A final thought on the Baptist Assembly. Glen (here) has raised an interesting question in his reflections about the style of what we do at Prism that I want to muse on. I think alt worship is actually a bad name for what we do because it implies that we are merely seeking a replacement for the more traditional activities that the church calls ‘worship’ (wrongly in my view – but that’s for another post) such as singing and listening to sermons. Rather, I think we are seeking to do a number of things simultaneously.
The first is to help people see the world differently, from a strange, even obtuse angle with unexpected shafts of light falling on it. We were helped in this by the theme of the Assembly – One World, One Mission – but it is one of the key considerations I always have uppermost when planning an event – be it, a church Sunday gathering or home group. This is because we gather to engage with God who calls us to embody his values in the world in which we live and work. So having an understanding of that world is important.
It means that we need to hear what the world is saying about itself and not only what we want to say about it. Now, I appreciate that the world speaks with many voices and we will inevitably be selective in what we turn our ears and eyes to. But it seems to me that it’s essential that we hear voices from the world as clearly as we can.
The second is to suggest that God is to be found already working in this world and that if we look carefully we’ll see his shadow falling across it, notice his finger print on all we’re seeing. So, we listen to a Patty Smith album and become aware that she talks more and more intelligently about God than the average ‘worship’ album; or we see a movement working justice that inspires us even though its motivation is avowedly not religious; or we see vital theological issues being played out in a movie or the plot of a novel.
This helps us in the key task of bridging the gap that Christians are often guilty of maintaining between the world we live in day-by-day and the faith we express in our worship; the gap we express when we say ‘I come to church to focus on God without being distracted by all the awful things in the news’ or ‘we are going into the world to take the presence of God with us.’
The third is to help us see ourselves in a different way as a result of the first two. In focusing on what’s going on the world, we see that God is bigger and that our lives are more significant than we thought. We find ourselves caught up in the story of God, the creating, covenant-making, coming King; and we see that God has given us a key role in how that story unfolds in our world.
My hope is that people leave an event like Prism, with a fresh way of living in the world. I guess this is the hope of traditional gatherings, but I wonder if the traditional model tends to focus on me and God and take the world for granted as a fixed entity from which we’ve withdrawn in order to worship before we go back into the world with a changed view of ourselves and perhaps a better take on God.
The trouble is that it tends to treat the world as a given on which we will act rather than something which acts on us as we seek to identify the shape that God wants us to take on to effectively embody his values in that world.
After the first Prism – which seems like a lifetime ago in Brighton in 2005 – I wrote a series of articles for the Baptist Times on ‘alt worship’. It’s my intention to dust those off over the next few days and re-post them here.
Finally got round to listening to the Mumford & Sons album - a fascinating and rather wonderful example of hearing God in the unlikeliest of places!
Wednesday, May 05, 2010
Tuesday, May 04, 2010
From the Assembly to the real world
Back from the Assembly and beginning to recover. I had to hurry off yesterday morning to get back from Plymouth to chair an election hustings meeting last night (200+ people on bank holiday Monday evening, not bad!).
I can only comment on Prism at the Assembly because it's all I got to - five sessions plus a double seminar slot. I gather from the blogs that the Assembly overall was better than it's been in recent years which is good to hear.
Prism went really well. The final session on Sunday evening where we welcomed the ministers about to have their hands shaken on the stage in the other place, looked at how we communicate the good news, interacting with Billy Graham, Rob Bell and Where the hell is Matt? The fact that we shared deeply with one another and ended up dancing probably means that something gelled!
The team were great and worked really hard to make the whole event go really well. It almost makes me want to do it all again, but....
Meanwhile, back in the real world, I have a leaders meeting tonight that I'm really looking forward to. With our newly elected team of nine trustees, we will be starting the journey into the future that God is inviting us on. Let's hope we catch the right wave!
And the spell checker button has reappeared - thank you blogger!
I can only comment on Prism at the Assembly because it's all I got to - five sessions plus a double seminar slot. I gather from the blogs that the Assembly overall was better than it's been in recent years which is good to hear.
Prism went really well. The final session on Sunday evening where we welcomed the ministers about to have their hands shaken on the stage in the other place, looked at how we communicate the good news, interacting with Billy Graham, Rob Bell and Where the hell is Matt? The fact that we shared deeply with one another and ended up dancing probably means that something gelled!
The team were great and worked really hard to make the whole event go really well. It almost makes me want to do it all again, but....
Meanwhile, back in the real world, I have a leaders meeting tonight that I'm really looking forward to. With our newly elected team of nine trustees, we will be starting the journey into the future that God is inviting us on. Let's hope we catch the right wave!
