.

About three week’s later, having prayed on and off for the elderly gentleman, Anne was getting off a bus in the centre of town when someone tapped her on the shoulder. She turned to see a smartly dressed, clean shaven man smiling at her. ‘I want to thank you,’ he beamed.

Anne was flummoxed. He’d never seen this man before as far as she knew. Sensing her bewilderment, the man said ‘you were the lady I spoke at the bus stop by the crem a few weeks ago, who told me Christians weren’t so bad and that I should ring my daughter?’ Suddenly she twigged: ‘Oh yes,’ she said.

She hadn’t recognised him because at that first meeting he’d been scruffy and unshaven and really down.

He explained: ‘I rang my daughter and then I went to see her. It was ok. In fact, I now live with her – she and her husband have a large house – and I worship at their church.’ He grinned broadly. ‘So thank you. Life’s come good since I met you at that bus stop.’

So in what sense does Anne have nothing to offer? I wish I had a church full of people who spoke to strangers at bus stops. God see3ms to have a habit of using such conversations to turn people’s lives around. And I wish church leaders would realise that Christians are more use on the streets than in the church building and let them get out more.

A bracing week at Butlins

Today we're off to Spring Harvest, to the icy chill of Skegness, for a week of listening to stories and praying with people.

Being on the pastoral team at an event like this is a wonderful privilege as people entrust us with their struggles and joys, challenges and disappointmnts and we are able to walk with them for a while, offering pointers to where grace might be found in their circumstances.

We also work with a team with whom we have loads of fun. So we're looking forward to our week.

I'm taking Patti Smith's memoire, Just Kids, with me to read in the quiet moments as well as the manuscript of my book to start compiling a list of subjects and people that might go in the index.

For the journey, as well as listening to at least one Patti Smith album, we also have the soundtrack from Slumdog Millionaire, Lonelady's lovely, edgy Nerve Up, and Paloma Faith's still splendid Do You Want the Truth or Something Beautiful.

We'll be testing out the dongle. So I hope to be able to post from time-to-time through the week

Back home

Back from a busy but pretty good Spring Harvest - hence the silence! I'll be reflecting on the experience later in the week.

This week I need to sort out the Prism programme for the Baptist Assembly (just two weeks away) and the first session of our look at God and Darwin (part of our Alternative Wednesday programme), as well as catching up with what's been going on at church in my absence.

It's good to be back home after a week in a Butlin's chalet on a Butlin's diet!

Tidying up

I finished my paper at the weekend - The Matrix of Leadership: location, social order and authority in early Christianity. (slight title change!)

It's a bit long (7,200 words) but I'm quite pleased with it. In the end, the ideas flowed and I think I made a reasonable case that leadership in the Jesus movement in the second century was just as fluid as leadership in the first; and that just because certain letter writers expressed views about how it should be, that isn't necessarily how it was.

In particular, I explored the issue of social location (what kind of people joined the church) and asked how that might have affected the ways the movement was led in the first three generations.

I really enjoyed interacting with Polycarp - what a lovely gentle letter!

A footnote to my last post: Yes, Tom Wright did talk about jubilee. He argued strongly that Jesus was declaring jubilee when he preached in Nazareth and that is why he is good news for the poor. The jubilee is physical and economic and the proclamation of the Kingdom includes our mentioning and modelling it to the world.

I agree with Lynn, though, it would be a good investment to buy the CD of the talk. It's also available as a DVD but probably isn't that riveting as Tom didn't dance while he spoke!

The (W)right stuff at Spring Harvest

Back from Spring Harvest - so cream crackered that I can barely focus!

We had an excellent, very busy week. The highlight was hearing Tom Wright (yes, that's right, the Bishop of Durham, no less) expounding the Nazareth sermon of Luke 4 in the light of its Isaianic background and fulfilment in the Acts of the Apostles ('a very buzzy book'), all focused on the Kingdom of God. It was utterly blistering!

The amazing thing was that as he came into land - and I was wondering for at least two thirds of it, how he was going to apply all this to his audience - you could sense a sudden in-take of breath all over the big top as people realised that this was about them. We all have Nazareth's in which we're called to proclaim the Kingdom of God; in some of them we'll be thrown off the cliffs by the antagonistic; are we up for it? More important, do we know the message and are we filled with the Spirit of the messenger? Amazing!

