Reflecting on Blackpool

There are some good reflections on the assembly from Catriona here and here. I agree wholeheartedly with her comment in support of those who lead worship in flip-flops (there should be more of us!). Andy Goodliff has commented here; and Geoff Colmer here

I'm also really pleased that she enjoyed our Bible study with Vinoth Ramachandra. It was pretty brilliant. He asked me five minutes before we were due to start whether it was normal for British Christians to turn up at a Bible study without Bibles! I answered that, sadly, that it was...

Our venue this year was a challenge. They were due to be serving in it up to 9:30am, despite the fact that our morning session actually started at 9:15! It was so light - being a conservatory - that the data projector, so carefully hung on the Friday afternoon, cast an invisible image on the screen and had to be taken down and replaced with a 42 inch plasma screen - as pictured (thanks to Jonathan Somerville for the image) - and by Saturday afternoon, two 42 inch plasmas.

It enabled us to become not only the alternative celebration but also a retro one - so that everyone who turned up could see what we were singing and saying, we produced printed song sheets and sheets with Bible passages and liturgy on them!

Numbers were very encouraging - though sometimes difficult to calculate. Some 300 listened to Vinoth, 200+ broke bread at our celebratory communion, and around 120 gathered each evening to celebrate and chat, learn and share and sing.

I guess the big difference with Prism this year was the music. Sam Hargreaves led a wonderful band, modelled on the Cinematic Orchestra, and using songs from around the world as well as many of his own. They produced a great sound and his sensitivity to where the Spirit was as we gathered was excellent. You can track him down here and access some of his music.

I think we struggled with the venue to begin with and that made Friday evening (pictured above) tricky. But Juliet Kilpin, who shared the teaching with me, was brilliant and the band got us off to a good start.

We anointed the Newly Accredited Ministers with oil on Saturday Evening. Well, I say we did; in fact the congregation did. The gathered body acknowledged that God had called these women and men to serve in ministry in our churches by anointing them as symbol that the Spirit would touch and animate their ministry among us. It was very moving.

On Sunday evening, we had the BMS personnel heading off in the next few weeks to various parts of the world. We were able to speak to each one before praying a commissioning liturgy for them based on Titus 2:11-15. Elaine Storkey spoke really well that evening .

The highlight for me was our communion service on the Sunday morning. Ruth Neve created an outstanding liturgy out of Isaiah 25 that emphasised joy and celebration, in anticipation of the great banquet God invites us to. It was truly joyous and completely rooted in the cross.

So, it all went well. Let's do it all again next year in Bournemouth - only in a slightly better venue!

Assembly thought

Just back from the baptist assembly. I'll blog about it later in the week. In the meantime you can check out pictures of my hands at the assembly here

Other bloggers

One of my morning rituals - usually done before breakfast but after I've collected the overnight emails - is to trawl through a collection of mainly New Testament blogs (yes, I know I should get out more, but it's early!)

The one that I've found most stimulating over recent weeks is Michael Bird and Joel Willetts' Euanggelion. you can access it here

Today Michael bird is recommending Scott McKnight's book on the atonement but adding his own reflection on why it matters what we think about this central doctrine of the Christian faith.

So, if you want some stimulation, check it out.

And a great time was had by all...

Well, yesterday went rather well, I think...

120+ turned up in the afternoon to hear the African Kidzsing choir (who were wonderful) and then stayed on to eat and find out about Fruto del Espirtu's gorgeous range of fruit juices (and the vision behind the company). A good number stayed on - and more joined them - to hear Gareth Davies-Jones sing songs from his new album, as well s some old favourites.

Everyone went away entertained, provoked and challenged - which is what church should like, isn't it?

It was a great last Sunday before sabbatical for me - seeing the church full and humming with conversation, visitors and regulars mingling and everyone being enabled to support movements that could make the world a bit better. I can't ask for more than that really...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Further thoughts on sheep and goats

We had a great conversation over coffee at our local chic cafe this morning about the gospel, assurance of salvation, what we believe and how we live - all issues touching on Matthew 25.

One of the things I came away more certain about is that the issue of faith and lifestyle is a tension that we resolve at our peril - and certainly at some risk to our theology.

We are saved by faith and judged by works - is that the argument of Romans 2? What we do is evidence of the reality of our faith - is that the argument of James 2? As we await the coming king in whom we have put our trust we will live lives built on and reflective of his values - is that what Matthew 25 is about?

[I think the answer to all these questions is 'yes and...']

I guess something else I've thought about since Sunday - and yet another person this morning told me how challenging they found what I'd said on Sunday morning - is that it's no one's job but God's to decide who's a goat and who's a sheep. The trouble is that we are always comparing ourselves with others and, depending on our temperament, reckoning ourselves better or worse than them.

We really should only compare to Jesus, commit ourselves to following him whatever (much like Paul in Philippians 3) and trusting him to enable us to live up to his call. By his grace we'll not go far wrong if we live this way.

Listen while you work...

As well as Yeasayer - who are fab (see previous post) - I've also been listening to the new REM album (undoubtedly the best work they've done since New Adventures in Hi Fi; lots of angular, industrial guitar sounds and stipe sounds like he's interested in what he's singing again) and the new offering from Delirious?

I'm not sure what I think of delirious? This album grows out of a visit to India and the lyrics seem more grown up than previous work. The packaging, however, suggests that style and art are triumphing over concern for the global poor - tons of plastic and an awkward sized lyric book. They ought to have taken a leaf out of Radiohead's book; the album sleeve for In rainbows is all cardboard.

As to the music, Kingdom of comfort is a good opener and the guitar at the start of God is Smiling is sublime. There are a number of tracks that will end up as firm favourites at churches and conferences up and down the land. But I don't feel I've learned anything about India or what the band made of their experience, except that they felt uncomfortable.

Oh, and the live Cinematic Orchestra album gets better with every listen.

So, listen while you work...

Getting the message out

Well, I duly preached on Matthew 25 and no one threw anything (which I always take as a positive sign).

It did lead to some interesting conversations afterwards. One or two wanted assurance that what they'd been taught in the past is right and they'll be okay on the Day of Judgement. The trouble with this is that I don't know what they've been taught and it's not up to me whether they'll be ok on the day of judgement!

I think people tend to be either hopelessly insecure on this issue and assume they're a goat or arrogantly confident of their status as a sheep. I suspect the last shall be first on this one! The former are probably much more in touch with the values of the Kingdom than the latter who come dangerously close to exhibiting all the hallmarks of a caricature pharisee (don't we all on many occasions?!)

Next week I'll be rounding off our series on the discourses in Matthew by returning to 28:16-20 (where we started last Autumn) and asking what a disciple should know so they can pass it on as they go into the world (that is, each time they leave their home).

It seems to me that it's more about how to live (as Jesus did) than about a set of doctrines to talk about. This means that as we go into the world our lives attract a certain amount of interest because of the values we live by. That interest is our opportunity to talk about the Jesus of those values and all that he means to us as brother, friend, saviour and Lord.

But I'm getting ahead of myself (I haven't started thinking about next week yet!)

This is my last full week before going on sabbatical. I'm ready for it but I realised at the church family meeting and lunch yesterday that I'm really going to miss everyone. I realised even more at the end of our later service when people who won't be around next week, were saying goodbye to me.

I have to say that I am really enjoying the Yeasayer album - All Hour Cymbals - which is a studiedly weird as the title and utterly breathtaking. There's not a duff note on it - though I haven't yet fathomed out what any of it is about.

Struggling with difficult texts

I have been wrestling with Matthew 25:31-46 ahead of preaching on it on Sunday and am wondering whether I might have found a key that helps to unlock it. Of course, I might have stumbled into some ancient heresy - in which case, I repent immediately!

Any of you with any wisdom on this, please comment on what follows.

The story (it's not a parable) is puzzling for a couple of reasons. The first is that Jesus seems to be suggesting that the sole basis for judging everyone from every nation is how they've each treated his followers ('the least of these my brothers and sisters' used elsewhere in Matthew to talk about disciples). There is nothing about faith or living a personally righteous life.

And the second is that both the sheep and the goats are surprised by the criterion for judgement or at least they are surprised by the fact that Jesus says they haven't recognised him in the people in need around them.

The embarrassment of this story, of course, is that it seems to suggest salvation by works; that we are judged solely according to what we do rather than what we believe.

So, here's a thought. Is Jesus (or Matthew) going full circle and ending the final discourse of the gospel with reference to the first one (namely the sermon on the mount)? Is mention of the least of these an oblique reference to the poor, hungry, shattered of the beatitudes? Possibly.

