More salvoes in the election campaign

There's an interesting page in today's Times that says something about the forthcoming election and how Christians will be challenged by it.

At the top of the page the ever-sensible Tom Wright, Bishop of Durham, expresses concern that God is being squeezed out of politics by the way the current government does business - though he does reckon this process started under Mrs Thatcher.

At the foot of the page is a report of a David Cameron interview in the gay magazine Arena where he says that churches have got to accept gay people into their ranks as equals.

For some Christians this could well leave no party worthy of consideration when it comes to casting their vote!

Clearly that's not a sensible position, so there's going to be a need for some really careful thinking to take place between now and 3 May. Deeply held opinions need to be challenged and fresh reflection on what scripture and Christian tradition says about crucial issues will have to take place.

That thinking will undoubtedly be helped by the lecture that Tom Wright is due to deliver at the synod next week and a book co-authored by Nick Spencer and Jonathan Chaplin that's coming out this week.

Resources are one thing, but I also think we need to be serious in prayer for our civic society. There are fault lines that can become fractures; there are deep differences of opinion even within congregations that need to be prayed about and talked out.

So, let the conversations begin - and those that have already started (and there are lots, I know), spill over into the public domain so we can all benefit from them.

Thoughts about sermons

'We no longer seem to expect our ministers to spend hours (literally hours) every week, thinking, reading, praying: so that when the hungry sheep look up they may be fed.... '

So said Davis McCaughey, the first president of Australia's Uniting Church, in 1979.

It's quoted in blog piece lamenting the decline of the denomination over the past thirty years. I don't know enough about church life in Australia to comment on the main argument of the piece (here), but it caught my eye because it seemed to have something important to say about the issue I was thinking about earlier in the week.

Perhaps people in our churches would be better equipped to live and share their faith, if they were better taught by ministers who took greater care and time over preparation for Sunday.

I find myself somewhat conflicted about this. Having been challenged on Sunday evening about how fragile some people feel in the face of attacks on their faith in the wider world, McCaughey's comments suggest a way that ministers can be the key to encouraging muscle growth among members of our congregations.

McCaughey is not a lone voice, of course. Eugene Peterson has always aregued that the primary calling of the minister is to listen and speak, to pray, study scripture and offer spiritual direction through Sunday teaching and one-to-ones.

I'm not sure the sermon can carry such baggage, however, in our media and information saturated world. But I do think churches - and ministers especially - need to think about what they teach and how they teach it (I've said this before), so that individual Christians feel better able to face the challenges of the world they live in.

The question is how will this best happen? Answers on a post card, please.

Building spiritual muscle

We had a really excellent Later Service yesterday evening. There weren't many of us but the conversation was rich and stimulating. I guess the latter was very much the product of the former!

We were continuing our reflections on Nehemiah, looking at chapter 4 and Glenis, having set the scene really well, asked what opposition we feel we face from outside the church.

We got the usual stuff about people being too apathetic to oppose what we're doing providing it doesn't interfere with how they live their lives and the fact that certain elements in our culture, especially the liberal media, are mounting a concerted campaign against belief.

So far, so expected

I don't buy the second argument - though I think the first has a lot of merit - and said so. To which one our people said that it's alright for me because I used to be a journalist, I've studied a lot and I know how to answer people and so I'm not fazed by such attacks. She admitted that she found such attacks quite unsettling.

I was lost for words (momentarily!).

Part of the issue here is the end of Christendom, something we who've read missional church texts know all about. It's about how the Christian faith has been moved from the centre to the margins of our culture - quite rightly in my view; it's where we belong.

But the upshot of this is that all opinions are now equal and therefore are equally fair game. And this is still a relatively new experience for Christians, especially those of a certain age and those who grew up in Christian families. For them it feels personal; their faith is being attacked now in a way that would have been unthinkable 30 to 50 years ago. And that's uncomfortable.

So, it's made me think about how we help people in church to think about their faith.

People were talking last night about such opposition calling for spiritual warfare. And I guess that's true. But it depends on how you understand spiritual warfare. For me the idea is much more about how we live than how we battle unseen spiritual powers. I tried to sum my view up in these lines:

In the early hours
writing these lines
aware of unearthly powers
in unsettling times;
war rages on our TV screens, the front line’s in my soul:
your light and these neon dreams still wrestling for control.
cause I hanker for the good life that work and money brings,
seeking the products as advertised and clinging to these things…

I’m not looking for a way out, Lord,
just some high ground so I can see
this game and its many rich rewards
in the light of all you have for me…

So we overcome evil by doing good, according to Romans 12; and we take thinking captive so that we can demolish arguments, according to 2 Corinthians 10. This means that we know how to think and how that thinking works itself out into the way we live. And the church's 'teaching' programme should be addressing that in a variety of ways.

It's back to that issue I keep returning to in this blog, discipleship. There are two facets to it here: how we can be disciples in today's challenging environment and how does what we do in church help?

Lots to think about there...

Want to help Yemen? Leave the car at home...

I'm still looking for offers to host a Bill Mallonee gig. But I've also been thinking about Yemen and Thomas Friedman in between completing another chapter of the book.

There was a summit on Yemen in London today, featuring the foreign ministers of a number of interested states wringing their hands about what to do for this failing state.

Friedman knows what to do. Go green. His argument brilliantly links global weirding, petro-dictatorships and the war on terror. His argument is that our dependence on oil makes us dependent on the good will of those who sell us the oil and skews our foreign policy as a result.

Indeed he argues that every time we fill our tanks, we donate money to Al Quaida. So if we want to reduce the threat of militant islamism, we need to reduce our dependency on Middle Eastern oil and the only way we can do that is to 'go green', generate our electricity using renewable resources and innovate in the area electric vehicles. This does not just make climate sense. It's also the only sensible anti-terror policy.

Now, you need to read Friedman's argument because there's a ton of statistics and good sense that is missing from my stripped down version of it. And, of course, such a thing couldn't happen overnight. But it has to start or Yemen will just be the latest not the last failing state we have to hold a conference about.

Theologically I reckon his ability to link things that the media and our politicians generally don't link, is very important and suggestive. And is something we should be doing at church rather more than we're prone to.

With that in mind, St Arbuck's this coming Sunday is thinking about 'why vote?' the first of a number of gatherings this year that will have a political focus and feel. come along if you're passing Starbucks in the Market Square in Bromley at 2:30pm on Sunday.

Let's get Bill Mallonee back in the UK

Being a long-time fan of Bill Mallonee and the Vigilantes of Love, I emailed him last week to see whether he had any plans to do some gigs in the UK (I get regular email updates from him detailing his US tour plans and asking if anyone wants him to gig in their town).

I didn't really expect to hear anything but almost by return I got a personal email from Bill saying he'd love to come but has no representation over here; did I think there was any interest in him?

So, here I am asking: who'd like Bill Mallonee in their church, community centre, cafe, living room? I am not a tour promoter but I'd love to see him perform back in the UK. I am going to get in touch with a couple of obvious events organisers.

For those of you unfamiliar with Mallonee, he was voted 65th in a poll of the top 100 songwriters of all time by Paste magazine and was a UK and US critics favourite through the 1990s. Like many really talented song writers, his music is not what the pop charts are full of, so over recent years he's struggled. But he's still writing and performing; and he's still quite brilliant. You can check out a story from Christianity Today here and his own website here.

So, just to repeat the question: is there anyone out there who'd like a Bill Mallonee and Vigilantes of Love gig in their back yard, students union, church hall, pub, living room? Let me know

Making music across the globe

Thanks to Geoff at Wonder and Wondering for this link (which is lovely) that led me to this link because that's what YouTube does! I think this is equally fab (though I should warm you that it does contain Bono and is presented by Starbucks).

It reminds me of the terrific work that Duncan Bridgeman and Jamie Catto have done on their two 1 Giant Leap projects, bringing musicians together across continents to create some really interesting music.

I'll be listening to that today as I write.

working in Limehouse's premier chilled space

I'm sitting in one of my favourite cafes in London - Departure in Limehouse - listening to Soulsavers' Broken, stunning new music that I discovered through Word Magazine, They're a British production and remix duo, Rich Machin and Ian Glover, who work a lot with singer Mark Lanegan. Wonderful downtempo, bluesy, gospelly electronica with rock overtones.

Departure is run by London City Mission and is one of the most intriguing new mission projects I've encountered. It's a great cafe and art space located squarely in the racially mixed community around Limehouse. It offers art classes, space for hire and a great chilled environment for meetings. So, I'll be here for the best part of the day meeting Urban Expression folk and doing some Baptist Assembly planning.

The other new music I've been listening to today is Laura Veirs truly lovely new album, July Flame. Something of a departure (see the link there...?!) for the US former geologist; a much more stripped down sound that showcases her voice and lyrical flair. And it's only a fiver this week from Amazon as a download. How's that for a new release?

booze, young people and votes

Booze became an election issue today. Rival platforms focus on cutting binge drinking in pubs or alcohol promotions in supermarkets.

What is interesting and profoundly dispiriting is that in all the posturing no one is talking about why young people in particular drink the quantities of alcohol they do. Some in the medical profession talk about the need to change the culture of drinking in the UK. But their remedies are just to price young people out of the alcohol market.

As a Street Pastor I see the effects of over-consumption on a Friday night in a relatively sedate South London suburb. Lots of the people we meet are just a bit merry, having a good time; they're with their mates and everyone will get home happy. None seem to lack the resources to buy whatever their evening needs to go well.

