Telling the story of God's mission

Like Jim over at living wittily, I was at an induction yesterday. And I would endorse everything he says about the service for Catriona at Hillhead.

My mate Richard was being inducted to the pastorate at Upminster. I had the privilege of preaching on the theme - chosen by him - of 'the church has left the building', reflecting on the crucial missional call of God's people.

The service was a joyous mix of worship and story-telling, encouragement and challenge. And, of course, it was followed by fantastic church buffet, canapes and conversation over endless cups of tea.

It reminded me why I do this, because in the story-telling there was a profound sense of the God who leads us on, urging to step out together into this adventure of mission he's been on forever. And looking round the congregation, I had a wonderful sense of the potential of these ordinary people to be extraordinary in their acts of simple kindness that could change the world.

Where the sun shines its light

So the Sun has switched allegiance. Is anyone surprised? Does anyone really care? Do newspapers really decide what we think or how we vote? If so, then we truly get the leaders we deserve.

It is part of a larger pattern within the Murdoch empire, of course. James Murdoch's speech at the Edinburgh TV festival shows that the Sun's owners continue to think media is safe only in the hands of unaccountable billionaires.

It's enough to make you even more grateful for the riot of views, opinions and facts in the blogosphere.

I guess if nothing else the Sun's move confirms that the general election campaign has started!

Recovering the incarnation

The section of Hirch's searching book that I've been reading this week feeds directly into conversations we've begun having at church. We know the attractional model no longer works - our falling Sunday attendance and lack of people at special evangelistic events proves that. The question is 'what do we replace it with'?

Hirsch's answer is that we need to recapture the core Christian doctrines of the incarnation and the mission of God. He argues that the attractional model tends to negate these two insights because it 'demands that in order to hear the gospel, people come to us, on our turf, and in our cultural zone. In effect, they must become one of us if they want to follow Christ.'

This is, of course, the opposite of incarnation: God comes to us - the word became flesh and moved into the neighbourhood (as the Message memorably puts it). It means that we, who have been sent as Jesus was sent, must go to where people are rather than expect them to come to us.

This is the method Jesus modelled in his ministry and called his first disciples to follow when he sent them out - Matthew 10:5-16. They were to accept hospitality rather than offer it. It was Paul's practice too - finding people he could establish a workshop with, accepting invitations to be based in people's homes (see Acts 14-18).

Hirsch stresses that church grows out of mission and not vice versa. And mission grows out of a proper grasp of who Jesus is (ie our Christology). So he produces a simple diagram that says Christology determines missiology which in turn determines ecclesiology. It's a good simple principle that ought to underpin everything we do as gatherings of Jesus followers.

It follows, therefore, that mission needs to take place in third places, those spaces that are not our homes or workplaces, but rather where we socialise and have fun. This would mean more gatherings in pubs, cafes, clubs, arts centres, community halls, etc.

So, we'll see how St Arbucks goes this Sunday. But we'll also be exploring how our allotment group can become a missional community with shovels and coffee. And what else...? The possibilities are limited only by our imaginations.

Feeling refreshed

Had a fun time being refreshed by the Baptist Union this week. Good bible studies from Steve Finamore, an excellent lecture on prayer and art by Richard Kidd and the joy of catching up with friends from all over the place.

There was a refreshing absence of competitive churchmanship - the my-congregation's bigger than yours nonsense - and a lot of sharing of ideas over good ale. So it was 48 hours enjoyably spent.

The sun shone most of the time as well which meant I was able to enjoy the lake at Swanwick - walking round it rather than swimming in it, of course - as well as a little of the Derbyshire countryside.

The trouble with three day conferences, of course, is that they only leave two days to do a week's work. But lots of others are involved in delivering this coming Sunday's programme, so the pressures slightly less than usual. Still, back to church Sunday and the return of St Arbucks mean that it'll be a fairly busy one.

I've just watched the conclusion of the BBC's excellent three-parter on the collapse of Lehman Brothers and its aftermath. Called The Love of Money you can catch it all on iPlayer and if you haven't seen it, I recommend you do. It's well-made and delivers a clear analysis of what went on in those fateful days.

Coming to a Starbucks near you

This coming Sunday, we are kicking off our cafe church programme for the autumn.

St Arbuck's Sundays run at Starbuck's in the Market Square in Bromley from 3:30 to 5:30 on the fourth Sunday of the month. Come along for a skinny chai latte and breakfast panini or tea and granola bar or some other combo of beverage and snack.

Our theme is celebrity and who's worth following or not. There'll be a quiz, provocative testimony and a chance to think about who we want calling the shots in our lives.

Come along. Bring a friend.

Taking control of my environment

Having a bit of a sort out today and came across my Bell Jar albums. I've not listened to them for a while, so I gave them a spin. Good stuff. It sent me to their website to see if anything new was happening and came across a four-track ep, a taster of a new album due next year, and it's truly fab. Check it out here (click the listen in the bottom right of the picture).

Tidying is always a displacement activity for me. My study needed it as I was beginning to run out of surfaces to dump things on! But I need to be reading and writing and can't focus so tidying is a good distraction. And you can always comfort yourself by pointing to all the lost treasures you unearth in the process.

Ah well, enough of this. Back to work accompanied by Prefab Sprout - more unearthed treasures I've not spun for a while... gorgeous.

Pinball wizard

Sometimes I feel like the ball in a pinball machine. I'm sure we all do - whatever our job or calling.

An email sends us in one direction, a phone call in another, a friend sharing a grief over a drink in a fresh direction.

Each of these comes while we are already moving between booked commitments, the diary driving our movement through the day, the week - a meeting here, a time of preparation or writing there.

And each comes with its own urgency, demanding attention at the cost of everything else.

And God says 'stop'. In the midst of the rush and tear, the perpetual movement, his voice urges us to 'be still and know that I am God'.

But how can a pinball be still?

As I walked to get the papers this morning, having read the latest crop of emails, some words of T S Eliot came into my mind. They capture the feeling and possibly a way of staying sane, being still in the midst of movement:

'At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor
fleshless;
neither from towards; at the still point, there the dance
is,
but neither arrest nor movement. And do not call it fixity,
where the past and future are gathered. Neither movement
from nor towards,
neither ascent nor decline. Except for the point, the still
point,
there would be no dance, and there is only the dance...'
[Burnt Norton from Four Quartets].

It is the dance that's all, of course; not jigging alone beneath the mirrorball but flowing gracefully through events with our partner in whose arms we are still, unrushed, quiet, at rest...

'By a grace of sense, a white light still and moving,' says Eliot.

Good conversation, music and reading

Just back from a lovely day in Didcot planning next year's Baptist Assembly. It's shaping up to be a good one, so look out for publicity arriving through the autumn (if you are baptistically inclined, of course).

In the car on the way there and back I was listening to the new albums from Imogen Heap and Athlete - both of which are really cool. The final track of the Athlete album, Rubik Cube, is one of the best songs they've written. I also listened to the Radiohead albums that have just been re-issued in bumper editions - Kid A, Amnesiac and Hail to the Thief - and found them to be more satisfying and tuneful than I remember - Pyramid Song from Amnesiac still sends chills down my spine when the drums come in half-way through.

I'm preaching away from home on Sunday morning - at Welwyn Garden City - on Building a Better Body. I'm doing the introduction to an autumn series loosely based on my book (which is a little surreal - certainly a first for me!). I'm going to reflect on what the church is for from a missional perspective using Philippians 2:12-18.

Still finding Hirsch's book richly stimulating. He's got some very good things to say about consumerism as a threat to discipleship. He argues - convincingly to my mind - that it is more of a threat to genuine Christianity in the West than either Islam or the New Age movement.

He talks about discipling believers being the key to creating missional communities in a section where he comes close to echoing Michael Gorman's theosis argument in his Inhabiting the Cruciform God. I need to read it again, however, before I reflect on it.

Time for a glass of sauvignon blanc, I think...

Barefoot in the church

At the end of yesterday morning's service a mate sidled up to me and suggested that I was in my element. We'd just had a lively all-age baptismal service - with three people getting baptised - led by our worship band (with me on guitar). I was standing at the end of the service in bare feet chatting to people when my mate made the comment.

And I thought 'yeah; you're right; this is as good as it gets.'

I would, of course, enter a couple of caveats to that response. Baptismal services are always a high point - what can be better than people who've found faith in Jesus telling the church and their families that they have taken the most significant step a human being can take?

And while a number of people said to me how much they enjoyed the service, I know that some (probably quite a few) didn't and that their voices will reach my ears via the usual channels through this week.

But one thing I did feel at the end of yesterday morning is that we can do things differently even at our morning service without the ceiling falling in. And that has to be good.

The question of what it means in relation to the conversation over Hirsch's book is for another post later in the day.

We're just not that attractive

Thanks to John for that interesting stat from Graham Cray (comments to consuming our way to discipleship): only 6% of the population are likely to be attracted to church events such as Back to Church Sunday (something our church is taking part in).

Hirsch's point is, I think, very telling. And it's reinforced by Cray's comment. In short, what we do in church isn't very attractive, so it isn't going to attract many people. I have to say that most of what the church does wouldn't attract me!

Hirsch argues that churches inhabit only one narrow section of our highly fragmented society. Using a cultural difference scale popular with missionaries, he shows that most of our neighbours are not 'culturally proximate' to us and that we therefore have to cross cultures - just as those going overseas as missionaries - in order to share the gospel.

