Reflecting on faith in a secular Lent

As it's the beginning of the month, I thought I'd post the lent reflection that  wrote for my church magazine.

Lent offers us an opportunity to reflect on our lives in the run-up to Easter in two ways. One is to reflect on our personal, individual walk with Jesus and the other is to ask how we can be a witness to our faith in the communities in which we live. They are, of course, intimately connected.

There has been much press interest in recent weeks over the place of the Christian faith in our society. Before Christmas, David Cameron asserted that Britain is a Christian country, even if his own faith is sometimes not as strong as he wished it was. Then in February there was an explosion of stories about whether militant secularism was on the rise; stories that often generated more heat than light.

So in Lent, as we reflect on the events at the heart of our faith – namely the life, death and resurrection of Jesus – it is a good time to ask what we think and feel about the place of the faith that matters so much to us in the wider society in which we live.

Baptists have something original to contribute to this debate because Baptists can be seen as the group that first called for a secular society – if by that we mean a society in which everyone is free to decide what they will believe. Thomas Helwys, one of the two founders of our movement, was the first Englishman (probably the first person anywhere) to call on the ruling powers to allow freedom of conscience in matters of religion.

As Baptist minister and theologian Alec Gilmore reminded us a couple of years ago: ‘For Helwys, religious liberty was a right for everyone - heretics, Turks and Jews, whoever they were, whatever they did; even for Roman Catholics, when the memory of the Gunpowder Plot was still acute. Anything less was a loss to the community, as well as to the individual. No parliament could legislate against it. No monarch could overrule it. He reminded James I that he too was a mortal, "dust and ashes" like the rest of us, with no power over the immortal souls of his subjects. James responded by putting him in prison, where he remained until his death.’

So while Baptists are delighted that anyone wants to be a follower of Jesus, we are also committed to allowing people not to be. The state has no role in deciding people’s faith. So Baptists have always been somewhat ambivalent about whether Britain is a ‘Christian’ society and have tended to side with the secularists, arguing that the state’s role is create a framework and atmosphere where all people are free to believe what they want to. So the followers of all religions and those who choose to follow no religion are welcome to participate fully as citizens.

Such a view means that Baptists are iffy about prayers and bishops in Parliament, about state funding for Christian schools and about giving Christian ethics pride of place in the moral debates of the day. Of course, when Helwys was writing there wasn’t a strong and vocal atheist movement; most English people were default Christians and Helwys’ case was most sharply about how the state should not determine what kind of Christian they should be.

We are invited into this debate in every generation. And perhaps in this Lent, it’s a good time for us to defend people’s right to follow Jesus and not to (if that’s what they choose).

But Lent is also a time to reflect on what kind of Christian we are going to be. If the trappings of state support for our faith are removed, then our faith has to stand on its own two legs – and those legs belong to every person who claims to be a follower of Jesus.

So here’s a story from the Celtic Christian tradition and a meditation to help our Lenten reflection. Aidan, bishop of Lindisfarne, met a man on the road: ‘Are you a Christian,’ he asked him. ‘Of course I am,’ replied the man. ‘That’s good to hear’, said Aidan: ‘now, will you try to be a better one?’

To live rooted and grounded in Jesus

Is how to be a better Christian

To learn our faith

Is how to be a better Christian

To overflow with thankfulness for all God’s mercy

Is how to be a better Christian

It will not happen through

force of will,

following rules,

finding secret wisdom

It started in baptism

When we died and rose with Christ;

It continues in faith

As we walk with him

This Lent, will we reflect on our lives and seek through Cross and resurrection of Jesus, through the inspiration and in-filling of the Holy Spirit, to be those who radiate the glory of God to our friends and neighbours?

Aching for a new world

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 reach a 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!

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

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.

Protesting the big society

I got an email from the Evangelical Alliance just as I was finishing preparing for Sunday evening. The email concerned the big society and how it was a great opportunity for churches - and asking for money to help make their version of the big society a reality. The sermon I'd just finished is about spurring one another in to love and good works and focuses on the fact that our faith is for the world and not just us. So, I should be putting two and two together and saying let's all leap on the big society bandwagon...