But far too many of them, of both sexes, are hammered, tottering, slurring, giggling, shouting, whining, unable to decide where to go or what to do next. When we talk to them, they all tell us (with very few exceptions) what a good night they're having, despite the fact that tomorrow they'll remember none of it, but be left with a sore head and possibly a profound sense of regret at what they might have said or done. The few exceptions tend to ask why they do this - end up drunk sitting in the gutter, throwing up, falling out with their friends - most weeks.

Some, still articulate enough to engage us in real conversation, will tell us that the whole purpose of the evening is to have such a good time that they won't remember it tomorrow. For them the very definition of a good time is to get completely wasted. When did swathes of our young adults sink into such despair that the only entertainment for them is oblivion?

It seems to me that what we do to the price of alcohol - assuming we're not going to put it up to £50 a unit - is utterly irrelevant. What we have is a crisis of young adulthood and none of the posturing of politicians has so far come near to recognising that, let alone addressing it.

Leadership is about seeing what is happening, speaking the truth about it and bringing people together to put things right. I'd vote for that if it was on offer.

Finding the key to the good life

'Give me abundant, clean, reliable and cheap electrons,' says Thomas Friedman, 'and I will give you a world that can continue to grow without triggering unmanageable climate change.'

In a very thorough and accessible survey of the energy options facing the planet, Friedman argues that electricity generation is the key to sustainable development. This means that governments as well as the private sector needs to be putting research funds into innovating in the area of electric transport and electricity generation from renewable resources.

But in a crucial section, he argues that the planet cannot just change its energy supply and carry on as it has before. Conservation must go hand-in-hand with changes in the consumption habits of the world, especially the rich world.

His thinking is influenced by political ethicist Michael Sandel who urges that we need to strengthen (perhaps in come cases develop) a sense of responsibility for and stewardship of the natural world.

The key thing for Friedman is that this cannot be legislated by governments. Arguing that as societies, we need to develop an ethic of conservation. 'Ethics are not laws. They are not imposed by the state. Rather, they are norms, values, belief, habits and attitudes that are embraced voluntarily - that we as a society impose on ourselves. Laws regulate behaviour from the outside in. Ethics regulate behaviour from the inside out. Ethics are something you carry with you wherever you go to guide whatever you do.' (p237)

The trouble is that our good ethics are so often let down by our bad behaviour. This is what Paul is talking about Romans 7 and Titus. We all agree on the basics on how people should live - in Paul's day it was that people embody the cardinal virtues of sobriety, justice and piety, virtues that would lead to the good life in a good society. The issue is where do we get the power to live such virtues?

Let's pray for Haiti

I'm not sure just how stupid you have to be to say that the Haiti earthquake is the result of one of the poorest nations in the world being cursed, but Pat Robertson's managed it. The death toll is the result of the wrath of God on a nation that's done a deal with the devil, he told the couch potatoes glued to his TV show.

And people in our churches wonder why our neighbours think the Christian faith has nothing credible to say to our world!

What's happened in Haiti is a ghastly catastrophe that should have us on our knees praying for those caught up in it and reaching into our pockets to support appeals for cash to bring aid to them.

Beyond that, I'm reminded of a scene in a film about an American evangelist (sorry, I can't remember what it's called) in which John Denver plays an angel who is sent by God with this message for the evangelist: 'God would like you to shut now because you're embarrassing him'.

Of the making of books (revisited)

Well, the good news is that my editor liked the first chapter very much.

And the even better news is that chapter 2 is written and the writing is flowing better than it has for quite sometime. I should get it finished by my revised deadline of mid-February.

Great ways to start Mondays

Jim Gordon's blog on Johnny Cash is worth reading. It reminded me how much I love his version of hurt. You can see it here in all its glory. Jim's right about how moving the end of the video is when Cash closes the piano lid and wistfully caresses it as if lamenting a profound loss.

There's no better way to start a Monday than listening to Andrew Marr (Start the Week has a cracking line up this morning) and Johnny Cash!

Boats that rescue in one way or another

I watched The Boat That Rocked last night. It's Richard Curtis' film about pirate radio and it's great fun - well acted, with some pretty wonderful music. It also, in passing, makes a bold claim for the importance of rock n' roll and the place of the pirates in ensuring we all got to hear it in the 1960s.

I am slightly too young to have had my love of pop and rock formed by the pirates, though I did listen to Luxembourg and Caroline. Curtis' film lovingly recreates the clash between the establishment and the pirates and reminds us just how different the world was in 1966.

Perhaps ministers-in-training should be watching it alongside reading Callum Brown's book on the church in that decade as well as other assessments of how significant the 1960s were in creating the world in which we now live.

And talking about significant boats in history, Friedman reminds us of one in his chapter on biodiversity. As he movingly tells the story of the last breeding pair of giant soft-shelled turtles, the language he uses, because no other language is good enough, is that of Noah and the flood. Indeed the whole chapter is littered with biblical allusions.

Take this as an example: 'we may be the first generation in human history that literally has to act like Noah - to save the last pairs of a wide range of species....Unlike Noah, though, we - our generation and our civilization - are responsible for the flood, and we have responsibility to build the ark...The beginning of wisdom is to understand that it is our challenge and our responsibility to act like Noah - to create arks, not floods.' (p181).

I wonder how many parties in the forthcoming election will be putting up posters of Noah leading the animals into the ark as they promise to get serious about climate change?

The warm glow of achievement

Success!!

Chapter one of The World of the Early Church: A social history is written, a chapter on cities in the Roman empire. And I am quite pleased with it.

Hallelujah! Assuming my editor likes it, the other seven chapters should be a lot easier than that one. If she doesn't like it, I.......

Our calling

I came across this great quote about Karl Barth (I don't usually say that, not being a systematic theologian in any way shape or form) by Robert McAfee Brown: 'For Barth the tasks of exegete and preacher, scholar and proclaimer, teacher and witness, are all combined in one vocation'. (the quoue came courtesy of David Guretzki. Thanks for stopping by and introducing me to your blog. Lots of Barth to check out - I think I'll give it a go and see if I understand any of it!)

I think the quote is very pertinent to the last posting here and the comments it's attracted. Ministers need to see their vocation in these terms. it's not enough to speak, we also need to be scholarly in our engagement with every facet of the world around us

This doesn't mean that we'll be experts at everything. But it does mean that we'll seek to be well-informed, aware of the issues and thoughtful about how the gospel and our theological reflection inform our response to what's going on in and around us.

Global weirding

As I sit and watch people struggle past in the couple of centimetres of snow that have fallen over night, I'm reflecting on Thomas Friedman's description of climate change as 'global weirding'.

In a very good chapter on climate change, in particular the way the science is treated by those who are politically sceptical about the need to change our way of life, Friedman offers an excellent guide to what is happening, what the science is actually saying and how policy makers ought to be reacting to this.

one sentence jumped out and stopped me in my tracks. In a section detailing recent climate events, including hurricane Katrina, Friedman noted: 'Katrina wasn't so much an example of global warming as it was an example of the long-term infrastructure decisions society needs to make in order to survive. The weather is so much more than "do I need an umbrella?" It's also "should I buy a condo on the coast?" and "did we build those levees high enough?"'

These are profoundly theological questions that I'm not sure we're asking in our churches even if we've started asking them in our theological colleges.

For me, this whole issue raises questions about how we are training ministers for mission for today's world. Courses in ministry formation should engage with the likes of Friedman. But such engagement would mean that ministers-in-training need to be engaging with economics as much as Calvin, the principles of scientific enquiry as much as Karl Barth, public policy as much as pastoral theology.

But I'm not sure there's room in the curriculum. More pressingly, I'm not sure there's the will to make it. And the reason for this is that churches still want ministers who will fulfill the traditional roles of preaching and leading worship and reassuring our folk that God's on the case and all will be well in the end. Is it any wonder our churches are still emptying? And, in particular, that thinking people under 35 do not consider the Christian Faith has anything intelligent or effectual to say about the world or to the world as it teeters on the brink of the consequences of global weirding.

writing and planning

Well I finished the leaders' prayer meeting because we'd been promised a foot of snow by 9pm and walked home under cloudless skies on a perfectly dry pavement. Ah well.

I managed half a chapter today, describing city life in Pompeii and Ostia. I should finish it tomorrow. That'll be one down, seven to go. So will meet my 31 January deadline? I reckon I might.

We pondered church planting this evening. Having launched messy church a year ago and seen it establish itself as a good monthly fixture, attracting about 50 regulars, it's time to leave the building.

So, this year's challenge is to consolidate St Arbuck's into a new congregation not just an adjunct of our morning service at Starbucks a couple of hours later. And to see if the allotment group will grow into a congregation or missional community of some kind. And then what?

Aren't new years exciting?

Dreaming simple dreams

Happy New Year, everyone. 2010 has started well for us, catching up with old friends, eating, drinking and making merry. Hope it's the same for all of you.

I thought I'd link my blog to my facebook page (just cause I can, really). It'll mean it ups my profile over there as it should automatically display anything new I post here.

We're thinking about hopes and dreams tomorrow in church and I wanted to keep it simple. So there'll be no unveiling of a great mission strategy born of a dream that our church building will be bursting at the seams; and no step-by-step guide to realising our hopes of being fitter, more beautiful and infinitely more spiritually alert.