And the spell checker button has reappeared - thank you blogger!
Sunday, May 02, 2010
Baptist Assembly update
Day three in the Baptist Assembly house and all is well. Four sessions in, it's possibly the best Prism ever - good numbers, excellent atmosphere, real engagement with the issues and a tangible sense of the presence of God in unexpected and rather wonderful ways.
We had a particularly good communion this morning - but Prism communions have been special from the first. But all the sessions have gone well and, possibly for the first time, I think we have created a trajectory through the weekend and are taking delegates on a journey.
The cost of all this is that I'm totally wiped out, we've one session to go, then we've got to de-rig the space and I've got to get back to Bromley to chair a hustings meeting tomorrow night. Ah well! Tuesday I shall sleep - until the leaders' meeting in the evening.
We had a particularly good communion this morning - but Prism communions have been special from the first. But all the sessions have gone well and, possibly for the first time, I think we have created a trajectory through the weekend and are taking delegates on a journey.
The cost of all this is that I'm totally wiped out, we've one session to go, then we've got to de-rig the space and I've got to get back to Bromley to chair a hustings meeting tomorrow night. Ah well! Tuesday I shall sleep - until the leaders' meeting in the evening.
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
The financial markets are all Greek to me...
Greece is in crisis. I grew up with such headlines being a relatively regular occurrence as the regime of the colonels lurched from crisis to crisis through the 60s and 70s until democracy was restored. The causes of the current troubles are complex and beyond the comprehension of most mortals (certainly this one).
But at the heart of Greece's current problems are the bond markets. The way the media talks about these exchanges where cash is swapped for Government debt, you'd think they were operated by god-like powers who were above being questioned for their actions. I thought the credit crunch, if it's achieved nothing else, has at least dethroned the masters of the universe.
But no, these impersonal forces are still very much in control of events. Take this quote 'The market is now looking at every country with a lot of curiosity.' It was said this morning by Gilles Moec, senior European economist at Deutsche Bank, in response to questions about why the stock markets across Europe are falling.
In a sense he's right. Markets, those collections of individual decision makers with certain amounts of money to spend seeking products at a price they're prepared to pay, are looking for profits across Europe. But in a more profound sense, his comments illustrate the levels of denial at the heart of our current crisis - not just in Greece but across the globe.
The markets are moved by people like Moec and hundreds of others who make decisions based on their political views, religious outlook, knowledge of economies and how they work, the fact that they got to work with indigestion following a dodgy breakfast on the go and congestion on the metro. It's people who decided what to buy and sell and how much they're prepared to pay. The fact that the deals are in billions of dollars does make them impersonal; it just means that the sums involved are eye-wateringly huge.
But each of the deals is made by a trader pushing the button on his mouse or shouting into a phone. And perhaps we need to start calling these people - a highly paid, enormously powerful minority across the globe - to account for their actions.
This is why it's good that the US Senate is giving Goldman Sachs a hard time for developing products that appear to have been designed to benefit from the failure of other financial instruments.
This morning's election press conferences were all about party leaders trying to show how they will cut the deficit to ensure the market will continue to fund to Britain's national debt. The trouble is that such cuts fall disproportionately on the poor, the unemployed, the long-term sick and disabled; they risk creating new pockets of intractable, generation-after-generation deprivation in parts of the UK. And all to satisfy the markets, all to ensure our credit rating doesn't go from triple A to junk as Greece's has.
As the crisis deepens isn't it time for a different way of organising our financial affairs? Shouldn't those who want to lead us being saying something about this?
But at the heart of Greece's current problems are the bond markets. The way the media talks about these exchanges where cash is swapped for Government debt, you'd think they were operated by god-like powers who were above being questioned for their actions. I thought the credit crunch, if it's achieved nothing else, has at least dethroned the masters of the universe.
But no, these impersonal forces are still very much in control of events. Take this quote 'The market is now looking at every country with a lot of curiosity.' It was said this morning by Gilles Moec, senior European economist at Deutsche Bank, in response to questions about why the stock markets across Europe are falling.
In a sense he's right. Markets, those collections of individual decision makers with certain amounts of money to spend seeking products at a price they're prepared to pay, are looking for profits across Europe. But in a more profound sense, his comments illustrate the levels of denial at the heart of our current crisis - not just in Greece but across the globe.