This means that the attractional model no longer works. We cannot just put on an event and expect people to come. We have to go to them, on to their turf and communicate in their language. That's a tall order for most of our congregations who've grown up in a world where they set the terms of engagement in evangelism. That world is gone.

The great thing is, as Hirsch points out, our world is not that dissimilar to the one the church was born into and so the New Testament is a helpful guide to help us ask the right questions about how we can be missional church in our context.

Shaking up the faithful

One of the points Hirsch makes early on is that the urge for community can lead us to seek safety above discipleship. 'Too much concern with safety and security, combined with comfort and convenience, has lulled us out of our true calling and purpose.' (p25)

As my anonymous friend (good to see you back, by the way) points out 'perhaps discipleship is about being selfless' - absolutely right. Discipleship is the polar opposite of consumerism because it is always seeking the welfare and benefit of others rather than ourselves.

Such a calling requires people who are constantly asking questions. If Hirsch is right that 'the most vigorous forms of community are those that come together in the context of a shared ordeal or those that define themselves as a group with a mission that lies beyond themselves - thus initiating a risky journey' (p25), then our gatherings should be awash with questions about what we're doing, why and how we'll do it.

The church's mantra should focus less on answers (the usual focus of teaching programmes that fill our people's heads with information) and more on questions (what is the shape of discipleship in the context we actually live in? How do we live for others in that context?)

So I agree with anonymous that 'Christian teaching might not be all it's cracked up to be' in this sense: if a teaching programme is just about filling people's heads with information that has precious little effect on how we live when we're not in church, then it's not going to make disciples and is really a complete waste of evryone's time.

And it's not what Jesus did. As Hirsch points out: Jesus 'spoke in confusing riddles (parables) that evoked spiritual search in the hearers. Nowhere does he give three-point devotional sermons that cover all the bases. His audience had to do the hard work of filling in the blanks. In other words, they were not left passive but were activated in their spirits.' (p44)

Now that would shake things up a bit.

Consuming our way to disicpleship?

Started reading Alan Hirsch The Forgotten ways: Reactivating the Missional Church. He's the co-author (with Michael Frost) of the Shaping of Things to Come. As expected it's good stuff so far.

Following my previous post, Hirsch says this about church, based on a couple of diagrams of the way churches are laid out, 'we plainly cannot consume our way into discipleship.' (p45)

I think that's pretty prescient. He's arguing that our basic mode of operating in church is consumerist. And this applies to traditional, seeker-friendly or off the wall experimental gatherings. Each is seeking to meet a need in an audience member.

'They come to "get fed". But is this a faithful image of the church? Is the church really meant to be a "feeding trough"for otherwise capable middle-class people who are getting their careers on track? And to be honest, it is very easy for ministers to cater right into this: the prevailing understanding of leadership is that of the pastor-teacher. people gifted in this way love to
teach and care for people, and the congregation in turn loves to outsource learning and to be cared for.' (p43).

His argument - that I'm really forward to seeing him unpack - is that churches have to get smaller (and more numerous) so that everyone participates rather than comes along for the ride; and they have to get a whole lot more serious about relationships: 'a church is formed not by people just hanging out together, but by ones bound together in a distinctive bond. There is a certain obligation to one another formed around a covenant.' (p40). Such a covenant community is serious about worship, discipleship and mission.

I guess where this fits with the previous post is in the area of how our gathering help to make disciples. Part of the church's weakness in the UK is that we're not very good at making disciples. We have attenders, friends, even members; but how many disciples do we have and how do we measure growth in their discipleship?

I think my disquiet about our teaching programmes is that I'm not convinced that the learning outcome is discipleship - and anything less than that is a waste of everyone's time, isn't it?

Getting on the hamster wheel

Confession time. I've found it really hard getting back on the hamster wheel.

Autumn is coming and I need a teaching programme for the church. I've tried this and that, one permutation of topics with another of exposition - you know the kind of thing... And always at the back of my mind has been the nagging question 'why?'

I've blogged before about how the church is good at teaching programmes but not very good at learning outcomes (as you can see from the fact that I'm bloigging about this again!) I have been constantly thinking as I've wrestled with dates and deadlines, subjects and scriptures 'what's the point of all this?'

Our church has a reputation as a good teaching church. but is anyone learning anything? Isn't the autumn just one more turn round the hamster wheel where we move from week to week tackling a new meaty subject before we've had the chance to digest last week's meal?

And what difference does it make? are our people better equipped to make sensible judgements about relationships, decisions about what to spend their money on? Are they kinder, gentler, more gracious and out-going people at work? Do they embody the values of Jesus in their daily lives and conversation?

So I was having a chat yesterday with one of our young adults, an intelligent, thoughtful committed guy, who was telling me - in effect - that he was all sermoned out. What he'd really like is a chance to reflect on what we're learning, interact with others learning the same things, pray through issues we're facing at home and work.

Of course, we get a chance to do this in home groups. But the trouble is that church on Sundays just gives a whole load more stuff to process and really nowhere to go and process it.

So, as I've said before, we're going to try to be even more interactive at our Later Service on Sundays, more responsive to where people are at with the material we've already engaged with, more alert to the issues people have faced in the previous week and how what we're learning might help them face them more faithfully.

In short we're going to try to turn our hamster wheel into a hamster ball - something that actually goes somewhere rather than just round and round in circles.

Hotels and parables

A final reflection on our Sri Lankan hotel experience that kind of sums the whole thing up.

Hikkaduwa was pretty trashed by the tsunami in 2004. When we stayed there in 2007, the hotel we chose was part of an international chain and had had considerable help in getting itself back on its feet. It was full when we looked at the website ahead of this year's visit - it was also pretty expensive!

The Supercorals where we stayed wasn't so lucky. The sea washed away the ground floor and did quite a bit of damage to the pool and outdoor bar area. Five years later, it's still being rebuilt. Half the hotel was boarded up with workmen coming and going doing major plumbing and electrical work.

Our room was comfortable, the bathroom was excellent, the air conditioning was quiet and wonderfully effective. And given that we were paying the equivalent of £13 per person per night bed and breakfast, we thought that it was good value. And to be honest even after the loss of my mobile phone from our locked room, I'd consider staying there again.

We felt that our presence was a tiny vote of confidence in their reconstruction efforts, their comeback from being all-but washed away by the tsunami.

And our stay was not without its comic moments.

On the first day of multiple occupancy, we came down to breakfast at our usual time of just after 8am. It was laid out for a buffet but there was no food in it yet. 'about ten minutes,' said a bright eyed young waiter. So we sat down. What he'd failed to tell us was that the ensuing ten minutes would offer us some of the best slapstick we've ever witnessed.

In an attempt to light the kerosene burners under each of the large dishes that keep the buffet warm, two waiters managed to set fire to the table cloth. Three foot high flames quickly spread as the kerosene spilled out from the burner. Other waiters arrived with cloths. For the next two or three minutes about half a dozen of them fanned the flames along the table. Eventually a manager with a jug of water and the fact that all the kerosene had burned up meant that the conflagration died down and went out.

In the meantime, another group of waiters was trying to get the toaster working. It was one of those devices where you put the bread in at one end and it falls out two or three minutes later from the other end nicely brown. Except this machine was only producing warm curly bread. One waiter thought that this was because the conveyor belt was moving too quickly, so he was trying to slow it down using spoons. After a moment or two it stopped working altogether.

So there was much frantic fiddling with the plug and cable. Still nothing. This was probably due to the fact that one of the waiters was sitting on the floor with the two ends of the power cable sticking up from his fist, completely separated from the plug in the socket. The manager motioned to him and he proceeded to shove the cable ends back into the live plug and hold them there. The toaster sprang to life - although it continued only to produced warm curly bread unless the same slice was put through it three or four times.

And we were not charged a penny for this floor show! The breakfast that eventually followed it - some half an hour after we first sat down - was pretty good too, though we avoided the fish curry and French toast.

This is a hotel with huge potential - a great location, lots of rooms, a well appointed pool in a lovely garden area with the Indian Ocean as a constant backdrop. But it requires a management revolution and an influx of high-spending tourists to achieve that potential.

In many ways, it's a tiny parable of Sri Lanka as a whole. I for one am up for investing a bit of time and cash in the country. We just need a million or so more.

Just like a Friday night in Bromley

The Hikkaduwa beach festival - the second since the tsunami - happened while we were staying at the Supercorals. As a result our hotel, which was deserted when we arrived, filled up with two Sri Lankan families and a host of young people from Colombo.

Two particular memories linger about the festivities.

The first was that on the Friday evening, as we were walking through the town on our way to a restaurant, we saw large numbers of heavily armed paramilitary police, some toting Uzi machine pistols, others with AK47s. You have to wonder what kind of trouble they were expecting!

When we saw the chief of police the following morning, he said that there'd been very little trouble, 'just lots of teenagers being naughty,' he observed. 'mainly drunk and disorderly.' It sounded like Bromley on a Friday night.

The second was the behaviour of the young people staying in our hotel. In common with young people the world over, it seems, a good time is equated with heavy drinking. The haul of bottles removed by cleaners of the rooms after the weekend would have kept a medium-sized recycling plant in business for a month. The drink of choice appeared to be vodka with a variety of mixers but there was also a brewery's worth of beer bottles and a fair haul of empty wine bottles.