Well, no, I'm not doing that. I'm actually working on an email to send to Christians in the area asking if they'll support the youth charity I chair because local authority spending cuts have put its future in grave doubt. And that's the big society dilemma for me.

In good years, when government spending was available to forge real partnership between the statutory and voluntary sector, I'd have been pretty supportive of much of the thinking embodied by big society propaganda. I think local groups are better at shaping the services to be offered to their locality; I think voluntary sector organisations offer the flexibility and fleetness of foot that's needed to meet the real needs of people as they change over time. But that can only happen if there's statutory support in the form of funding, not to mention the flow of funds of grant making trusts. Sadly the savagery of the spending cuts means that not only is there no local authority grants but bids to grant making trusts - themselves seeing reduced assets because of the shenanigans of the bankers - outstripping supply of money.

A sensible government would have put the big society transition arrangements in place before local authorities took the ax to support of the voluntary sector. A sensible government would have established the big society bank on a sound financial footing - probably using the proceeds of a robin hood tax on the banks that would see £10bn+ a year flowing into its coffers - so it could fund the transformation of our communities. But it didn't. So we will see many good voluntary sector groups go to the wall as the funding dries up.

So the church has a dilemma. Government says join us in the big society and we want to say this is what we've always done, so of course we'll join you. And like the good Samaritan, we will bind up the wounds of those damaged by life, mugged by misfortune. The church has always done this. it will continue to do so. But in the coming months it might find itself expected to do vastly than its meagre resources will allow. Can we provide care for the vulnerable, training for NEETs, support for struggling families, food for the hungry, utilities to those priced out of the market, care for those struggling to live in the community with mental health problems...? In short, can we make good the effect of the most savage spending cuts ever envisaged in a single spending round? I doubt it.

Paul says that we should pay our taxes as a sign of love for our neighbours. This implies that government has a responsibility to the vulnerable. It implies that one of the ways in which we order the big society is through the election and action of good government, charged with gathering and distributing tax revenue fairly. So, yes, Mr Osbourne, close the VAT loophole on goods brought in from the Channel Islands (I will willingly pay the correct price for my Cd's and DVDs from Play or wherever), but also do something to claw back the £25bn lost each year to tax 'avoidance'.

So, I think we should help out where we can by bringing aid to the vulnerable and protest the fact that we have left in the mess we're in by a financial system that is still out of control (how can a bank that makes £1 in losses be paying out just shy of £1bn in bonuses to the incompetent?). I think a few occupations of the places that are still part of the problem would be a good way of churches showing that they are part of the solution. If the EA is raising money for such a campaign of protests, I'll donate to that.

Recession, singing and being church

It's been good to have anonymous as a dialogue partner. Really got the grey matter going. And hopefully, the thinking will lead to action.

The recession adds a whole new dimension to this discussion, as anonymous suggests by way of a tangent (the whole comment on the last post repays careful reading). I do have all sorts of fears that cash will drain away from much of the good work that is being supported by Christians as they tighten their belts and that Christians might become more self-absorbed as they see their incomes falling.

But I think the recession - we can use that word now as the governor of the Bank of England used it last night(!) - does afford us an opportunity to assess our values as individuals and communities. We will suffer mild discomfort as bills rise - though already food and fuel costs are coming off the peaks they hit in the summer - but the poor around the world will suffer greatly.

The difficulty with recessions is that they are so uneven in their impact on people. Some sail through them relatively unscathed and others find their lives shattered by them. And often those people can live on the same streets, exercise in the same gym, shop in the same malls. My prayer is that our eyes are opened to see how people are being affected.

One of the interesting features of this recession, however, is that it could affect the middle class in the south much more severely than others - unlike the downturns in the early 1980s and 1990s. It is people working in financial services - and those trades dependent on them in London - and those who've relied on debt, especially tied up in property, to fuel their lifestyle who are at the eye of this storm. And these people are my neighbours.