Just the simple thought that I hope that this year I'll get to know Jesus better and that as a community of his followers, that's what we will all be hoping to achieve together. And in knowing Jesus and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of sufferings, becoming like him in his death so that we might somehow attain to the resurrection of the dead (Philippians 3:10), we might draw others into our adventure of faith.

It's a simple dream. It was Paul's. And it might just turn the neighbourhood upside down if it fires us as it fired him.

Happy New Year.

Lessons from Paul in divine discontentment

Someone asked me apropos James 2 and 4 about when it was right for Christians to agitate for change when Paul says that we should be content with the way things are. It was part of a broader discussion about those areas where people think James and Paul are at odds on some pretty fundamental issues of the faith.

It's a serious question, though I think one that gets a bit overblown, so I've been pondering it over the past day or so and here's what I think.

When Paul says he was content and had learned to be content (Philippians 4:11), he did not mean that nothing bothered him or that he put up with what ever came his way or that he didn't think there was a lot wrong with the world that the followers of Jesus should be concerned about putting right, but simply that his personal economic circumstances did not determine how he responded to or felt about things.

He was clearly discontented about many things: that Christ had not yet been formed in his Galatian converts (Galatians 4:19); that those who followed Jesus were failing to share what they had with the poor (1 Corinthians 11:17ff; 2 Corinthians 8:1-15); he wanted to see justice done between Philemon and Onesimus, being discontented with the current situation between them; he was concerned that the Thessalonians didn’t succumb to the lure of being clients but worked to have something to share, indicating a level of profound discontentment about current economic relations in the wider society (1 Thessalonians 4:11-12; 2 Thessalonians 3:6-13; see Bruce Winter ‘From secular clients to Christian Benefactors’ in his Seek the Welfare of the City [Eerdmans 1994]).

There were a whole range of things that grieved Paul, made him angry at their injustice, that he was definitely not content about and not prepared to learn to be content about.

Indeed, he was only prepared to learn to be content about his own personal circumstances. At the start of Philippians he spoke about his imprisonment being not what he’d have chosen, but still working out for the advancement of the Kingdom of God. And at the end, in relation to their gift, he spoke about having learned to be content about his own personal economic circumstances – whether he had a lot or a little didn’t make him view the world any differently.

But in all sorts of other areas, he seethed with a divinely-inspired discontent at the way the world was and campaigned and agitated to see it change, working mainly through to creating communities which embodied the values of Jesus’ reign, but not afraid to comment on how those values challenged the prevailing ethos of the world around them. And he would have said a loud and enthusiastic 'amen' to how James urges his readers to live.

Christmas travels

Back from Devon. It only took five hours - though it rained all the way. We had a fabulous break - lots of good food, lovely walks, great conversations, though sadly no surfing....

We bought a painting - it's for Linda's birthday in February really, but we'll probably hang it before then. It's a glorious small study of a blue cloth that changes shade and texture in different lights and from different angles.

Lots of writing to do this week as well as getting ready for Sunday (hopes and dreams for the coming year).

After hearing someone in the church I went to on Christmas morning wish Jesus a happy birthday - almost breaking into song in the process - I was so heartened by Michael Gorman's post that pointed out that Christmas is not Jesus' birthday, but the time we celebrate the incarnation of the Second person of the Trinity. It was a good to read a bit of sensible theology over the festive season.

In the post he says: 'Singing Happy Birthday to Jesus would not seem to engender devotion to the One we are called to follow so fully that it might lead to death—yet the Church remembers Stephen, the first martyr, on December 26, the day after Christmas. Singing Happy Birthday to Jesus reflects an understanding of Jesus as a cute little baby or little boy who could cause no trouble and do no harm. But that is not what Herod thought, so the Church remembers his slaughter of the innocents on December 28. In other words, the shadow of the cross is present in the Scriptural Christmas narrative, and in the Church’s way of framing its celebration, but it is absent from the “Happy Birthday, Jesus” mindset.'

Pretty much everything he's been posting through Advent has been top notch, so check him out here (you'll need to scroll down for the birthday post).

With all the hype that attended Douglas Campbell's big book on Paul, it's as well to remember that Gorman published a much briefer but immensely rich Pauline theology this year. Inhabiting the Cruciform God is one of my books of the year (though I've not quite finished it yet).

Christmas in Kingsbridge

We've decamped to Devon for Christmas, spending it with good friends.

Just back from a wonderful walk across Bantham beach - didn't go in the water today! - and up over the headland before retiring to the Sloop for a coffee. Sheer bliss.

Spent five hours on the M4 yesterday which wasn't so blissful. It was bumper to bumper and we rarely got above 30mph. And then the traffic cleared as soon as we hit the M5 at around 6pm, so our usual 4 hour journey took nearer to nine hours.

But it's worth it for the company and scenery!

Listened to Boo Hewerdine in the car who kept me feeling mellow. I was reminded just how good a songwriter he is.

Happy Christmas everyone.

A good Christmas read

If you're still looking for some Christmas reading, let me recommend Thomas Friedman's new paperback, Hot, Flat & Crowded: Why the world needs a green revolution - and we can renew our global future (Penguin 2010).

Friedman is a New York Times columnist who for the past decade has offered some of the best thinking and commentary on globalisation. His book The Lexus and the Olive Tree is still the best introduction to the new world order that emerged after the fall of the Berlin wall but before the World Trade Centre attacks of 2001. A lot of his analysis still holds true, however.

Friedman points out that this emerging world is bordered by two interesting and memorable dates - 11/9 was when the Berlin Wall came down (that is 9 November 1989); 9/11 was when those infamous attacks happened (that is 11 September 2001).

Now he turns his penetrating gaze on how a globalised world needs to get to grips with climate change. The book came out before the debacle in Copenhagen, so it's message is even more urgent now than it was just a couple of months ago when the paperback came out.

Because a year elapsed between the hardback and paperback versions of the book, a year in which the financial meltdown played out before an open-mouthed electorate, Friedman rewrote the first section. These 60 pages offer some of the best, most prescient analysis of the credit crunch against the backdrop of the increasingly globalised world in which banking and hedge funds are a key lubricant. And he makes intriguing and convincing connections between the three crises that threaten a perfect storm of problems for the world - financial meltdown, population growth and climate change.

So I heartily recommend this narrative full of great anecdotes, interviews, stories and analysis as a welcome distraction from all that theology - as well as a wake up call to Christians to get informed and get active in this area.

Reflecting on our carol service experience

We had a good day of carol services yesterday.

It kicked off with the biggest turn out at Messy Church in its year-long history - and this despite the atrocious conditions under foot. I didn't count but there could well have 70 people at the peak.

Two things stand out. The first is that there were a number of families who've not been before and the second is that a number of families stayed on for the all-age carol service. So we're making new friends and hopefully helping them explore the meaning of the Christian faith for families today.

Then at teatime we had a pretty full and very traditional carols by candlelight. This continues to be an event that attracts a good number of people who don't usually attend church. I lost count of the number of people I shook hands with who joked that they were once a year regulars.

The music was great, the service flowed sweetly with a reasonable number of people involved in one way or another and a number of people commented on how helpful and challenging the sermon was.

But I guess what stands out for me is the thought that this service above anything else we do is worship as entertainment. Now don't me get me wrong. This doesn't mean that the service is not worth doing. Lots of people, church goers and non-church goers alike, find much that is beneficial for them in it. But I wonder if there's a danger that it is just another feature of the traditional Bromley Christmas, up there with the office party, sherry and mince pies with neighbours, last minute shopping, menu planning to suit the tastes of everyone sharing all the meals that will be cooked over the festive season, etc.

My feeling is that the Advent Conspiracy has helped a number of us to think about how we celebrate Christmas this year in terms of what we buy, who we invite to parties and why. But I think we've a way to go.

So - and if this isn't a contradiction - I do feel that carols by candlelight is really good, positive and worthwhile but perhaps it does just allow people to come and do right by God at this one time of the year when the Christian story still resonates with a broad cross-section of the population, so that they don't need to engage with God at any other time of the year.

Maybe this contradiction is at the heart of all the public worship activities we do as a church but it's just thrown into particularly sharp relief at Christmas.

So, a question for next year is whether we can help everyone at our carol services to see the connection between this story and the celebration of it they gladly come at Christmas and their everyday, ordinary, January to November working and domestic lives.

Answers on a post card...

Planning for next year

One thing I tend to do at this time of year is plan the teaching programme for the next session in church. I'm a bit late this year for all sort of reasons, not the least of which has been the trouble I've had writing that has tended to slow everything else down.

In the evenings from January to March we'll be using Nehemiah to ask some questions about what it means to be a missional people.

I have to confess that I find Nehemiah difficult. One reason for this is that I'm fed up of books and conference sessions on leadership telling me that he is the model leader! I'm sure the book that bears his name must have more to tell me than how I exercise leadership - otherwise those who read it who aren't leaders can't be getting a whole lot from it!

The other reason is that he comes across as an insufferable chauvinist, precursor of the Pharisees that Jesus struggled with during his ministry which tends to make the text that bears his name somewhat uncongenial.

However, I've been looking for a handle that will let me into seeing Nehemiah in a fresh way and I think I found one with Stuart Murray Williams' brief comments on this text at the end of his still excellent book on the city and some sermons by Mark Driscoll, who explored Nehemiah as the builder of a city within the city and used the book to help his church in Seattle explore their calling to embody the gospel where they are.