Linda observed that she felt like she'd woken up in the middle of a Club 18-30 holiday - incessant noise, doors banging all night!

Alcohol is a problem on the island, like it is everywhere. The Government looks forward to the day when liquor along with cigarettes is a thing of the past. But that is a long way off. It isn't only well-healed young people getting tanked up for a weekend of partying; the poor are also prone to drink. Many of the fathers of the kids at the Hanbamtota project had problems with alcohol - a way of numbing the pain of unemployment and crushing poverty.

Often we risk having an idealised picture of the places we visit. Sri Lanka is a needy country because of poverty and natural disaster but it's needs are exacerbated by human sin and greed, fecklessness, poor government and oppressive religion that makes huge demands on the poor but offers precious little grace.

It's why the country needs a strong church that has grasped what it means to be missional communities, living for and sharing the good news about Jesus at all levels of society. It's why I'll continue to pray for my students at LBC, for the pastors I've met and worked with and the believers struggling to embody Kingdom values in their everyday lives. In fact, I'm praying for them exactly what I'm praying for myself and believers in the UK.

An encounter with law enforcement

I'm catching up with stuff and I was reminded yesterday that I hadn't blogged about the last part of our trip to Sri Lanka and especially a couple of episodes that I referred to in passing and promised to elaborate on later.

The first concerns my meeting with the chief of police at Hikkaduwa.

On the Friday we went to Hambantota to visit the Smile school, I left my British mobile phone in my hotel room and it disappeared. Assuming that it wasn't spirited away by aliens, I concluded that it had been stolen. I told the hotel manager as much but he thought it unlikely and wasn't fabulously helpful - though he did allow me to use his phone to ring my operator to report my phone's loss and get it blocked (later he tried to charge me 450 rupees for doing so but waived it when we complained).

For insurance purposes we decided that we would have to go to the police station to report its loss so that we got a crime number to make a claim once we get home.

So we found a tuk tuk driver -Nimal who I blogged about earlier - and went to the relatively newly built, three storey police station on the edge of the town. A man in a smart brown uniform was just getting out of white patrol car with his family and asked what we needed. He turned out to be the chief of police for the area.

He invited us up to his office and showed us to seats in front of his desk. Lifting his jacket, he removed his automatic pistol from his belt and put it on the desk and sat down. It turned out that not only did he speak very good English, but he'd also taken part in exchange trips to police forces in Harrow, Leicester, Cambridge and one or two other places in the UK. Since I come from Leicester and Linda from Harrow, this gave us quite a bit to talk about.

It was the time of the Hikkaduwa beach festival and the police chief lamented the lack of sleep he'd had over the previous 48 hours. 'I don't how I'm supposed to make good decisions when I'm so tired,' he said in between barking orders to various junior officers who came and went from his office.

Turning to the reason for our visit, he asked me to write down what had happened - 'but not in much in detail,' he stressed. I duly complied and in exchange he gave me a signed piece of paper confirming that I had reported the theft of my phone. It was clear that was all the attention its loss was going to get!

Suddenly, he looked down at the gun on his desk and up and me with a hint of embarrassment on his face and then picked the pistol up, apologised for leaving it out in the open and put it in the draw of his filing cabinet. Then he returned to signing the document and handed it to me.

Commiserating with us that we'd suffered such a horrible experience during our holiday, he wished us a pleasant stay and ushered us out of his office - probably keen to get some sleep before the night's festivities demanded his full attention.

Summers are for reading

Finished the wonderful Buechner's Telling the Truth. Get it and read it - especially if you are involved in any kind of ministry.

I have returned to Michael Gorman's rather harder but extremely stimulating new book on Paul's theology.

I am also reading Christopher Bryan's Render to Caesar: Jesus, the Early Church and the Roman superpower which I got half-price in the Oxford University Press summer sale (which is nice!).

It's well written, considerably 'lighter' than Gorman and offers a nuanced interaction with a plethora of studies on Jesus and empire and in particular the work of William Horsley. Mid-way through chapter, I'd say it's pretty good.

I'm also trying to plan the autumn programme and finding myself unable to make anything work but I'll keep prodding away.

Laughing with God

I think when I first read Buechner, I didn't get it. Oh I thought it was good in an earnest, po-faced kind of a way. I think was too young, I came to it at a time when I knew everything and had a system that I was able to slot everything into and neatly file away for future recall.

Well, I'm older now. And I've just read the chapter on the gospel as comedy, sitting the garden in the afternoon sunshine and laughed and laughed - and cried - and thought that for the first time I've seen things about God that I've known to be true in theory but have never felt rumbling in the depths of my oh so serious and sorted soul.

What a joker God is! And how blessed I am that he is. because the biggest joke is that I can join him at his table, share his food and laugh along with him.

There's no point quoting any of the chapter. You need to get this book and consume it, feast on it, relish every morsel of it and find your soul nourished by it like nothing you've experienced for such a long time.

His retelling of parables - especially the prodigal son - is like hearing them for the first time and in a way that makes you realise that they are telling you your life story, including the moment when God accepts and embraces you, welcomes you into his kitchen and shares what he's just cooked for himself.

The meanings of words

I've been reflecting on John 1 for Sunday. I came across this great quote by Eugene Peterson:

'Jesus is the dictionary in which we look up the meaning of words.'
(Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places, p103)

I am thinking about how we are formed by the Word, spoken into existence, transformed from one degree of glory into another by God's creative, powerful Word.

John tells us that this Word became flesh in Jesus of Nazareth, a man who chats with us, sits and eats and drinks at our tables, tells stories, dances at weddings, laughs and cries - and always defines what it is to be human. More than that, the Word became flesh so that we might join the conversation he wants to have with us and be transformed.

So Peterson reminds us that 'Jesus is the dictionary in which we look up the meaning of words. When we look up the glory in Jesus we find - are we ready for this? - obscurity, rejection and humiliation, incomprehension and misapprehension, a sacrificial life and an obedient death: the bright presence of God backlighting what the world despises or ignores.'

It is, of course, what Jesus himself says in john 12: 20-26 (especially 23b-24) when Greeks want to make him a tourist attraction - a perenial temptation the church faces in every generation! It's a powerful reminder of the upside down values of Jesus' kingship and power.

Finding reasons to be a preacher

Thanks for Jim Gordon over at Living Wittily - one of the most consistently thought-provoking and spirit-lifting blogs around - I've started re-reading Frederick Buechner's Telling the Truth: The Gospel as Tragedy, Comedy and Fairy Tale.

I'd forgotten just how good it is. Buechner's prose is sublime. His portrait of Pilate in the first chapter is breath-taking and his reflection of Pilate's question to Jesus - 'what is truth'? - dazzling and unsettling and just right.

Having the sielnce that greeted Pilate's question from the lips of Jesus, Buechner says: 'What is truth? Life is truth, the life of the world, your own life, and the life inside the world you are. The task of the preacher is to hold up life to us; by whatever gifts he or she has of imagination, eloquence, simple candour, to create images of life through which we can somehow see into the wordless truth of our lives. Before the Gospel is good news, it is simply news that that's the way it is, whatever day it is of whatever year.' (p17)

Suddenly I am aware of wanting to be a preacher again. Not a purveyor of finely crafted spiritual homilies but someone who allows the truth to take shape on my lips. Buechner's book is is his Beecher Lectures on preaching delivered at Yale in the mid-70s. And yet they could have been written yesterday, such is their prescience.

Of the preacher, he says, concluding his first chapter, 'So let him use words, but, in addition to using them to explain, expound, exhort, let him use them to evoke, to set us dreaming as well as thinking, to use words as at their most prophetic and truthful, the prophets used them to stir in us memories and longings and intuitions that we starve for without knowing that we starve. Let him use words which do not only try to give answers to the questions that we ask or ought to ask but which help us to hear the questions that we do not have words for asking and to hear the silence that those questions rise out of and the silence that is the answer to those questions.'

Yes please!

Making connections

We had three encounters during our holiday in Hikkaduwa that have set me thinking about what it means to be a missional disciple. These are the stories that I'll reflect on over the coming weeks.

We were on holiday, staying in a hotel that I'll blog about separately, using the pool, going out to restaurants in the evenings, doing a bit of site-seeing during the day when we could drag ourselves away from the pool and our books (I read Tim Winton's Breath - wonderful - and am halfway through Marilynne Robinson's Gilead - completely stunningly brilliant).

In the course of our idling, we met three people and began to forge a relationship with each of them that threw up for me questions about how sharing our lives is a sharing of our faith, since that's what drives the way we live.


The last guy we met is called Nimal. He runs a turtle farm and we went as punters to see what he does. There are lots of turtle farms but his was the nearest - and hence the cheapest to get to by tuk tuk.

As he showed us round, it was clear that we were in the presence of a man of vision and passion and we connected. Our conversation strayed to his family and why he runs the farm, how he's funded and whether we could keep in touch. Having exchanged emails, we left feeling we had done more than visit a tourist attraction.

Our tuk tuk driver that morning was by a strange coincidence also called Nimal. We'd met him the previous day when we'd come out of our hotel needing a trishaw to take us to the police station to report a theft (more on that later). There were lots of tuk tuk drivers vying for trade, Nimal's red trishaw was on the opposite side of the road, facing the wrong way and yet it was eye that I caught.