Inevitably, as they are affected, there will be knock-ons in the wider economy affecting other sectors. But we have such a tiny manufacturing sector these days that it's unlikely we'll be seeing factory closures on the scale we saw in the 1980s.

So it's maybe not a time to focus on singing but on sharing, on being honest about how we're doing and how we can support one another and those who could well be in need around us. In short, we have an opportunity to be church in a significantly deeper, more Christ-focused way.

Of course, some would say that a sing-song in a crisis is just the medicine we need, but I'm not sure I want to go there...

Why, O why do we sing in church?

I think Richard has a valid point (comment on the last post) that the aim of modern forms of worship was to help people who weren't connecting with God in traditional services an opportunity to make some connection with him. And I would say that there have been times when I have connected with God using a mix of vehicles including modern worship songs.

But I also think that anonymous (comment to same post) has touched an issue at the heart of the contemporary church's struggle to connect with people. Put baldy, it is that we are generally frothy and irrelevant, inward looking and a wee bit smug about our relatedness to God.

Now, I wouldn't want to go overboard here. I've met loads of Christians who are getting their hands very dirty in some places where people need help and only Christians are there to do anything. I've been to estates in inner cities in the UK where the only 'welfare' provision of any kind is that offered by Christians who sacrificially give of themselves, their time and their resources to make a difference and bless their neighbours.

And I'm writing this the day after a British Christian aid worker was shot dead in Kabul for doing exactly that as a Christian. So I don't think we can tar the entire church as self-obsessed. It dishonours those who are worshipping God with their bodies laid on the line day, day out.

But sadly, the contemporary worship scene is part of a wider malaise in the western church that sees offering people what we think they want is the way to attract people. And while there might be some superficial appeal for some in the entertaining mix we serve up, the longer term danger of the whole approach is that we are only offering an hour's mildly spiritual diversion.

Now some will protest that worship songs are not entertainment; they are a means of lifting up the name of God in a way that draws people to him and therefore are the essential component of what we do as churches. Sadly, as anonymous' posts so eloquently attest, such an approach repels rather than attracts some, perhaps many people.

We do seem to be afraid of thinking, of asking the hard questions about our faith that would stretch our faith both intellectually and emotionally. As an author, I am frequently asked to remember my audience doesn't want to be too taxed. I need to write in a way that will be accessible to people who don't read books - tricky when I write books!

I had some interesting conversations as I was putting the finishing touches to my recent short commentary on Galatians that I was possibly entering into discussions and debates about the text that were not appropriate for the general Christian public. The idea seems to be that the average church person can only cope with a pre-digested, entertainingly served up gobbet of something to believe rather than a range of possibilities to think about.

This could indeed be why the church in the UK is losing people. But it also highlights a real problem that churches have and it's this: who is our audience and at what level do they wish to be engaged? I have said for a number of years now that I do not believe there is a one-size fits all way of being and doing church. I am neither original nor alone in this view, but it is depressing how few of us there still are who really believe it and are prepared to practice it.

There are a load of people who think seriously about the world and their place in it and who might well find that the Christian faith has something intelligent and helpful to say that would help them engage with and think through these deep questions. At the same time, that process might well help them to meet and engage with God with every fibre of their beings - body, soul and, equally importantly, mind.

Sadly, songs like I can only imagine will only repel those with an ounce of intellect and musicality. I am sorry for anonymous' poor experience of church so far. Keep in touch. I'll return to this theme.

End of the journey, start of the adventure...

We're looking forward to a busy day at church.

This afternoon and evening we have a festival of the nations, featuring the Kidzsing choir from Johannesburg, an innovative project called Fruto del Espiritu which is seeking to help Colombian farmers grow fruit for fruit juice rather than coca for cocaine (they've got a contract to supply fruit cocktails to the Dorchester Hotel no less) and Gareth Davies-Jones is rounding our evening off with songs from his new album, Water and Light. Oh and there'll be food.

And this morning - my last before going on sabbatical - I am rounding off Matthew by returning to 28:16-20 (where we started) and looking at what we've learned about being and making disciples as we've read the five discourses.