The markets are moved by people like Moec and hundreds of others who make decisions based on their political views, religious outlook, knowledge of economies and how they work, the fact that they got to work with indigestion following a dodgy breakfast on the go and congestion on the metro. It's people who decided what to buy and sell and how much they're prepared to pay. The fact that the deals are in billions of dollars does make them impersonal; it just means that the sums involved are eye-wateringly huge.
But each of the deals is made by a trader pushing the button on his mouse or shouting into a phone. And perhaps we need to start calling these people - a highly paid, enormously powerful minority across the globe - to account for their actions.
This is why it's good that the US Senate is giving Goldman Sachs a hard time for developing products that appear to have been designed to benefit from the failure of other financial instruments.
This morning's election press conferences were all about party leaders trying to show how they will cut the deficit to ensure the market will continue to fund to Britain's national debt. The trouble is that such cuts fall disproportionately on the poor, the unemployed, the long-term sick and disabled; they risk creating new pockets of intractable, generation-after-generation deprivation in parts of the UK. And all to satisfy the markets, all to ensure our credit rating doesn't go from triple A to junk as Greece's has.
As the crisis deepens isn't it time for a different way of organising our financial affairs? Shouldn't those who want to lead us being saying something about this?
Equality, responsibility and dreams of a better world
There was an interesting exchange on the World at One phone-in with Gordon Brown yesterday. A woman city worker was asking why he was against aspiration, the evidence for which was seen in the fact that she was now paying income tax at 50%. This means that she earn in excess of £150,000 a year, £3,000 a week, £75 an hour.
It came on the same day that Birmingham City Council lost an equal pay case brought by women workers who were being paid around £12,000 a year and weren't receiving the bonuses their male colleagues on the same pay scale were getting - sometimes to the value of 150% of their annual salaries.
It's the contrast that strikes me. In their book The Spirit Level: Why Equality is better for Everyone, Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett argue, pretty cogently with a wealth of statistical data, that inequality is bad for people's health and well-being. The more unequal a society, the more likely it is to be affected by higher incidence of mental illness, more violence, more relationship breakdown.
Sadly, the book is not at the centre of the election campaign despite party leaders welcoming it when it was published last year.
And this morning we wake up to news that Greece's credit rating has been down-graded to junk status, that it risks bankruptcy and massive default on its debts. The effect of this apocalyptic scenario - brought about by international capital markets (that's people who buy and sell bonds in the markets of London, New York and the Far East, like Gordon Brown's interrogator) - will be lower wages for the poor, massive rises in unemployment among lower paid people and large numbers of people losing their homes - in short, even more inequality.
The city worker challenging Gordon Brown said how fed up she was of being blamed for the world's financial crisis. This on the day that Goldman Sachs executives were trying to defend the indefensible before a Senate enquiry.
It's all left me with a feeling that we haven't begun to have the conversation we need to have about how we value people, what kind of society we want to live in and what it means to take responsibility for our actions. If the election is about anything, surely it should be about this.
It came on the same day that Birmingham City Council lost an equal pay case brought by women workers who were being paid around £12,000 a year and weren't receiving the bonuses their male colleagues on the same pay scale were getting - sometimes to the value of 150% of their annual salaries.
It's the contrast that strikes me. In their book The Spirit Level: Why Equality is better for Everyone, Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett argue, pretty cogently with a wealth of statistical data, that inequality is bad for people's health and well-being. The more unequal a society, the more likely it is to be affected by higher incidence of mental illness, more violence, more relationship breakdown.
Sadly, the book is not at the centre of the election campaign despite party leaders welcoming it when it was published last year.
And this morning we wake up to news that Greece's credit rating has been down-graded to junk status, that it risks bankruptcy and massive default on its debts. The effect of this apocalyptic scenario - brought about by international capital markets (that's people who buy and sell bonds in the markets of London, New York and the Far East, like Gordon Brown's interrogator) - will be lower wages for the poor, massive rises in unemployment among lower paid people and large numbers of people losing their homes - in short, even more inequality.
The city worker challenging Gordon Brown said how fed up she was of being blamed for the world's financial crisis. This on the day that Goldman Sachs executives were trying to defend the indefensible before a Senate enquiry.
It's all left me with a feeling that we haven't begun to have the conversation we need to have about how we value people, what kind of society we want to live in and what it means to take responsibility for our actions. If the election is about anything, surely it should be about this.
Tuesday, April 27, 2010
Making the (w)right move
Excellent news about Tom (N T) Wright: he is moving to St Andrews University to be professor of New Testament and Early Christianity.
This is excellent news because it will allow him to focus on completing his bold and brilliant series on Christian Origins and the Question of God as well as other projects that he's had on the go for too long.