The response was big. I prayed with three or four people, two of whom were ministers going back to really difficult situations who had found Tom's message nurturing and nourishing and wanted strength for the fray.

That's why I love being on the pastoral team at Spring Harvest.

Elsewhere, I did a seminar on self-esteem that seemed to go really well - 200+ turned up for it and lots stayed around to chat afterwards. And on the final evening Jeff Lucas was the best I've ever heard him - funny, theologically deep and sharp in terms of application.

It was great to work with a group of people that Linda and I have worked with for the past six or seven years. We laugh and cry together in roughly equal measure - though a good deal of the crying is tears of laughter! We'll do it all again next year, I hope.

Now it's back to papers and emails and catching up with what's been happening here.

Emerging churches - second century-style

Today I am trying to get a structure for a paper for my supervisor on leadership in the New Testament and immediate post-apostolic period. I've narrowed it down to looking at Rome and Philippi and trying to trace the trajectories of leadership development as those communities matured.

I think I'll call my paper The matrix of leadership: location, social order and authority in Rome and Philippi because that sounds suitably impressive (even if it masks the fact that I might not have anything intelligent to say!) and does touch on all the issues I think I want to address (albeit at a fairly superficial level).

I'm particularly interested in teasing out the evidence for the so-called three-fold ministry - bishops, deacons and presbyters - and reasons why it appeared/is appearing. And I am especially keen to see if there's any evidence for the assertion that the church was already moving out of homes into larger buildings and that many communities in a city were becoming one led by a singly bishop, assisted by presbyters and deacons.

We have good evidence for Rome because of literature having been left to us that was written from the city - namely 1 Clement and the Shepherd of Hermas. It seems that these two documents reflect different Roman Christian communities, thus suggesting that multiple churches were not at this time (the turn of the second century) becoming a single church with a unitary leadership.

Sadly we don't have similar evidence for Philippi - that I can find anyway - but we do have two letters: Paul's from the mid-50s and Polycarp's from the first third of the second century. A lot of good research has been done on what the Christian communities were like in Philippi when Paul wrote but sadly nothing like that wealth of information exists for the church/churches that Polycarp wrote to 80-ish years later.

What we do find across the second century literature, however, is considerable difference of opinion over how churches should be organised and what authority church leaders had. Teasing out the reasons why this was the case looks as though it's going to be quite interesting.

I'm hoping to get the structure done and map out the argument for each section ahead of going away. Because we're off to Spring Harvest in the morning. Five days in Skegness just as the winter returns - great!

But we're looking forward to meeting up with old mates and working with a whole range of people on the pastoral team. I'm also doing a seminar on self-esteem (though I'm not sure I'm good enough to be doing that, really...)

And inbetween all that, I'll be doing bits and pieces of writing with a view to editing it when I'm back and getting it off to my supervisor before we meet in a couple of week's time.

Seminar at Spring Harvest

Spring Harvest went really well - including my seminar on the church. A good group turned up despite the sunshine and we talked a lot about why people struggle with church and how we can help them find a place.

In the course of the seminar we drew up an ecclesial minimum - a brief list of things a group has to have to be church. Here's what we came up with - see what you think:

The presence of Jesus
teaching and learning
sacraments - especially communion
relationships
catholicity - that is relationships with other groups of Christians (I think this one came up because it had been the aspect of the church that was the theme of the previous day!)
Able to face tough times as well as good ones

Worship did not appear because I ruled it out before I set them compiling their lists in small groups. I suggested that the early Christians didn't meet to worship because that was a 24/7 activity along the lines of Romans 12:1. My full argument about this is in chapter 2 of Building A Better Body.

What I was really impressed by was that no one suggested that any of these activities had to happen in a special building or involve large numbers of people.

That gives me hope for the future of the church.

Off to the seaside

Off to Spring Harvest in the morning for five days on the pastoral team.

The weather forecast for Skegness is sunny and warm - a first for us up there! So we're looking forward to a good week with a great team.

back blogging next week....