Cafe culture

It's our anniversary cafe church on Sunday evening - we've been doing them a whole year. We started with a BMS Sunday focusing on Africa and this anniversary one is focusing on feet - standing on holy ground, going into the world with the good news (Exodus and Isaiah).

Our format has changed over the year, moving from looking at moral issues to a more liquid worship model, offering fresh ways of encountering God. From May, we aim to do another series of issue-based cafe services looking at conspiracy theories (the da vinci code, the gospel of judas, etc), gossip and the media, U2 and God. These will be aimed at people on the edge of faith, wondering what the Christian faith means in today's culture.

cafe services have been enormous fun but they are very labour intensive. I couldn't do them without my administrative assistant, who not only shops for a variety of bizarre items, but also gets props ready and increasingly has an input into how we'll deliver the theme. I also have a couple of others who offer creative input and help delivering the evening.

But these kind of events take a lot of putting together - so if you're pondering doing it, get a good team around you.

Back from a busy time at Spring Harvest. On the whole it was a good experience. A few good new songs - in a sea of increasing blandness, I fear - some good teaching/exhortation and some great fellowship (that's what I go for, really!)

I might be writing something for next year's Spring Harvest - watch this space.

Now I'm back for a weekend - BMS Sunday so it'll be great - and then off to the Baptist assembly where I'm involved with the new alternative strand called Prism.

Off to Spring Harvest

Finishing off preparing for Spring Harvest ahead of going away first thing in the morning to Skegness. So no blogging for a few days.

Have a great Easter everyone.

Isn't Jesus interesting...?

I'm reading Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan's The Last Week, an account of the final seven days of Jesus' life by two of the Jesus Seminar's superstars. It's brilliant and infuriating in equal measure, but well worth reading.

There's been no shortage of Jesus sories in the news over the past few days, such as the publication of the Gospel of Judas and James Tabor's new book on the Jesus Dynasty. I've not read the latter - though the book blurb and extracts that are online (get at them through Mark Goodacre's weblog at www.ntgateway.com).

The gospel of Judas tells us nothing about the events of the first Easter but gives us a fascinating insight into second century gnostic thinking.

All this comes in the wake of Dan Brown winning his high court action against the authors of Holy Blood and Holy Grail (or was that the other way round) and therefore keeping the Da Vinci Code hype going (and the tills churning).

Some Christians see this as a concerted attack on orthodox Christianity - and there might be some truth in this. Certainly the Jesus Seminar and the Westar Institute that set it up aims to raise questions about orthodox Christianity and show that traditional understandings of Jesus and Christian origins are plain wrong.

But this is also a great opportunity for Christians to talk about the historical origins of our faith and the credibilty of the records on which our faith is based.

For all the beauty of their writing, it seems to me that Borg and Crossan go out of their way to trash Christian doctrines that they disagree with but which the historical material they are dealing with (Mark's gospel) seems to uphold. In order to achieve this, they have to make theological judgments about which bits of Mark are accurate. Those judgments strike me as being extremely arbitary which makes me wonder if their assertions about other history are equally tendentious.

Hope puts a spring in your step

Last night we finished a series on What Christians Believe, rounding it off with hope - what is it that Christians are hoping for? And what difference does it make?

I think it's fair to say we had a good evening. The discussion was lively and the conversations I had after the service were very encouraging.

I think what pleased me most was the fact that people wanted to continue to think about these issues, read the scriptures I recommended and follow up other material. It's heartening when some are saying - I think rightly - that Christians appear less inclined to think about their faith, to find a group of people keen to have this kind of conversation in church.

What was most heartening of all were the numbers who indicated how exciting they found the Christian hope that we outlined. And what kind of difference it might make to the way they live their lives in a world teetering on the brink of despair.

Inspiring models

There are two particular projects on the expressions DVD which have set me thinking - in particular, thinking that we could do similar things where we are.

The first is Messy Church in Portsmouth, a wonderful child centred congregation featuring arts and crafts and food - what more do you need? The other is Nightshift at Hereford Baptist Church, in which the church opens late at night to offer hot drinks and conversation to people going home from clubs - what could be simpler?

Both these ideas seem obvious when you see them - but only when someone else has thought of them!

Anyway, I'm buying the DVD for my leaders and we'll talk about these and other ways of being church to see if there are things we could be doing here.

The shape of obedience

Listening to the Secret machines - good stuff. Reading Richard Hays' on Paul's use of the OT - brilliant, essential. Watching a DVD on new ways of being church - inspiring; lots of good models; plenty to think about (called Expressions: the dvd).

I've talked about this before, but there are so many things to keep an eye on in this job that it's sometimes hard to know where to focus.

We're about to go to Spring Harvest and after that I'm involved in the Baptist Assembly - so those things outside the immediate life of the church are pressing. Then there are meetings with people about getting a housing advice centre off the ground with other churches and statutory sector partners - so the mission of the church locally is pressing. Then there's the regular life of the church with the ups and downs of peoples' health, with niggles over roles and how we organise things, with preaching and teaching, leading worship, etc - so the internal life of the church is pressing.

It's all very stimulating and I know how fortunate I am to be in this position compared with so many who don't find their jobs as energising. I just wish there were 8 days in a week!

Yesterday I was particularly thinking about how we help people to think in a biblical way about the world we live in. Preparing for Palm Sunday, I've been struck about the competing expectations and understandings people had about the messiah and whether Jesus fitted the bill.

John paints a picture of different crowds ebbing and flowing around Jesus, welcoming him, badgering him, criticising him, wanting a slice of the action. And at the centre is Jesus, a still point in a swirling world, though clearly anguished at what lay ahead of him. His desire was to help those around him see things as he saw them.

Hays argues that this was Paul's intention in his letters. He calls it 'the conversion of the imagination' which I think is a wonderful phrase, encapsulating the need for us to to allow our whole thought process to be transformed by God, so that we look at, interact with and feel differently about the world we live in. Hays says that this happens through correctly reading the Bible. I agree. And I'd add that the Holy Spirit has a key role to play in taking and applying scripture to our thought processes.

The portrait of Jesus in John 12 is a portrait of an obedient Son under great pressure. He writes it to tell us what happened. But he also writes it to show us - obedient children - the shape of lives lived out of the still centre of obedience to God and his purposes. He writes to shape our thinking and hence our living. Jesus could only do what he did because he knew who he was under God, knowledge forged by the Word and the Spirit.

Good reading and listening

Picked up a digitally remastered copy of Jethro Tull's Benefit yesterday. Among the bonus tracks is Witch's Promise, the first Tull track I heard on Top of the Pops back in 1970-ish. It all still sounds surprisingly fresh, Ian Anderson's crisp diction and Martin Barre's rampant guitar making a very English sound.

I also acquired the remastered My Life in the Bush of Ghosts by Brian Eno and David Byrne, one of the first albums to use samples - cut ups, I think they were called back in 1980/81. This too has weathered well. The guy at Virgin selling it to me wasn't born when it first came out and marveled that it had been re-released!

I have also discovered Gareth Davis-Jones, a Christian singer-songwriter from the English North East. He has an album out and another being launched at the Baptist Assembly in Late April. He's one of the musicians we've got lined up for Prism, the alternative strand of the Assembly. I'm looking forward to hearing him in the flesh. Meanwhile you can check him out at www.headingwestmusic.com

Having spent more time than is healthy on trains over the past couple of weeks I've also been doing some reading. Tom Wright's new one Evil and the Justice of God (SPCK £12.99), apart from being a tad overpriced is another example of first rate scholarship and spot-on apologetics. I'm also part-way through his Simply Christian - equally good.

I've just started Moazzam Begg's autobiography Enemy Combatant which is sobering stuff.

Freedom - much talked of, little enjoyed?

We rejoice with Norman Kember and his family that he's free and home. It is great news for him and James Loney and Harmeet singh Sooden. It's important that we don't forget Tom Fox and his family in our celebrations.

Many are puzzled by Norman's actions - the UK press reaction has been bewildering - but as the wonderful Bob Gardiner, his pastor, said at the weekend the gospel makes us all fools in the eyes of the world.

We are also concerned at the plight of Abdul Rahman, facing the death penalty in Afghanistan for converting to Christianity 16 years ago. He is one of hundreds if not thousands of Christians around the world at risk of losing their life simply because of their faith.

It's good to see that the press and governments around the world are up in arms about this. Let's pray that he's released unmolested. Sadly there are too many confirmed stories of converts from that part of the world who have been released by the courts only to be murdered by mobs on the courthouse steps.

Maybe we should expect the world to hate us - Jesus told us it would - and that its hatred in some places will result in death for members of our family. It shouldn't stop us calling for countries who are members of the United Nations to live up to their commitments - in particular the commitment to religious freedom and tolerance.

This commitment means not only that Christians shouldn't be on trial for their faith but that governments should be educating their populations in the principles of tolerance and acceptance of difference. One of the key marks of a free society - as our baptist forbears were the first to say (I think) - is freedom to choose which religion, if any, to follow.

Of course, such tolerance is a matter of grace. And maybe you need the Spirit to live in such a way.

Passing on the faith

Life is really hectic so I'm sorry for not blogging for a while.