He will be a loss to the Anglican hierarchy but a huge gain to the academic world. You can read all about it here and here.
This is excellent news because it will allow him to focus on completing his bold and brilliant series on Christian Origins and the Question of God as well as other projects that he's had on the go for too long.
He will be a loss to the Anglican hierarchy but a huge gain to the academic world. You can read all about it here and here.
Finishing touches all round
Having planned the framework for Prism, I've been spending the day sorting out running orders, shopping for a good deal of the stuff we need in the zones and listening to copious quantities of dance and chill out tracks to serve as background and fill-in music when people are gathering and in zones. The bar will be open in our venue from 7pm, so we need to ensure a suitable atmosphere is created as delegates arrive.
We've had trouble sourcing 200ml cartons of red grape juice (any suggestions? we need 150 of them) but apart from that we've got everything we need to ensure the event goes with a swing.
The plaster is drying nicely in our bathroom ready for the tiler to come tomorrow and make it look fabulous. So hopefully we're on track for a Friday tea-time finish. I'll be in Plymouth, but the rest of the family will be able to spend the weekend moving between the shower and the bath, washing off a fortnight's accumulated grime.
We've had trouble sourcing 200ml cartons of red grape juice (any suggestions? we need 150 of them) but apart from that we've got everything we need to ensure the event goes with a swing.
The plaster is drying nicely in our bathroom ready for the tiler to come tomorrow and make it look fabulous. So hopefully we're on track for a Friday tea-time finish. I'll be in Plymouth, but the rest of the family will be able to spend the weekend moving between the shower and the bath, washing off a fortnight's accumulated grime.
Monday, April 26, 2010
Falling short but feeling excited all the same
On the train to Bristol for a Prism planning session using my dongle. The experience so far is that the connection is slow and occasionally haphazard. Of course, 'slow' is a relative term, since connection speeds are vastly quicker than anything we experienced just a few years ago. But today we expect instant and lightening fast.
Last night I rounded off our series on living the resurrection by looking at Philippians 3:10 and reflecting on our dreams and God's role in them. Philippians 3 is one of my favourite passages; I've preached on it often and yet I still feel that its heart eludes me. Someone said that yesterday's sermon was really helpful and cast new light on one of their favourite passages.
But I felt that yet again I had not done the passage justice, that what I wanted to say about it lay just beyond my finger tips - much as Paul's complete knowledge of Jesus is just another step beyond his grasp. And maybe that's the way it has to be with this text. Our knowledge of Jesus will always be partial, our view through the distorting mirrors of our own perception, and so our thoughts about and reflections on this amazing text will always leave us feeling excited but dissatisfied.
Maybe this should be true of all our preaching. Like my internet connection, it's good but not as good as we'd like it to be.
Last night I rounded off our series on living the resurrection by looking at Philippians 3:10 and reflecting on our dreams and God's role in them. Philippians 3 is one of my favourite passages; I've preached on it often and yet I still feel that its heart eludes me. Someone said that yesterday's sermon was really helpful and cast new light on one of their favourite passages.
But I felt that yet again I had not done the passage justice, that what I wanted to say about it lay just beyond my finger tips - much as Paul's complete knowledge of Jesus is just another step beyond his grasp. And maybe that's the way it has to be with this text. Our knowledge of Jesus will always be partial, our view through the distorting mirrors of our own perception, and so our thoughts about and reflections on this amazing text will always leave us feeling excited but dissatisfied.
Maybe this should be true of all our preaching. Like my internet connection, it's good but not as good as we'd like it to be.
Saturday, April 24, 2010
Being a holy people in an unholy world
As an experiment - which I started last month - I am posting my perspective from our church magazine on my blog and facebook for those who would rather access it electronically than in print. I hope it's of interest to a wider audience - I've shortened it a little, cutting out the very specific stuff.
Not long ago the comedian Frank Skinner wrote a fascinating piece for the Times. In it he welcomed the increasingly marginal status of the Christian faith in the UK. Now Skinner is not noted as a popular theologian but his comments certainly made us sit up and listen.
Skinner said this: ‘There was a time when social pressure made people go to church. If anything the reverse is now true. Most adults you see in church nowadays are there because they want to be there. That’s not decline, it’s progress.’
Now, that’s an interesting thought, worth pondering for a few minutes...
He follows it up with this one: ‘I’m a little wary of muscular Christianity…It seems to be in direct contradiction to “Resist not evil, but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also”. This is the doormat as positive role model — a doormat who’s more concerned about the “welcome” than the muddy feet. Surely the central image of Christianity is someone who can shoot fireballs out of his fingertips allowing himself to be nailed to a wooden cross — submission as the ultimate show of strength — love as impenetrable armour. Most British Christians are badly dressed, unattractive people. We’re not pushy and aggressive members of society.’