This quickly turned out to be a good thing since he spoke really good English. Having got us to and from the police station, we agreed to have him come in the morning to take us to a couple of attractions beyond walking distance (a temple and the turtle farm).

Again, we connected as we chatted about our lives. One question we often asked people in Hikkaduwa is whether they were around during the tsunami time and what happened to them. For Nimal the turtle farm owner, it meant the loss of significant parts of his family, though he himself was in Colombo on the fateful day.

For Nimal our tuk tuk driver, it meant anxious hours searing for his wife and her mother who'd been at the market. He says that God spared them - interesting language from a Sri Lankan Buddhist who technically doesn't believe in an interventionist God. We chatted about how he saw things, including his faith - we were standing on the shore at a Buddhist temple that has a prayer house on a tiny island about 100 metres off shore that many people were going to in a small boat.

Our conversation led to an invitation to go back to his house to meet his family and see how he's getting his life back together. Driving his tuk tuk means he's earning money that he's investing in developing his property. Now he has a house that he can rent out - he showed us round it and it's pretty decent, only lacking air conditioning. We'd seriously consider staying there next time we go - it would cost a seventh of the cost of our hotel!


As we drank tea and chatted with his daughter who's also learning English, looked round his rental property, made suggestions about how it could be more attractive to English tourists, I was aware that this was not the kind of transaction I normally have with a cab driver.


Finally, we reconnected with a seamstress called Kandy. We met her last time we were in Hikkaduwa and she was delighted to see us again. She and her husband had been injured in the tsunami and still need treatment on damaged limbs five years on. Their business was washed away and they've been building it back up ever since. We bought a few things - she insisted on giving a couple of items.


Then she invited us for tea and bananas at her home. So we went. She's living on the top floor of a rented house with virtually no furniture and no windows or doors. We chatted about business, the lack of tourists, the trauma of the tsunami time, the difficulty that the poor and ordinary people (as she called them) have faced in the years since rebuilding their lives with very little outside help.


We were invited for dinner - fish curry, rice, vegetables - and continued the conversation, listening to Kandy tell her story and share her concerns. She has a son, who we also met, who works at an outdoor pursuits centre on the lake behind Hikkaduwa, particularly teaching people to kite surf. This is a family struggling to get on, facing all the pressures that families the world over face making ends meet, staying safe, trying to improve their lot and their lifestyle.


Not once with any of these people did we tell them we were Christians, try to share the gospel with them or suggest they go to church. We spent time - all too brief - listening to them tell their stories, offer hospitality, introduce their families and even share a little of their dreams for the future.


So what's missional about all this?

I don't have any answers about this beyond the really obvious observation that you can only share what's on your heart with someone that you have made a genuine connection with. Otherwise you sound like a double glazing salesman or the purveyor of one more bright idea to file alongside all the other information flooding into people's lives. Mission begins with entering another person's world, connecting with what they think and feel and inviting them to step into your world so they have a similar experience.

The question is why we can't make similar connections with our neighbours, people we see more often than those we meet on holiday?

A hand for the drowning

In the midst of our languishing by the pool in Hikkaduwa last week, we had the opportunity to visit a project in Hambantota on the south coast of the island.

It's a pre-school and after school club run by a UK-based organisation that I don't normally have much time for. But this scheme is truly inspiring, fabulously well run and meeting a real need among some of the poorest children in the town.

Hambantota is where the current president hails from and the Chinese are there building a huge new port. Their workers live in a beautifully constructed temporary village with plant lined roads and air conditioning on the edge of the town (at the end of a new road they've also built which will join up with the toll highway under construction - also by the Chinese - that goes from Hambantota to Colombo).

The school serves the needs of a community of poor families who live behind the dunes on the shoreline. Those dunes saved the community from the worst effects of the tsunami; many others in the city, especially those at the Sunday market, weren't so lucky - the devastation was truly apocalyptic.

Fifty or so three to fives gather each day of the week for breakfast, structured play and learning, ending with lunch before going home. For most of them, it's the only really decent food they get. The workers say that when the kids arrive for breakfast on Monday, they are constantly emptying their plates and asking for more.

Having seen the end of the morning programme and helped to serve lunch, we went off to see the area they come from. There is an effort underway to replace their mud and wood houses with brick built ones but it's going off at half-cock. Terraces of houses (6-8 in a line) are being built by local builders who lack the skill and resources to do a decent job. Many of the would-be homes languish half finished because no one has the money to complete them. They are meant to be two-storey so they all have stairways leading to a hole in what is currently the roof, so none of them are water tight. They also lack windows and doors - though they are supposed to be coming.

But the real issue is water. The local authority owns the land the homes are on and they will supply a tap with a water meter for 15000 rupees (that's £78.23 at today's exchange rate). The authority will pay half that cost for each tap, leaving these abjectly poor people to find 7,500 rupees to make up the balance. You might as well ask them to deposit a million dollars in person on the moon!

So there are squabbles over water and people are left with the indignity of washing outside with their neighbours watching.

The authority has also said that no one can have an indoor kitchen. So most cook on open fires outside their wooden shacks. Some have begun to construct wooden lean-tos against their designated brick house to serve as a kitchen - with an open fire - as and when they move in.

The kids are lively, wide-eyed, craving attention. When they arrived at the project in January, they were all under-weight, averaging just 10 kilos, somewhat less than a well-fed three year old should weigh. The project aims to build them up physically as well as providing a grounding in education - maths, Sinhala and English, social skills and friendship. In many ways the project is a mirror of the pepe projects run by BMS in various places.

I came back to my relatively luxurious hotel full of awe and despair. This little project is a tiny boat in a rough sea of need. What made the despair deepen was seeing rich, sassy Sri Lankan young people, down from Colombo for the Hikkaduwa beach festival, drinking, smoking, playing with their mobiles and camcorders: it was hard to believe we were still in the same country.

Touchdown

Back in blighty after 24 hours of travel yesterday. Knackered but in good heart!

I'll catch up with some final Sri Lanka reflections over the next couple of days.

Final day

Final day in Sri Lanka. I've got lots to catch you up with but that will have to wait our my arrival back in the UK.

For now, we're off to the Galle Face Hotel for high tea - very civilised. As I said in an earlier post, my mother used to dance and drink G+ts when she was stationed here during the war. So I go in memory of her.

Then tomorrow our flight is early and gets back to Heathrow late the same day - though we lose five and a half hours along the way, so it'll be a bit of a marathon

Reflections on the state of things

We had a lovely evening last Friday with the principal and his wife. It was interesting and inspiring to hear his testimony and his take on the college and the state of theological education here. He's keen to improve what the college is doing for its students which he believes this in turn will strengthen the Sri Lankan church at a time when it really needs strengthening.

He was sharing that having come to faith in the assemblies of God, a church that he still serves, he has found the spirituality of the churches here generally here to be thin. This particularly came home to him when he spent a year at St John’s College, Nottingham and was introduced to other forms of spirituality and liturgical traditions.

It reminded me of a conversation that I had had with a Swiss guy who studied with me both weeks – a glutton for punishment! He’d been asking me whether I thought it appropriate to introduce western theological ideas that could undermine or unsettle people’s faith in the simple scriptures. I can see his point – up to a point.

But Sri Lanka (like most developing nations) is actually awash with ideas and ‘theologies’ from the western church that are no more appropriate here than they are anywhere. So Hillsongs is where it’s at in terms of worship, theological and spiritual support for the state of Israel is a given (odd in a country that is politically seeking alliances with the gulf states and Iran!), and charismatic ministry and prayer styles derived from South Korea are de rigueur.

So the question is not shall we bring ‘western’ ideas – they are here whether we want them or not. And every month one international ministry or another pitches its tent announcing that it is introducing the next wave we've all got to ride. The question is what kind of thinking will strengthen and build the Sri Lankan church? Answering that is a much more subtle affair.

One of the answers I gave my Swiss friend was that I see a huge need for a church leadership that is able to think, to discern what is right and what is wrong, what will help their church and what won’t. My hope is that in a tiny way what I was teaching about the New Testament might help students to see that there are other biblical ways of approaching these issues that might just help them to reflect on their situations and what the scripture is saying about them.

Just like the UK church, the church here is prone to leap on whatever bandwagon is passing. Undoubtedly some churches are growing. But it's worth asking whether current approaches to worship and mission will make significant inroads into the Buddhist community - the evidence seems to suggest not yet.

Unlike the UK church there seems to be a correlation between theology and the funding of work over here. Support for Israel could be a product of the fact that American fundamentalists spend a lot of dollars keeping things going here. And he who pays the piper picks the tune.

Independence of thought and genuinely contextualised theology and church structures are vital for the Christian community if it's going to make Jesus known in ways that appeal to all sections of Sri Lankan society.

And a really cool thing to finish with: One of my students last week is the coach of the Sri Lankan rugby union team. No, I didn’t know they had one either. Apparently, they play in the Asian Five Nations and everything. He's a South African who played his club rugby at Richmond and in the Irish republic. He’s a really nice guy, taking the course to improve his knowledge. Let’s hope it works - though I'm not sure it'll improve his team's performance on the field!

Mixing with the chic and the fancy

Just got back from shopping at Paradise Road and Odel - these are the two coolest retail places in Colombo. But, my, how they've changed.