Rather more likely and interesting (I think) is the following thought. Could this whole judgement scene be an outworking of 7:21-23 where Jesus distinguishes between those who claim to be disciples - some he knows and some he doesn't. There he only says that not everyone who calls me Lord, but only those who do the will of my Father will enter the Kingdom. Is he here spelling out what that's all about?

After all, he has echoed those words in 25:12 where half the young women seeking entry to the wedding banquet are sent away with the words 'I don't know you' ringing int their ears.

From 24:36 Jesus has been telling his followers that his parousia will arrive suddenly and unexpectedly and so they should they should always be ready. This readiness is not a hanging about in the hallway with our bags packed, but an active waiting on the king and working for his kingdom as spelled out the three parables from 24:45-25:30.

Is this judgement scene the final teaching on what it means to be ready, a final spelling out that judgement is based on how we live as well as what we believe? Is Jesus reminding us that not everyone who says Lord, Lord will enter the kingdom, but only those who who do the will of my father spelled out in the terms of this story. Is Jesus here stressing to his followers that the quality of their lives in the world, where they support and look out for one another and the poor of their communities (Galatians 6:10 in action) is the single sign that he is the one to whom the world will give account and that he is returning at a time no one knows, so everyone had better ask themselves whether they are ready?

The criterion for judgement seems to be a conscious echo of the description of Jesus' ministry in 9:35-38 and 11:4-6 and thus a call for us as followers of the coming king to be living as the king lived, caring for those in need and thus demonstrating the grace of God to all.

And all this might help us to integrate the picture of the relationship between faith and works in Matthew 25 with the ones we find in Romans 2:6-11 and James 2:14-24 where there is a similar emphasis on what we do as well as what we believe, with the former having a judgement setting.

Am I mad or does this make some sense?

Taking a city break in Ancient Rome

Yesterday I was put through my paces by my supervisor. He seemed pretty pleased with the direction of my paper, though suggested that I might like to pay closer attention to the primary sources rather than the secondary ones.

Now I am going to do some detailed investigation of life in the cities of the ancient world, in particular Rome, Philippi, Corinth, Antioch and Ephesus (those places that the Jesus movement took root in and which became significant centres of mission and and developing organisation and ministry).

My focus is on the question of where the earliest communities gathered. The prevailing view is that congregations of 30-ish met in homes that were inhabited by and thus organised as a household. This explains the presence of household codes in the NT and Apostolic Fathers and could account for the forms of leadership that emerged over the first three generations. But this consensus is being challenged by some.

What if the earliest communities met somewhere else because the bulk of members lived in insulae, above workshops, in temporary accommodation near where they picked up seasonal employment? Where would such groups meet and what kind of leadership might emerge in them?

Anyone with any suggestions of where I might look, please let me know. I'm looking forward to getting stuck into this especially when I'm away in May at IBTS (good library and convivial surroundings) with a view to getting something on paper for a meeting at the end of July.

The soundtrack for today's reading and preparation will be the new Cinematic Orchestra live at the Albert Hall album (truly gorgeous) and the remarkable album by Yeasayer. Called All Hour Cymbals, it's a wonderful mix of quirky rhythms, great tunes and opaque lyrics - somewhat resonant of early Talking Heads.

Tidying up

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

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

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

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

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

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

The (W)right stuff at Spring Harvest

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Emerging churches - second century-style

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Gearing up for getting away

We had a good day yesterday. Another dedication in the morning which swelled the congregation. Sunday Break was really well attended and the Later Service had good numbers, despite a number of regulars being away.

I preached okay as well. In the morning several people asked me - in response to what I said about Matthew 24:40-41 - what about the rapture? To which I said, 'what about it?' or words to that effect. I politely clarified that I don't believe in it and that it certainly isn't taught in Matthew 24 - quite the opposite, in fact (see last post).

This morning I've had a number of meetings to talk through arrangements for my forthcoming sabbatical - bring it on....!

Linda and I are going to Prague for month in May after the Baptist assembly and then hopefully to France for a couple of weeks in June. Sabbaticals ought to be about rest, refreshment, relaxation, recharging the batteries - and that's what I'm doing for the bulk of mine.

In Prague, we're staying at IBTS and I will be making use of the library to do some research on early church history and continue getting some focus to my studies. This week, I'm writing a paper on leadership ahead of a meeting with my supervisor in a couple of weeks. It's fascinating, though really difficult to keep all the issues in my mind as I create my argument. Hopefully, what comes out at the end of the week will make sense enough. I'll edit and refine it while I'm at spring Harvest.

I've been listening to Larry Norman of late and rediscovered his fabulous Nightmare #71 off what I think is possibly his best album, So Long Ago the Garden (which was part-produced by the great george Martin). It's a wonderful dylanesque song with really contemporary resonances. For instance:

we've paved the forest
killed the streams
burned the bridges
to our dreams
the earth is bursting
at the seams
and in the pain of
childbirth screams
as it gives life
to what seems
to either be
an age that gleams
or simply lays there dying
if this goes on
will life survive
how can it
out of the grave
O who will save
our planet?

Good question - one we might be addressing at the Baptist Assembly

New light on familiar texts

I always get caught out by weeks with Bank Holidays in them - they're shorter than average weeks!

the trouble is I never seem to take that into account when diary planning. So my week thus far has been pretty full-on, but also surprisingly enjoyable.

I've been looking at the next section of the eschatological discourse in Matthew this afternoon. I'll be preaching on 24:36-51 on Sunday where Jesus shifts our focus away from the overthrow of the temple to his return.

As ever I have found Dick France's commentary to be absolutely first rate. He writes beautifully, his exegesis is easy to follow and his conclusions always soundly based. I was particularly struck by his take on the classic 'rapture' text in v40-41. Having grown up with Larry Norman singing a version of these words in I wish we'd all been ready, I thought I knew what they were about (and I didn't really like it!)

Dick invites us to ask what these people are being taken for? After all, just a verse earlier people were being taken unexpectedly by a flood. That clearly was not a good thing. So Dick argues here that these people are being taken to judgement; unexpectedly, out-of-the-blue, unprepared, they are swept away to face their maker and account for their lives.

The rapture doesn't sound so cool now, does it?

I love it when new light is cast on familiar and troubling texts by the cool head of a master scholar. What this does is to sort out the flow of the discourse for me. Jesus is talking about his unexpected return by using three pictures of sudden events - floods, burglaries and the return of a master from his travels. None of these events can be predicted with any accuracy; they come upon us when we're looking the other way.

So it will be with the return of Jesus. The question these verses ask of us is simple: will we be doing what we should be when he comes or will we have slipped round the back of the bike sheds for a sly fag?

Tomorrow I'm off to Didcot, home of the Baptist Union and BMS World Mission, hoping to get a number of papers tackling Clement's view of church leadership read and noted on the way there and back.

The passion's fitting climax

We watched the final episode of the Passion on the BBC in church last night as part of our special later guest service.

Someone asked before we started whether we'd pull it if the programme veered off into heresy. We said 'no' (though we were a little nervous!).

No one need have worried. I thought it was a stunning and deeply moving climax to an intriguing series. There was no doubt that Jesus physically rose from the dead and that the disciples knew it.

For me the scene at Emmaus was wonderfully done. I thought the idea of casting a different actor to play the risen Jesus was a master-stroke, introducing that element of doubt into the disciples' and Mary's minds when he first appeared. I thought it was a wonderful and moving moment when he changed back into Joseph Mawle as he shared the bread and wine.

Even the final scene at the pool of Siloam was very effective. I know it moved the location of Jesus' encounter with Peter from beach in Galilee and I know it moved the Great Commission location from the hills of Galilee to Jerusalem. But it was incredibly moving seeing on Peter's face the look of recognition, the fact that he'd got who Jesus was and what he was about and was ready to do it and tell everyone about it.

If Christians can't use this season finale to talk to their colleagues around the water cooler about who Jesus is, then we're in trouble.

Well done BBC, the Passion was not without its faults but overall it was a splendid, gritty representation of the events of that first Easter.

Happy easter

Easter day! The tomb is still empty; Jesus is risen. Hallelujah!

Two Resurrection thoughts for you:

'The words 'it was credited to him' [Abraham] were written not for him alone; but also for us, to whom God is credit righteousness - for us who believe in him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead. He was delivered over to death for our sins and was raised to life for our justification.' (Romans 4:22-25).

'Therefore, my dear brothers and sisters, stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labour in the Lord is not in vain.' (1 Corinthians 15:58)

Happy Easter everyone!

Please, Mr preacher, can I ask a question?

Spent a really quality couple of hours with a woman who in her eighties has experienced a renewal of faith over the past six months. We meet every other week or so to talk through issues and read the Bible together. It's wonderful to see how she has come alive.