Now, of course, we’re better dressed than the average congregation, but surely Skinner has a point. Being a follower of Jesus is not about status, power, influence, being the centre of attention. Rather it’s about serving people and being, like servants, a bit anonymous as we do it; people get served but they’re not sure who did it.
And this chimes in with the major theme of Paul’s passionate letter to the wayward Corinthian church. It is a sustained meditation on what it means to live a cruciform life, that is a life shaped, as Jesus’ was, by the cross.
His plea is that his readers take seriously all he’s taught them about Christian living. In the course of this he offers a model of life based on the character and cross of Christ, a life that he lives. The trouble is that this life is perceived as weak and worthless by his readers. It doesn’t bring them the kind of attention and status that people in Corinth valued so highly; it doesn’t help them win friends and influence in high places.
Now, of course, we’re not interested in such things. But we do think we have a right to be in the place of honour in public debate, that our view of morality is to be given preference over anyone else’s. And we’ve lost that over recent years and it hurts and, if we’re honest, we resent it.
With a mixture of charm and invective, Old Testament exposition and explanation of the difference between Jesus and every other religious teacher on offer, Paul urges, cajoles and encourages his readers to make it up with him and with Jesus. In doing so, he says, they will be able to live the kind of life that God calls them to.
That call is to be a holy people in an unholy world. Paul’s focus is on how his hearers will develop a way of living that puts a broad grin on the face of God. They’ll do it by hearing again the story of Jesus and his cross and building their lives on it as he’s built his life on it and offers that as an example to follow.
And while this way of living inevitably means that we don’t do some of the things our neighbours do – for Paul’s readers that meant avoiding what went on in Corinth’s temples and private function rooms – it mainly means that we develop a community life that has our neighbours looking enviously on wanting what we’ve got.
As we explore this letter between May and the beginning of August, we will look at how we can build and nurture strong, mutually supportive and encouraging relationships, how we can develop a community life based on equality and justice, where the weak are cared for and all are channelled into good works, how we can reflect the values of Jesus in our lifestyle at church, at home, at work and at play.
Friday, April 23, 2010
Celebrating St George
It's St George's Day. For some bizzare reason a range of English people, some with questionable attitudes to foreigners and precious little interest in the Christian faith, will be celebrating the life of a Middle Eastern Roman soldier martyred for his faith under Diocletian for refusing to worship the emperor.
One suspects that the recent revival in the cult of St George - it was a major feast in medieval and early modern England - has something to do with the surging confidence of Welsh and Scottish people in the wake of devolution and the perenial self-awareness of Irish people who have managed to get their saint's festival - St Patrick's Day - celebrated by any and everybody across the globe.
There's a parade featuring St George in the City of London today for the first time since 1585. According to stgeorgesday.com (yes, our saint has his own website featuring Ian Botham on the home page!) over a million of us think we should have the day off to celebrate.
I'm preparing for Sunday at the moment - only one sermon as I've just talked to my morning preacher who has made it back from the States! I am focusing on how knowing the power of the resurrection enables us to live a cruciform life. I know nothing of St George - I suspect most of what we know is legend and rumour - but if he died for his faith, standing against an imperial ideology that sought the worship of its citizens, then he'd grasped what Paul is saying in Philippians 3:1-4:1 and especially v10.
In this sublime piece of rhetoric, Paul shows how the cruciform life of Jesus is the model for the lives of his disciples. Paul shows how it's working out in his life and urges us to work it out in ours. And it hinges on knowing the power of Jesus' resurrection. For only that power enables us to leave our old lives and press on into the future that God has for us. And only that power enables us to share the sufferings of Jesus in our daily lives - whatever those sufferings might be.
If those who want to celebrate St George's Day want to celebrate this, pass me a banner and count me in.
One suspects that the recent revival in the cult of St George - it was a major feast in medieval and early modern England - has something to do with the surging confidence of Welsh and Scottish people in the wake of devolution and the perenial self-awareness of Irish people who have managed to get their saint's festival - St Patrick's Day - celebrated by any and everybody across the globe.
There's a parade featuring St George in the City of London today for the first time since 1585. According to stgeorgesday.com (yes, our saint has his own website featuring Ian Botham on the home page!) over a million of us think we should have the day off to celebrate.