I've been pondering how we pass the faith on to the rising generation. I love the new Cadbury's TV ad where a boy gives a girl a couple of chunks of his chocolate bar, marries her, has a son who is seen in the last frame giving a chunk of chocolate to the girl he fancies. It strikes me as being a wonderful picture of what the author of Deuteronomy might have been trying to convey.

Deuteronomy 6 - which we use in dedication services - talks of families speaking about God's Law when they sit down and when they go out. It's a picture of mums and dads passing their faith on to their kids.

As we were reflecting on mother's day this morning at church, we talked about the relationship between family, church and the children's and youth programme in raising adult believers. Gone are the days when Christians are bringing their children up in a sympathetic environment.

David Smith puts it like this 'Adjusting to this new context [exile, the marginalisation of the church in western culture] is incredibly difficult since the mindset of most Western Christians has been formed by centuries of tradition which has conditioned them to expect the surrounding world to constitute a friendly and hospitable environment for their beliefs and values.' Lots of us still live as if this weren't so. We especially think that old ways of doing Sunday School and youth work still apply, are still good enough. [By the way if you've not come across David Smith, check out his stuff, especially Mission After Christendom (DLT, 2003) - excellent.]

David Voas - whom I've talked about before - sums it up well: the church has a half life of a generation, two church going parents have a 50:50 chance of passing their faith on to their children.

This means we face a challenge. One of the most stimulating thinkers in this area is Pete Ward. His book Growing up Evangelical: Youthwork and the making of a subculture is a revelation. He basically argues that over the past couple of generations, youthwork has aimed to create safe havens, bubbles that protect our kids from the world beyond the church. As a result they have failed to convert a childlike faith in Jesus into an adult discipleship.

This is a real problem for the church. If even church goers only have a 50:50 chance of passing their faith on to their kids, we need to think very seriously about how we as churches support parents in discipling our kids. We need to give our children and young people the tools to navigate their way as Christians in the choppy and turbulent waters of school, friendships, university and jobs.

Any ideas?

Who we are (yet again)

Started Street Pastor training last Saturday - excellent. Today I wrote a piece for my church magazine. These are linked by a thought about Good Friday (stay with me...)

Les Isaacs, the founder of Street Pastors, suggested that people outside the church know lots of things that we're against, but very little of what we're for. Earlier today I was musing on how we celebrate Good Friday. A little while ago I was in the middle of a rant by a group of Christians about how outrageous it is that the shops are open on Good Friday.

Now I think it might be a generational thing, but I'm not sure I can't hot under the collar about shop opening hours. Sometimes I need to shop at midnight and am grateful for the corner shops and supermarkets open at that time. Sometimes I need things on a Sunday. I even admit to having gone shopping on Good Friday (in fact I have done so the last three years at Spring Harvest - the UK's premier Christian conference!)

As I mentioned a few posts ago, Paul urged his readers in Rome to live their lives in the ordinary daily round in an extraordinary way because they were indwelt by the Spirit of God.

There was no acknowledgement of Good Friday in First Century Rome. And Paul didn't seem to be lobbying for one. Rather he was lobbying for a people whose lives were shaped by the cross to be living in the midst of working, shopping and playing Romans and allowing the shadow of the cross to fall over their lives.

Is there a lesson in this for us? I think so.

Keeping the balls aloft

Life's been a bit manic (again) hence the gap between posts.

Have been listening to the Arctic Monkeys (excellent) and Sarah McLachlan (equally excellent), but the stand out music of the last fortnight has been Eels live album called Live at Town Hall. It's a great collection of songs - heavily weighted to the wonderful Blinking Lights album - played by E and string section, pump organ and guitar. It shows off his song writing skills and especially his ability to deliver a lyric.

In between I've been working. I finished my Galatians manuscript and sent it off to the publisher - I await the blue pencil response! We're more than halfway through a series on basic Christian beliefs which is proving quite interesting. Last night it was the cross and I'm not sure it went as well as I'd hoped - it's such a vast subject I felt like I was drowning in it at times.

I've been counting the number of balls I have to keep up in the air. My admin assistant (what a luxury it is to have one!) has produced me an action plan of my roles - in the church and beyond. It runs to some 15 separate items (many of which are multi-faceted).

Looking at it I wonder - does church have to be this complicated?

Who we are (revisited)

Had a good ministers' conference - lots of stimulating conversation. I also celebrated my 50th birthday on the second day.

Birthdays are always a time when you think about how life's going. That combined with the conversations at the conference have had me thinking this week further thoughts about our identity as Christians.

If we're right that Paul stresses to the Romans that our identity has to do with our call to be holy people (understood in the Old Testament sense of set apart), our adoption as children of God and our entry into a new family that we label 'the church' - and I think we are - what does this mean 'the church' should look and feel like.

I came away from the conference with the nagging feeling that ministers are still seeing themselves as CEOs of complex religious service organisations, that their role is to get all the pieces in place to ensure that 'church' maximises productivity in the form of making new converts and using everyone's gifts efficiently.

Now don't me wrong, both of those things are vitally important. But it strikes me that Paul would find all our talk of structures and programmes, groups for this, that and the other really rather puzzling.

Reading Romans again, I was forcefully reminded that Paul says almost nothing about how to do 'church', nothing about structure, organisation, leadership or strategy - even though, he does suggest that his ministry over the previous few years has been based on a strategy of reaching the major cities of the Eastern Med (though sometimes I wonder whether we are reading modern business-speak back into Paul's words in Romans 15:15-33 which have a much more confessional, liturgical and theological tone than most corporate annual reports!)

Even more, I was struck again by the fact that Paul doesn't tell those outseide 'the church' how to live their lives. Of course, he talks about the consequences of human sin and fallenness - only so that he can show how God in Christ has dealt with sin as a destroyer of creation as well as a personal character trait of individual people. But there's no pointing the finger at neighbours who are living together or governments who allow anti-Christian propaganda free-reign in the media.

Rather Paul talks about community, family, beloved friends and co-workers and welcoming all in the name of Christ. Paul talks about our identity in Christ as God's redefined people and speaks of us living out of that identity in a competitive empire. Paul talks about our community life being inklings of the new creation God is making through Jesus in the power of the Spirit. This is a challenge to Christians living in the rich west, living at the heart of an empire that seeks to impose its values on the world by economic clout and military might.

What would our 'churches' look and feel like if we focused on being community and left it to God's Spirit to use our life together as the means to infect the culture around us?

Who are we, then?

Next week I'm off to a ministers' conference to do the Bible readings. And I'm really looking forward to it - though I'm not sure I have anything particular to contribute to my brothers' and sisters' understanding of either the text or their jobs.

I've decided to read Romans 1 and 16, the opening and closing of Paul's great letter, and think about the twin issues of identity and inclusion. Who are we in Christ? How do we build genuinely inclusive communities?

These have always been key issues - they clearly were for Paul's first hearers. But I feel them to be particularly important for us today. Our identity as Christians in the West has taken a hammering with the passing of Christendom and the abandonment of the faith by so many of our neighbours. Who are we when so few think the Christian faith worth following?

I guess Paul's first hearers thought something similar for different reasons. There were not many Christians in Rome in the mid-50s when Paul wrote. Romans 16 suggests five house churches, possibly seven. Even if 30 people went to each - which would be pushing it, given the capacity of the homes these groups met in - that would mean a Christian community of no more than a couple of hundred people in a city of one million.

Furthermore, these believers would be people of little status or clout. They wouldn't even have had the presence that the Jewish community had through its purpose-built meeting places. The Christian community would have been all-but invisible.

So, what was their sense of identity? Paul clearly wants them to understand themselves in relation to the coming Kingdom: they are people of the new age rather than the age that is passing away. They are people of the resurrection, people who know the forgiveness of God and the renewal of their lives through his Spirit. In short they are holy people.

And they have this status not because they were born into it - which must have been a relief to those (a majority) who were at the bottom of the social heap and hence born to nothing but penury - but because God chose to give it to them as an act of grace. More than that, by making them holy and filling them with the Holy Spirit, God made them into brothers and sisters of his son, Jesus, he adopted them into his family (adoption into a divine family was the highest a Roman could imagine - it's what Caesar had a habit of doing).

Paganism in ancient Rome - as much as various new age spiritualities these days - offered ways for people - who'd never be adopted into the emperor's family - to discover the god within them, to realise that they were in some way already divine or had the potential to be. The good news of Jesus is that God adopts us into his family, makes us partakers of the divine nature, as Peter puts it, through our faith in Jesus.

That has to be good news in any culture, doesn't it?

Showing people Jesus

I was talking a guy yesterday who confirmed something I've believed for a while. His church is involved with a number of partnerships with outside organisations which enable it to meet a variety of needs in its local community.

So it runs a parenting course, a project to reduce youth offending, an after school club - each with a different partner providing funding or material or a worker.

As a result the church is growing and yet it does no programmed evangelism.

Why? Because the people who are coming to the projcts are being drawn into something that is 'blessing' them and they want to find out why. So all sorts of conversations happen and people who come to the building for one thing end up coming for others - including on Sundays to find out what makes these Christian tick.

That's got to be worth thinking about.

Earthing the vision

Had a meeting with the council yesterday to talk through how churches could be involved with the homeless in our borough. There are worryingly large numbers of them for such an apparently prosperous place - 180 under 18s a year presenting themselves with no roof over their heads; another 200 of all ages per month (though many of these are returners) who'd be described as 'sofa surfers' - people who live on friends' sofas for months even years at a time.