I remember going to both in 1999 on my first visit here. Paradise Road sold locally-made arts and crafts, fabrics and candles and smelly things (a bit like the Pier only more authentically Sri Lankan), while Odel sold over-runs of clothes made here for the likes of Gap, M&S, Tommy Hilfiger and others.

Now both stores are brands in their own right. Paradise Road still sells Sri Lankan-made arts and crafts, ceramics, cloth and pictures, but it also has complete kitchen ranges and dinner services in lovely pure white porcelain. It's the kind of place where you'd have your wedding list - and I suspect one or two of the young couples I saw in there this morning were putting one of those together.

Odel has become a mall selling clothes, jewelry, shoes and accessories -many of them at prices that wouldn't be out of place in Harrods. It's busy with chic Sri Lankans and tourists but it's lost something of its character.

I guess both places indicate something of Sri Lanka's development over the past decade. Despite the war, it has been doing OK with garment making for many major brands as well as tourist industry that, judging by the number of new hotels going up in Colombo alone, can't doing that badly.

We'll see what effect the recent granting of an IMF loan will have. Chances are that stringent enforcement of market mechanisms by the IMF will send the cost of basics - like fuel oil, grains, especially rice - through the roof. At the same time the rupee will fall on the open market - assuming the IMF insists that the Government can no longer artificially peg it to the dollar.

The chic in Odel might be OK. The rest of the population could feel quite a pinch.

The difference in Colombo

Back in Colombo. As you drive down from Peredeniya, which is only a couple of kilometers from Kandy, to Colombo, you feel the temperature rising. By the time you hit the Colombo suburbs, it's a good 10 degrees Celsius hotter than up country.

Colombo is also noticeable for three other things: the traffic, security and Chinese road builders.

The Colombo traffic is permanently heavy, as though anyone who has a car just loves to be out in it, sitting in the semi-chaos, sounding their horns. Trishaws, buses, lorries and vans compete with cars and bikes and a new phenomenon - 4x4s: there seem many more of these leviathans on Colombo's roads than even three years ago when I was last here. Maybe it's a sign of rising prosperity for some.

Security is much more noticeable in Colombo than elsewhere in the country. On many street corners heavily armed soldiers stand and watch, various buildings have guards posted, some in sand-bagged constructed machine gun posts. Some roads around government buildings are closed; others have been made one way. Occasionally the checkpoints on the edge of the city pull you over to check your identity - though vehicles with foreigners tend not to be stopped.

The Chinese are here are building all sorts of things. The road coming in from Kandy is being widened by gangs of Chinese workers with sparkling new equipment. This is part of China's investment in the country, which includes a new port near Galle. Again, this is a sign of rising prosperity for some.

Around the Galle Face Hotel, complexes of apartments and hotels, with restaurants and leisure clubs, as well as the ubiquitous shopping malls are going up faster than in the gulf states. The skyline in this part of the city will resemble Dubai in no time at all. The question is: who is all this building for? How many of Colombo's current residences can afford to live in such places? As we sat in an Italian restaurant last night, eating reasonable versions of Italian dishes, all the diners, bar one couple, appeared to be foreign, many eating alone on a Sunday evening, indicating that they were business people staying upstairs, here for meetings and deals.

This country feels that is on the cusp of something. Let's pray that it'll be good for all its people.

A meeting over the tracks

At the end of my second of week of teaching, I'm feeling a little knackered!

We've been at Perandeniya this week. I say we because Linda and Liv joined me on Tuesday which is great. Their train was delayed by two hours - which wasn't!

The week has been generally good but hard. The students on BTh course are not as competent in English as the MDiv students which makes teaching more challenging. Even more of a challenge is grading papers. I have 25 exam papers to mark this afternoon - blogging is a welcome relief!

Today we went to the elephant orphanage at peniwalla which was fabulous. It was our second visit but Liv's not been before. It's great to large numbers of these amazing animals up close.

While waiting for Linda and Liv's train on Tuesday, a man from another delayed train – one that had been shunted into a siding and all-but abandoned there – came across the tracks to ask what was happening. He looked up from the tracks and asked in Sinhala. I apologised for not speaking his language, so he spoke mine. I explained what was going on as far as I understood it – there had been no announcements over the public address system, no word shouted by station staff to the stranded passengers.

We then got talking about Sri Lanka. He was in the hotel business – as far as I could make out, his family owned a hotel – and he was worried about the world economy and the effect of the war on tourism. He kept asking whether I liked his country. It felt as though he thought I might be the key to its economic turnaround, my tourist rupees alone would cause an upturn! It was an interesting conversation. There was something desperate in his tone, as if he wanted to see his country’s fortunes restored but despaired of them having the wherewithal to do it.

This place is full of such chance meetings.

Completing the first stage

My first week of teaching yesterday afternoon. I bade a tearful farewell to all my students and then went off to meet an old friend. The students seemed to appreciate the course. They worked pretty hard and joined in class discussion. All the first assignments were way beyond what I was expecting and indicated wide reading, good thinking and the desire to reflect on how this applied personally and to their ministries.

The old friend I met yesterday runs a micro finance project here that now has 4000 project holders and has contributed seven billion rupees to Sri Lanka's GDP. As he says 'not bad for something that started with 200 rupees and faith'!

He spells faith r-i-s-k and is continually putting himself on the line so that the poor on this island get a shot at living. He's one the most inspiring people I know,

Today I'm off to buy a motor bike for another friend who's current bike is clapped out and unroadworthy. I've never bought a motor bike before, so this should be fun.

Tomorrow, it's off to Kandy. Not sure what the internet access will be like up there, so blogging might become a bit light.

Trouble with the air con has me camping out

Yesterday evening disappeared in a blur, I'm afraid. It was a busy day and I think I was feeling tired. So here we are - Thursday and that's almost over (at least for me!)

Today opened with torrential rain turning travel round Colombo into chaos. So lots of students were late and dripping when they did get here. But one had stopped off to buy me fruit - how sweet is that? people here are like that.

It was the day of the class photo which was a wonderfully shambolic affair with one of the college handy men standing on a chair taking three pictures on each of about ten different types of digital cameras. Not surprisingly, it took an age to get through - prolonged by lots of fooling around and gales of laughter from all round the room - and no one felt like being photographed by the end.

The rain affected the air conditioning in my room which means I can't sleep in it tonight as it's stiflingly hot. So I am camping out in the faculty office where the air con is so fierce I might need to sleep in a coat! Unlikely. It just makes it very much more comfortable.

So, my nightly routine will be a bit different tonight. But it will end as it has most evenings this week with the final few tracks of Leonard Cohen’s wonderfully uplifting live at the O2 album. It has become my lights out music – two prayers, great playing, the Webb sisters and his voice like angel wings brushing against granite filling the darkness with a sublime wonder. You can't ask for more really!

Tomorrow I'll be catching up with an old Sri Lankan friend and seeing his new office which will be great fun. It's also the last day of lectures with this group - though I discovered that one of them, a Swiss guy who's studying over here, is coming to Kandy to do my course next week. Now he is some glutton for punishment! I'll be sorry to see them go - though I have their assignments to look forward to - because they've been a good group, lively, engaging, wanting to talk, full of questions, keen to learn and aching to be useful to God.

One guy - who really struggles with his English and was deeply apologetic about that - works in the East of the island with displaced people, bringing them aid and the gospel. He spends three months at a time literally camping out, with no air con or creature comforts, sharing God's love and what practical support he can with the people worst affected by the war, those who've lost absolutely everything. He's the reason I'm here. If I can encourage him half as much as hearing his story has encouraged me, then that's worth the air fare - and camping out in the faculty office.

Healing wounds

Another full day of teaching. The students were fairly responsive, which is good. Some of the assignments I read last night were very good indeed – much better than I was expecting. It’s always nice to be pleasantly surprised by things!

I visited the health centre where one of my students works and am going back in the morning to lead their devotions at 8:30am.

It's a place where a friend of worked for some time and which we visited three years ago. It continues to be an amazing place, offering primary health care to all kinds of people, some of whom can pay something and some of whom can pay nothing. It has Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, Christians, Tamil and Sinhala people all receiving the same standard of care.

Steve, the director, explained to me that, following the experience of the tsunami, where they went out to people in need, the staff are very keen to do more outreach work, taking medical care to where the people who need it are and not just waiting for them to come to the clinic.

After all, he says, most of the word God is go!

They already run a medical outreach programme in the North East, a spin-off of their tsunami response. There are lots of places where such work is still needed in Sri Lanka.

The recession means that finances are stretched, however. The Sri Lankan rupee is linked to the dollar but most of the clinic's donations come in sterling which has fallen against the dollar. Added to that, Sri Lankan inflation is running at 25%. It all means that a pound doesn’t go anything like as far as it did a couple of years ago.

Sri Lanka is in the throes of agreeing an IMF loan. One of the conditions for that loan will probably be that the rupee is allowed to float free of the dollar. In purely financial terms that probably makes sense. But it will be catastrophic for inflation in the country as the rupee will plummet and prices of imports, especially oil and other essential raw materials will go up. That means bus fares will rise and other basic costs for already hard-pressed people.

Added to that, the recession in the West has cost about 100,000 jobs in the garment industry. Because we are not buying as much from Marks & Spencer, Gap, Top Shop and other high street names who source a lot of clothes from this country, people are losing their jobs. Recessions always bite hardest on the poorest. Tightening our belts – by not buying new trousers or belts – means families here often lose their single wage earner.