We always end up talking about how things are going at church and this afternoon we got on to the subject of sermons. She likes my sermons but wonders if there's too much in them - 'such a lot to digest,' she says - and would like the opportunity to ask questions as and when they arise - 'would you mind being interrupted?' she asked.

My initial response - and I think it's my considered response too - is that I'd love to be interrupted. I'd love the sermon to be more of a dialogue rather than a monologue. In my previous church in the evening service, I'd preach and then we'd have feedback and questions. It was based on the principle Cromwell apparently used when allowing chaplains to be attached to regiments of the New Model Army in the English Civil War. He said they could preach for as long as they liked providing they subjected themselves to questioning by the troops for the same length of time. Good principle.

As we chatted, one idea that emerged was to preach a single sermon over three Sundays - i.e. each sermon would have a third of the content that they have now - which would allow for there to be interaction during the preaching and after it.

There are all sorts of logistical issues - can you do it in a gathering of 250-300? what happens if you miss one of the parts of the sermon because you don't come every week? how do you ensure that the loudest voices don't dominate the question time?

But there could be all kinds of benefits. One of the things I'm keen to explore is not how we create teaching programmes - I think we're quite good at that - but how do we ensure learning outcomes? More dialogue, questions being asked there and then, indicates what people know, what their concerns are and what they are learning from the current teaching programme.

I think we can try this in our later service - there's already quite a bit of dialogue there anyway. I wonder if we can contemplate it for our other gatherings.

Thumbs up to the beeb's Passion

I watched the first episode of the The Passion over lunch today (on BBC iPlayer) and overall I was really quite impressed.

I thought it was a bit hesitant to begin with, took a while to find its feet. But once it had, it had a lot going for it.

I think the characterisations of Pilate and Caiaphas are excellent - rounded, believable people you can feel real sympathy for even if you don't like them. The street scenes are suitably sweaty and noisy. Jerusalem feels edgy and likely to blow up any time.

Jesus comes into this with a rag-tag of followers and hangers-on and quietly makes his presence felt. Joseph Mawle brings a sly humour to the role that feels entirely appropriate. The scene of him 'teaching' in the temple while he walked around that includes the parable of the wicked tenants was particularly effective.

Effective too is that as the episode unfolded, it was Jesus, the one with no power, who was driving the drama; those with political power were having to play catch-up and react to his agenda. This means that there is real tension in the narrative - even though we all know what's going to happen.

Less good, I feel, is his diffidence about what he stands for. The triumphal entry was good with all the right references to Zechariah but Jesus doesn't seem to be certain why he's come. And, annoyingly, he twice told people that 'the Kingdom of God is inside you' (a minor saying from Luke's Gospel that would be better rendered 'the Kingdom of God is among you'). And the scene with his mother was slightly odd but I can't put my finger on why.

And the 'healing' of the lame and blind in the temple was insipid and didn't really tell us anything about Jesus other than he welcomed everyone. Far more effective in that regard was his encounter with the prostitute who decides to follow him. That scene was charged with real chemistry and charisma.

Overall I thought it was excellent start. I look forward top how the series unfolds over this week.

The Seldom Seen Kid sounds great to me...

I took delivery of the new Elbow album yesterday. The Seldom Seen Kid is as good as anything they've done, which means it's wonderful.

If there's a better lyricist writing in rock music today than Guy Garvey I've not come across him or her. The album is full of big songs and bigger emotions and is quite gorgeous.

Taking on the fundamentalists

There's a great piece in the review section of yesterday's Guardian by the peerless John Gray attacking the arguments of the atheist fundamentalists - Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Daniel Dennett, Philip Pullman, et al.

Lucid, entertaining, cogently-argued, it's a wonderful piece of writing that demolishes the premises on which these guys base their arguments.

He also suggests that the atheists are getting more militant because they see their dream of secularism evaporating as religion makes a come-back all over the world.

It's worth checking out. Here's the link http://books.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,,2265395,00.html

What happened on Palm Sunday?

It's Palm Sunday. I've found preparing a sermon for today really difficult. There is just so much to say about what happened that I have not been able to reduce my jumble of thoughts to a manageable presentation - hopefully I will this morning.

We're in Matthew this Easter and one the things that intrigues me about Matthew's telling of the story is the numbers of pairs he refers to. Scholars endlessly debate the two donkeys, some suggesting that Matthew was somewhat dim to read the Zechariah 9 prophecy to mean that the king came riding on two animals!

I wonder if Matthew draws attention to pairs in order to draw us to the heart of the story. Two disciples are sent to get two donkeys at the beginning of a narrative that concerns two crowds, two views of Jesus and two testimonies about him from outsiders. Let's unpack that.

Matthew is the only gospel writer to distinguish between the crowd accompanying Jesus and the crowd already in Jerusalem. The latter is puzzled about the commotion and ask 'who is this?' (10 - everything so far in the story has happened outside Jerusalem); the former answer that 'Jesus is the prophet from Nazareth' (11), the northern crowd and telling southern enquirers that the messiah is one of theirs!

The Jerusalem crowd gives way to the Jerusalem leaders - the chief priests and teachers of the Law - who object to the singing of the children in the temple because of what they are singing to and about Jesus (not because they are against kids choirs in the temple!). They have a view of Jesus at odds with the one Matthew has been unfolding to us through his narrative. To them Jesus is at best an interesting if maverick preacher, at worst someone who will bring the wrath of Rome down on them. They certainly believe he has no business saying the things he's reputed to have said and accepting the praises of the children.

All these pairs lead to the most crucial pair - that of the two testimonies about who Jesus is - at the heart of Matthew's story. The two testimonies come from 'outsiders' - the Galilean pilgrim crowd and the children - and concern who Jesus is.

The first identifies him as 'the prophet', a strong echo of Deuteronomy 18:15-19, which looks to the coming of the prophet like Moses, a text that informed Jewish messianic expectation in the first century. More than that, they have already suggested that he is the king foreseen by Zechariah (9:9), an echo of David's return to the city after Absolom's revolt (hence the strong emphasis on Jesus as Son of David in this section of the gospel?). Of course the crowd does not quote Zechariah, Matthew does. But the crowd's behaviour - the chanting of hosanna (from Psalm 118:25-26), the spreading of cloaks and branches on the road - point to the text in Matthew's mind: they clearly see him as God's prophet and king, the long-awaited messiah who will lead them to freedom in his Kingdom.

Having made his demonstration in the temple, the children sing and Jesus responds to his critics by citing Psalm 8:2. It all looks so innocent and the focus appears to be on Jesus and his enemies. But if we miss the detail, we miss what the temple authorities were so grieved about.

Jesus' demonstration in the temple consists of two actions - turning over the tables of a few money changers and dove sellers (probably his action was not big enough to arouse the interest of the Romans or the temple police - unlike what happened in Acts 21:27-35; this was a small-scale making of a point) and the healing of those barred from access to the temple (the blind and lame - their access was not officially barred but their lack of welcome stems from the time David took the city as narrated in 2 Samuel 5:6-8).

It was these two actions together that drew the attention of the priests and the children (and no doubt others who were amazed at what was happening). The children sing hosanna as the crowd leading Jesus into the city had done (thus tying the two halves of the story very closely together). But when the priests object, Jesus quotes Psalm 8:2, a verse that applies the singing of children to the praise of God. What is Jesus claiming here? As Dick France suggests in his excellent commentary on Matthew 'Jesus was not averse to taking upon himself what in the OT was said of Yahweh...unless he is here setting himself in the place of Yahweh, the argument is a non-sequitur' (quoting his own much earlier study on Jesus and the Old Testament).

The priests are left gagging as Jesus leaves for the day. It's only when he returns to the temple the following day that they have found their voice again and ask where he gets his authority from (23)

The Passion - coming to a TV near you...

I'm getting very excited about the forthcoming BBC production The Passion. Having spent a good deal of time reading and watching the material on the BBC website, I have to say that this looks like a real quality film.

I encourage you to watch it - broadcast times are on the BBC website - and it's already available to pre-order from Amazon on DVD (released the day after Easter).

We are basing two Easter Day guest services on the film and have found the BBC really helpful in getting publicity material together for those services. So thanks to Tim Leith, the beeb's picture campaign manager, for allowing us to use images from the film in our publicity.

One the strengths of the film appears to be the way the writer and director have woven together the familiar story of the last week of Jesus' life from three distinct perspectives - Jesus, Caiaphas and Pilate - and listening to them speak, I reckon they've got those perspectives about right.

I like the idea that these are three dimensional characters, struggling with a situation in which they are trying to do the right thing as they see it. One of the interesting things that the producer Nigel Stafford- Clark says in the interview on the BBC website is that Jesus drove these events and that the other two were forced into them by Jesus' initiative. I thought that was an astute observation.