I'm hoping that we'll be able to do the same for us. So we'll be exploring aspects of being a missional people where we are as we read the book together, things like being a people who pray, plan and prepare, who recognise that everyone has a role but not everyone does the same amount of work, who have a passion for economic justice, who seek to create space for those not in our group to explore the meaning of life, who recognise the importance of covenant relationships and constantly retelling the founding stories of the community, and so on.

I think all this - and more - is in Nehemiah, so it'll be interesting to see whether we're able to extract in in such a way that helps to shape our identity as a missional people in our city in the second decade of the third millennium after Christ.

So, this is Christmas...

So far, Christmas has not been quite as frantic as previous years, though our grand daughter arrived on Wednesday afternoon and I've had lots of lovely distractions to deal with since then - and my productivity has plummeted! So, this might just be a state of mind!

In common with a lot of churches, we'll be busy this weekend. We have three carol services on Sunday plus an hour spent on the forecourt serving mulled wine, mince pies, tea and coffee to passers-by (it'll be interesting to see if the current lovely weather has any impact on the numbers)

We're also going to Starbucks on Monday evening to sing carols and other Christmas favourites at six to bring a little cheer to last-minute, late evening shoppers.

I've been enjoying more over-looked music - Florence and the Machine and Paloma Faith. Both their records are very listenable. And I've taken delivery of Alan Roxburgh's new book Introducing the Missional Church which I shall take away on my Christmas break to Devon. It looks pretty good.

Moments of musical wonder

Geoff over at wonder and wondering has tagged me with a music meme. The point, he says, is to write about moments when music just made you stand still in wonder, but not to write about your all-time-favourite music.

This is really difficult. I can think of tunes that make the hairs on the back of my neck stand up every time I hear them - Miles Davis' So What, Santana's Every Step of the Way, Vaughan Williams' Lark Ascending

I remember first hearing Jimi Hendrix's take on All Along the Watchtower (which I already knew from Dylan's John Wesley Harding album). I was learning to pay the guitar at the time so I must have been about 15/16 and I was speechless with wonder at the sound he drew out of a Telecaster. The falling chords in the instrumental section took my breath away.

I remember seeing and hearing the Smiths on Top of the Pops performing This Charming Man, Morrissey with Gladioli in his back pocket and wearing a hearing aid (it was the days before foldback was played through headsets). I was captivated. He was a thing of wonder! But the song reached in and caressed some deep part of my soul. I was married by then but listening, I felt like the awkward teenager I had been and yet I felt I was OK to have been it because here was this guy singing my feelings on top of the pops.

For me it has always been the combination of words and music that creates wonder. yes, great guitar playing will always send a tingle down my spine. But it's the way a lyric rising and falls within a sequence of chords that causes me to stop and wonder.

Very early on Leonard Cohen did it in the Stranger song. Over the simple picked acoustic, Cohen's mellifluous vocal sang:

And then sweeping up the jokers that he left behind
you find he did not leave you very much not even laughter
Like any dealer he was watching for the card
that is so high and wild
he'll never need to deal another
He was just some Joseph looking for a manger
He was just some Joseph looking for a manger.

and the killer line

O you've seen that man before
his golden arm dispatching cards
but now it's rusted from the elbow to the finger

Joni Mitchell has the same effect on so many of the songs from her classic 70s period (Court and Spark to Don Juan's restless Daughter). The way her vocal rises through the uncertain love song, the same situation to the lines

Still I send up my prayer
wondering where it had to go
with heaven full of astronauts
and the Lord on death row
while the millions of his lost and lonely ones
call out and clamour to be found
caught in their struggle for higher positions
and their search for love that sticks around

I'm sent into all kinds of wonder every time I hear that tune.

I could go on. I guess the most recent music that has done this for me is Elbow. Each of their four albums have been little wonders. But One Day like This off Seldom Seen Kid still makes me stop still with a hush over my spirit. The simple vocal over the rising orchestra and choir

Well anyway, it's looking like a beautiful day,
so throw those curtains wide
one day like this a year
would see me right.

On the live from Abbey Road DVD where Guy Garvey and the gang are performing this with the BBC Concert Orchestra and the choir Chantage, there's a woman in the choir who is so utterly transported by what she's singing that she looks like I feel every time I hear it. It's a moment of sheer bliss and wonder when the song reaches its climax.

Not sure if this is what you wanted, Geoff....

Seeing the end of the apocalypse

I've just finished the notes for our final session on the apocalypse. It's been great fun doing this even though I've felt at times that I've drowning in john's imagery.

But one thing I have come away more than ever firmly convinced of is that John's letter to these scattered urban communities across the western end of Asia minor is one of the most potent missional texts in the New Testament.

We get so caught up in the imagery, convinced that John is writing to confirm our particular system of theology and narrow conception of the New Jerusalem as a life raft for people like me, that we miss the central unveiling of God's purpose: that through his people the nations of the world will be brought into God's Kingdom and bring their glory and wealth into his city.

This is the end (that is goal) of John's apocalypse and if that's not missional, I'm not sure what is.

Really good TV

Just watched The Secret Life of Cranes on More 4. A film about the people who sit above our cities in tower cranes, who shift heavy materials on building sites; about what they see and how they feel about it.

It was a stunning 40 minutes of visual treats accompanied by quirky observation. If you didn't see it, check it out on 4OD.

Oh, and though the song didn't appear in the film, it was apparently inspired by the Elbow Song The Loneliness of the Tower Crane Driver, but showed such guys as anything but lonely - though they spend long days alone. They were all surprisingly articulate, at times almost poetic.

My phone keeps time perfectly

Well, it seems that Nokia have delivered me an early Christmas present by giving me a software upgrade for my lovely E63 which means that I don't need to keep correcting the date.

Up until last Friday, my phone skipped two days every day which meant that everyday I had to reset the date which was a little tiresome. Now I don't have to, which is lovely. So thank you Nokia and 3.

Yet another late entry

Another late entry into the festive ten - which now has thirteen entrants! - is the wonderful Animal Collective.

I blogged about Merriweather Post Pavilion when I bought it but that was back in the early Spring and as ever with an album bought early in the year, it gets displaced from the playlist by subsequent purchases.

Flicking through my iPod this morning, I alighted upon it and remembered how good it was. Quirky pop, propelled on waves of sound, it's weird and lovely. And I'm sorry I forgot about when compiling my original list.

Conspiring to make Advent meaningful

We're two weeks into the Advent Conspiracy and it's beginning to raise some profound issues for people - which was the intention. As ever when issues are raised, there's a danger that we get side-tracked into questions that have no simple answers, leading to the temptation is to say that there's nothing to be done.

So, for example, when I raised the question last week that how we spend our money shows where our hearts are, that the truth of our worship is seen in our till receipts, I got a number of questions asking about what I felt this meant for the nature of advanced industrial capitalism. Fascinating though such conversations would inevitably be, they can be a way of avoiding the more direct question of what we'll actually spend in the run up to Christmas.

Last night we pursued this topic looking at what Paul says to the Corinthians about the use of any surplus they have. 2 Corinthians 8:1-15 is the beginning of Paul's appeal to the church to join in his collection for the saints in Jerusalem, suffering acutely from the effects of famine and recession.

The principle that Paul works up to is equality, used twice in v14. It seems that Paul here states a key principle of how economic relationships should be organised among God's people. Justin Meggitt argues that this verse is one a key one in understanding the mutualism that was a hallmark of early Christian thinking about the use of money.

So what does it have to do with Christmas? simply this. Paul doesn't come out with the principle immediately. Instead he talks about the grace of God. We will never grasp how God expects us to use money until we are seized and overwhelmed by God's grace. This is why he talks about the experience of the Macedonians - those believers in Thessalonica and Philippi - being gripped by God's grace in such a way that they wanted to ensure that their surplus was used to bring grace to others.

It's not only the Macedonians who are an example here. The Messiah, Jesus himself, is too. He operated out of a grace that meant that though he was rich, he chose to become poor in order that we might be enriched (v9). However we understand this key Christmas text in terms of salvation and forgiveness, new life and rescue, it's context demands that we see it in economic terms as well. Jesus is another example of mutualism in operation. Perhaps the Macedonians had grasped this through what Paul wrote to them in Philippians 2:5-11, 3:7-16.

And so grace should be directing our planning in two areas. The first is purchasing. What do we buy? How do we spend to show our love for friends and family and our commitment to justice and equality across the world? And what's grace got to do with it? And the second is partying. Who do we celebrate with at Christmas? The temptation is to spend money celebrating with friends and family. But the first Christmas was full of celebration with strangers, people invited to share the joy of the birth of Jesus who were unknown to his immediate family.

When I'd preached this at our earlier service yesterday afternoon, I had a conversation with a woman who hates Christmas because she doesn't have anyone to celebrate with and often spends it on her own. Indeed sometimes she prefers that because it's not enough to just invite people to share with us, we also have to think about how we plan our celebration. This woman said that she'd been invited to join a family at Christmas and she felt like a gooseberry, not knowing the in-jokes or family history that dominated the conversation.

There's no easy answer to any of this. I guess a starting point is that we need to pray for an overwhelming experience of grace that will help us to think practically about we use our disposable income to show the reality of Christmas.

Laughing with God

There's a lovely Regina Spektor video here.