And who says they don’t believe in structural sin, in systems that unravel and hurt the least able to cope?

The challenge for the church on this island is growing by the day. But if the students I have in my class are anything to go by, there are lots of people in the churches able to rise to this challenge and make a tangible difference to the real lives of thousands of people here.

The health centre is in the throes of redoing its publicity. Everything it produces is in three languages – Sinhala, Tamil and English. I have noticed that around the college here too – signs in the toilets asking you to leave them clean for the next user, the sign announcing the opening times of the library and other notices are all in three languages.

Sadly this is rare these days in Sri Lanka. Many places have signs in just one language. For instance, many doctors serve either the Tamil or the Sinhala communities and all their signage is in one language only – this despite the two communities living cheek by jowl with one another. In the state hospitals, signs are increasingly in Sinhala and English only.

Is this a symptom of a society coming together after the war or of the continuing division between the two peoples that populate this beautiful place?

And the real work begins

First day of lectures. I was apprehensive but the group was a manageable size – 14 students, a mixture of men and women, a good number of lay people, including two doctors. After introductions we got down to business. I think most of them appreciated what we are doing. Certainly a number joined in the discussion in the afternoon. This is a step up from my group last year.

I was teaching from 9am to 4pm with some breaks (see below). it felt a bit gruelling!

One of my students is a doctor from a medical centre that a friend of mine used to work at and I have discovered that it is literally two doors down the road. This is why the junction near the college seemed vaguely familiar – I have been here before!

It runs from 4pm-7pm offering services mainly to poorer people who can't pay for medical treatment. So I’m going to visit tomorrow afternoon after classes.

The system here is slightly odd. Each class has a monitor appointed who’s job is to help the lecturer. They will get hand outs from the office and distribute them to the class. Mine has decided that I need help remembering when the breaks are due and so has got a bell which he pings loudly, grinning broadly, when I need to stop.

Another thing I’m struggling to remember is that when a Sri Lankan agrees with you, they shake their head from side-to-side. To move the head up and down means disagreement. So when I nod and say ‘yes’ people get confused. Body language is so culture specific!

I went for a walk along the Galle Road after class in search of a supermarket. I was determined to buy my own cornflakes (I’ve run out). About half a mile or so down the busy drag I duly found one and got bread, milk and cornflakes for just over 500 rupees (a bit under £3). I think things are more expensive here than they were. But I walked back in the sunshine (pretty hot) feeling really chuffed that I'd managed to negotiate such a complex task!!

Tonight I have eight assignments to read. Most of the students were completely daunted by what I set them, an assignment I thought was fairly straight-forward. I asked them to write too many words (2,500 – is that unreasonable for a post-grad assignment? Not in England but probably it is when English is your second or third language!) and – apparently – the reading was hard. But the hardest bit was that I asked them to reflect on their own experience and how what they were reading – on the supper in 1 Corinthians 11 – might make them think differently about the way they do meals at their church. Ah well. We’ll see what they make of it.

What a great job for a boy!

Two posts today as it's Sunday (to make up for no posting yesterday!)

I had lunch at the Galle Face Hotel today. This is one of the most civilised experiences to be had on planet earth. The atmosphere is distinctly old colonial, the service is friendly and unassuming – and completely wonderful. The food is great and the view is to die for. 50 feet from our table the rollers crashed on the beach in the bright sunshine.

My mother danced and drank G+ts here during the war. Her memories of it right up to her death were fond and vivid. I always visit when I'm here.

I was hosted by a charming couple and the family matriarch, a dominant force in Sri Lankan Baptist life who is also a vice president of BWA. She is lovely, great company, full of conversation – even waxed lyrical about how amazing Michael Jackson was having watched his memorial service on CNN – but I imagine she is not someone to mess with.

He spoke of his parents coming to dances here at the Galle Face in the 1940s - who knows maybe they met my mum. The couple also had their wedding reception here many years ago.

At the Galle Face they employ a boy (he looked no older than 16), dressed in waiter’s uniform, complete with bow tie and starched shirt, who’s sole job is keep the crows off the guests. To do this, he is armed with a sturdy catapult and he spends his time patrolling the grass by the veranda aiming at crows and occasionally letting off whatever ammunition it is he fires. What a great job for a boy of a certain age! I have to say, he didn’t look too happy – the task is hot and somewhat unrewarding.

This evening I spoke at a seminar at William's church for young couples on family life. I spoke for 40 minutes (William took half that time translating) and then was questioned for an hour and a half. They asked some pretty searching questions. It was a hot and stimulating evening - once again rounded off with great food.

I got back to the college thinking I have a pretty great assignment at the moment (as people keep calling it here). It's a huge privilege to share the lives of these lovely people and have a modest input into their development as disciples. Tomorrow the assignment begins in earnest - 17 MDiv students for a week immersing ourselves in the social history of the New Testament. How cool is that!

Lessons in hospitality and endurance

As I walked by the sea yesterday afternoon, passing rows of broken buildings, a woman hailed me. People often shout hello as you pass by – it’s all the English they know. But this woman called me over asking ‘how are you? Do you live here or visit our country?’ She asked whether I liked Sri Lanka, how long I was staying, what I had come to do, had I been before. She understood all I said in response. She offered me food but I declined because I had to get back to the college (and didn’t want to contract anything, frankly).

But we started talking about tsunami time and I asked whether she’d been in her home when it came. They had run. And lived – all of them, even their small children (one a dot in nothing but her pants was running in and out of what’s left of the back of their home.

She invited me to look round. There wasn’t much to see. Two rooms still had something approaching a roof on it (that's where all the family slept), the rest are open to the elements save for a bit of plastic sheeting tied to the jagged top of the brick work – where the original roof had been torn off in the storm.

I asked why she’s had no assistance from the government. ‘because they been fighting the war, against the tigers. But now we won, help will come. It take long time cause we poor country.’ She is fiercely loyal to her government; their victory is her victory, proud, no doubt, of the banners flying not far away from her home lauding the triumph of the government forces over the terrorist tigers.

But what kind of government keeps it’s loyal people hanging on so long? And how long will she have to wait for the government to finally act on her behalf? And will it insist that she move the other side of the railway line, away from the sea, where her husband ekes out a meagre living as a fisherman?

The 500 rupees I gave her toddler ‘for milk’ (about £2.50) seemed more insult than charity or act of good will. He kid’s face lit up and she beamed a thank you before running off behind a wall where another family member was washing clothes.

If I lived here (grand gesture time…), I think I’d be wanting my church to visit, to assess what could usefully and helpfully be done for these people with them setting the agenda for the kind of assistance they want. I’d like to take William and Gary to visit. I’ve no doubt they’ll tell me that there are hundreds like this family and this little community on the other side of the tracks from relatively prosperous-seeming Dehiwala.

I feel helpless and guilty in the face of such need. I wouldn’t last a night in that house. And having had the sea come and attack me, rip the heart out of my community, tear the roof off my home, how could I lie awake at night and listen to the sound of the waves crashing on the beach 20 feet away from where my head was?

She asked me what I liked about Sri Lanka ‘is it the always smiling people?’ she asked. That’s certainly a big part of it. I left her on the step thanking me for stopping by, hoping I’ll visit again and smiling broadly as I went off along the beach. I’m not sure how or what I feel.

Sweating over discipleship

Spoke at a seminar for Baptist Christians this morning on discipleship. About 60 or so came and listened, joined in with questions and then had lunch together.

It went well. William was translating for me and did an excellent job. I found myself slipping into a rhythm of speaking in sentences without sub-clauses. And while it felt a little stilted, I did feel myself able to focus better and not stray from the point buoyed along by my oratory or flights of fancy.

I do feel sheepish about teaching Sri Lankans about discipleship, however. it seems to me we've a lot to learn from their grasp of the Gospel and commitment to Jesus. I found the question and answer time very challenging and have come away with a lot to process.

What I was reminded of, however, is that there is a lot of nominalism in the church over here. There are still good numbers of people who go to church because it's the thing to do, what their family has always done, where they meet their friends, etc.

Time and again I was asked about how we help, encourage or cajole people to take Jesus more seriously. I said all the obvious things in answer but came away thinking that exactly the same issues beset us in the UK; our churches are awash with Sunday Christians who seemingly want nothing to do with Jesus during the rest of the week.

John was right in his letters to the seven churches in Revelation to stress that apathy was a bigger killer of Christian commitment than persecution. It was then. It is now. And it is no respecter of national boundaries or cultures.

Day 2 in the Sri Lanka house

Just been for a mid-afternoon stroll to the very hot sunshine to the sea. It’s about a quarter of a mile and half a world away. Down the commercial street with shops at the top, a Dutch reformed church midway down, a couple of banks, rows of buses and tuk-tuks (trishaws – the main taxi) and you reach Dehiwala station – a raised concrete platform with a sign in the middle of the railway tracks. There’s a building in the centre of it where the staff sit and people can buy tickets.

There are groups of mainly men and gaggles of young people walking each way on the tracks. Then on the other side of the tracks between the station and breaking rollers is a fishing community, living in the still-broken remnants of homes smashed in the boxing day tsunami of 2004.