Social changes account for the rise in numbers - the breakdown of relationships leaving people in 30s or 40s homeless but wanting to stay near children; young people seeking independence but not having the wherewithal to fund it in an expensive town; mental health, drug and alcohol problems; the pressure on housing stock because of the numbers choosing to live alone.

As I listened to these numbers being delivered by stretched council officials who clearly cared about the human lives behind these statistics, I recalled Jeremiah 29:7. Yet again this verse is becoming a major feature of my life. It called me into ministry 30 years ago. It haunts my thinking about the shape of Christian community and the nature of our mission.

And it needs to be earthed. Why would we want to help people who are homeless or at risk of becoming so? Because we want to seek their welfare. Why spend time helping people to learn the basic life skills needed to run a home, pay their bills and establish themselves as members of our community? Because we want to seek their welfare. Why work with other churches and offer our premises as a base for an advice centre? Why put our own money and resources into this? Because we want to seek the welfare of the city where we've been exiled.

This is all the agenda we need.

PS... Apparently, there's a cricketer with my name who's the 9th sexiest man in the world. Perhaps I should demand a recount....

Mistaken identity?

According to page 7 of today's Independent newspaper, I am the 9th sexiest man in the world. Either that or I have been the victim of identity theft!

There was a great line on Desperate Housewives last night - my second favourite TV show of the moment (House being my favourite - so pleased it's back). Bree and her mother-in-law, Phyllis, do not get on and Phyllis was beginning to have convenient memory lapses that cast Bree in a bad light and even on occasion threatened her well-being. After a number of illustrations of this, the show's narrator said: 'her mother-in-law's memory is fine; it's her soul that was faulty.' Lovely.

We'll be thinking about human nature, who we are, why we are what we are, on Sunday evening. So I'll be weaving these things in somehow.

Thinking about Christian worship

That's the thing about blogs - don't get one for days, then two come along at once.

If you're looking for stimulating new year reading, then can I recommend Larry Hurtado's At the Origins of Christian Worship?

Hurtado is professor of New Testament Language, Literature and Theology at Edinburgh. Over the past 20 years, he has been exploring the whole issue of how monotheistic Jews came to see Jesus as divine.

At the end of the 1980s he published One God, One Lord: Early Christian Devotion and Ancient Jewish Monotheism. Then a couple of years he produced a massive tome called Lord Jesus Christ. Along with a collection of essays that came out ate last year called How on Earth Did Jesus Become a God? this amounts to a formidable body of work.

Hurtado has an easy style for a scholarly writer and an eye for how all this affects Christian belief today. At the Origins of Christian Worship is a set of four lectures he gave exploring the religious environment into which Christianity was born and the nature of early Christian devotion to Jesus. He tackles questions like 'how did the early Christians come to worship Jesus?' 'what evidence do we have for their practices?' and 'what might early Christian devotion have to say to us in the twenty-first century?' It's great stuff.

Early Christian worship fed into early Christian thinking about who exactly Jesus was and the shape of Christian community - hence it's a key element in any social history of the early church. I'm thinking of devoting a couple of sessions to it in my lecture course in Sri Lanka.

Better on foot

I've had car trouble this week. And that combined with other pressures (the sheer volume of work) means I haven't blogged for a while. Apologies.

I was reflecting on my car's inability to go, while reading Mark Goodacre's NT gateway blog (excellent - but he's been blogging less than me recently; get a grip, Mark). He wondered how fast Jesus walked - as you do...

The reason is that James Dunn in his enormous book Jesus Remembered suggests that the young carpenter would have walked regularly to Seppharis - just 5km away from Nazareth - and might therefore have been involved in building the theatre as well as other projects in that highly Gentile-influenced town.

It's fascinating to think of Jesus as an ordinary working man - which he would have been for at least 15 years of his life. What did he make? In Gibson's The Passion, Mel has him rather anachronistically making a table of the kind westerners sit at for meals, with Jesus quipping to his mother that he's sure it'll catch on.

The likelihood is that he would have made furniture and agricultural equipment but would have spent more of his time helping to build buildings of all kinds - mainly houses, maybe, but also larger public buildings. And in doing that he would have been mixing with people of many faiths - Sepphoris was full of Gentiles attracted there by the strong Roman presence; and other parts of Galilee had significant non-Jewish populations.

It makes you think doesn't it? The Son of God sitting down for a midday break with chippies from Roman provinces north of Judea, dealing with site managers employed by Pilate and his predecessors, sharing the time of day with soldiers and officials, traders and imperial hangers-on.

It raises all kinds of questions about what languages Jesus spoke - his gentile colleagues wouldn't have spoken Aramaic, so he must have known enough Greek to get by; about how he lived - was he away from home for extended periods of time (The movie with Jeremy Sisto playing Jesus has a scene with him and his father away from home seeking work in a struggling economy). It might also help us to see where Jesus acquired his understanding of ordinary working life, his stock of images drawn that life that appear in his parables. It also roots the Son of God in a very specific place and time with all the pressures that brings.

I am having to think about these things as I'm teaching a course in Sri Lanka in July on the social history of early Christianity - a slightly more daunting prospect than I was expecting when I agreed to do a few lectures when I visit friends on the island!

It promises to be fascinating preparing for it - if only I can fit in with everything else! Now where's the number of my breakdown service....

New Year listening

Check out the new Strokes album - First Impressions of Earth - you won't be sorry (if you like this kind of thing).

It's taken a bit of a mauling from the critics but it strikes me it's everything we want from the Strokes - world-weary, guitar-dueling rock from the spiritual heirs of the great Television.

One track in particular struck me as I was preparing a sermon on 'the God who's speaking' last week. Called Ask me anything, it contains the wonderful line 'don't be a coconut/God is trying to talk to you/we could drag it out/but that's for other bands to do...' Singer, Julian Casablancas, going on to protest 'I've got nothing to say'

Great riffs and theological eloquence as well - what more could you ask?

Seeking our city's welfare

Just back from the Mainstream Conference. Good time.

In particular, Glen Marshall's Bible readings in Jeremiah were spot on. He dealt with chapters 1 and 29 and both studies were full of insight and wisdom.

Jeremiah 29:7 was a significant verse calling me into ministry when I was a student almost 30 years ago. It's surfaced at crucial times over the intervening years. This week, longing for a word from God, I was once again forcefully reminded how God has linked our shalom with the shalom of our neighbours.

For me, it means that my focus needs to be outside the church not inside. No change there, then. But Jeremiah's letter to the exiles contains some home truths we don't really like. For starters, he said the exile was to last their whole lives - that's the import of 70 years (v10). What about us? If it's true that the church in the UK is in a time of exile, how long will it last? Will we never see the end of it? Sobering thought.

Those exiles, said Jeremiah, need to settle into their new situation and seek God's shalom for the Babylonians. This was outrageous advice. Babylon had defeated Judah and carted half the population into exile. It was still menacing the remaining people. In just a few short years, its forces would crush Judah's rebellion, level Jerusalem and destroy the temple.

And yet... Jeremiah says seek the shalom of these people in their homeland. What are the implications of that advice for us in the secular, faith-ambivalent UK? What does it mean to seek the shalom of our post-Christendom, consumer culture?

Jeremiah 29:11, a favourite OT verse because of its promise, is closely linked to verse 7: God wants to bless us with his shalom. That's his plan for us. How will it happen? He's told us already. It'll happen as we seek the shalom of the city where we've been sent into exile. On top of that, shalom will come as we seek God in the midst of exile (v12-14). For Jeremiah's first readers this was confirmation that they can find God in Babylon and not just in the temple in Jerusalem. For us, it means that we can and should expect to meet God in the city whose shalom we're seeking, where we've been exiled.

Tough? Exciting?

Happy birthday

Hey, my blog's a whole year old...

happy birthday and blow out your candles nicely...

Happy New Year

Well, it's 2006. This blog is nearly a year old - amazing!

Happy New Year to all of you who read it. May God be more real and active in your lives this year than last.

I've had a quiet Christmas - except for the day at the Ikea sale (if ever you need a metaphor for eternal punishment....!)

I have also been writing some of the book on Galatians that I need to finish by the end of February - four sections in two days (not bad going).

The more I read and wrestle with Galatians, the more I love it - it's raw emotion, creative thinking, incredible grasp of the implications of the life, faithfulness and death of Jesus, its sheer radical take on what it means to be a Christian. Sometimes I read Galatians and then I look at the church and I wonder where the connection is.

I've also been finishing off a workbook for our major New Year series - What Christians Believe - without finding a snappier title for it. Perhaps I should call it the full Monty or true spirituality (but those titles have gone). I've been trying to capture the fact that the Christian faith is a relationship with God that's open to examination and explanation because God has spoken to us through his Word in both the Bible and in Jesus and he still speaks as his Spirit interprets his word to us in our daily lives.

For this reason, Christianity is less a religion and more a spirituality - and thus very trendy, according to the sociologists! But it's far more than that. If Jesus is God incarnate and if we can meet him in the power of his Spirit, then the Christian faith is a relationship that should lead to personal and social revolution.

So maybe our new year's resolution should be to get into this Christian faith so that we and our neighbourhoods are turned upside down.

Happy 2006.