I shall be stressing that disciples are believers with L-plates who pass on to others what they're discovering about the life of faith. There should be something of the wide-eyed, 'wow, look what I've just found out about Jesus' about our evangelism.

Paul captures it in Philippians 3 where he talks about wanting to know Jesus (v10), pressing on to grasp more and more about him and at the same time planting churches and urging others to discover the Christ who'd revolutionised his life and promised to do the same for the world.

So, although we've reached the end of our journey through Matthew, in a very real the adventure with Jesus in the world is just beginning - as it was for the 11 who met him on the mountain. Will we worship or hesitate, offer our lives to his adventure of mission or shrink back into the safety of our church programme?

And then it's getting ready for the Baptist Assembly in Blackpool at the end of the week. After that, we're off to Prague for a month to stay at IBTS. I'm really looking forward to time away, recharging the batteries, reflecting on where I'm at and thinking about what God is saying about the next phase of my ministry. We're certain that it means staying put, that God has fresh challenges for us here. we're looking forward to being re-envisioned for the adventure.

I shall be blogging while away, I think., because there'll be tons of stuff to reflect on and express an opinion about while we're away. So, keep in touch...

Living for the benefit of others

Just re-read Bruce Winter's essay in the Brower and Johnson collection Holiness & Ecclesiology which has a lot of really helpful things to say about Paul's teaching on sanctification (an event not a process) and how Paul dealt with the Corinthian's failure to live up to their calling.

In particular he reminds us that one of Paul's major concerns was how his hearers' conduct helped or hindered their neighbours seeing the gospel in action. Commenting on what Paul says about food offered to idols, Winter says: 'He [Paul] rejects the popular aphorism that 'all things are permitted' (10:23), and demands what was antithetical, i.e., they give no offense to Jews or Greeks or to the church of God but seek the welfare of their neighbours that they may be saved.'

That seems spot on to me - and goes a long way to explaining Paul's teaching on a whole range of things in the letter. The church's porous boundaries meant that Christians - individually and collectively - had to have a firm grasp of their identity in Christ and sensitivity to how their conduct commended their faith to outsiders.

They were sanctified, set apart (1:2, 4-7) so that their neighbours would see Jesus' revolution in action through how they lived and related to each other. It was their failure to live up to this calling that exercised the apostle so.

Priorities for embodying the good news

I'm clearing the decks so that Linda and I can get away for 36 hours to France before the winter sets in. We're off tomorrow - going through the tunnel for the first time.

So, I've been working on a church ethos and values statement which I'll share once the elders and leaders have taken a good look at it. It's been interesting thinking about what the church stands for, what values we embody as a community.

In many ways it's exciting to be thinking through these kinds of policies for how we run ourselves as a church. We've also been agreeing a covenant - a process that's not yet halfway through but is progressing slowly - thinking about new ways of doing leadership and firming up job descriptions for the ministry team.

All this is vital at some level, but I have to say, I'm not sure it's why I went into the ministry!

I've been reflecting a little on where my priorities lie (you have to when you're writing a job description for yourself!) or what my calling is. I've always seen my primary gifting as teaching and missional leadership (by which I mean looking for opportunities beyond the confines of the church community to earth and embody the gospel so that large numbers benefit and some find faith in Jesus).

I guess I'm hoping that the stuff we're doing at the moment will free me to do that in the coming months.

I'm also increasingly convinced that my studies in the social history of the New Testament (a suitably vague term for my area of interest) is actually a vital part of my missional leadership. I am finding all kind of resources in my studies that fuel questions about what we're doing today and why. If we are going to break out of the way we've been and done church as baptists for the last 200 years (and I believe we must if we are going to have any future), then the way the early Christians embodied the good news of Jesus in their culture holds vital lessons for us. And merely picking our favourite NT text and turning it into a system will not do!

I'm convinced that structure and organisation matter far less than ethos and values, that operational systems cannot be put above relationships and that being busy in church is no substitute for living a Christian life in communion with others.