The writer, Frank Deasy, added that Caiaphas wanted to make the case to his people that sacrificing Jesus might make sense if it saves the people of Israel from the wrath of Rome (something from John's Gospel) and that Jesus was looking to sacrifice himself for the sins of the world - and that these two motives somehow meshed as the drama unfolds.

I think this promises to be one of the best things the BBC has done for ages and very possibly one of the best dramas ever made on the life of Christ - certainly his last week.

So, set the video and watch it. Then come to church and talk about it - come to ours if you're local...

The excitement of Budget Day

In my previous life as a financial journalist, Budget Day was a highlight of the year. A long day listening to the chancellor, talking to contacts in the City and adland, finding an angle, writing endless words of analysis, finally going to press around midnight and then seeing your words the following morning, part of the ocean of ink spilled in an effort to interpret what the Chancellor had done.

I still get a frisson of excitement on Budget Day. So I watched Alistair Darling yesterday while I had lunch. It was the dullest speech in living memory - I gather former Chancellor Geofrey How fell asleep in the peers gallery!

And yet it seems to me to be as good a budget as we had any right to hope for. It's good for poor people - despite Nick Clegg's rather snide remarks - in terms of child benefit, tax credits and fuel payments. I would have liked him to be bolder on dealing with the utility companies but I hope he'll return to the fray if in the coming year if they do nothing to end the inequity of the poor paying a higher price per unit for gas and electricity than the rich - that's a scandal.

I think the alcohol tax rises were well balanced and the green initiatives on car pricing and tax rates, though small steps, are steps in the right direction. I'd have quadrupled the VED on Chelsea tractors (while offering a waiver to farmers and those who need four-wheel drives - though the trouble with that is that it removes the incentive to the industry to improve the technology in these vehicles and opens a loophole that some clever accountant will exploit).

I was also pleased that he left gift aid untouched - £300m left in charities and voluntary sector organisations (and, of course, churches). That was a bold statement of commitment to this vital sector of our society.

So all in all, I thought the Chancellor done good - given the bad hand dealt to him by the world economy and some of his predecessor's decisions. We'll see how it plays out in the coming months.

Where's our movement going?

I finished Rob Warner's book last night and agree with the reviewers that it is a very significant study of the past 25 years or so of the movement that I've been a member of all my Christian life.

I don't think it has the same charm and impact as Pete Ward's Growing Up Evangelical and that's partly due to the - in my view - massive overuse of sociological jargon. Some pages contain a plethora of arcane terms that make reading heavy going at times.

That aside, the analysis is fascinating and - again in my view - spot on. I found his description and comparison of the various bases of faith written over the past 20 years really interesting.

His overall conclusion that evangelicalism might be splitting (bifurcating is the term he uses) into two camps - one more entrepreneurial and activist, the other increasingly theologically conservative - seems right. You only have to think about what's happened to Word Alive - until last year part of Spring Harvest and but this year a stand alone event sponsored by the two most conservative groupings in evangelicalism (UCCF and New Frontiers). The split with Spring Harvest was, as I understand it, entirely for doctrinal reasons - SH is too liberal for some in the UCCF/Oak Hill/Evangelicals Now stable.

I think this is a pity because one of Spring Harvest's strengths over the years has been its diversity. Reading between the lines of Rob's book, I wonder if SH's days are numbered and with its passing whether evangelicalism will fragment into increasingly narrowly defined groups that have little contact with each other and even less dialogue.

I think that will spell a significant defeat for us and possibly lead to a decline in evangelical numbers - as Rob suggests, we might only have bucked the trend in general church decline for a short while because of the energy of the some of the participants; if we begin to fall out over increasingly arcane points of doctrine, we only have ourselves to blame if our churches empty in the coming years.

On a more positive I picked up the new Nick Cave album today - DiG!!! Lazarus Dig!!! (he insists on all the exclamation marks) - and extremely fine it is too. He really has no business producing his finest work now he's in his fifties - but I'm jolly pleased he is. And I got Toumani Diabate's The Mande Variations. He is described as the world's greatest kora player - the multi-stringed instrument of Mali (where Diabate comes from). It's sublime and beautiful, eight pieces of virtuoso playing and gorgeous tunes. What more could a boy want?!

Larry on his friends

Thanks to Sean the Baptist posting these words on his blog and reminding me of another great Larry Norman song

Well my life is filled with songs
But I just could not get along without my friends
And I'm happy now, but when this good life ends
I know a better life begins ...

... And someone died for all your friends
But even better yet, he lives again.
And if this song does not make sense to you,
I hope His spirit slips on through, He loves you.

'Song for a Small Circle of Friends'

Larry Norman 1947-2008

Well the sad news today is that Larry Norman has died.

It's hard to estimate how big an influence he had on me as a teenager and young Christians. He was a major reason that I came to faith in Jesus at all; he was the reason I joined a band and gigged around the North West; he's the reason I wrote the kind of songs I did.

But much more important than any of this, he was a model of rebellious orthodoxy that I hope I will never tire of following. Larry Norman always seemed to be saying that being a follower of Jesus was not synonymous with middle class respectability and drab, uncreative conformity. For that alone, I will be eternally grateful.

But then there were the songs. He wrote vibrant, witty, tuneful and rocking stuff - his early 1970s output is among the finest music committed to vinyl. I remember getting the digitally remastered Only Visiting this Planet and crying. Yes, some of it sounds of its time now, but Why don't you look into Jesus, the Outlaw, I am the six 0'Clock News and The Great American Novel are still amazingly effective. He is the best lyricist the church has produced in over a century by a long shot.

Martin Joseph rehabilitated his Six Sixty Six on his recent Deep Blue album. It represents one of the things I never got about Larry - probably because I didn't grow up in US dispensationalist circles - which was his eschatology. For this reason I never really liked I wish We'd been all been ready - though it had a pretty tune.

But he was always more than that. My best memory of him is seeing him at the Co op Hall in Leicester. I was a late teenager, there with my youth group. In those days there was no separation between the star and the audience and during the break I found myself standing next to a shy and polite Larry Norman who listened and responded to my gauche attempts at conversation about chord sequences before resuming a brilliant set - just him and his tiny acoustic guitar.

He's a towering figure. I'll miss him.

The slow road back to wellville

Well, here I am still struggling to throw off this flu bug. It's left me feeling drained with a tightness across my chest and a bit of hacking cough. Still, life goes on...

Nearly finished Rob Warner's book. The second half - on the theological changes - has been fascinating. I was particularly heartened by his account of the adopting of the new basis of faith by my old Alma mater, London Bible College, under its now former principal, Derek Tidball.

I found the accounts of the various bases of faith a tad dull and dis-spiriting, the latter because it seems to confirm that evangelicals are pathologically obsessed with circling the wagons and keeping out the enemy - even when the enemy turns out to be Bible believing Christians with a slightly different take on some arcane point of doctrine.

For a movement heading for the rocks - and potential oblivion - shuffling who sits where on the poop deck seems a calamitous waste of resources!

I've been preparing some thoughts on how we do mission for delivery to Spurgeon's students in the morning. I'm looking forward to it - it'll be the first work I've done for a week!

And my spell-checker has returned - thank you blogger central (or whoever you are)!

Struck by the lurgy....

Well, I've struck down by the winter fluey-cold and completely wiped out for most of the past week. And what's worse, I've been so thick-headed that I haven't been able to read for any length of time.

I have discovered BBC iPlayer, however, enjoying re-runs of Torchwood and Freezing - and a particularly wonderful k d lang gig recorded at a church in North London (not sure if it's Union Chapel or not). She was on great form, her voice pitch-perfect throughout and the band were full of invention.

The nest is emptying

It's all go here. My younger daughter is off to Australia in the morning so it's been packing and ensuring that she's got everything she needs - though as we never tire of pointing out, she is going to a first world country with shops and stuff!

I'm sure I'm not old enough to have a daughter of an age to go off down under for eight months. But it seems I am. With her older sister away at university, our nest is going to feel somewhat empty and quiet.

I took delivery this morning of a print to order copy of Edwin Hatch's The Organisation of the early Christian Churches and found to my surprise that there are hand-written annotations all over the text. Thinking these were in pencil, I got a rubber and started to rub them out. They are not in pencil; they are printed. It's extraordinary.

I have emailed the supplier to see if they can throw some light on it. Judging by the notes that I can read, this original reader, apart from having lovely handwiritng of a clasic kind, thought the book was pretty good!