Christmas greetings

The chances are I won't blog again until next week.

So may I take this chance of wishing you all a very happy Christmas.

I hope you get a chance not only to reflect on the Christmas story but to meet its central character. The wonder of Christmas is that God's word became flesh and moved into our neighbourhood so we could talk face-to-face.

Best of 2005

Christmas is the time of year when newspapers and magazines pick their best of the year - books, music, movies.

I always scan the lists for confirmation of my taste. I notice that I have five of the Word's top ten albums of the year and five of Q's - though they're a slightly different five.

The albums I've bought this year that I'm still listening to on a regular basis are Kaiser Chiefs, Coldplay, Gorllaz, Hard Fi, Arcade Fire, Dylan's No Direction Home, the Magic Numbers, the Blind Boys of Alabama with Roy Harper (or is that the other way round?) and Neil Young. These are all really fine pieces of work.

My top three albums of the year, however, are Eels Blinking Lights and Other Revelations, Elbow's Leaders of the Free World and Kate Bush's Aerial - these three are head and shoulders above the rest for originality, lyrical power and musical beauty. Each in their own way show that pop music can deal with profound and grown up issues and cast a new light of life's struggles and joys.

If you're still compiling Christmas lists, put these albums on them - you won't be disappointed

Is there anything new in the Christmas story?

Sometimes as I'm preparing for Christmas, I begin to wonder whether I've already said this. Didn't I take this angle last year, I ask myself; haven't I adopted this approach before? Sometimes it's hard to see anything new in the Christmas story and what should be the most exciting of stories becomes stale and samey.

Well, I've had one of those days - and then suddenly, an epiphany (which is appropriate given the season!)

I'm writing my script which retells the Christmas story as it actually happened (according to Matthew and Luke) in the order it happened taking due note of the passing of time and it hits me.

I ought to fill in the context, I guess. Following on from Kenneth Bailey - that great New Testament scholar who's lived most of his life in the Middle east - I believe that when Mary and Joseph went to Bethlehem they would have stayed with a cousin of Joseph. He would have had relatives there as it's his ancestral home and it would have been unthinkable that one of those relatives would not have made room for Joseph and his wife-to-be

(on a technical note: there probably would not have been a commercial inn in Bethlehem. They tended to be at the mid-way points on roads between trading centres. And the word translated 'inn' in Luke 2:7 means guest room - it's the word used in Luke 22:11 for the 'upper room' where he celebrated his last supper with his friends. Where Luke speaks of a commercial inn - as he does in the parable of the good Samaritan - he uses a different word altogether.)

When Mary went into labour - some time after arriving in Bethlehem - the guest room was full of people. There was no privacy for her to deliver her baby. So she went into the section of the house downstairs where the owners would keep their animals at night. It was warm, dry and there was an ideal cot for the baby! There she could go with the women who'd be on hand to assist and deliver her baby in relative privacy - at least away from the prying eyes of men!

The shepherds are summoned to the house that Jesus was born in by angels. They come. They see. They worship. They start telling people in the house what the angel told them. And suddenly I'm thinking this is probably the first time that half Joseph's family will have heard this. I wonder what they make of it? I wonder how long it is before the whole street knows?

Something as ordinary and everyday as the birth of a baby is suddenly an extraordinary, once-in-history event: God's anointed saviour is arriving in the world. The one who will reverse the effects of the Fall, defeat death, satan and all forces of darkness and evil has been born in the Bethlehem equivalent of a suburban semi.

God comes right under the noses of people - and they don't think anything of it until shepherds who'd been sent by angels - angels who didn't appear to anyone in the house or street where Jesus was born - turn up and spill the beans. It's amazing.

I love Christmas. I never fail to see something new in the story. This is the lynch-pin of history, the night when God came to set things right. And no matter how often I read it, it still blows me away.

Christmas stuffing

It's been busy - hence the lack of blogging this month. Christmas is jammed full of stuff - planning services, visiting people, sorting out things that'll have to happen early in the New Year, shopping, writing Christmas cards, etc

In the middle of all that we've been doing a short Advent series on Jesus @ the movies. We reflected on grace and vocation through Babette's Feast and we looked at whether there were tips on movie watching from Paul's visit to Athens (Acts 17:16-34), while taking in material from Pay it Forward and X Men 2. It's been fascinating.

One thing it's confirmed is that this way of doing theology has a lot to do with age, temperament and upbringing. There are people in my church who think we've nothing to learn from the movies and indeed never visit cinemas, while there are others who try to watch a film a week and who reflect on what those films are saying about God, us and the meaning of life.

A number of things have struck me from all this. One is the number of Hollywood people who are committed Christians. I was particularly struck by the fact that Scott Derrickson, writer and director of the Exorcism of Emily Rose - a film I haven't seen - is a committed Christian, a graduate of Biola University and he has some fascinating things to say about Christians and horror movies.

I guess the main thing that doing this brief series has reinforced to me is that God is concerned about what's happening in the world beyond the Christian ghetto and that he wants his people out there mixing it with people who hold all kinds of views about life. That's what Paul did in Athens - he walked the streets, read the history, got into the poets and philosophers and engaged in debate and discussion.

There's a such a contrast between Paul and so many of us. We're not interested in dialoguing with the world. We seek a monologue - where we speak and the world listens. We don't know enough about what our neighbours are thinking and saying to be able to engage in a conversation with them about things that concern them.

Hollywood composer Barry Taylor reminds us that there's a great debate happening across America - and I guess across the UK too - concerning God. But the church isn't involved because it's happening in movies theatres and by and large we don't go there. That's a pity because Paul would.

Freedom to be a community

In preparing for the men's Bible study this evening, I've been reminded what an amazing letter Galatians is. Angry, passionate and containing the most incredible charter for freedom ever penned.

I've been particularly struck by 5:16-26. If his first hearers were not to submit to the Law, what was to stop them living morally chaotic lives? The Spirit. Simple as that.

God's Spirit is the powerful presence of the future (as well as God himself) in our present. He ensures we triumph in the battle between the present evil age and the glorious age to come (Galatians is a wonderfully apocalyptic book!).

5:17 is not saying that we flail helplessly, pulled first one way by our flesh and then another by the Spirit. Rather, it's reminding us that because we are indwelt by the Spirit, we cannot choose as our way of life, behaviour that is opposed to God's will. Rather we can only do - that is, we are only allowed to choose to do - what God wants. More than that, though, the Spirit in us is God's investment in us not only choosing that b ut also being able to live it because he is the Spirit who raised Jesus from the dead.

Amazing stuff.

And there's more. We don't do this alone. The fruit of the Spirit is not about more loving, joyful and peaceful human beings but about more loving, joyful and peaceful human communities. Churches ought to be places marked by acceptance and love, peace between us, joy in one another's company, faithfulness in relationships, self control in the way we speak to and about one another. They ought to be that. But...

But, they can be that because that's the kind of community the Holy Spirit grows when a group of Christians tell God that's what they want and commit themselves to walking the way of the Spirit.

Keeping the faith

It's advent this Sunday, so new things in the morning, but in the evening we're finishing our series in 1 John.

I do wonder whether anyone in the church knows we're in such a series! We started back in late September and interspersed reading 1 John with prayer and cafe church. Running a series is good for the preacher and those involved in leading services. It also seems to have helped those leading our homegroups. But I'm beginning to question whether those attending find it that helpful. After all, if you miss a couple of evenings in a series that doesn't run every week, it's not long before you lose any sense of continuity. Ah well...

Anyway, this week we're thinking about keeping the faith. John stresses the need to hear the testimony of God about the truth of what we believe, follow the example of Jesus who in his fleshly life (so emphasised by John) kept true to his mission and rely on the power of the Holy Spirit to give us the resources to live as God wants us to. It's great Trinitarian stuff!

But we often tend to read it as speaking to me as an individual; how I keep the faith in my isolated walk in the world, out there among colleagues who don't see things the way I do.

John, however, talks about an eternal triangle, involving God, me and my brothers and sisters. He writes not to individuals but to individuals in community. He does not suppose that we'll keep the faith on our own. He assumes that we do this together, that we'll support and encourage one another.

But I wonder if there's also more to it than this. John was writing to communities - possibly in ancient Ephesus - where life was more settled and local. People worked where they lived. The people they lived and ate with were the people they worked alongside in whatever trade the household followed. Very few lived in one place and worked in another. very few lived with one group of people and worked with a different group. So for them, the opportunities to help one another live out their Christian faith were more frequent and came in every strata of the daily routine.

Our lives are not like this. so how do we meaningfully support and encourage those brothers and sisters we only see once a week at church - assuming we all attend every week - or once a fortnight at home group - assuming we get to each one of those. We can go several days or even weeks between encounters.

Can we do it virtually? Can we find a way of using texts and emails as a substitute for being face-to-face? Many recoil at such a notion, arguing that you've got to be with someone to support them. But is this really true? Many churches have for years run a telephone prayer network, where requests are phoned around a group of people who pray for specific situations they've received alerts about. Sometimes members of the network pray with each other on the phone.

Is doing the same thing by text or email or through MSN messenger really that different? It's just a thought. We'll see how people react to it on Sunday!

Going to see Elbow at Brixton Academy tonight. Can't wait!

Still no latte, but...

Last Sunday we had another cafe-style service - our seventh - celebrating our 142nd birthday.