You could also check out her charming, witty and thought-provoking song Laughing With

No one laughs at God in a hospital
No one laughs at God in a war
No one's laughing at God
when they're starving or freezing or so very poor

No one laughs at God when the doctor calls after some routine tests
No one's laughing at God when it's gotten real late
and their kid's not back from that party yet

No one laughs at God when their airplane starts to uncontrollably shake
No one's laughing at God when they see the one they love hand in hand with someone else and they hope that they're mistaken
No one laughs at God when the cops knock on their door and they say "We've got some bad new, sir,"
No one's laughing at God when there's a famine, fire or flood

But God can be funny
At a cocktail party while listening to a good God-themed joke
Or when the crazies say he hates us and they get so red in the head
you think that they're about to choke

God can be funny
When told he'll give you money if you just pray the right way
And when presented like a genie
Who does magic like Houdini
Or grants wishes like Jiminy Cricket and Santa Claus

God can be so hilarious

No one laughs at God in a hospital
No one laughs at God in a war
No one's laughing at God when they've lost all they got
and they don't know what for

No one laughs at God on the day they realize that the last sight they'll ever see is a pair of hateful eyes
No one's laughing at God when they're saying their goodbyes

But God can be funny ...

No one's laughing at God
No one's laughing at God
No one's laughing at God
We're all laughing with God

Lots to ponder there - especially the last line...

Late entries in the festive ten

Doesn't this always happen? Just as you've decided on your festive ten along come two releases that compete for top slot.

the first I was expecting. it's the five track EP by the wonderful Smoke Fairies - two girls from Sussex whose English folk sound is filtered through Nashville and the Mississippi Delta - Frozen Heart. Just five tracks (download only as far as I can tell) but each one beautifully played with shimmering vocals. Well worth checking out at less that £3.50.

The other came via the Word's best music of the decade free CD. It's the Decemberists' The Hazards of Love. Shock horror, it's a concept album or at least a suite of songs about a love affair with lots of finely honed musing on the nature of love. The band boasts one of the best rhythm sections I've heard in a good while - languid bass (both upright and electric) with inventive brushed and sticked percussion that keeps the time signatures beautifully fluid.

Song writer, Colin Meloy, is full of pastoral lyricism and wonderful tunes. With vocals shared by him and - I assume - keyboardist Jenny Conlee, this is a sweet confection indeed, if an album boasting a storming murder ballad (The Rake's Song) and such foreboding about the doom as well as the ecstasy of love, can be called a confection. Available everywhere for a song! Check it out.

My festive ten

This is, of course, misnamed. It’s not a collection of my favourite Christmas songs but the ten best listens of the year, released this year.

That last criterion has left me a bit short of material this year because I’ve not actually bought as many CDs as in previous years and some of them are not 2009 vintage.

One of the best purchases of the year is Lamb’s Best Kept Secrets: the best of Lamb 1996-2204. But it’s four years old so doesn’t count. It's British drum n' bass at its best. i can't understand why they are not huge.

I also don’t think I can count the 2009 remix of King Crimson’s In the Court of the Crimson King. I only bought it because I haven’t got the album on CD in any of its remixes, though I confess I cannot tell the difference between the latest twiddle of the knobs and one done in 2004 that accompanies the CD I bought. It remains seminal and wonderful, however.

But there is a live album in my selection, recorded in London in 2008 and containing material stretching back to the mid-60s. But it only came out this year.

So here they are in alphabetical order (with a little note on why I love them)

Athlete Black Swan. This album is so much better than the critics said it was. It contains a couple of Joel Pott’s best songs to date – namely, Black Sawn Song and Rubik’s Cube – and is altogether lovely.

Leonard Cohen Live in London. This is a recording of his storming gig at the O2 last year which I wish I’d been at. It is simply one of the most beautiful and moving things I’ve ever listened to. I went to sleep with it filling my ears when I was on my own in Sri Lanka this summer. Every song is brilliant. The playing is tight and inventive. It demonstrates Cohen to be not only a survivor but one of the top song writers of his generation.

Editors In this Light and on This Evening. Again, an album a bit savaged by the critics. But I reckon it’s their best to date. It’s full of angular synthesisers. At times you get the impression it was precision engineered on a lathe. But the lyrical content is full of elliptical emotion. The stand out tracks are Bricks and Mortar, the Boxer and the visceral Eat Raw Meat=Blood Drool, but there isn’t a duff song in the collection

Fever Ray. I discovered this self-titled debut via a free download of a live version of most of it via the Guardian (so, thanks for that…). Fever Ray is Karin Dreijer Andersson, one half of Swedish band, the Knife. With lines like ‘when I grow up/I want to be a forrester/run through the moss in high heels’ and ‘accompany me by the kitchen sink/we talk about love, we talk about dishwasher tablets, illness/and we dream about heaven’ what’s not to like? It’s set to a wash of rubbery percussion and growling electronica and is as great in the car as it is on the iPod.

PJ Harvey & John Parish A Woman A Man Walked by. Polly Jean is incapable of producing a dull track and with her long time on/off collaborator, Parish, she serves up a collection of reflections on love and life that are by turns gossamer light and gut-wrenchingly heavy. It’s not her best work, but it still knocks most other artists’ output into a cocked hat.

Imogen Heap Eclipse. Great tunes, interesting lyrics, neat arrangements. Like a number of others in the list, it’s full of washy synths and layered vocals. There’s a depth to the song writing lacking from some of her contemporaries. It’s a delightful confection.

Jars of Clay The Long Fall back to Earth. Liquid, on their eponymous debut album, remains one of my favourite songs. But some of their output since has been a tad bland. Not this, however. Coming hard on the heels of the return to form Good Monsters, this album is even better. Great songs, great playing and its lyrically more inventive and poignant than anything else they’ve done. Stand out tracks are Weapons, Headphones and Hero. Christian music as it should be.

Moby Wait for me. What’s not to like – Moby’s back in his bedroom, playing pretty much anything and everything, inviting a few friends to do guest vocals? It’s his best collection since Everything is Wrong in my opinion. Pale Horses, Study War, Walk with Me and Hope is Gone are the stand-out tracks on an album of shimmery, laid-back loveliness.

Timariwen Imidiwan: Companions. Wafting in from the desert, the Taureg tribesmen’s third album is their strongest and catchiest to date. Driven along by the guitar and guttural vocals of Ibrahim Ag Alhabib, who writes everything, this is probably like nothing you’ve ever heard before. And don’t worry that you won’t understand a word of it, just dance along.

U2 No line on the Horizon. Yeah, I know it’s a bit predictable and I know we all love to hate Bono. But I reckon that this is the Irish fab four’s best album to date - better even than Achtung Baby. Full of inventiveness and instrumental dexterity (as you’d expect), it’s also got some great songs on it. Moment of Surrender, White as Snow and Cedars of Lebanon are the stand outs for me. But I love it all.

If I had to pick a best album of 2009 from this lot, I’d be hard pressed to choose between Leonard Cohen and Fever Ray but would probably tip my hat to the former just because of the delight he’s brought to my life for 40 years.

It’s great that one of you has already made suggestions of other tracks and albums. Please feel free to comment and tell me what you’re favourite listens have been this year – I still have a Christmas list to compile!

Starting the Advent adventure of discovery

As it's Advent, the start of the Church's year, I've decided to modify the look of my blog. I haven't done it for ages. I thought this template was the prettiest.

Advent is a lovely season, a time of reflection as we await the coming of Jesus. Of course, it's a season that's been cheapened by the clamour to spend and over-consume. But it's possible to be aware of the presence of God even in the thick of the high street mob chasing pre-Christmas bargains.

He's there in the echo of the carol drifting from a shop, the wide-eyed wonder of a child pointing at the lights in the windows, the care taken to buy a loved one that one perfect gift.

This year we've joined the Advent Conspiracy, a movement that originates in the US that invites us to think about the meaning of Christmas and make how we spend, give and celebrate a function of our worship.

We kicked it off in church yesterday and I think it went down pretty well. Lots of people agreed but were left asking practical questions about how this might alter how we celebrate Christmas to bring it more into line with the values of Jesus. hopefully, we'll tease out some answers to those question in the coming couple of weeks.

I shall be using Maggi Dawn's Beginnings and Endings as my advent readings this year.

And over the next week, i shall be compiling my festive top ten of essential listening from this year's output of CDs. It's shaping up nicely.

The core fact of our faith

Some good responses to the last post - check out the comments. I agree with a lot of what's there.

I guess I'd say one of the facts that convinces me to take the message of Jesus seriously is this one: the existence across the Roman empire by the end of the first century of small communities of people who believed that Jesus was exclusively the way to experience God.

This is a hard, uncontested fact that demands an explanation for the following reasons

There were lots of cults and religions, philosophies and ways of understanding life in the Roman world. By and large, it was a tolerant culture. providing you bowed the head to the cult of the emperor two or three times a year, you could believe pretty much whatever you liked. And the social expectation was that you'd honour the local gods, the deities of whatever trade you pursued and anything else you chose to.

The amazing thing was that the followers of Jesus were prepared to drop every other faith and worship Jesus exclusively. Only the Jews were similar - but they were a special case because for the most part they were an ethnic group and therefore born that way. The gentile followers of Jesus chose to believe what they did.

And the reason why these early followers of Jesus were prepared to drop all other allegiances - sometimes at great cost to themselves - was because they believed that not only had Jesus lived and died but he had also risen from the dead. More than that, he was alive now and able to bring each believer an experience of God the like of which they'd never had before.