I also received Eckhard Schnabel's Early Christian Mission (both volumes) as a gift from IVP (for reading some stuff for them and being an all-round nice person!). It's probably not something I'd have bought my self (the price is somewhat off-putting), but it looks fascinating and extremely comprehensive. I shall enjoy dipping into it.

Now I'm off to prepare a roast dinner - a last supper before my second-born heads off to the other side of the planet.

So, what am I for, exactly?

Following yesterday's post on bible reading, I've been doing a bit of that with various people through today and making some interesting discoveries (and rediscoveries).

Our women's bible study group was getting its teeth into 1 Corinthians 11 this lunchtime - actually it was our second week of looking at it and we haven't yet really got down to a close reading of the text (maybe next time)!

Rather we've been talking about how we read the bible. And I must say I find myself a little perplexed at how some people are socialised into the world of Bible reading in our churches.

It seems that we feel we can't read the Bible like we read any other book. All our critical faculties, it seems, have to be left at the door. I know the Bible is inpsired. I know it's God's word. I know that if we take it seriously, it's dynamite.

The trouble is that we're schooled not to take the Bible seriously. We either treat it as a promise box - lots of things God's going to do for me because he loves me - or we treat it as a rule book, full of 'do's' and 'don'ts' and commands that we have to follow or else. We seem not to be able to read it as a story. And this has to be learned behaviour because it's not an obvious way to read anything.

Surely this is what ministers are called to do something about. After all, we're not called to run churches - the members do that, making decisions as they gather together, appointing leaders from among themselves to put those decisions into effect (well, at least how Baptists are supposed to do it). We're not called to be priests, representing our people before God and God to our people - we believe in the priesthood of all believers, so all can preside at the Lord's table, all can baptise, all can share their insights and use their gifts; supremely each of us can lead each of us into an encounter with the living God.

So what are we for? I used to tell a previous church that my role was to be theological consultant, helping them to read scripture and apply it to their lives; telling stories of what they could be like if they grab hold of God with both hands - and then supporting as they do that and fear the wheels coming off completely!

And I think today that God's been reminding me that that is a key part of my job - if not my whole raison d'etre. After spending time reading the bible with lots of lovely people today, I also realise it's the part of my job that I really love the most.

Are we reading the Bible more or less?

One of the staggering statistics in Rob's book are the numbers showing the decline in the sale of Bible reading notes over the past 20 years. In 1985 Scripture Union was selling 199,593 copies per issue (that's each quarter of the year). By 2000 that figure had halved to 98,380.

Church leaders often lament what is sometimes called 'biblical illiteracy' of their congregations. This is probably unfair. And it's probably true that sales of Bible reading notes aren't a surefire guide to Bible reading.

Having said that, however, I was interested to see that the Bible Society has done some research on Christian attitudes to the Bible and found that 35% of non-leaders read their bibles every day (you can do the maths for what that says about the proportion who don't). I'm not sure it's much of a comfort that 56% of non-leaders use the bible in their devotions 'frequently' (undefined).

SU and other bible reading note publishers might be heartened by the fact that 43% use notes of some kinds - though not much.

And we're all heartened by the fact that non-leaders do not find Richard Dawkins a threat to their confidence in the Bible - though, actually, I'm really not sure what that says about us at all. How many of those asked had heard of Richard Dawkins and why would the musings of a noted, high profile atheist make any difference to our confidence in scripture?

One of the findings in the executive summary caught my eye. 'The Bible is regarded as an important driver of spiritual growth; however its use in this respect should also be regarded as a corporate as much as an individual pursuit. People also need encouragement and assistance in developing their ability to understand and apply the Bible,' it says.

I find this very heartening. In the early church studying the scriptures was a collective activity because of literacy rates and because gathering together to support and encourage one another was the key to creating healthy Christian communities.. I think coming together to read the Bible and learn from one another is a key in our generation to growing not only healthy disciples but alsovibrant churches.

Last night we did a good deal of reading the bible and reflecting on it in groups, having had some input from the front (perhaps a little too much!). People shared their insights and i think found it a really helpful of understanding and applying the Bible. There was a real buzz about the place and a sense of engagement with God as well as the scripture.

We'll be doing it some more.

Money to burn?

I read the section on the decade of evangelism in Rob's book yesterday.

The startling statistic is that the evangelistice initiatives of 1994 - Jim, Minus to Plus and On Fire (which passed me by!) - cost British churches a staggering £8m. Add to that the costs to churches and individual Christians off flying back and forth to Toronto to get the blessing (one estimate I read put this at many millions) and it's clear that we've got money to burn...

When I was reflecting on the decade for Building a Better Body, my conclusion was that it was very fad driven, one initiative after another with no real idea of what we were trying to achieve. Over a million people left the church through the decade - which makes for an interesting definition of evangelism.

But I wonder if we've really learned the lessons of all that. As Barry Linney said 'Rather than listening to those outside [the church], we were still only speaking to them after listening to our own heartbeat.' Has anything changed?

And has anybody got any idea why the spell checker on my blogger has ceased working?

More thoughts on Rob Warner

I am continuing to enjoy Rob Warner's Reinventing English Evangelicalism. I think it almost ranks with Pete Ward's Growing up Evangelical for its ability to give narrative shape to significant moments in my life.

I have particularly enjoyed and winced at Rob's description of Spring Harvest and his account of magazine publishing. Some of his insights are worth pondering long and hard.

For example, 'the multiple-choice approach of Spring Harvest's programme introduced many evangelicals to a comodified concept of worship and teaching: the autonomous individual makes an independent selection from the programme and may come to expect a similar autonomy in choosing local church activities.'

He adds that the Spring Harvest diet is therapeutic rather than theological and has led to the increasing ghettoisation of evangelicals. it is hard not to share his scepticism when he suggests that far from equipping evangelicals to live more effectively in the world, Spring Harvest has contributed to the creation of an evangelical family that 'looks less like a community gathering for advance than a remnant withdrawing into subcultural segregation.'

He is wonderfully acerbic on some of the music to have come out of this subculture in the past decade (joining Pete Ward and Nick Page) suggesting 'while singing songs that herald an army mobilised to take the land, Spring Harvest's evangelicals functioned increasingly as a gated community, a ghetto on holiday.'

I shall be at Spring Harvest this year working on the pastoral team as I have done for the past five years, seeking to help particpants make the most of any encounter with God that they have during their week away. But I know exactly what Rob means!

His analysis of evangelical magazines also looks spot on. As the launch editor of Christianity in the autumn of 1996, I am one who contributed to the demise of the evangelical monthly!

Our aim had been to produce a magazine that reached beyond the ghetto, found its way into news agents and Smiths and addressed the world through the prism of a carefully thought-through broad evangelical theology. What were we thinking!

Christian publishers were not prepared to invest the sums required to create such a product and Christian readers were not prepared to support it. Both seem to have opted for the easier task of talking to the converted and reinforcing their prejudices about the world and the church.

Rob is spot on when he says: 'Evangelical faith, at least in Britain, appears to have entered upon a consumerist trajectory, privately engaging but publicly irrelevant. The quest for an evangelical meta-narrative has been aborted in favour of inspirational entertainment. The secularizing process has produced evangelicals whose faith is compartmentalised and privatized according to the prevailing cultural pattern. Perhaps it is the evangelicals, to adopt Postman's polemical description of TV, who are 'amusing themselves to death.'

This might be a slight hyperbole but it contains enough truth to send us to our knees and our bibles in search of a genuinely culture-transforming expression of faith.

The importance of being equals

One of the things I love about Matthew 18 is its realisim about human motivation and assurance of God's grace.

When the chapter opens, the disciples have clearly been hurumphing about Jesus appearing to make Peter top dog in the team (16:18-20), something that could have been reinforced in what just happened (17:24-27) where Jesus miraculously provided for his and Peter's temple tax (what about us? you can almost hear the rest saying!!)

Their question about status is met with a discourse about equality of relationship among the disciple group of which a child - a completely status-free entity (interestingly refered to as 'it' in the text) - is the prime, indeed only example.

And it all leads up to a wondrous word of grace, the democratisation of authority in the community of believers, the sharing of Peter's gift in 18:18-20 where each and every disicple is given the same right to tie up and untie as Peter was given in 16:18-20.

As Dick France in his consistently excellent and in sightful commentary points out, the key to grasping these words is to recognise that Jesus speaks in future perfects. That is to say what we bind or loose will already have been bound or loosed in heaven. In other words our authority is that God graciously condescends to disclose his will to us as we gather together to ask him (that is the thrust of the prayer pericope in v19).

And all this has to do not with people - the binding or loosing is not about the including or excluding of people since the object of the binding or loosing is neuter - but with things or issues. Indeed what Jesus probably has in mind here are the actions of those wandering or sinning that he's already referred to. God graciously gives insight into what's right and wrong so that we can speak that truth into each other's lives and thus keep one another sharp and on the right track.