Bright blue signs in Sinhalese, Tamil and English with a bold graphic indicate one’s evacuation route should the sea come again with the ferocity it did on that day. That’s all the evidence there is down here of the government having spent any cash; all except a rather oddly-placed, barbed-wire surrounded outpost of the military with a couple of young soldiers passing the time with a group of equally young men on the other side of the wire.

The people live in homes that look as if they’ve gone the distance with Godzilla and King Kong. Tiled areas indicate where there was once a brick house. Some structures have part of the brick work in tack, the rest of the home being made of sheets of plastic, discarded advertising hoardings promoting fashionable menswear.

Families sit on plastic furniture, half in and half out of these structures. Here, a woman sorts laundry that’s hanging between walls made of pallets; there, a man washing through some clothes; in the distance another tends to his boat’s out-board engine; and everywhere, children play, jumping, hiding and giggling.

It’s hard not to feel a furious rage at the indifference of a government that seems able to man endless checkpoints around the city and pay for vast numbers of billboards everywhere lauding it’s victory in the recent war. In a bid to be fair, it is a poor country and it has been ravaged by a cruel and senseless war (aren’t they all? This one more than most, fuelled by the desire to atomise an already tiny living space, along ethnic, cultural and religious lines, pluralism in action, some might say; human sinfulness and the arrogance of power, some might reply; and so the argument goes on).

Surely somewhere the pittance can be found that would give these people decent hovels in which to live, where they can be near the sea that is their livelihood and rail track that takes their catch to markets along the lines. Surely somewhere the will raise these people’s lives above this level of destitution in a country that is showing signs of prosperity in other places can be found.

I was with my friend, William, earlier today. He’s been involved with a similar fishing village down the coast, near his church, since the tsunami (interestingly, Sri Lankans speak of the tsunami time; sentences often contain the phrase ‘in the tsunami time’). The reconstruction, which was still going on last we visited, has now finished. He’s promised to take me, which will be great. He’s done a wonderful job bringing this community together, helping them to rebuild as they wanted to, offering support with local officials, still there after the aid caravan has long since rolled on. Not surprisingly, some of the families have started coming to his church.

Just behind the beach community, on the other side of the railway track, a 122 appartment block is being built. I can see it from my room at the college, a concrete colossus, wrapped in blue plastic sheeting. It boasts parking and a rooftop swimming pool. It's owners will be able to look down on the shattered fishing community atthe end of a busy day.

Touch down

Arrived safely and have been welcomed by folk at the college. Internet access is good and plentiful at the moment. So, here's an account of my trip....

Uneventful departure from a wet heathrow. Good if noisy flight to Doha. Lots of extended middle eastern families running riot in economy. Food OK. Service good. Watched 2001: a space odyssey and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Lion. Both good – seen them before, of course but not for a long time. Did a little reading.

Not much time at Doha because our flight was slightly late. Rushing to get through the door to the bus and the Qatar Airways man asked me to wait. I asked him why and he replied it was because I was flying Business Class to Colombo. Woohoo! I’ve never been upgraded before.

Anyway I couldn’t travel on the coach that was there because it wasn’t a Business Class coach. When that arrived, it had seats rather than making everyone stand.

I’m not sure it’s worth the money, but the service and food and the space, the acres of space after being crammed between large people on the first leg of the journey, was just fabulous.

So I had a glass or two of nicely chilled New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc, served with a selection of salted nuts. Followed by my appetizer of mezee (however you spell it!!) and an entre of chicken and green beans and a desert of custard tart and fresh fruit. The coffee wasn’t very good but the chocolate and extra glass or two of sauvignon blanc were just the ticket.

Then I slept for a couple of hours on a seat that went flat at the touch of a button. Who could ask for more?!

Met at a rainy Colombo airport by Chrishnan, the LBC administrator for a long drive to the college through Colombo’s riotous traffic. A melee of vehicles compete for space on the roads, no one gives way and no one waits and seemingly no one gets killed.

Lots of soldiers with Kalashnikov’s, lots of checkpoints – more than last time. That added to the congestion with trishaws being pulled over and passengers asked for papers, lorries being searched and some buses being stopped, all the passengers told to get off while it was searched and they were questioned. One gets a slight impression of needless oppression.

There are lots of pictures of the PM, smiling and waving, with slogans in Sinhalese that I can’t read no doubt lauding him as a hero, victor in the nation’s 25 year civil war.

And now I’m here at the LBC campus in Dehiwala in a well-appointed, if basic, air-conditioned room with a veranda that has a view of the sea in the distance over the roof tops. The sun is shining and, despite my kip in business class, I’m feeling a bit knackered - but very pleased to be here. There’s just the small detail of a course to teach next week!

Off to Sri Lanka

I'm off to Sri Lanka tomorrow to teach New Testament at the Lanka Bible College in both the Colombo and Kandy campuses and do some ministry among our baptist family over there.

I'm really looking forward to going. I always find the LBC students challenging and hugely encouraging. I know I will hear stories and testimonies of God's goodness and provision that will make my spirit soar as well as stories of hardship and conflict that will bring me to tears. I'm sure I learn so much more about being a follower of Jesus from my students than i teach them.

I'll also be joined by my wife and youngest daughter for the latter stages of the trip - we'll be getting a few days in a hotel in the south and catching up with friends.

So blogging will infrequent for the next month - Internet access will be at best intermittent.

Just how hard is the Christian faith?

I think my anonymous dialogue partner makes a good point about Christianity being for everyone and not just intellectuals in his comment on my recent post on Michael Gorman's new book. I think the challenge for Christian teachers is simple: how do we grasp the depth and breadth, height and length of God's word to us and pass it on so everyone can respond to it.

The Christian faith is both disarmingly simple - as Karl Barth famously said: 'Jesus loves me this I know for the the Bible tells me so' - and mind-stretchingly complex and intricate.

I actually think that what Gorman is saying is fairly straight-forward - he speaks, of course, as a theologian and New Testament scholar and as with all branches of knowledge, this discipline has its own language (jargon, if you like) and ways of expressing ideas that can appear opaque to those unfamiliar with them. Again, it's the job of the teachers in the church to take what is opaque and try to make it clearer - without dumbing down.

The simple idea at the heart of Gorman's book seems to me to be that Jesus calls us to die to self and live to God; he calls us to stop running our lives according to our agenda - the what's-in-it-for-me approach to life - and start listening to what God says and living it out at home and work, in politics and in our relationships with one another.

The New Testament, says Gorman, uses a number of pictures for this of which 'becoming like God/sharing the divine nature' (theosis) is one central one.

The question that immediately arises is 'how does this happen?' There are lots of people who want to lead less self-centred lives that pay attention to the needs of others, especially those who haven't landed on their feet the way we have, but who struggle to do so because the impulse to look after number one is so strong.

Gorman's answer is that God pours himself out for us (that's what kenosis is all about) in Christ, so that we can be empowered through forgiveness and receiving new life (his life through his Spirit being poured into us) to live as Jesus lived (this is what he means by justification - being put right; this is one of Gorman's distinctive and more controversial suggestions).

One central idea he uses - based on Galatians 2 and Romans 6 - is of co-crucifixion, that by faith, we share the cross of Christ so that we might share his resurrection. I will blog on the detail of this later - once I've finished and digested the chapter dealing with these two texts.

Finding grace in Hyde Park

I was at a wonderful, uplifting gathering in Hyde Park yesterday. A racially and culturally mixed group of thousands sang and raised their arms, pointing excitedly at the sky, joining in with the songs they knew, smiling and shouting affirmation when something good or that they agreed with happened. The music was varied, even Amazing Grace on an old church organ.

The event was Neil Young's blistering set at Hard Rock Calling, a two hour energy filled finale to a day that included Fleet Foxes, Seasick Steve, Ben Harper and the Pretenders.

It was great, but it held no lessons for the church except one, I think. And that was not that we need to erect stages in fields and ape the world's greatest music form (rock and roll) at big gatherings. It was a much smaller thought. Simply this: we need to be people who are far more life-affirming than we traditionally are, much more aware of the grace washing around the world in all sorts of unexpected places.

I saw this particularly in the set from Fleet Foxes where the soaring music and tight harmonies are wedded to lyrics that are full of wonder at the world we live in, open to experience, curious and inquiring. When was the last time you experienced that in church?

Thoughts on Michael Jackson

I awoke this morning to the Today programme playing Michael Jackson's Thriller. So I knew he had died. He was taken ill during Newsnight last night and one had the sense that it was serious. Radio 4's flagship news show, normally awash with grey men talking about affairs of state, rang with the sounds of Jackson's back catalogue and a slightly awkward James Naughtie interviewing a range of people from the world of pop.

And how do I feel about all this? And where do I put him in the pop pantheon? I only ask that second question because someone asked me earlier this morning.

I feel that Jackson's death is truly tragic, the end to a life that has been lived in three stages - as Paul Gambaccini said on Today - the child star, the megastar and the freak show. The third part would be swiftly forgotten, he said, leaving only the memory of the electrifying performer at the height of his powers in the trilogy of albums he recorded with Quincy Jones.

I wasn't a fan of Jackson's music - though I sat up into the wee small hours to see the world premier of the Thriller video (all 17 minutes of it) on Channel 4 - but I recognise his talent. Beat It, Billie Jean and Thriller are great pop songs, superbly crafted and produced.

But I do find it hard to disentangle that from the freak show Jackson became - his eccentric behaviour, changing facial appearance, his family life, allegations of abuse - both to him in his childhood and by him at his Neverland ranch.