I'm preparing for Sunday at the moment - only one sermon as I've just talked to my morning preacher who has made it back from the States! I am focusing on how knowing the power of the resurrection enables us to live a cruciform life. I know nothing of St George - I suspect most of what we know is legend and rumour - but if he died for his faith, standing against an imperial ideology that sought the worship of its citizens, then he'd grasped what Paul is saying in Philippians 3:1-4:1 and especially v10.
In this sublime piece of rhetoric, Paul shows how the cruciform life of Jesus is the model for the lives of his disciples. Paul shows how it's working out in his life and urges us to work it out in ours. And it hinges on knowing the power of Jesus' resurrection. For only that power enables us to leave our old lives and press on into the future that God has for us. And only that power enables us to share the sufferings of Jesus in our daily lives - whatever those sufferings might be.
If those who want to celebrate St George's Day want to celebrate this, pass me a banner and count me in.
Thursday, April 22, 2010
Marking McLaren with a minute's mayhem
I hope we’re all planning to have a minute’s mayhem at midday in honour of Malcolm McLaren who is being buried today (as his family has requested).
I thought I’d play Steely Dan’s Showbiz kids very loud and dance like a loon round my study. Of course, I might not be able to hear myself singing along over the sound of the drilling and banging from upstairs!
It seems an appropriate track since McLaren was nothing if not a showbiz kid and at the end of day the punk movement he helped launch was much more style than substance, all about the tee shirts and posturing and not much about changing the world (though it did blow a much-needed gale of fresh air through the music business).
I thought I’d play Steely Dan’s Showbiz kids very loud and dance like a loon round my study. Of course, I might not be able to hear myself singing along over the sound of the drilling and banging from upstairs!
It seems an appropriate track since McLaren was nothing if not a showbiz kid and at the end of day the punk movement he helped launch was much more style than substance, all about the tee shirts and posturing and not much about changing the world (though it did blow a much-needed gale of fresh air through the music business).
Putting fire into the campaign
The lacklustre election campaign pitched into farce yesterday with Ken Clark ranting against those who might vote in such a way that we end up with a hung or balanced parliament. With his apocalyptic talk of IMF bureacrats touching down in London the day after the election, it's the first time I can recall a candidate threatening armageddon if you don't vote for his party.
Still, it's good to have a titter among the tedium! The thing is that with the prospect of a balanced parliament and a real chance for radical reform of our broken political institutions, the election camapign should be rivetting. Candidates and leaders should be engaging with the real issues of how we can refresh and renew our democracy. Instead they seem to be arguing over who can be trusted least to manage our present less-than-adequate way of doing things.
Back in the real world, it's 100 days since the Haiti earthquake but the suffering of a nation seems to have dropped off the radar - you really have to search hard to find anything on the BBC news site (though the Today programme featured a report on the continuing relief effort that contained the good news that immunisation of children has prevented epidemics of water-borne disease).
And Obama is making a speech about banking regulation in New York later today. Let's hope there are some radical proposals to regulate the excesses and even support for the Robin Hood Tax. Such a tax on every transaction of every financial institution across the globe could raise more than $300 billion for poverty-relief and front-line services in every nation where banks operate.
As Alexandr, the meerkat, would say 'schimple'
I wonder if it will feature in the prime ministerial debate this evening....
Still, it's good to have a titter among the tedium! The thing is that with the prospect of a balanced parliament and a real chance for radical reform of our broken political institutions, the election camapign should be rivetting. Candidates and leaders should be engaging with the real issues of how we can refresh and renew our democracy. Instead they seem to be arguing over who can be trusted least to manage our present less-than-adequate way of doing things.
Back in the real world, it's 100 days since the Haiti earthquake but the suffering of a nation seems to have dropped off the radar - you really have to search hard to find anything on the BBC news site (though the Today programme featured a report on the continuing relief effort that contained the good news that immunisation of children has prevented epidemics of water-borne disease).
And Obama is making a speech about banking regulation in New York later today. Let's hope there are some radical proposals to regulate the excesses and even support for the Robin Hood Tax. Such a tax on every transaction of every financial institution across the globe could raise more than $300 billion for poverty-relief and front-line services in every nation where banks operate.
As Alexandr, the meerkat, would say 'schimple'
I wonder if it will feature in the prime ministerial debate this evening....
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
Bathrooms, music and the nature of reality
We have a bath and a towel rail, shower tray and many holes in walls; the electrician has arrived to do the wiring for the down-lighters and tomorrow the plasterer will come. It's like a convention of the skilled here! And we're on track for a completion at the end of next week.