And he does this through being with us in our tiny insignificiant little groups in all his glorious resurrection authority (28:20; see 1:23).

Isn't this fab?!

And it raises the question why we bother about our status and where we fit in the church pecking order and whether we're doing better than the bloke who sits next to us on a Sunday morning.

The beatitudes have already reminded us that we bring nothing to the table but God gives us all we need to live. And here Jesus calls us to earth those values in the way we look out for one another. Truly, as Wesley so memorably put it, we are called to 'watch over one another with love'. What greater status could we ever want than that?

Off to a flying start

We had a really good day yesterday. Our new look evening programme attracted a good number, evenly divided across the two services - 67 at the first, 58 at the second.

Not only did the two services go well, they both felt relaxed - all the tension associated with people not liking aspects of what we do had evaporated to be replaced with an expectatncy and spirit of co-operation.

Let's hope it continues.

Next week we'll have post cards for the two congregations to take away to invite their friends to come along. It's my prayer that we'll grow the congregations in both time slots over the coming weeks with people returning to church after a long absence or those who've never been before.

Thanks for Catriona for her comments on Matthew 18 - yes, I wonder what Jesus meant by treating people like tax collectors? More on that tomorrow. I'm off to the men's Bible study to begin looking at 1 Corinthians 15 - mind-blowing!

Ringing the changes

It's the first day of our new Sunday pattern - and I'm quite excited!

We meet as normal this morning. Then this afternoon we have a classic-style service at 4:45 and a more contemporary, fluid one at 7pm.

A number of people have said they are coming to both which kind of defeats the object but also suggests that folk are not unwilling to try to new things which is good.

I'm slightly apprehensive that the church will feel emptier at these two services than it used to at the evening service - but that is one of the reasons for doing it: offering a predictable gathering that people can bring their friends to without fear of the service not being what they expect. So we're hoping that some who have dropped off in the evening because it's been neither fish nor fowl over the past year, will start coming again and that people will friends to explore what the Christian faith is all about in a gathering they will find accessible.

My aim is that twice the number will be gathering across the two services than came to one. I'm not sure when I'd like to reach that target but this time next year would be good.

I've been getting the home group notes on the next section of Matthew that we'll be reading together. It's the discourse on relationships in chapter 18. Some of the text is tricky but I have found it incredibly stimulating as I've actually been forced to ask what the text says (and what it doesn't) and discovered that it speaks very clearly into our journey towards expressing membership in a new way.

I'll blog on it properly when I've got my head around it, but suffice to say that often people refer to this passage as being about church discipline and yet it seems to be much more about mutual care and taking responsibility for one another's discipleship. Jesus calls each of us to be attentive to one another, offering gentle care and correction as we travel together.

Watch this space...

Good study time

Had a fab day at Dr Williams's library in London yesterday. This is an institution like something out of Dickens and yet it's wonderfully efficient. I went to track down some journal articles and the staff quickly located what I wanted and copied anything I needed (again very quickly) - so thanks to them for making a research day so pleasant and straight-forward.

I went to look for material on leadership in the early church from Paul into the apostolic fathers. In their spacious and airy reading room, surrounded by ancient tomes and overseen by busts of eminent congregationalists from the Victorian era, I located a number of helpful items, plugged in my iPaq and made copious notes in the convivial surroundings.

I reckon if I could do that every week, I'd complete my MPhil in no time at all. If only!

So today I'm back getting ready for Sunday and wondering about church stuff with a spring in my step!

Reinventing English evangelicalism

I've just started reading Rob Warner's Reinventing English Evangelicalism, 1966-2001: a theological and sociological study. It's his PhD, completed at Kings College under Andrew Walker. Andy Goodliff and Jim Gordon have both blogged reviews in great detail, so I'm not going to that, though I will be commenting on things that strike me as I read it.

The first of these is something that Warner notes from studies of American Christianity. He suggests that despite their numbers, American evangelicals have made precious little difference to American life.

'Notwithstanding the high proportion of Americans professing evangelical beliefs,' he notes, 'these may not be the primary or dominant convictions in the personal lives and socio-political convictions of American churchgoers.'

In other words, faith is a private matter that might influence personal morality but has nothing to say about business ethics, buying and selling, military policy or any other political issue. It seems that Christians have settled for the enlightenment division between the public and private realms - faith belongs in the latter and is not allowed to set foot in the former.

Sadly, I suspect the same is true in the UK as well. Too many Christians bolt Christian faith on to their ordinary trust in the way things are, trusting God in their personal lives, but trusting the military to keep them safe and their bank balance to keep them secure.

Good times

'Good times' - as my eldest daughter would say when something goes well. Last night certainly turned out to be pretty good.

For one thing, I think I felt the freest in my preaching here that I have ever felt. For another, people were generally encouraging in their response - not in the sense that they enjoyed it but that they thought it was a word for them and could form the basis for how we move forward as a church.

It means that quite a few people are looking forward to next Sunday when our new pattern of gathering gets underway - 4:45pm for the classic-style service, 7pm for the contemporary one.

I'm trusting that God has good times for us as we step into this new pattern. We'll see...

Learning lessons from Paul?

Looking forward to the evening service today. It's the last one in its current time-slot - next week we have two (more on that in a moment).

The reason I'm looking forward to tonight is that we reach the climax of our reflections on Clustering around the Table based on 1 Corinthians 11-14. And I am keen to explore whether the model Paul assumes - relatively small, home-based gatherings around the meal table - is a model that would help us build community and share our faith with our neighbours in more informal and interactive settings.

The early believers took the Greco-Roman symposium as their model for what happened when they met - a meal followed by a structured conversation in which everyone participated. One of the key things to notice in this, it seems to me, is that the early followers of Jesus didn't create something new and didn't amend something noticeably religious as the pattern for their gatherings. So, could we take the dinner party or summer BBQ as our model for church?

Next week we launch our new evening programme for an experimental period. We're replacing the hallowed catch-all 6:30pm service with two gatherings. At 4:45pm we'll be having a classic-style service with hymns - old and new - prayers and a sermon. Then at 7pm we'll have a late service with more contemporary music, an informal feel and interactive worship and teaching. It will include elements from our cafe-style gatherings and a more flexible and fluid approach.

It'll be interesting to see how it goes. My hope is that over time it might double the numbers coming in the evenings as people feel able to invite their friends to one or other of the services. Our primary aim in all this is mission - we want to provide people of varying temperaments worship formats that they feel comfortable inviting their friends to.

Of course, in many ways this is but a stepping stone along the way to working out how we might apply what we've been exploring in Clustering around the Table to how we create church here that builds believers and provides opportunity for others to hear and respond to the Christian message.

In due course, it would be good to see groups meeting in cafes and pubs on Sunday and other evenings through the week in order to do and be church. But revolutions start with baby steps...

Meetings, meetings...

We got into serious planning mode for Prism this week. Prism is the alternative strand of the baptist assembly.

Ruth, Sam and I met on a roundabout in Lutterworth to begin serious planning and made really good progress.

Keep your eyes on the Baptist Assembly website for more details - they should be up in the next couple of weeks.

As we were thinking about music, Sam introduced us to Cinematic Orchestra, very chilled and jazzy. I'm listening to ma fleur now and enjoying it a lot.

This week has been full of meetings but quite productive. It was Pecan's AGM last night - a good mix of stories and exhortation to keep up the good work.

Map to the heart

If you haven't caught up with Maps yet you should. The album We can Create came out in the middle of last year. It's another of those creations by a single individual in his bedroom. And it's quite lovely.

The bedroom in question is in Northampton and Maps is a guy named James Chapman. But the fact that the record was co-produced by Valgeir Sigurosson (Bjork's collaborator) and mixed by Ken Thomas who has worked with Iceland's wonderful Sigur Ros explains why it sounds so lush and rich.

Bits of it sound like Moby (no bad thing) especially It will find you; other bits sound like nothing on earth. Check it out - you'll be so glad you did: it'll make your heart skip like a spring lamb.

Thank God it's Sunday

We had a fabulously positive church meeting.

It wasn't just that the three issues we were really keen to move ahead on were agreed (though that is great), it was the spirit in which the discussion was held. Although differences of opinion were aired, people listened to one another and as a result, I think we discerned the mind of Christ.

We adopted a new way of expressing membership through an annually renewable covenant, we co-opted some excellent people to the leadership as the first stage of moving to a different way of recognising and appointing leaders and we agreed to trial a two-service evening programme, with a classic-style service at 4:45pm (we think) and a more experimental mix of contemporary songs, celtic liturgy and elements from our cafe services at 7pm.