We built a cairn of stones at the front of the church representing all the memories and stories held by people in the church - some of whom had first come in the 1930s. We played pass the parcel, we thought about the nurture of the rising generation and we had a liturgy of passing on the baton from the older to the younger people in the church.

It all worked well.

Cafe church is becoming a fixture of life here. Most people accept it as part of the monthly programme. We're also getting quite a few visitors to each one.

So the plan is to continue them into the New Year. I'm hoping they'll continue to evolve into events that combine conversation and liturgy, ritual and fellowship.

Service and services

Kez, commenting on the last posting, is right to suggest that we need to get out more. We've had a bit of discussion about this already on this blog.

But even getting out more doesn't alter the fact that we've got to think about what kind of service we offer those who come seeking us out. Alan's point is that there are still significant numbers of people who want the church. Indeed he argues that some are called to be church members to keep the church going for the benefit of its non-members. This is a distinctive (and possibly eccentric) spin on Archbishop Temple's idea that the church is the only club that exists for the benefit of its non-members.

I guess my bottom line is that I want people to meet and engage with Jesus. They might do this as they access a service we offer - whether that's a regular Sunday gathering or something special we do because they ask us (a dedication, wedding or funeral). But maybe they are more likely to do this if we go out looking for ways to make contact with them - in the pubs and clubs of our communities, at the school gate, at work, etc - as Kez suggests.

I say this because I don't think I buy Alan's idea that people are 'cultural Christians'. I'm not sure what he means by this beyond the fact that they hold residual Christian values (precious and in need of re-inforcing any way we can). I'm not sure what this has to do with knowing Jesus in a living and vibrant way that changes our values and lifestyles.

But I'm happy if 'cultural Christians' come to my church seeking a dedication (our alternative to baptising babies), a wedding or a funeral. It is a pastoral opportunity that enables me to talk about the Christian story and how it impacts on their lives. More than that, it's an opportunity for Jesus to touch their lives in unexpected ways. I'm all for it.

Basic models

I've been reading an intriguing book by Alan Billings. It could well be standard middle-of-the-road Anglicanism for all I know - but since I'm not one of those...

Alan is the reason I'm a Christian. He prepared me for confirmation in the early 70s before I defected to the free church across the road (better girls!) But the indelible mark he left on me was that Christianity was absolutely about the world we live in. God is interested in the world and not just the souls of people.

His book looks at why people in a secular culture come to church to have their babies baptised, get married and bury their dead. He argues that it's because people are 'cultural Christians' and when faced with these key moments in their lives want to face them in some way in the presence of God.

It's an intriguing and sometimes compelling argument. I do find myself in sharp disagreement over his definition of Christian and hence wondering whether his label 'cultural Christian' really has any validity. But it's made me think - and not many book do that.

What I am really wrestling with at the moment is his discussion of different churchmanship - the parish versus gathered model. This is ecclesiology 101 but it came as a forceful reminder to me as I read it this morning that this one reason why we - a gathered church - struggle with being inclusive.

The argument is that the parish model enables the church to include everyone in a defined area and in some way offer to serve them. The gathered model says that church is for the people who have chosen to be part of it and our only engagement with the wider neighbourhood is for evangelism.

I want to be a gathered church doing parish-style ministry. But is that possible? Do the 'cultural Christians' who live around me - if that's what they - see my church as a valid expression of the Christianity they think they want when they are hatching, matching or dispatching? Or is the default position of English people to seek these services from the church of England - of which we have plenty.

I am just embarking on marriage prep with a couple who are not church attenders at the moment, though she used to come to our church when she was younger. They want to get married in church for precisely the reasons Alan suggests in his book - 'it's not really proper getting married anywhere else.' 'I want God to be part of the ceremony'.

But I suspect that most people like this couple would seek out the parish church rather than my Baptist church.

The question I'd like to work with for a while is this: can we identify an area - not well served by other churches - and offer to be a 'parish' church to its residents? What would we have to do that was different? What services would we have to provide?

More fundamentally, how could we let people know that we were operating in this inclusive, parish way and were not just a congregation for those opting to join and prepared to get over the hurdles to associate with us?

Ah, questions, questions. What fun!

Spam and blogs

Time was when spam was just a rather unpleasant processed meat product. Now it's also an irritating intrusion into the blogosphere.

I have decided to activate the word verification software which ought to prevent automated comments from being left - so I won't have to go through deleting ads for second-hand cars or various money-making schemes.

It only adds a simple step for you if you want to leave a comment - so please don't be put off!

Emerging from what?

Much chat about the so-called emerging church seems to assume that it comes from nowhere in the sense that it consists of groups forming in homes or pubs with no connection to any other Christian community. This is because many emerging church groups are set up by those who have left what stuart Murray calls inherited church because they cannot function within it.

I have for some time thought, however, that new forms of church will also need to emerge from traditional/inherited churches or those churches will not see the decade out.

I'm sorting out a cafe-style gathering for our evening anniversary service this weekend which is an exercise in looking back - sharing memories, telling stories - and looking forward - what memories will the rising generation be forming in the coming years?

It's got me thinking about whether the church of the future really can emerge out of the church of the present and the past. Is it possible for the rising generation to begin to create a church in its image as the generation currently dominant in the church has created a community in its image over the past 30 years or so?

More specifically, I want to help us explore what those currently running the church need to be doing to prepare the next generation to take the church on. The dilemma is that we so train and nurture people that they will only be able to perpetuate the current structures. How can we nurture our young people and young adults in the ethos and values of Christian community in such a way that they are able to give their own shape to those values in the churches they create?

Even more importantly, how can we give space to the rising generation to begin creating church that meets their needs while still functioning within the framework of community that meets the needs of the current leading generations?

One obvious response to this is to allow the creation of lean-to groups - gatherings of people who want to explore different ways of doing things - which are resourced by the church they lean against. Those involved in such groups would be members of the supporting church. In a sense this is an adaptation of the church planting model so popular in the 1970s and 80s but it might create space for experiment and adaptation, for the exploration of what shapes work for church in very specific contemporary social contexts.

It will be interesting, as we do a ritual handing on of the baton from the over-40s to the under 40s on Sunday evening, to see what emerges from it. Will it just be a nice thing to do or will actually shift the balance of power within our community with the current generation genuinely making room for the emerging generation to explore, spread their wings and create new ways of doing things? We'll see.

Isn't life busy

It's been really hectic since getting back from Prague and Budapest - I suppose that's the price you pay for having a holiday!

Listening to the wonderful Kate Bush album - you either love or hate her, I guess. I've loved her since Wuthering Heights and bar the rather disappointing Red Shoes, she's not made a bad album in almost 30 years.

I'm also reading Alan Billing's Secular Lives, sacred Hearts. Alan is the guy who first interested me in the Christian faith 35 years ago. A middle of the road Anglican whose brand of the faith I rejected in my early days as a Christian in favour of a more certain evangelicalism, I now find considerable wisdom in his reflections on the role of the church in a time of no religion.

Life's busy-ness has been exacerbated by having to edit and sign off the Autumn edition of Talk, the Magazine of Mainstream, the Word and Spirit network within the Baptist Union of Great Britain. It's a good issue but I wish we had the budget to make it look more interesting. Particularly worth checking out is Peter Oakes' article on The New Testament, The Roman Empire and Shopping. It's great stuff.

So, now we're into planning the next session's teaching programme, lining up the home group sessions and wondering why lots of this stuff increasingly fails to capture the imagination of the ordinary Christian.

Is it just me, or is it getting harder to create a programme in church that appeals to a broad cross section of our Christian public? I am about to embark on discussions with my leaders about launching a lean-to programme of home and church based alternatives to our normal church programme.

If anyone has such a 'shadow structure' operating in their churches and would like to share their wisdom with me, I'm all ears.

Travels

Just back from a week in Central Europe - Prague, Budapest and Vienna.

Prague is wonderful. It was very moving for a child of the sixties to stand in the old town square under the statue of Jan Hus and remember the days in 1968 when the Soviet tanks rolled in and the time 20+ years when Czechs thronged the square celebrating their freedom from communism.

It's particularly moving because Hus was a Christian reformer who campaigned for freedom for Christians to develop an expression of their faith for themselves rather than having to follow the one laid down in far away Rome. In particular, he wanted ordinary believers to have communion in both kinds regularly, that is to have both bread and wine whenever they attended. It's hard for us protestants who value celebrating the Lord's supper the way we do that for centuries people were barred from the table except at Easter when they got bread dipped in wine from the priest.

For many years I had a lapel pin of a chalice in my lapel that was given to me by a Czech believer I met in the 1970s - when it was tough for believers. It symbolised for me the freedom that we have in Christ and the freedom we campaign for believers to celebrate their faith in the way their conscience suggests they should.

Lots of other lovely things happened that I'll refer to in subsequent blogs...

Good to be back

Faith and young people

It's been furiously busy over the past week or so. Lots of things happening at church and a funeral for a troubled family. It's always the problem of church life, isn't it, that we plan and strategise and events conspire to delay or derail those plans.

We're off to Prague and Budapest at the weekend for a break - beer, jazz and conversation, history and architecture (what more could one want!) - but not before I've done a session with schools workers.