I've been listening to the debut album by John Grant. Queen of Denmark is simply gorgeous. I've been eagerly awaiting this release since I heard the first single, Marz, which you can download for free at his record label's site (here). On first listen, it seems to be a list of ice cream flavours, but it slowly reveals itself to be a lovely meditation on memory and simpler times.
I've been working on the opening session for this year's Prism. So far we're kicking off with Gorillaz Glitter Freeze, moving into the Grace section of the second 1 Giant Leap DVD, possibily taking a peek at Christian Falk & Robyn's Dream On before moving into the zones for story telling and conversation. The aim is to create uncertainty - even a sense of disorientation - about whether there really is 'one world' and even more uncertainty about the reliability of our perceptions of that world.
I will also be using some of Alan Roxburgh's insights on maps and the growing sense that the maps we use to tell us how the world is and therefore how we do 'one mission' in it are no longer in tune with reality - and basing it all on Epeshians 2:1-10.
It will all make sense when it happens (maybe)! Of course, it'll all change over the next week. We have a final team meeting on Monday at which I hope we'll nail down the framework for the five sessions.
I've been listening to the debut album by John Grant. Queen of Denmark is simply gorgeous. I've been eagerly awaiting this release since I heard the first single, Marz, which you can download for free at his record label's site (here). On first listen, it seems to be a list of ice cream flavours, but it slowly reveals itself to be a lovely meditation on memory and simpler times.
I've been working on the opening session for this year's Prism. So far we're kicking off with Gorillaz Glitter Freeze, moving into the Grace section of the second 1 Giant Leap DVD, possibily taking a peek at Christian Falk & Robyn's Dream On before moving into the zones for story telling and conversation. The aim is to create uncertainty - even a sense of disorientation - about whether there really is 'one world' and even more uncertainty about the reliability of our perceptions of that world.
I will also be using some of Alan Roxburgh's insights on maps and the growing sense that the maps we use to tell us how the world is and therefore how we do 'one mission' in it are no longer in tune with reality - and basing it all on Epeshians 2:1-10.
It will all make sense when it happens (maybe)! Of course, it'll all change over the next week. We have a final team meeting on Monday at which I hope we'll nail down the framework for the five sessions.
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
Transitioning to a new world
We're having our bathroom done. The lovely Steve and his mate have ripped our old bathroom out and over the next fourteen days will put in a lovely, gleaming new one. Over that time we shall grow increasingly smelly as we have nowhere ablute (well, I exaggerate, of course, because we are able to bath in the kitchen or hose one another down in the garden!
The transition is painful and inconveneient (briefly) but the end result will be wonderful.
I have also just started reading Alan Roxburgh's Missional Map-making: skills for leading in times of transition. Everything Roxburgh writes is worth reading, so I'm looking forward to picking up some hints on how I will manage things over the next six months as our new leadership beds in and we begin to chart a course into the mission God's calling us to join him in.
The introduction contains two great quotes. A seminary president addressing his peers and saying: 'I have just been elected president of a seminary that trains men and women for a world that no longer exists! What do I do?' And a denominational leader who echoed the seniment with the words: 'I was trained to lead and minister in a world that no longer exists. I learned methodologies and strategies that don't work in today's culture,' before adding that 'the chuch [is] a vampire sucking the love of ministry out of my system.'
I admire the honesty and would like to see it reflected in the way our denominational leaders and seminary principals speak about the world we're in. And I'm looking forward to seeing what kind of maps Roxburgh will help me make as I seek to lead my church in this time of transition.
I'm also looking forward to having a shower!
The transition is painful and inconveneient (briefly) but the end result will be wonderful.
I have also just started reading Alan Roxburgh's Missional Map-making: skills for leading in times of transition. Everything Roxburgh writes is worth reading, so I'm looking forward to picking up some hints on how I will manage things over the next six months as our new leadership beds in and we begin to chart a course into the mission God's calling us to join him in.
The introduction contains two great quotes. A seminary president addressing his peers and saying: 'I have just been elected president of a seminary that trains men and women for a world that no longer exists! What do I do?' And a denominational leader who echoed the seniment with the words: 'I was trained to lead and minister in a world that no longer exists. I learned methodologies and strategies that don't work in today's culture,' before adding that 'the chuch [is] a vampire sucking the love of ministry out of my system.'
I admire the honesty and would like to see it reflected in the way our denominational leaders and seminary principals speak about the world we're in. And I'm looking forward to seeing what kind of maps Roxburgh will help me make as I seek to lead my church in this time of transition.
I'm also looking forward to having a shower!