And these people were prepared to die for what they believed - and by the early decades of the second century, this was a relatively common occurrence.

How did a tiny, rural Jewish pressure group, whose leader was executed by the Romans for subverting the state, gain a gentile following in many major cities across the empire? How did it persuade sophisticated gentile people in Corinth and Ephesus, Antioch and even Rome itself, that it held the key to the meaning of life, a key worth surrendering one's life to hang onto?

Because of the resurrection. On the first Easter, the tomb where Jesus had been laid was empty; his disciples saw him, ate with him, listened to him and realised that he was the incarnation of God.

That's the only plausible explanation for the presence of the church in the second quarter of the first century - barely a generation after Jesus' death. And if the resurrection happened, then everything the New Testament says about Jesus is true and worth trusting one's life to.

Justifying mission - as if that's possible!

My anonymous conversation partner asks a range of salient questions about why the church should have a high street presence that go way beyond the mechanics, so I thought they deserved a response of their own.

I guess my starting point is that Jesus is the person who gives my life meaning, purpose depth and a sense of direction. And that Jesus urges me to share what I've found with other people.

Now I know that the church as we've inherited it is not a great vehicle for commending the message of Jesus to a sceptical world - hence my desire (expressed lots of times through this blog) to find other models of community and outreach. In this I am part of a big conversation with lots of other followers of Jesus.

So, when I say that the aim of being on the high street is to engage people in dialogue about Jesus with a view to introducing them to his way of living, I do not envisage many of them turning up at my church (or any other for that matter). Rather I envisage new styles of gathering growing out of those encounters, meeting there, in people's homes, in pubs, clubs or restaurants, being small and always involving the consuming of food and drink - much as Jesus did, in fact.

I agree that Christians have a chequered history. But I would suggest a visit to Sri Lanka and conversations with Christians who've been burned out of their homes and seen their land and churches stolen from under their noses by Buddhist monks before succumbing to the myth that Buddhism never did anyone any harm!

I am not going to give a point-by-point defence of the church, however, because everyone can tell stories of bad encounters, of people being badly treated and casually written off by church-goers in ways that are inexcusable. And it's happened in my church despite my best endeavours to prevent it and I'm deeply saddened by it.

But I would say that none of this - painful though it's been to me and I've no doubt to others - stops me from believing that Jesus remains the most important person who's ever lived, the only absolutely true and faithful representation of God on earth and the one whose message can and does genuinely bring life, hope and joy to millions of people around the world.

I believe the gospel to be the key to unlocking the good life of justice and equality that the world is crying out for and so I want that message to have a clear high street presence where it can shine in the neon darkness. I believe it to be a message of substance that needs to be sounded out amidst the clamour of the consumerist god which is leading our culture well and truly up the garden path to disillusionment, debt and despair.

As to whether the Christian message is sustainable over the long haul, I'd say 'yes'. It's sustained me for 35 years and a colleague I was talking to for 50 years this coming Sunday. And I could line up a room full of other witnesses who'd say the same. But, of course, it's not a question that can be answered at the start of walking with Jesus because he invites us to come and see if it's true. It's an adventure of faith we take with him and in company with others who support and pray with and for us.

It's that that I want to see on our high streets so people at least get a chance to see Jesus clearly and decide for themselves whether he might be offering the rich life they're hankering for.

Sorry if this sounds like a sermon - I am a preacher, after all...!

Connecting to create social capital

I guess the danger of suggesting a high street presence is that I lay myself open to a whole load of good retail analogies - the church is like Woolies in a lot of people's eyes; we cannot compete with big chain book sellers, etc... I think all those are legitimate points. I agree the church is a very tired brand indeed with no commercial future whatsoever.

So, I want to suggest two things about my thinking briefly that might round out what I said in my previous post and point to the thinking that underlies it.

The first is that I want to be a missional presence on the high street. My interest is in making Jesus known to people who don't know him. Those people are less and less likely to darken the doors of our church buildings. And having helped people encounter Jesus to see what kind of groups emerge that help people to be followers of Jesus. I do not think the inherited model of church has much of a future, so new ways of bringing disicples together are urgently needed.

The second is that I am also interested in generating social capital. In the midst of our retail wastelands there is precious little connection being made between people. I believe the church has a key role to play here - meaning 'church' as a community of people coming together because of Jesus rather than an institution that lays on services (precisely what Alan Hirsch talks about in his book The Forgotten Ways).

There is lots of analysis about the reasons for the sense of angst in our society. Both Brown and Cameron have recently laid out their stalls for making our neighbourhoods better places for everyone who lives in them. They don't really add up. Endless think tanks report on broken Britain or versions of it which create vast amounts of column inches in the papers but do little for the growing numbers of lonely and disconnected people in our neighbourhoods.

I genuinely think the gospel has something essential to contribute to the creation of social capital. I saw it in the 15 years I lived and worked in Peckham; I've seen it elsewhere. The kind of community that coalesces around the gospel generates social capital, helps neighbours connect with one another (whether they connect with Jesus or not).

So my idea for a high street presence is about more than retailing. It's about creating spaces where people can hang out, make friends, connect with other human beings, begin to work through issues, etc.

In many ways this is what church buildings did in previous generations but will no longer do precisely because decreasing amounts of people have confidence in the institution of the church to deliver anything they are looking for. What we need to discover are ways of earthing the gospel - which I still believe is the key to helping people get their lives together and satisfy the deep longings of the human heart - in fresh ways that don't carry all the old baggage.

This is a work in progress, so please comment and move the conversation on...

So, what kind of High Street presence?

Well, my post on booksellers has gone Stateside (you can see where here) - which is a first for me! More than that, it's provoked the 'explain what you have in mind' question. So, here's a very unrefined first stab to get the conversation going...

It seems to me that if there are lots of people on our high streets - and judging by my shopping trip today, there are, despite the recession - then we need to create spaces where we can engage with them without taking them off those high streets and into an alien space, seemingly miles away.

So we need a retail space that is open, inviting, familiar and welcoming. I think the space needs to do coffee and snacks. The food needs to be fair trade, creatively done and competitively priced. We're not talking local church cake stall here.

We need a good range of Christian and other literature, including magazines - and space for people to browse, sit and read. Think Borders.

I'd like to see a gallery space downstairs with art being exhibited by local artists. I spoke to a guy last night while I was Street Pastoring who said there was a chronic shortage of space for artists to exhibit in across South London.

There needs to be free wi-fi and a number of spare laptops for those without machines to use. Wi-fi access could be granted to anyone who buys a beverage or food.

I'd also like to see a group of people on hand to assist those who come in to ensure they get what they need. The Apple Shops are good at this. People in different coloured tee shirts making sure that visitors have product explained to them, etc. One of the things that could be offered is a book ordering and advice service with a guarantee that we'll get anything in print within a week - unless it has to come from overseas - and we'll not restrict ourselves to Christian stock.

And then we need groups to be using the space, people exploring the Christian faith in various ways that are open and accessible to anyone who comes in. Perhaps an artist explaining her work, groups talking through local issues or world news, an alpha or Essence course, Christianity Explored - whatever local churches wanted to organise. The idea is that such groups would happen in space that lots of people who don't go to church would feel more comfortable in.

And we'd need regular cafe church-style happenings, lasting thirty minutes or so which anyone in the store at the time was invited to join in with.

Someone made a comment about Wesley Owen stores not being the most riveting places on the High Street. point taken. This space needs to be quirky, interesting, creative, well-designed and genuinely welcoming to all-comers. This might mean very carefully vetting which local church members you allow in!!

Anyway, this is off-the-top of my head, based on a wish and some experience of places like the Departure Cafe in Limehouse and a cafe I went to once went to in Deptford that had good food and an art space for a while.

It would require a deal of investment from people willing to see it as mission rather than a pure profit generator. And it would need a pool of committed, competent and trained volunteers from local churches, as well as people with experience in retailing and hospitality to come on board.

It's a tall order to do it well. But God's mission is worth stretching for, isn't it?

Nostalgia isn't the source of missional thinking

I'm preparing a sermon for Sunday on living in the now which is the final shout in our What's God got to do with it series. I want to reflect on a couple of things - our anniversary-besotted culture (so prevalent that Radio 4 aired a documentary on the subject a couple of weeks ago) and the church's tendency to indulge in nostalgia, the desire that things return to how they once were, which tends to stifle mission.

Even this morning , the Today programme is lauding the fact that Yes Minister will be thirty years old during next year's election and is about to be remade for Ukranian TV, an excuse to play vintage moments and interview Tony Jay, the writer. It is still seen as seminal political TV in a way that The Thick of It isn't (but give Iannucci's show thirty years and we'll come over all nostalgic about it).

Nostalgia prevents us from living in the present and facing its challenges. This is not to say that we can't learn from the past. The past has a huge amount to teach us and we need to study it to learn those lessons. But nostalgia is about wishing we were still in the past, thinking that the present is not as good as the past and refusing to take it as seriously as our history.

Nostalgia prevents genuinely new thinking being heard and adopted. I got a whiff of this in the debate about the future of Christian book selling over on the UK Christian booksellers blog (here). It's not that there aren't good ideas being expressed, but that one or two posters are saying there's nothing to be done because we're not in the situation we used to be in when people read books and had money to spend on them in Christian bookshops.