Preparing for this I've been re-reading David Voas and Bob Mayo and have got my hands on a paper by Nick Lear which is full of good stuff. I want to reflect on what difference the fact that young people know next to nothing about the Christian faith makes to our approach to Christian youthwork and schools ministry. Does this ignorance suggest indifference or hostility or potential interest?

I've blogged before on what Mayo thinks - that it's an opportunity if we're clever and creative. I think the jury might still be out. One of the issues is whether 'faith' is an option that's of any interest at all to young people. If Mayo's right that most teenagers live in a happy midi-narrative that the world as they experience is generally benign, what place would faith have in that?

What I'll be interested to hear from schools workers is whether there are social differences at work here. I would have thought that suburban kids generally inhabit a happy midi-narrative derived from reasonable income and supportive family life, combined with attending good schools and achieving reasonably well both academically and in sport. But kids in urban areas who are poorer, perhaps discriminated against because of race, facing family pressures at home and not seeing school as a place of opportunity might inhabit a midi-narrative that is not so happy.

This observation is either obvious or a cliche, I guess - and I know the pressures on suburban kids can be quite intense.

But Mayo's research raises the question about what the gospel is for these young people and how they might access it. People with no perceived needs, generally don't respond to the gospel of meeting needs - whether those needs are practical and social or emotional and 'spiritual'. If people don't feel in need, do they respond to a saviour who meets their needs? Isn't the proposition just simple gibberish?

I'll let you know how the group I'm talking to responds to this. If you have views, let me know.

The journey is all

Paul Lavender again makes a helpful point, one that Dan Kimball makes in his book Vintage Christianity, which is that people see their spiritual lives as a journey not a destination, that they are in perpetual motion, with nothing fixed and settled. To a great extent they are not looking for answers, rather their spiritual lives are nourished by questions, by exploring, by seeking fresh ideas and experiences.

For some Christians this is a difficult notion because we have been discipled into the view that we have 'the answer', that 'the answer' is everything that matters and that people need to hear 'the answer' - regardless of what question they're asking.

Of course, it should be pointed out, that such a view of spirituality applies to a minority of people. The Kendall research - published as Paul Heelas and Linda Woodhead The Spiritual Revolution - suggests that while many people in Kendall are attracted to alternative spiritualies, they still constitute an underwhelming minority of the general population - about the same or slightly less than the number attending church.

Bob Mayo - whose research I've alluded to before - would go further, especially in relation to young people, and say that they are not on a spiritual quest of any kind. They are happy in their 'midi-narrative' that life owes them material comforts and a good time, but issues of spirituality are matters of indifference to them. They go clubbing because they like music not because they are looking for a transcendental experience of some kind which the boomers and Gen Xers before them might have been (if Tom Beaudoin in Virtual Faith is to be believed).

All this, it seems to me, points up the strength of a going and waiting strategy suggested in the last blog. What kind of journey are our neighbours actually on? We might assume they go to the gym and yoga because they are seeking contact with some higher power. But they might go because their mates do it, they want to shed a few pounds or they fancy the yoga teacher. We might assume they visit old church buildings only because they have penchant for medieval architecture when in fact they yearn for contact with the mysterious and the divine.

All this suggests we need to listen rather than guess, go where they are, hang around and wait to hear what makes them tick. In this process we'll make new friends - a hugely valuable thing in its own right - and we'll hear what makes our new friends tick. Only then should we be praying for the insight into how we introduce our new friends to our old friend, Jesus.

Going and waiting

Paul Lavender has rightly spotted a flaw in my party strategy which is simply that it's an alternative one-size-fits-all mission strategy. I don't intend it to be.

He rightly points out that where he lives - in the North of England - parties are a bit middle class. People are more likely to congregate at the pub or Starbucks (surprisingly not seen as middle class - his phrase).

I guess this points out an obvious but essential thing: mission strategies need to fit the locality they're being tried in. If people don't go to parties, don't throw them. Find something people will come to. The point remains that we're doing this because we want to meet and hear them talking.

John Drane in an excellent article called 'Patterns of Evangelization in Paul and Jesus' (in Joel B Green and Max Turner [eds] Jesus of Nazareth: Lord and Christ, Eerdmanns 1994) suggests that Paul's missionary strategy consisted of two major elements 'which we may describe as "going" and "waiting"' The going bit we're very happy about - that's the Great Commission in action (though there's a good case to be made for saying that the commission is to make disciples, the going bit is taken read since we 'go' into the world every time we leave our homes - but that's a different story). Waiting sounds tricky. After all, if you've made the effort to go, shouldn't you set about speaking immediately?

Drane's point is that this is precisely what Paul didn't do. He went and waited, watched and listened. 'As well as going, his was also a strategy of waiting,' he says, ' creating space in which people could be themselves, and as themselves could decide without coercion how and when to respond to the challenge of the gospel.'

I guess what I'm suggesting is that we create waiting spaces, situations where we can meet and listen to our neighbours whether that's in our homes at parties, in the pub after work, over lunch, wherever. The point is that our neighbours feel able to be natural and we are meeting them because we want to know them. Where the relationship goes from there is genuinely open.

Drane argues that Paul followed the strategy of Jesus - both in his actions - partying and eating with whoever and allowing them to set the agenda by asking questions and making observations - and in his teaching - for instance in the parable of the 'waiting' father in Luke 15.

Of course, our desire is that people will hear and respond to the gospel. But if we wait before we speak, maybe they'll hear it in language they understand, from people they've come to know and like. At least then they might give our story a fair hearing.

Love your neighbour

Phin has spotted the major weakness of my new mission strategy - to have more parties - which is that we don't know our neighbours. We live fragmented lives; for many of us our homes are dorms we return to at night to sleep in, our lives are lived where we work. Increasingly, we even play on our own - solitary hours on gym machines fighting the signs of aging.

This is a parody, I appreciate - though I'm guessing it's not far from the truth for many of us and those who live on our streets.

I guess where I live, life is slightly more settled. People tend their gardens, wash their cars, walk their dogs. It's possible to see the same person regularly and hence actually meet them. My next door neighbour is good at parties - any excuse and she's cracking open bottles and inviting people to celebrate - and she gives me a clue to how it could be done.

Pick a date - say Halloween or bonfire night (in the UK) or kids starting school/university or changing jobs - run off a number of invites for your immediate neighbours (15 houses/flats in your street/block), say that you're having a party to celebrate whatever it is, everyone's welcome, bring a bottle. Obviously, we'd need to invest in some drink and nibbles - possibly even a BBQ and fireworks for bonfire night. Post the invites through people's doors and see what happens...

In some neighbourhoods it will at least start a conversation - neighbours might call round asking if we're serious, what they should bring, can they bring their children or a friend.

I think for it to work, we've got to be totally flexible - whatever our neighbours want to do, we ought to let them do (providing it's legal and doesn't endanger the lives of everyone there!). What we might find is that people really are looking for connection with other people, they really are isolated and would like to know their neighbours. If we achieve nothing else, we'll have created some social capital - and that's a result.

Sometimes I think Christians want to be religious all the time when what we need are people who'll model being human beings in a world that's lost the template. After all, Jesus came to renew us in our humanity, to restore what sin has left defaced and mangled. He was always at parties as far as I can tell, a nightmare for religious people, but a model of what it means to be a human being in the image of God to everyone else.

If anyone's tried this, let me know how it went. When I do it, I'll post the outcome...

Is church too hard?

Mark in his comment on my last post hits the nail on the head when he suggests that needing to restate our vision every three months is a product of our modern targets-obsessed culture.

Last night I outlined the strategy I think the church should be adopting to reach people in response to that dreaded question - 'where are we going?'

Part of my answer was so complicated that even I lost track of it! But the core answer was really simple - 'let's have more parties', I said. 'Let's invite our neighbours into our homes for a social event with no agenda beyond having conversations with the people who live around us.'

Let's do this a couple of times and then let's touch base with one another and ask 'what did we talk about? What did our neighbours want to talk about? What were their concerns and interests?'

Having done this, we might be in a position to think about how we share our faith with our neighbours in the light of their interests and concerns.

It's not rocket science. I've said it before. But I'm more and more convinced it's something we need to try.

I'm haunted by the fact that people under a certain age know very little about the church and the Christian faith and that people over a certain age know rather too much. Most of the people in our church are over a certain age and assume everyone knows as much about church as they do. More than that, they think everyone else is interested in the church and what it has to say.

What we need to learn is that not only do they not know anything about the church and the Christian faith, they are not interested in it either. All Bob mayo's research points in this direction. I think we'd have to conclude the same from David Voas' work.

But this isn't a bad thing. It just means we need to communicate with them in a different way to the way many of us have grown up with. Hence the need for parties where we listen and pour drinks, pass canapes or sausage rolls and hear our neighbours speaking...

Who knows, we might just hear the voice of God.

Dreaded questions...

There are two questions I dread being asked as a minister. The first is 'what exactly do you do?' We'll not go there!

The second is 'where are we going as a church?' It comes in many variations. I remember being asked by a very serious young woman newcomer in my previous church 'what is your vision for the church and how can I get on board with it?' I wilt before such interrogation!

But I've been asked twice today 'where are we going?' so it's made me think.

As usual, it's also made me a little obtuse. You see, I'm not sure the church ought to be going anywhere. We're here doing our stuff Sunday by Sunday. More than that, we care for people, visit the sick, teach the young, provide a place for the generations to meet each other, offer spiritual direction and counsel and pray for one another and our neighbours.