It was completely knackering leading it and I went home to file my tax return for light relief!

Then in the evening, our cafe church explored issues of table behaviour in Corinth and how Elrond's council from the film the Lord of the Rings throws light on our reading of 1 Corinthians 11:17ff. We had lots of good discussion, though it was a relatively low-key evening.

Today, I've felt a mixture of complete exhaustion and something near elation. I think we might have turned a corner - though we have not reached our destination.

Sunday comes too quickly

Because I had three days out at a conference this week - Mainstream (usual mixed bag) - I feel slightly under-prepared for today.

We have a church family meeting at lunchtime with too much on the agenda but nothing that can be left for the next one.

I hope everything gets talked about in a spirit of co-operation and we're able to move forward together as a people united in a desire to create church that is flexible for believers and welcoming to outsiders.

One issue I have to raise but which we can't resolve is the process of registering as a charity and the effect that will have on our current rules and set up. With the BU governing document not yet ready (hopefully I'll hear good news about that on 14 February), we can't begin the process of talking about it as a church. A cursory glance at it suggests that it will replace our current rules - with all the trauma that will cause. Still that's for another day!

It's cafe church this evening - possibly the last in their current form (depending on the outcome of discussions at the church meeting!). We're continuing our look at 1 Corinthians 11-14 thinking about clustering around the table. Our focus this evening is on how we treat difference and especially how we welcome and include 'the poor' as equals at our table.

It was this issue that indicated to Paul the depth of the hole the Corinthians were in. Describing their gatherings as doing more harm than good (11:17 cf 20), Paul focuses on social divisions that continued among these early believers because they had insufficient grasp on who they were in Christ and what difference that made to their social relations.

We'll be exploring that under the rubric of the types poverty that Malcolm Duncan outlined at Mainstream which I've found very helpful as I've reflected on it in the light of 1 Corinthians 11 (see previous post).

Hopefully, it'll make for a good evening. We'll also be watching a clip from Lord of the Rings (the forming of the fellowship) and listening to Elbow - an eclectic mix as ever.

Overcoming poverty of aspiration

I'm just back from the Mainstream Conference at Swanwick. I was hoping to blog while I was up there as I had great free internet access in my room (thanks Hayes conference centre) but I was too tired when I finally crashed out from catching up with mates!

It was a good conference overall. The highlight was Malcolm Duncan, the movement director of Faithworks. He is a truly brilliant communicator who is also a highly original and creative thinker - a rare combination, I find. He offered us an inspiring and achievable theology of social action and community transformation and challenged us to go do it - all in under an hour.

He has a new book out called Kingdom Come: the local church as a catalyst for social change. I've not read it yet but if it's half as good as his conference presentation, it will be a blast.

In the question and answer session on the final morning of the conference, he spoke in passing about poverty, drawing our attention to something he's written (that I'm looking for) on the five aspects of poverty. Three of these - which are spoken of a lot by sociologists of religion - are material, civic (ie being powerless and therefore disengaged) and spiritual (using the term in its broadest sense).

To this Malcolm added two - poverty of identity (so many people not having any idea of who they are and why they matter) and poverty of aspiration. This last one resonated particularly with me. It's about people having no hope, thinking the best days are behind them, hankering for the good old days. We hear it every time people talk about society going to the dogs and things being so much better when we were young.

It is this poverty that robs the church of its power and relevance because it suggests that Christian eschatology has nothing to give us that resources our present work for God. we pray 'thy Kingdom come' but expect everything to stay the same - and so it does.

Why study the early church?

A couple of friends have asked me recently why I seem particularly interested in how the early church met. One who emailed me asked whether how the early Christians met is relevant. I thought it was a really good question - one of those straightforward, obvious ones that aren't so easy to answer.

Here's an edited version of my reply...

It’s a really excellent question. It is the question that drove me to study the social history of the New Testament in the way that I’m currently doing. The reason is simple – though the answer is proving to be anything but!

The current debate about what people call emerging church or fresh expressions is centred on the question ‘what should the church be like to be relevant to the world we live in 2008?’ This question is often refined to this one ‘what would the church look like if all we had was the gospel and the culture we live in – and no history at all?’

We find it really hard to answer that question for two reasons. The first is that we’ve had 2000 years of church history – some of it glorious, some of it anything but. The second is that we have scripture and especially the New Testament which we often read thinking that it contains a blueprint of how we should do church.

I am convinced that what we have in the New Testament are people wrestling with the same question we need to wrestle with – namely ‘what should the church look like if all we have is the gospel and the world we live in’? This is why the churches in Corinth were different from the churches in Rome which were different from the Christian communities in Thessalonica.

I am fascinated to see if there are lessons for us in how the early followers of Jesus earthed the gospel in their culture. As I said earlier, I do not believe the New Testament has a blueprint for church organization or leadership, a single way for the followers of Jesus to express their corporate life. What I think we have are Spirit-inspired people making it up as they went along.

It is fascinating to see what they came up with and how it enabled them to embody the gospel of Christ in a way that enabled others to hear it, see it, experience it and respond to it.

That’s what I want to see happening in our time but I fear that weddedness to forms of church that might once have worked prevents that from happening. If our authoritative text shows us how the first followers did it and invites us to learn their method but not ape their forms, I think that’s worth a shot.

Does that make sense?

Of course, the other reason I'm studying the early church is that I think it's fascinating because I'm a history junkie and I might get an MPhil out of it. But maybe that's too mercenary an answer!

Living for the benefit of others

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

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

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

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

Getting to grips with scripture and culture

I've had an interesting few days wrestling with 1 Corinthians 11-14 and how we do church in our world.

I remain convinced of two things. The first is that we need to read the New Testament more carefully against its social and cultural background, to mine it for resources to help us re-imagine the church in our own generation.

That sounds easy enough until you start asking questions about the domestic arrangements of the early Christians, their relative position in the social pecking order, their economic circumstances, the influence of other religions and philosophies and especially of the Imperial cult. And there's a stack of other questions that lurk behind them.

So are we able to recover the circumstances and meaning of our authoritative texts.

The second relates to that final point. Two thousand years of church history and our denominational backgrounds deafen and blind us to what the texts are actually saying. We cannot hear Paul above the cacophony of our own traditions.

Someone once described culture as 'the way we do things round here' and that pretty well describes the situation we find ourselves in. When I talk about 'church' in our setup, people immediately form a picture that involves our worship space (of which people are very fond as they invested cash and labour in creating it), our music (of which people are both proud and critical in equal measure), our preaching and teaching, Sunday School, groups and departments within church life.

Immediately we are thinking of something that Paul didn't know and never envisaged. More than that, we are interpreting Paul's words against the background of the church we know. So when I asked last night whether church should always involve food, the immediate comment was that it would be a lot of hard work for the catering committee because they couldn't conceive of church with food being something that happens beyond our building and present context.

For all these reasons, I have a feeling that last night misfired somewhat! Next week I need to be simpler and more direct - while hopefully being true to my understanding of what Paul is saying to us in 1 Corinthians 11-14. We'll see

Listening and reading

In Rainbows is a such a good album! There's not a duff track on it and Jonny Greenwood seems to have rediscovered the joy of playing of guitar because he gets sounds and emotions out of it that we've not heard from radiohead for ages. Thom Yorke's voice is amazing too. But the biggest surprise is that the album is full of melody, gorgeous tunes erupt on every track - not something usually associated with the band.

I also got the five disc special box set of Bladerunner for Christmas, which includes Ridley Scott's 2007 final cut of the film which I watched the other evening. It's still a ground-breaking movie, a fabulous story, compellingly told and if anything richer than the Philip K Dick book on which it's based (which I also really like). Perhaps it's because Bladerunner is so stripped down while at the same time expanding the conflict at the end between Deckard and Roy Batty, but the key theme of what it is to be human comes across much more powerfully and poignantly in the movie than in the book.

Just before Christmas my stock of reading was added to by a collection of Edwin judge's seminal essays on the social history of early Christianity. Called Social Distinctives of the Christians of the First century, it's been edited by David Scholer and published by Hendrickson.

Judge is one of the key scholars in this area. His 1960 booklet The Social Pattern of the Christian Groups in the First century in many ways kick-started the social scientific study of the New testament, the investigation of where the early followers of Jesus fitted into their world that has led to seminal works by Gerd Theissen, Wayne Meeks, John Elliott, John Gager, Philip Esler, Bruce Malina, Bruce Winter, and a host of others. The book is the first of three collections of his writings coming out in the next year.