One comment talks about the church being strapped for cash, unable to meet its pensions and buildings maintenance bills because of falling numbers. Well, let's shut up shop now, then. Surely falling numbers is a spur to our thinking about what we're doing and why it's not attracting people in the way it used to.

The trouble is that we wistfully look back to the days when people came to our churches; nostalgia tells us the attractional model of mission works. But it doesn't. We are not attractive, very few people come out of the blue or because a friend invites them. So we have to find other ways of engaging people with the gospel.

Given that large numbers of our neighbours spend a lot of their leisure in the High Street, is there not a case for thinking how we might be present on the High Street, engaging them in conversation and creative ways of sharing the good news about Jesus?

If we don't get creative, we'll find it harder and harder to meet the pensions and maintenance bills. But much more important (cause, after all, the church can live without high-cost buildings) if we don't get creative lots of people will not have the opportunity to hear and engage with the good news about Jesus - and none of us want that, do we?

missional thinking about the high street

Last night I finished Donald Miller's Blue Like Jazz. I really enjoyed it. It's a ramshackle, witty and well-written set of reflections on Christian spirituality. I recommend it.

I wouldn't have read it had by daughter, then working in our local Wesley Owen, not recommended it to me and ordered me a copy. I wonder how many of us are grateful to our local Christian bookshop for discovering new authors and encountering books that have had a shaping effect on our Christian lives.

Well, the news from Wesley Owen and its parent company is not good. The recession and other things are making life for them really difficult. Now, we've probably all contributed to this - we shop at Amazon, we don't read as many books as previous generations did (perhaps the publishers are partly to blame for this by not publishing what people want to read!).

But I wonder if this present trouble is an opportunity for fresh mission thinking and creative partnership between churches and the high street. After all, our neighbours are regularly on the high street and rarely in our buildings. The high street offers something they want. Analysts argue that shopping is a leisure activity and a source of 'spiritual' fulfilment in the absence of traditional organised religion. Missional thinkers have been rightly identifying consumerism as a rival god over recent years which makes the high street the place where we should be - as Paul was in amongst the idols of Athens - living and modelling a different form of spirituality to our neighbours.

And where better to do this than in a retail space that offers coffee, conversation, Internet access, books for browsing and buying, people to pray, space for groups to gather on a regular basis. The Christian bookshop could become a vital missional space with a bit of imagination on the part of church leaders and Christian retailers.

So are we up for this or will we all be lamenting the passing of the Christian presence on the high street the next time we gather at a conference to talk about how to do mission?

Getting into the Advent Conspiracy

Planning for Advent this year, I came across the Advent Conspiracy. I'm probably late to the party here but just in case of you haven't come across this initiative, it's really worth checking out.

The brain-child of three American pastors (who says nothing good comes from across the pond?), Rick McKinley, Chris Seay and Greg Holder, the Advent Conspiracy aims to help Christians reclaim Christmas from consumerism.

Check out it's website here where you can download the neat trailer they've filmed for it plus a whole host of other resources. The book from Zondervan takes a bit of hunting down because not many have allocated to the UK market.

we'll be launching into in two week's time, using Christian Aid as the vehicle for our giving to those in need.

Rick McKinley, by the way, is the pastor of the church - Imago Dei - that Donald Miller is a member of. Miller is author of a number of books, one of which Blue Like Jazz, I'm just finishing. It's really good.

Revelation's pastoral punch

The thing about Revelation 18 is that it is a withering attack on Roman economic power. Twinned with the wonderful satire of chapter 17, it makes for a powerful assault on imperial pretension. But it is placed where it is in John's Apocalypse, it seems to me, for maximum pastoral impact.

After all, the Apocalypse is a pastoral letter (among other things). And it struck me last night that John, having unwrapped the revelation he's received from the throne room in heaven, in the throes of spelling out the call of the followers of the Lamb to be the means through which the nations of the world are called to repentance, places this coruscating attack on Rome just before the denouement we're eagerly awaiting - namely the return of the Lamb and the restoration of creation.

And why place it there? For maximum pastoral impact, of course.

Having urged his hearers to loyalty in the seven brief message to each receiving church in chapters 2 and 3, he now asks them - the question is implied in how they respond to the lament over the fall of Rome - how would they feel if the empire was swept away?

Just how much are they plugged into the imperial way of life, how fat are they getting on its rich-pickings? How caught up in its buying and selling are they? Will they weep with the monarchs, merchants and mariners as they watch the city fall or will they rejoice with heaven that the enemy of the Lamb and persecutor of his people has had its come-uppance?

Couldn't help wondering what John would have made of the credit crunch, the collapse of Lehman Brothers bank and the market melt-down that followed... Of course, that was just a blip, a hiccough compared to what he describes in Revelation 18, but...

Clearing the decks

Well, I've had a great to getting to grips with Revelation 18 in the context of 15-19. It's not what I'm meant to be writing this week but the decks are now cleared to write world of the first Christians stuff tomorrow - yippee!!

It'll be interesting to see what people make of tonight's helping of the Apocalypse. We're focusing on John's critique of the economic power of Rome in chapter 18. And it's very relevant to the times we live in. Not for the usual escapist reasons but because John asks searching questions of where the loyalties of those who claim to follow the Lamb really lie.

I have really enjoyed getting this occasional series on the Apocalypse. I am going to see whether there's a book in the debris once it's all been delivered. I'm not sure I have anything original to say but I think a mid-level overview that brings the insights of Bauckham, Koester, Da Silva et al to the ordinary Christians who've suffered from a diet of Lindsay, LaHaye and the like for too long might find a market.

I've also discovered that I bought ten CDs this year that came out this year! So i shall be compiling my festive top ten over the next couple of weeks (I know you can hardly contain your excitement!)

the best laid plans...

Well, it's been a good day - and I haven't yet done any thing that I was planning to do this morning! Clearing the decks takes so long....

I'd forgotten that it's the next installment of the Apocalypse this Wednesday, so I need to do some preparation for that. it's been a blast doing it - though I'm not sure what it's added to sum of human happiness and well-being.

So, I've recast my week to take account of it.

I've been reflecting on what James says about making plans in 4:13-5:6 - in preparation for next Sunday afternoon and evening - and it's brought a wry smile to my face. Not that I was planning to make any money today as a result of my planning but, you know what they say, 'if you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans'. I wonder if that's a sentiment James would have endorsed...

Remembrance in a busy week

So, a new week. Life's been pretty full-on over the past few days. This is partly because we took a week off. Now, the principle that works here is that when you take time off all that happens to your work schedule is that the first three days of a week away get crammed into the two days prior to departure, while the final four have to be squeezed in to your first two day's back. Consequently, you end up feeling knackered and in need of a holiday...

So, with Remembrance Sunday and the next installment of James to prepare plus meetings relating to the youth charity I'm a trustee of, my three days back in the hot seat last week were pretty full-on.

I find Remembrance Sunday tricky. For some in the church there are personal memories of distant conflicts - especially the second world war and national service in the 1950s - for others there is a sense of wanting to honour a history that we've only really accessed in school. But for one family in my congregation yesterday, the day was especially significant as their son was deploying to Afghanistan that very morning.

A couple of people spent the summer researching the names that appear on our two war memorials in church and yesterday Janice reported on who these men were. It was fascinating but more than that, it put our remembrance in a very real context: here were men who were our brothers in Christ - Sunday school teachers, bookstall managers, players in our church football team - who'd been lost at the age of our older young people (late teens into twenties).

It made our two minutes silence profoundly moving.

This week, I am mostly writing. I want to get a chapter of my Lion book dispatched to my very patient editor and polish off a draft chapter of my MA. Even as I type these words, I think that sounds ridiculously ambitious... We'll see, I guess!

To keep me company, I have the Fever Ray album, Editors and Moby - all pretty wonderful - which reminds me that I will soon be compiling my festive top ten... Now, I need some coffee, I think.

The edited highlights

Just back from a great week in North Devon.

The highlights included discovering some really top notch restaurants in Ilfracombe. The pick of the bunch was 6 St James, a bistro offering superb food in a wonderful relaxed setting. But we didn't have a duff meal anywhere we ate.

We also saw Up - no Lucy, it wasn't on offer in 3D in Ilfracombe - which was great. The depiction of the hero's life with his wife, told from meeting to her death in about 8-10 minutes, was profoundly moving and brilliantly done. And it's a great yarn, well characterised and told.

We got lots of fresh air - in particular walking the headland above Woolacombe Bay - and yesterday, despite the rain, we toured some lovely seaside towns including Appledore and Instow.

Now, it's back to the grindstone - yippee!!!

Taking in vast quantities of sea air

Enjoying a few days in a fairly mild and unexpectedly pleasant Ilfracombe.

Went to see Up the other evening and last night went to a really excellent restaurant that we shall certainly be visiting again.

Internet cafes are sparse and connections a bit hit-and-miss, so I'll probably not be posting at length until we get home next week.

We had a very bracing walk up above Woolacombe bay this morning. Spectacular scenery and foaming seas - sublime....

How do we learn to trust?

I'm preaching about trust on Sunday morning and we're thinking about trust at St Arbuck's on Sunday afternoon - if you're passing the Market Square Starbucks on Sunday around 4pm, drop in, grab a coffee and a muffin and come up and join us.

So, I've been reading Anthony Seldon's new book, Trust: How we lost it and how to get it back, and so far, so good. I've only read the first two chapters but his analysis of why we are facing a problem with trust in our society seems to me to cover most of the bases.