Where should we be going, exactly?

But I know this is a question about strategic planning and I need to take it seriously. After all one of the reasons why people get involved in church is that they feel they can make a contribution, be useful and make a difference.

The trouble is that the church is not a business, its members are not my salesforce. So I can't say, our aim is that this year we'll contact 500 new households, convert 10% of them, recruit 50 more children to our Sunday School and baptise 30 new believers. Not that it wouldn't be great if that happened! And I know ministers who'd say 'we're praying for 50 newcomers this year.'

Well, we had over 100 newcomers in the past year. But before you get too excited, we are the same size as we were this time last last year, so we obviously leak. Or maybe that's just the natural cycle of suburban life - people come and people go.

But where are we going? I would like to see more families joining the church - people with children at home aged between 30 and 55. In my mind I have the committed, well-adjusted, hospitable and gifted couples who take family life in their stride and have time to spare for church activities.

But who am I kidding? What I want to do is reach the 30-55s who aren't currently aware of their need for a relationship with God, who are struggling like the rest of us keeping too many balls to count airborne and who have no desire to help me build a church.

The thing is that as soon as I start to think about where we're going a mass of contradictory goals come into view. I want more people who would love to serve God in caring for people, hosting groups, sharing the load in Sunday school and other areas of the church's ministry. At the same time, I want to build a place where burned out Christians can find refuge from the demands of an ecclesiastical machine that has a habit of sucking Christians in and spitting them out all dry, wizened and used up. And then I want to build a community where those who have no interest in God at the moment are made to feel intrigued about what he might have to offer them because of what they see in the lives of Christians around them.

So, where are we going? I guess this has always been the dilemma for churches. It's the old tension between maintenance and mission, between caring for the flock and searching for the lost sheep.

I'd like to think that as a result of what we do, more people will know Jesus this time next year than currently do at the moment. How will that happen? Ah... That is what the question 'where are we going?' is actually asking. Sadly, I don't know the answer to that one...

Are we really family?

These days we tend to see the New Testament's use of family language to describe fellow Christians - especially brother and sister - as conventional. Indeed gone are the days that Christians in the UK routinely refer to each other as brother or sister.

But for the early Christians this was anything but routine. One of the revolutionary aspects of their new faith was that through Jesus people who were not related became kin. That Paul thought this was worth stressing is seen in the fact that in 1 Corinthians, a letter written to fractious and divided community, he uses sibling language 39 times to stress the closeness of the bond that exists between Christians. He especially uses it when he wants to draw attention to behaviour that is inappropriate to our new family status - such as in 8:8-13 where he uses the word brother four times.

At the end of Romans in a list of greetings to various people involved in various house church groups across the city, he also uses the language of family - Phoebe is 'my sister', Rufus' mum has 'been a mother to me also', many in the list are described as 'beloved' - hardly the language we use of work colleagues.

And he uses it to stress the need to welcome one another (15:7). The situation is probably this: many of those named - especially the Jewish ones - are Jewish Christians who have recently returned to Rome having left in the late 40s when the Jewish community or parts of it were expelled from the city by Claudius. It's possible that those expelled were mainly Jewish Christians because historians of the day tell us that the expulsion happened following disturbances instigated by 'Chrestus' (possibly an early Latin miscontrual of Christ).

Now they were returning and needed to welcomed back into the predominantly Gentile house churches that were thriving in the city. Paul says these people - of different race, background and dietary behaviour - are brothers and sisters, family, kin and so should be welcomed with open arms and offered hospitality. It is possible that Romans 12-15 has been written with this in mind to ensure the family life of the churches in Rome is built up and the newcomers welcomed and included in the various groups that met around Rome.

For us it reminds us that we are family. If we are followers of Jesus, we are blood relatives of all the others followers of Jesus - whether we get on with them or not. We need to welcome one another, be hospitable, seek to help where we can and not discriminate against those who are new or different from us.

God gloriously calls us to be one family in his son Jesus - as Paul reminds us in his great Bible study in Galatians 3 which culminates in the ringing declaration of 3:28.

It also has something to say about church and post-church groups which I'll reflect on in a sbsequent post.

Latte, liturgy and living together

People leave church for all kinds of reasons. But one of the key ones - according to the published research and conversations I've had - is the behaviour of other Christians. People want to know Jesus but a few years of carping, criticism and condemnation by members of the church can be very waring and cause people to leave.

The sad thing is that many of these people are reticent to try another church because they assume the same thing will happen again.

Worse, the experience can corrode their faith. After all, if this is the way Christians behave, maybe that says something about the faith; maybe it means that it doesn't work, that it's not really true.

Jesus talked about those who cause little ones to stumble - something about mill-stones and lakes, I seem to remember. Paul wished that those troubling the Galatians would emasculate themselves (Galatians 5:12). Such talk makes you wince and wish for caveats until you've talked to some of the people whose faith has been shipwrecked by older brothers and sisters.

This is why Paul goes on to urge his Galatian readers to love each other or they risk biting, devouring and destroying one another.

Often our judgmental attitudes mask insecurities that we are afraid to admit or are born of wounds inflicted on us by others during our Christian lives. We perpetuate a cycle of harmed and harming.

So, here's an idea: if there's someone in your church that you don't get on with, who seems more likely to tear you down than build you up, invite them to join you for a latte (or whatever trendy beverage takes their fancy) and a chat about life (especially the things you have in common). It's much harder to knock chunks out of someone you know, whose vulnerabilities you've seen, who've passions and struggles you've shared.

Of course, it might make no difference but it's only set you back the back the price of a beverage.

This is a liturgical act - Romans 12:17-21 in action - and as such might bring God's light and love into situations and relationships which badly need both.

It's just a thought

Leaders of the free world

As the leaders of the free world - and those parts of the world under their heel - gather in New York, Elbow come storming over the horizon with their third album appropriately called Leaders of the free world.

For the uninitiated Elbow are the cream of the current crop of bands from England's North west. In writer Guy Garvey, they boast a songsmith of rare talent and sensibility.

In many ways this album picks up where A Cast of Thousands left off. Yet in so many ways it is an enormous leap forward both lyrically and musically. The lush textures and spare arrangements create a backdrop to musings that pack a real emotional punch.

Life beyond church

Thanks to those who commented on my last post. What particularly got folk was this notion of not being likely to continue believing once you've stopped belonging - which was something David Voas suggested in his paper.

In a subsequent email, he did suggest that he was referring specifically to Christian teaching that says attending church is vital. Clearly if you stop attending, you stop subscribing to that part of the package. He agrees with Richter and Francis that stopping church attendance is not the same as losing faith.

But he adds two important observations. One is that Robin Gill at Kent uni has produced evidence showing that people who don't attend church tend to lose their Christian beliefs over time. The other is that Steve Bruce - an advocate of a thorough-going version of the secularisation thesis - argues that people say they still believe but that those beliefs have clearly become less important to them otherwise they wouldn't have stopped attending.

However, I'm still inclined to think that there are a lot of people who've stopped going to church because it's dull, doesn't help them with their daily lives, takes up vast amounts of time and energy on trivialities or teaches too narrow a version of the Christian faith (all the reasons Jamieson puts his finger on) but who have not stopped believing in the core doctrines of the faith. Indeed they want to carry on believing.

So, we come down to a debate over what constitutes church. For the sociologists, the answer is the institution identifiable on every street corner of the land with structured services at set times and a membership regime that means you're either in or out. And this is fair enough. But it's not what the New testament means by church.

So, many who have stopped attending the institution might well be part of informal Christian gatherings - whether these are loosely constituted post-church groups or meals with believing friends that involve chat about Christian things and might even end with a prayer. These gatherings don't show up on the sociologists' radar for obvious reasons. But they clearly happen all over the place and often help to reinforce the faith of those who've stopped attending institutional church.

Such groups are networked in New Zealand and I gather Alan Jamieson is publishing a follow up to A Churchless Faith soon that argues that such groups are essential to those who've left church but who five years on are still maintaining a Christian faith.

Keep the conversation going...

Sociologists and faith

I've been reading some very interesting work by a sociologist called David Voas. He and a colleague, Alasdair Crockett, have been looking at data from the British Household Panel Survey and British Social Attitudes Survey searching for insight into Christian belief and church belonging in contemporary Britain.

For many years lots of us have been attracted to Grace Davie's suggestion that while church attendance is falling, Christian belief is still important in British society. More people believe than belong and Davie's 1994 book Religion in Britain Since 1945 was subtitled Believing without Belonging.

It is this notion that Voas and Crockett set out to challenge. And their article in the February 2005 issue of the Journal Sociology 'Religion in Britain: neither believing nor belonging' is pretty convincing. I have to add that as a working pastor, it's also pretty sobering and thought-provoking.

One of their key findings delivered using a telling image from the science of radioactivity is 'in Britain institutional religion now has a half-life of one generation.' This is based on data that indicates that children from families where two parents go to church are around 48% likely to become church-going adults themselves. Where only one parent attends church regularly (by which they mean once a month), the outcome is halved.

This gives our church's current thinking about and search for a youth worker a certain edge!