Making sense of the text

It's good to be back on the sermon treadmill! There's something about the weekly discipline of having a text that you must make sense of and find a message in for an expectant congregation.

We're still working our way through Galatians and one of the problems of having written about it is that I tend to assume preparing sermons on any passage will be relatively straightforward. If only!

This Sunday I'm preaching on 6:1-10 - often seen as a pot pouri of ethical advice with no coherent thread of thought. Working with it though once more, I wonder if I might have discerned a strand of Paul's thought that unifies these verses into a clarion call to build community by walking in the Spirit in the light of the coming judgment - and thus provide a fitting climax to his whole argument.

The thread runs as follows: having appealed to his hearers to keep in step with the Spirit since we have crucified our old natures and been made alive by the Spirit (5:24-26), we need to help each other walk the line the Spirit lays out for us (6:1-2). This means we have to be realistic about ourselves (3-5), recognise that we're as prone to fail as anyone and that we need one another.

In particular we need our teachers (6 - always a good thing for a preacher to come across!). So we bear one another's burdens - possibly focused on the causes and consequences of sin and failure that we help one another with) but we each carry our own load - which is what exactly?

The harvest we have sown (7-10). The load is what we carry into the presence of God on the day of judgment and can take justifiable pride in (as Paul was often saying - see Phil 2:16 and Rom 15:17 for example).

And what is that harvest? it's the result of doing good to one another and in the wider world (10). Making the most of every kairos (10 - opportunities) because the kairos (9 - proper time) is coming when we'll have to account for what we've done, who we've lived for and why.

And so the argument comes full circle. It starts with Paul telling us to look out for one another, bear the burdens that sin lays on us from time to time and it ends by telling us to be on the look out for opportunities to do good to one another - which I take to mean encourage, support, help, be there for our brothers and sisters in a way that means they are less likely to be overtaken by a sin (the word suggests an ambush).

Does that make sense? If so, then it seems to me that these verses give us a coherent picture of life in the Spirit in the community of Jesus' followers.

Living it's the thing, of course, though knowing what God wants of us is a good start.

Reflecting on Galatians

Re-read Sean Winter's Galatians Bible study from the Baptist Assembly and began reading his Whitley lecture. The former is full of good stuff - as I said before - the latter looks really interesting.

We have begun preaching through Galatians at church and this week I was exploring identity through Paul's long autobiographical section (1:11-2:21 - the longest in any of Paul's letters).

Half way through talking about our identity in terms of call (by God) and community, I got a sense of just how vital Galatians 3:26-29 is in all this.

I believe Galatians to be Paul at his most apocalyptic 1:4 and 6:14-15 bookend the discussion with suitably apocalyptic tones; his discussion of the new life we enjoy in the Spirit is apocalyptic and thus so is his description of the new humanity we are in Christ, summarised in 3:26-29. It's almost as if this is the peak of the mountain whose low slopes are marked out by 1:4 and 6:14f.

If this is the case then it's crucial that we grasp who we are in Christ in terms of the new creation and not in terms of categories derived from this age - Law, ethnicity, social status, education, whatever (I agree with Sean that gender differences are still important because sexuality is a core part of what it means to be human and does so in the new age as well as the old one; but that gender domination has no place in the new age, for we are equal in Christ and equally called and gifted to participate, minister and lead in god's new community.)

A key point that I made this morning - I'm not sure entirely effectively - is that the distinction we sometimes make between 'human beings' and 'human doings', emphasising that we're the former, misses the point of who we are in Christ. Paul describes his identity and work in the same broad sweeping term - call (1:15). This emphasises the all-encompassing nature of the life of discipleship. After all, in the terms of his other strong image in the letter, we can't just be crucified with Christ on Sundays and at the mid-week bible study; we either are or we aren't. Being crucified with Christ defines our lifestyle 24hours a day, seven days a week, for it's no longer me that lives but Jesus who lives through me (2:20 - next week's topic - bring it on!).

So it matters not only what we do but also - and possibly more importantly - how we do it, because it is the way we live out our calling to be disciples in the world in a way that makes us part of God's renewing of creation.