I also got Holiness and Ecclesiology in the New Testament (edited by Kent E Brower and Andy Johnson and published by Eerdmans) because it has an essay by Peter Oakes on Romans that he'd sent me a copy of while in draft form for my opinion. It's an excellent piece - worth the price of the volume on its own.

But there are twenty other essays by scholars of equal merit and creativity, exploring the themes of holiness and community in the all the New Testament books. Other stand-out essays are those by Bruce Winter on 1 Corinthians, Michael Gorman on cruciformity in Paul, Richard Baukham on John and Troy Martin on Galatians.

I've now got to wrestle with where the early Christians met and what their gatherings were like for a Sunday evening series we're starting this week called clustering around the table. Using 1 Corinthians 11-14 as our launch pad, we'll be looking at how the domestic environment of the earliest Christian communities helped to shape the faith and how we might learn new ways of gathering in our world from a close examination of how it was done in first century Corinth. We'll see.

The fragility of what we know

A fascinating, if brief post by Todd Bolen at his Bible Places blog
(http://blog.bibleplaces.com/2007/12/qumran-excavation-report.html), gave me a little light reading at the tail end of last week in the form of the report of the excavations at Qumran over the past decade. You can find it at http://www.antiquities.org.il/images/shop/jsp/JSP6_Qumran_color.pdf

I'm no expert in this area but I reckon the feathers are going to fly over this in the coming months. What the archaeologists suggest in their well-written and beautifully illustrated report is that Qumran was not a religious community but (effectively) a pottery factory and that the so-called Dead Sea Scrolls, long thought to be the library of the Qumran community, is in fact a collection of scrolls from many communities - synagogues and the like - deposited in the caves by people fleeing from the Roman advance in 70AD.

I'm not sure what it does to the 50 year-old Dead Sea scroll industry but it must raise some pretty fundamental questions about things that have been taken as 'gospel' in recent scholarship.

I for one will be watching the biblio-bloggers with renewed interest. Maybe I'll learn something!

Of course, one of the things it does remind us of is that our knowledge of the past - especially the ancient past - is very fragile. Huge superstructures are built on thin foundations. I am discovering this afresh as I explore what we know of the domestic circumstances of the early followers of Jesus and what those circumstances might tell us about what those early followers did when they gathered, who led them, who participated, what time of day they met, how often, what their neighbours thought was happening, etc, etc.

Does the archaeological record of places like Pompeii (very fashionable among NT people at the moment) and Rome, as well as cities in Turkey that have been partially or fully excavated, tell us reliable things we can build models on?

In particular, I've been reading Andrew Wallace-Hadrill, David Horrell, David Balch and Michele George over the past couple of days and finding out that there's still major disagreement on whether the early Christians met in the homes of those with a bit of money and who could therefore afford a domus-style home or in insulae (understood as apartment blocks rather than neighbourhoods) or workshops because they were all poor artisans (I simplify to make the point).

Where the early churches met has considerable implications for the mechanics of what they did. For example, if they met in a domus, did the host provide the meal they shared? If they met in a workshop was the Lord's supper a potluck meal created out of whatever the participants brought to share?

I'm also still wrestling with leadership language in the first christian century (roughly 40-140) and finding that the meaning of the words used depends on the context in which they were uttered. Bishop means one thing when we think of a cathedral and something else again when we think of gathering in a home.

Happy New Year

Happy new year to anyone passing this page. Hope it's a good one.

I finally caught up with Radiohead's In Rainbows in its CD incarnation on Monday. What a wonderful album it is - fierce, gentle, melodic, witty (not words usually associated with Radiohead), there's not a duff song on it. A great musical end to the old year.

All ready for Christmas

It was my dad's funeral last Thursday - which went as well as these things can. It was good to have the family all together to remember and say goodbye to him in style. we laughed and cried and shared memories - some well known family-wide stories, others known only to one member of the family or another.

We were able to give thanks for a long life (92), well lived; to be grateful that in later years he found faith becoming real to him again and bringing him enormous comfort and strength following mum's death.

So we've had a lot of catching up to do to be ready for Christmas: sermon preparation for Sunday evening and tomorrow morning, present and food shopping, getting internet greetings sent to those who live a long way away.

That's all done and the rest of the family's all here for seasonal fun and festivities.

So, it remains for me to wish my one or two readers a very happy Christmas and a fabulous, challenging, fulfilling and rewarding 2008.

Christmas reading

It's unusual for good Christian books to published in the run up to Christmas (some irony there?!)

Today I took delivery of Tom Wright's Surprised by Hope (SPCK £12.95). This is a semi-academic book - based on lectures in various places, including the 2005 Didsbury lectures - looking at what Christians hope for. As with everything Wright writes, it looks essential reading.

Michael J Gorman's Reading Paul (Cascade books - though being published by Paternoster in the Spring of 2008) is an introduction to the apostle by one of the most creative and stimulating Pauline scholars I've encountered of late. His Cruciformity: Paul's Narrative Spirituality of the Cross is a fabulous book, brimming with fresh insight into familiar texts as well offering a rich overview of Paul's spirituality. This new book is an introduction to Paul's gospel written for pastors and undergraduate students and looks really good.

Rob Warner's Reinventing English Evangelicalism 1966-2001 (paternoster - Studies in Evangelical History and Thought) is a revised version of his PhD written under Andrew Walker. Those of us caught up in the roller coaster ride of the past 25 years - with Spring Harvest and Toronto, restorationism and the rise and rise of the Evangelical Alliance in the 1980s - will find a companion to their memories here that helps us makes sense of our lives. I've only dipped into it, but already I put it alongside Pete Ward's Growing Up Evangelical as essential for any understanding of our lives, if, like me, you were converted into free church evangelicalism in the 1970s.

Each of these would be a great gift to a reader you know or even yourself (because you always ought to buy yourself something for Christmas - then at least there'll be one thing you'll actually want under the Christmas tree!)

Reading and coping

Registered this week as a reader at the British Library and the wonderful Dr Williams's library so that I have access to tomes and journals for my research. The British library is such a spacious and civilised place and the signing process was fabulously efficient. I haven't actually ventured into a reading room yet - can't rush these things.

I picked up a very helpful looking book by Ritva H Williams - someone I'd not come across before but who seems to have close contact with the Context Group of New Testament scholars. It's called Stewards, Prophets, Keepers of the Word: Leadership in the early church. It builds on her PhD on Ignatius and suggests there was greater diversity in leadership in the mid-second century than many scholars assume. In particular, she links emerging leadership roles to the social context and especially the household context of early Christian gatherings. It looks very interesting and I'm looking forward to getting into it.

Sadly, my father died last Sunday which, though expected as he'd been declining over recent weeks, was still a shock that leaves me feeling listless, disconected and profoundly sad. It means that I haven't been able to concentrate brilliantly well, as well as having a lot of work to do sorting out his affairs.

But God is good. Over the past few months dad had been reading his Bible, talking with the chaplain in the residential home where he lived and praying. Maybe he was ready to go. The funeral is next week.

It's a stark reminder that leadership in the church in any generation is not about titles and social structures but about people connecting with one another and being able to connect with God through Jesus Christ. There is always a danger when we immerse ourselves in close study of the texts and the history that we forget that. After all, Paul and Clement, Peter and Ignatius didn't know they were providing grist to the researchers mill; they thought they were helping people encounter the risen Jesus and offering ways those folk could learn and find support as they lived their new faith in a not-so-friendly environment.

I'll keep you posted on the Williams book - if anyone's read it and has views, I'd love to hear them.

Relaunching our housing project

Received my copy of Michael Holmes' The Apostolic Fathers: Greek Texts and English Translations (third edition) yesterday. What a beautiful book. Stunningly laid out and printed, wonderfully bound so that it lies flat when open - even on p4-5.

It is, of course, showing up the total inadequacy of my Greek!

Still I am continuing to find getting into these writings fascinating.

It's been pretty busy leading up to a reception today we hosted to promote our housing advice centre called iPad. About 45 people crammed into the space we use for offering this service to hear the assistant director of housing explaining the need for it and me outlining what we do - which is basically to offer hospitality and welcome to those struggling in some way with their life as a tenant and to major on helping them to sort out their budgeting and household management skills. It's not rocket science but a lot find it helpful. We also have people praying regularly for clients and workers alike.

Among the questions we were asked by a Bromley Housing department employee was this one: 'do you pray with the clients or for them while they are in the room?' No, I said; we send an email with prayer needs to our regular prayer partners. OK, she said, it's just that I had a client in serious arrears on her rent because of spending too much money on alcohol. So I suggested she went to church. She did. They prayed for her and it turned her life around. I recommend you do it too!

Not quite the response I was expecting!

I've got my first carol service of the season tomorrow - then Christmas will really have started! (good grief - and it's only 6 December!)