In particular, he talks about the demise of organised religion as one of ten contributing factors - others being the speed of life, inequality, corporate greed, failing politicians, the media - and he does so in a way that recognises what he's saying will not be universally popular.

His argument is that the three monotheistic religions have at their core a call to service, as well as greed social and moral norms. And he quotes Demos' Geoff Mulgan who says that without the clear moral codes provided by organised religion 'it is much harder to understand your place in society; it is much harder to picture what is going on'. And for this reason trust is harder because it relies on agreed norms of behaviour.

It's an interesting thought. I wonder what others think?

Finding the economic middle

Well, I didn't get a lot written yesterday (about 2,000 words) but I did realise what it was that I had to write. So next time I have a writing day, I have a scheme to work to.

I spent a lot of time yesterday reading about income distribution in the early Roman Empire and how this affects our reading of the economic and physical location of the early communities of Jesus followers. The correlation is simple (in theory), namely if there are middling sorts of people in the communities, the likelihood is that the groups would have met in domus-style houses and could, therefore, have been larger than if the groups were mainly comprised of poor people from tenements. Furthermore, leadership in those groups would have come from the heads of the households in which they met.

Rodney Stark argues - on sociological grounds - that the key group attracted to the new movement (as to all new religious movements) were the aspiring but liminal middling sort of people that Justin Meggitt suggests did not really exist in the empire and were not in evidence in the Pauline communities.

The question I was investigating yesterday was whether the data as handled by Roman historians suggests the presence of a middling, aspiring group whose status was in transition (ie they were liminal in some way). I think the answer I found was on balance 'yes' and that gives me the framework for the chapter on economic location.

I think Graig (thanks for the comment) is right. I now have to write what I know and then go back and tidy it up.

Getting to grips with the ancient world

I spent yesterday afternoon grading papers from my students in Sri Lanka and was pleasantly surprised by the quality - especially from those on the MDiv course.

Many of them showed a really good grasp of the material and genuine creative thinking about how reading the New Testament with an eye on its social context can help apply its message creatively to their present mission context. It was quite gratifying.

Today, I'll be writing - I'm aiming to draft a chapter of my MA on the economic location of the early Jesus movement. My supervisor has recommended that I just write and then see where the gaps are. This is a new way of working for me, so it'll be interesting to see how it works out.

The other issue that I'm looking forward to delving into is just how good is the reading by NT scholars of Roman history. The reason for asking this is that one of the key voices in the current debate - Justin Meggitt - based his approach to exploring the social and economic location of the early Jesus movement on the history-from-below approach that flowered in George Rude and Eric Hobsbawm's Captain Swing in 1969.

I remember when I first read Meggitt's excellent Paul, Poverty and Survival I felt my heart sink that a generation after an approach blossomed in secular history, NT scholars had finally caught up with it. I felt it particularly because even when I read history at Manchester in the mid-1970s, the approach was already being questioned by scholars who argued that all Rude, Hobsbawn, Thompson et al did was read their own sociological and philosophical theories back into the past.

I wonder if NT scholars are at risk of doing this with their use of particularly sociological models in their reading of the NT and its context. It's just a question... The context group of NT scholars have produced some fascinating and worthwhile work, much of which has enriched my understanding of the world the first Christians lived in. So I'd hate to think people thought I was dismissing it out of hand - I am certainly not doing that.

But I do wonder what regular (if one can call them that) ancient historians make of all this. In particular, I'm interested to see whether the ancient historians so loved of NT scholars have the same reputation within their own field. I just need to find a way of analysing that!

Good day in London

Well, I had a really excellent time with my supervisor and am all set to start writing my review of the state of the debate about the location of the early Christians, with a deadline of the end of January to get a draft outline of the whole thing done (45,000 words). There'll be three substantial chapters dealing with social location, economic location and physical location with an intro and a conclusion. All I need now is a catchy title!

And I succumbed to a book in Church House Bookshop. It's Peter Oakes Reading Romans in Pompeii: Paul's letter at Ground Level. I've been waiting for this since I heard Peter was writing it but thought it wasn't coming out until next year. I resisted everything else, though.

On my way from Victoria to Church house I went past people queuing to see pieces of a dead nun in Westminster Cathedral. And for those not willing to join the queue, the 'spectacle' inside was being beamed live to a giant screen in the square outside the Cathedral. There people were able to watch while consuming hot dogs and other fast food being sold from a range of stalls set up all around the square.

I have to say that it was all a bit surreal. I'm sure the nun in question would have been extremely embarrassed to be the centre of such a mawkish spectacle!

I also spent some time in the National Gallery. In particular I stood for quite a while in front of Pieter Bruegel's adoration of the Kings- a spectacular work up close; and Piero della Francesca's The Baptism of Christ - also quite magical. I also sauntered round a few other rooms and drank deeply of the atmosphere. Lovely. I must do it more often.

A day out in London

Listening to a great episode of In Our Time on the death of Elizabeth 1 with the peerless John Guy as well as two other really interesting historians. This is Radio 4 at its best.

Last night we continued our reading John's Apocalypse, tackling chapters 12-14. It seemed to go well - one or two making really positive noises afterwards. I have really enjoyed getting stuck into this book and think I might try to write something about it when I've finished.

But today I'm off to see my MA supervisor. Yes, my on/off on/off studies are back on because Lambeth will allow me to do a review MA on the social location of the early Christians. This dovetails nicely with the book I'm writing for Lion, so I hope to kill two birds with one stone without killing myself in the process!

Anyway, heading for St John's Wood means that I'll get a chance to stop off at a gallery or two on the way, as well as drop into my favourite bookshops. I still love browsing bookshops despite the fact that I can get all I need at much better prices from Amazon (and particularly Amazon Marketplace). There's nothing like actually fondling books in the hushed environment of a bookshop. The end result, of course, is that I normally buy things - but I will be resisting that today!

Part of the reason for that is that I have plenty to read already. I'm still working through Hirsch's excellent The Forgotten Ways and this week I took delivery of Allen Brent's A Political History of Early Christianity which looks interesting. Brent is a a bit of a maverick, a patristics scholar who has written widely about the influence of the imperial cult on the shape of early Christianity.

I'm also working through some excellent papers on Roman economic history and poverty in Paul's churches. Yes, I know, I need to get out more....

Good listening

Ok, I'm persuaded, the new Editors album is their best yet.

Brooding, wonderfully tuneful, lyrically intriguing, In this Light and On this Evening is finely crafted - almost machine music recalling Joy Division and New Order - yet deeply emotional.

It's a great listen. I'll ponder what it adds up to over the next few days.

Picking up the threads

Spent the day recovering from my weekend away and feeling as though I'm going down with a cold. Ah well.

The weekend was excellent. The group was very responsive and joined in well - especially on Sunday morning when we did something quite fluid, moving around the space and thinking about what it means to shine where we are.

As those who've commented on the previous post have noted, it is now up to the church itself to earth what was learned, sift what was useful, debate it back in their everyday context. I quite like the idea of a follow-up day (I'll suggest it to my mate).

I also think it would be great if our church organised a weekend away. I'll have to find out whether there's any tradition of it. We've had a couple of day conferences that have gone well. But there's nothing like going away together and spending quality time eating and playing as well as learning together.

The thought of organising it makes me lose the will to live, however!

I'm listening to the new Editors' album In this Light and On this Evening but it's too early to tell whether it's a cracker or not. There's certainly some good tunes on it.

A weekend conversation in the autumn sunshine

I'm mid-way through a weekend conference with a church that is pastored by a friend from way back. It's going well.:Nnce people, good atmosphere, lively conversations - and the sun's shone today!

One of the most impressive things this church does is a Wednesday evening congregation with a group of mainly young homeless people. They seem to have created something that enables these guys to connect with each other and with God. To hear their stories is really moving.

The great thing about weekends like this is that we can spend a concentrated time looking at a particular issue. In this case, it's how we'll be missional disciples. It works better than trying to do this kind of thing over a number of weeks at church for two reasons.

The first is that everyone has come away from the daily grind and have relaxed. They are open to thinking new thoughts and seeing life from a different perspective - and have a whole weekend to think about it, talk it over, thrash it out - in between bouts of playing, laughing, eating and talking about all kinds of stuff.

The second is that the speaker - on this occasion, me - is able to deliver a sustained case for something without a week at work intervening between each episode so that the audience has forgotten three-quarters of what was said last week when they turn up this week.

The key, of course, to such an event being beneficial long term is follow-up. How do you do that? Answers on a postcard, please...

We are the Hollow men, after all

Well, well, T S Eliot has been named the nation's favourite poet in a BBC poll. The news report on it, however, said it was unclear whether this was because people loved The Waste Land or Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats (the inspiration for the long-running musical)!

It's a problem with a poet of such breadth and development, I guess. I have to confess that I've never read Possum. but I do read Ash Wednesday (baffling but beautiful), The Waste Land and Four Quartets fairly frequently.

And The Hollow Men always resonates:

Between the idea
and the reality
between the motion
and the act
falls the shadow

For thine is the kingdom

between the conception
and the creation
between the emotion
and the response
falls the shadow

Life is very long

between the desire
and the spasm
between the potency
and the existence
between the essence
and the descent
falls the shadow

For thine is the Kingdom

For thine is
Life is
For thine is the

this is the way the world ends
this is the way the world ends
this is the way the world ends
not with a bang but a whimper