But another comment in the article also caught my eye. Talking about data that suggests levels of belief mirror those of belonging, Voas and Crockett say: 'If people choose not to belong it is a clear sign that they do not believe religious doctrine. Whether or not they are confident that God exists, it is apparent at the very least that they doubt the Almighty much minds whether they spend Sunday in church or in the shops.'

This assertion seems to contradict the findings of Richter and Leslie in Gone But not Forgotten and Alan Jamieson in A Churchless Faith. But I wonder whether it's an observation we need to take seriously. It's possible that what these guys are writing about is a transitional phenomenon. Some people leave church for relational and institutional reasons with their faith in core doctrines in tact but over time if they don't re-engage with a Christian group or church, those beliefs decay (to use the radioactive image).

It is, of course, possible that church leavers are being polite when they suggest that they still believe in Jesus, it's just Christians they can't stand. And, of course, mission thinkers have for a generation asserted that people find Jesus attractive but don't want the church. But Voas and Crockett might have unearthed something we don't want to accept: that there is a much closer correlation between belief and belonging and that when people choose not to belong, they are saying that they have ceased or are ceasing to believe - at least in the way they used to.

This has some implications for post-church groups. I'm going to a meeting on Friday about those, so I'll blog more on this over the weekend.

There is good news hidden in all this, however. Bob Mayo from Ridley Hall, Cambridge, has researched the beliefs of generation Y and found they don't have any - at least, they don't have beliefs or views about the Christian faith. This is good news. They are not disillusioned spiritual searchers who've tried Christianity, found it wanting and are looking elsewhere. They are people who don't know the story, are not hostile to it and if told it in language they understand, will give it a fair hearing.

That too has implications for our search for a youth worker...

Surviving beyond the church

As I said, a highlight of Greenbelt for me was meeting Jenny McIntosh from Spirited Exchanges. This is the network that grew out Alan Jamieson's research published in A Churchless Faith. It was fascinating to hear her approach and meet Sally, one of the church leavers who has been involved over recent months.

Since writing Why Bother with Church, I've been aware of the need for such a network in the UK and have been talking about it with a number of mates. It seems likely that Greenbelt will take the lead in this - which is fine with me.

I had coffee yesterday with a young woman who has struggled with church over recent years because of a breakdown in relationships and a chasm between what churches focus on and her ordinary, everyday life. Church ought to be a place of healing, somewhere the walking wounded can find acceptance and support. All too often it isn't.

On Monday at Greenbelt I went to a panel discussion where people shared their struggles with church. As a pastor, it was sobering to hear story after story of how church has made believing harder. As I listened, I was reminded that in my first discussions with the church I now serve - some two and a half years ago - I had spoken of the need for lean-to groups that would help those who feel little connection with church as we currently do it to connect with Jesus and see how a life of faith could be a path to wholeness for them.

This week, I presented a paper to my eldership proposing that we establish such a group for those struggling with church (such a group is different from lean-to groups established with the purpose of introducing people to faith in Jesus - somethin g I'd also like to do). So watch this space...

I propose this with some reservations, however. Many post-church groups are a forum for the big whinge, people gathered to tell their stories of how they've been misunderstood, abused, let down and failed by the church. If that's all that happens they can be quite toxic places.

In our conversation about Spirited Exchanges, we reflected on its role in helping people to put their lives back together. Sally spoke of the group's role as a kind of detox. I asked her to identify the toxin - was it the church and her experience of it or the gospel, the faith that the church rather imperfectly embodies?

It strikes me that this is the crunch issue. The kind of post-church group that I'm interested in is for those who still feel that they want to take Jesus seriously but who can't find him in church for all kinds of reasons. I appreciate that for some disentangling Jesus from church is difficult, that their struggles have been caused by the fact that the church has in some way obscured or distorted Jesus in the way they have taught the faith and behaved towards one another.

For this reason, it seems to me that post-church groups ought to be avowedly Trinitarian and open to links with other Christian groups (including churches). As a pastor, I think my role is to present everyone complete, whole in Jesus (Colossians 1:28). So any post-church group I'm involved in must have as its goal helping people to reconnect with Jesus and continue growing in him, being transformed by him from one degree of glory into another.

We'll see what happens. I'm interested in hearing from anyone - especially those in South East London - who'd find such a group (either physical or virtual) helpful.

Finding God on the margins

Just back from Greenbelt. Had a fantastic time.

For those of you unfamiliar with it, Greenbelt is a Christian arts, music and teaching festival that happens every year. It's awash with great music and stimulating speakers but the really wonderful thing about it is meeting people, hearing stories, sharing laughter and somewhere in the mix finding God.

Among the highlights for me were hearing Naim Ateek from Sabeel in Jerusalem, meeting Jenny McIntosh from Spirited Exchanges in New Zealand and liustening to Duncan Senyatso from Botswana.

I'll be blogging later in the week about how my thinking was stimulated by what I heard.

Have you missed me?

Well, I'm back. Two weeks of uninterrupted sunshine, swimming in the sea virtually every day (no surf sadly) and lots of good food and wine with friends.

And I've been thinking about nothing. It's been bliss!

Now I'm home to 190 emails - most of them spam - and a list of stuff to do.

I rediscovered Jeff Buckley's Grace while I was away - what an extraordinary album. I also heard the album by Willy mason which was interesting.

I read Nick Hornby's A Long Way Down - probably the best thing he's written, funny and thought-provoking. And I dipped into Richard Middleton's The Liberating Image - demanding but fascinating.

But frankly, I was too busy relaxing in the sunshine and the sea...

hitting the beach

Well, I've packed my wet suit and body board and am quitting the blogosphere for the beach.

Just in case the British climate is true to form, I'm taking a book or two. I've just picked up Richard Middleton's The Liberating Image (it's £4 off at wesley Owen so go and get a copy). Middleton is one half of the duo that produced Truth is Stranger than it used to be (the other half being Brian Walsh). Everything he writes is worth casting an eye over, so I'm looking forward to this meaty study of Genesis 1.

And for light relief - you'll be pleased I'm hoping for some - I've got the new Jonathan Coe and Nick Hornby novels, Dave Nwokedi's Fitzgerald's Wood - a first novel from a mate of mine who's also speaking at this year's Greenbelt - Bono's autobiography and Eugene's Peterson's Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places.

I'll probably manage ten pages of one of them, gloriously distracted by waves, ice creams, walks in the hills, conversations with friends and family and watching movies, sharing meals and drinking wine. Let's hope, anyway!

Discipleship and growing up

I've just had a most agreeable lunch plotting the future of our youth work. Nick, my youth work consultant, helped me to clarify a few things. He also suggested that what we wanted to do, though good (even essential), was not common.

One of the problems we face - I think in common with a lot of churches - is that we are quite good at gathering and teaching children and young people. Over the years hundreds have been through our youth work. But many of those young people are not making it to the world of adult discipleship. Somewhere between A levels and mortgages, they lose interest in the church and possibly in Jesus as well.

So our plan is to appoint a youth and young adults worker, someone who will create a programme, recruit, envision, enthuse and train a team of good volunteers (as well as taking on the many excellent volunteers we currently have working with our young people) and build a work that disciples people from their teens into their twenties.

What are the reasons why twenty-somethings fail to stick in the church? What puts young adults off being disciples of Jesus? If we can answer these questions (and others), then maybe we can create a way of working with our teenagers that gives them the resources to navigate the choppy waters from education to work, living at home to being independent, having a child's faith to being an adult disciple.

Many of the issues we need to address are those being tackled by emerging church thinkers. In some way we are gearing up for creating the church that will replace the existing one - that is surely the task of each generation: to mould structures that embody the gospel in a way that is attractive to our contemporaries. For this reason the person we appoint will be part of our core leadership team helping to shape (and be shaped by) the overall vision we have the church.

Obviously the person we're looking for will be exceptional - but there are exceptional people out there, looking for a challenge. Maybe it's you...

Cooking up a storm in Birmingham

So, what do you call a gathering of 12,000 Baptists? A rumour of Baptists? A gaggle? Possibly a confusion...? Who knows!

I'm just back from the Centenary Congress of the Baptist World Alliance in Birmingham, a strange and perplexing event. I was involved in the fringe festival, hosting a twice-daily music and chat show called Congress Unplugged - it was great fun and seemed to go really well. Through it I met lots of great people - from the UK and around the world.

The Congress proper was an altogether more staid affair, dominated by Americans and their acolytes. Everything of significance happened in English despite the fact that native English speakers were a minority of the delegates. Most of the keynote speakers were American - Rick Warren, Tony Campolo and Jimmy Carter - or European - Myra Blythe, Steve Chalke and David Coffey. Even the speakers from other continents were Western-trained and enculturated.

I guess this is to be expected but it's still a tad disappointing. Anyway, all power to David Coffey who was inducted as president for the next five years - bring on the revolution, David!

Our visit to Britain's second city co-incided with the arrests of terror suspects and a tornado - I don't think the BWA's presence caused either of these things!

listening to Editors - a very accomplished debut album called The Back Room - and Krystaal - an amazing funk, hip-hop, rock and fusion band from Congo now resident in Canada. The band make great music and have an amazing story of endurance and God's grace to tell. They single-handedly made the congress worthwhile!

Now it's tidying things up ahead of going on holiday. I read yesterday that thousands of blogs are started every day but only 13% are updated regularly - so I'm not doing too badly...!