When he launched his come-back tour - 50 consecutive nights at the O2 - I thought 'who's he trying to kid?' He looked frail, wild-eyed, unable to string sentences together. Surely this waif wasn't going to manage ten nights, let alone 50. It seemed a surreal final fling in an increasingly bizarre drama. And so, tragically, it turned out. His close friend Yuri Geller (that says something about his judgement) seemed to suggest it was the stress of the impending tour that killed him!

I suspect it'll be wall-to-wall Thriller, Billy Jean, some of the Jackson 5 hits over the next few days, pages of obituaries and memories of his 'friends in show business' and then the dust will settle. Like Elvis the myth makers will get to work, the cult of Jackson will arise, wacko will live on in a sub-stratum of the wacko celebrity world he inhabited.

But the music will stand. The Thriller album is probably one of the ten best pop records of all time (for all that I don't really like it) with it's strong tunes, infectious, machine-driven rhythms and crisp, clear vocal track. It has been hugely influential on the development of pop in the 25 years since it was released.

The tragedy is that Jackson never seemed to find the peace and friendship he so obviously craved. In that he is a true icon of celebrity culture.

Next year's Assembly takes shape

Just back from an Assembly Project Team meeting in a very sunny Plymouth.

The excellent news is that next year's Assembly will run from Friday to Monday (that's four days). This has happened because the Assembly organisers have listened to Assembly goers which in these days is a good thing to hear.

Themes are being worked on and there'll be news about that ahead of the summer lay-off.

So, now I have to put a team together to run Prism. Because we want the Assembly to be more deliberative, I am keen to have a smaller crew, so that delegates have more involvement in creating the programme as we travel through the weekend, with lots of space for people to be working together discerning what God is saying to us about our mission where we are and across the world.

I'm also minded to have no sung worship but rather a liturgist, a poet and a solo musician (who don't necessarily have to be three separate people) gathering our thoughts and reflecting back to us where our journey is taking us.

What do people think?

Imitating our extraordinary God

The great thing about the NAM's conference is hearing the stories of ministers finding their feet in the wacky world of the pastorate. There was a good mix of ages this year plus more women than I remember from three years ago when I was last involved and more black ministers too.

The stories are pretty diverse, as you can imagine, with some new ministers being pitched into chronically unhealthy churches and having to try to sort things out, while others are parts of well-functioning teams and are able to put what they've learned into practice in a supportive environment. I have to say that the latter is less common than the former, sadly.

I've been reading Michael Gorman's new book that luxuriates in the title Inhabiting the Cruciform God: Kenosis, Justification and Theosis in Paul's Narrative Soteriology. However, it's a lot more readable than that mouthful would suggest!

So far, I've read the first of the four chunky chapters that form the the kernel of the book. It's on what Gorman describes as Paul's master story, Philippians 2:6-11. And it's wonderful. He argues that this story tells us as much about God as it does about Christ, suggesting that God has always been kenotic and cruciform and that Jesus is just the most perfect and accessible image of that.

He argues that the narrative arc of Philippians 2:6-11 follows the pattern 'although 'x', not 'y' but 'z' where 'x' is Jesus as the form of God; 'y' is the human expectation of what that will mean, how it will play out; and 'z' is how it actually works. So, although Jesus is God he doesn't consider this as something to exploit for his own advantage, but empties himself (using 'empties' in the sense of emptying a liquid from a bottle to a glass).

So, here's a flavour:

'God, we must now say, is essentially kenotic, and indeed essentially cruciform. Kenosis, therefore, does not mean Christ's emptying himself of his divinity (or of anything else), but rather Christ's exercising his divinity, his equality with God.' (p28). In a lengthy footnote, Gorman points out that saying God is cruciform does not mean that God is constrained in his being by a particular form of Roman execution but that because the perfect revelation of the divine kenosis for Paul was in the cross and especially 'in the voluntary rejection of power/ privilege and humble self-giving' (p28 fn 67).

This leads to Paul's understanding of the shape of discipleship and leadership. 'We see, then, that Paul believes that in his decisions not to use or exploit his apostolic power and rights, he does not renounce his apostleship or divest himself of his apostleship but in fact exercises true apostleship because he thereby acts in ways that are in conformity to Christ. That is to say, as an apostle - an ambassador (2 Cor 5:20) of the self-emptying, crucified Lord - Paul acts kenotically and cruciformly.' (p24).

As ministers we are called similarly to lives of kenotic and cruciform discipleship so that, like Paul, we can be models and examples, calling others to follow our lead (Phil 3:12-17). That's a tough call but it's what it means to have the same mind that Jesus had (Phil 2:5). It is only leadership modelling such a lifestyle that will lead to the creation of missional disciples which is essential if we are to embody and communicate the good news of this kenotic and cruciform God to our neighbours and colleagues, families and friends.

Explaining the hiatus

I've been at the Baptist Union Newly Accredited Ministers' Conference this week - hence the lack of blogging. It was pretty good. There's a good crop of new ministers working their way through the system who'll do fruitful things in the years to come.

The input - from Ian Coffey and Karen Smith - was first class and John Rackley proved to be an excellent chaplain.

All-in-all, four days well spent. But because it was busy, it means I haven't been able to do as much as I'd hoped. So I'll have to catch up tomorrow and Saturday.

I'll post some reflections on stuff I've been thinking about later

Lessons from the widow at the temple

One of the stories in this evening's chunk of Mark (12:18-44) is the one about the widow in the temple.

I've always found this a complex and fascinating episode. Traditionally, she's seen simply as a model of self-sacrificing generosity. And that's how Jesus commends her to us. But just a couple of sentences before, he's drawn our attention to the scribes getting rich because 'they devour widows' houses' (12:40), leaving them in the state exemplified by the widow in this scene.

So, here's a picture of this devout woman dropping her last two coins into the treasury to pay for the upkeep of the scribes' power base and relieve the poor of Jerusalem. It's a somewhat more nuanced scene than we often see.

I think it serves both a negative and positive example.

She is an example of a widow being ripped by a system built on religious hucksterism. She's the victim of the worst kind of telly evangelist-style exploitation; the sort that says if you send a dollar, God will bless and heal you; a victim of the devouring of widow's houses that Jesus has just condemned.

But she is also an example of self-sacrifice, a picture of Jesus in giving her all for the good of others - even others who do not deserve it. Jesus is about to offer his body as a sacrifice on behalf of sinners - like the scribes, like the temple authorities who hound him to death, like this widow, like you and me.

We assume the audience of the teaching in v38-44 is primarily the disciples. Jesus is telling his friends not to be like the scribes, motivated by money, using religion as a means of making a fast buck at the expense of the vulnerable. Sadly it's a lesson we need to learn in each generation.

The lesson probably ripples wider to those in any kind of public service. After all, the scribes were among the political elite and rulers in Jerusalem. The widow is a lesson for all who enter politics - that it's about serving not being served.

And it's a lesson for us who are privileged to live in a system where we're allowed a say in who governs in our country. Are we looking for people who live lives of self sacrifice, seeking the welfare of their communities, paying particular attention to the poorest, the most vulnerable, the marginalised and weak?

Judging by the results of our recent round of elections, that doesn't seem to be the case. we still vote only for those who offer us the best deal, promise to protect our standard of living. We who have enough ought to be looking at the poor widows giving everything they have to keep their communities alive, get alongside them and share our fortune

All my ducks in a row

I've spent the morning sorting out my New Testament Theology course for Sri Lanka and then sending papers and articles for distribution to the students. Hopefully, it'll work ok. I have to sort out and send papers for my New Testament Social History course and then I'm all set - apart from jotting a few notes and aide memoires for the lectures themselves.

I am also trying to finish the notes on our church's series on Mark and the next episode of Approaching the Apocalypse. So life's full and challenging, interesting and stimulating. Can't ask for more than that, can you?

God creeping in at the edges

We had an excellent Pentecost Later Service last night. It worked really well despite being deceptively simple in structure.

We started with an explanation and then listened to three songs that in various ways explore what it means to be human in today's world - U2's Magnificent, the Killers Human (my favourite single of recent months) and Brett Dennen's Aint No Reason. People were invited to chat about how they felt about the songs as they played (they had lyric sheets to help them).

For further exploration we had three zones - one with the newspapers, one with notes on the section of Mark's Gospel we'd reached by yesterday and an art zone. In each of these people were invited to explore how we express our humanity in the worlds of work and politics, arts and culture.

The same questions were displayed in each zone - What does it mean to be human? What’s our calling as humans? What’s my calling? What does the Holy Spirit have to do with this? - plus some more specific ones.

Having meandered between zones for half an hour, we came back together for some liturgy and simple illustrative rituals - washing our hands to symbolise the cleansing that comes through the Spirit, drinking water as a symbol of refreshment and being anointed with oil as a sign of being filled with the Spirit to live as the people God calls us to be.

It was all very simple. yet it was a very profound evening. One reason for this was that we'd learned of the death of a regular member of our later service and the format gave space for those particularly affected by the news.

But I think something else was going on which is that when people are given freedom to explore a fairly well focused subject, that's what they do. And while they do that in a variety of ways, God is able to creep in around the edges and surprise us.

So, it was a good, simple and in many ways profound evening where lots of us encountered God in ways that aren't often possible in church.