Monday, April 19, 2010
Poised for the great leap forward
We're back from the best Spring Harvest for a number of years. The main sessions in the big top were consistently excellent with Ruth Dearnley, Dave Steell, Steve Holmes, Gerard Kelly, Steve Chalke and Gill Rowe each preaching on Esther.
Although our pastoral was half the size of last year's, we still saw the same number of people - so we were very busy. But it is a huge privilege to be able to walk with people through a whole range of issues. I had the joy of helping a 15 year old boy become a Christian which was great.
Yesterday our week got off to a great start with the election of nine trustee leaders, including a number of younger people - the average of the leadership is probably around 40, which is fantatstic. I've been telling people that this is year zero - not because we're planning a cull of the uncooperative - but because I believe that we have come through a long transition time and are now genuinely poised for a great leap forward.
This week will be mainly taken up with Baptist Assembly planning, catching up with people in church, preparing for the weekend and having our bathroom completely refurbished (fortunately, we've got experts coming to do that for us!)
Although our pastoral was half the size of last year's, we still saw the same number of people - so we were very busy. But it is a huge privilege to be able to walk with people through a whole range of issues. I had the joy of helping a 15 year old boy become a Christian which was great.
Yesterday our week got off to a great start with the election of nine trustee leaders, including a number of younger people - the average of the leadership is probably around 40, which is fantatstic. I've been telling people that this is year zero - not because we're planning a cull of the uncooperative - but because I believe that we have come through a long transition time and are now genuinely poised for a great leap forward.
This week will be mainly taken up with Baptist Assembly planning, catching up with people in church, preparing for the weekend and having our bathroom completely refurbished (fortunately, we've got experts coming to do that for us!)
Wednesday, April 14, 2010
On why it’s important to get out more
It's Day 4 in the Spring Harvest and we're all still sane. It's been a good week, Here's a story from it that the person concerned said it was okay for me to share. And I think it's worth sharing.
Anne came for prayer, feeling that she had nothing to offer, that God was distant and that she didn’t amount to anything. She’s not a sophisticated woman. She struggles with poor health, but she remains as active as she can be. After we’d prayed briefly and generally, she told me this story.
One day she was at the bus stop by the crematorium in her town. She often speaks to people at bus stops, so when she saw a slightly dishevelled elderly man, she asked if he was all right. He said he was visiting the memorial for his wife who had died recently.
She asked if he had family and he said that he only had a daughter but didn’t see her because she was a Christian. Anne thought this was a strange response and told him that she was a Christian and asked why he thought his daughter being a Christian was a problem.
He said he didn’t really know but got the impression they probably wouldn’t want him around. He added that his daughter had given him her phone number at his wife’s funeral, Anne suggested he ring her. What had he got to lose, after all?
She got her bus. That Sunday she told a leader at her church what had happened, who strongly advised her not to talk to strangers at bus stops but do something useful in the church instead.
She felt disheartened, guilty and useless.
About three week’s later, having prayed on and off for the elderly gentleman, Anne was getting off a bus in the centre of town when someone tapped her on the shoulder. She turned to see a smartly dressed, clean shaven man smiling at her. ‘I want to thank you,’ he beamed.
Anne was flummoxed. He’d never seen this man before as far as she knew. Sensing her bewilderment, the man said ‘you were the lady I spoke at the bus stop by the crem a few weeks ago, who told me Christians weren’t so bad and that I should ring my daughter?’ Suddenly she twigged: ‘Oh yes,’ she said.
She hadn’t recognised him because at that first meeting he’d been scruffy and unshaven and really down.
He explained: ‘I rang my daughter and then I went to see her. It was ok. In fact, I now live with her – she and her husband have a large house – and I worship at their church.’ He grinned broadly. ‘So thank you. Life’s come good since I met you at that bus stop.’
So in what sense does Anne have nothing to offer? I wish I had a church full of people who spoke to strangers at bus stops. God see3ms to have a habit of using such conversations to turn people’s lives around. And I wish church leaders would realise that Christians are more use on the streets than in the church building and let them get out more.
Anne came for prayer, feeling that she had nothing to offer, that God was distant and that she didn’t amount to anything. She’s not a sophisticated woman. She struggles with poor health, but she remains as active as she can be. After we’d prayed briefly and generally, she told me this story.
One day she was at the bus stop by the crematorium in her town. She often speaks to people at bus stops, so when she saw a slightly dishevelled elderly man, she asked if he was all right. He said he was visiting the memorial for his wife who had died recently.
She asked if he had family and he said that he only had a daughter but didn’t see her because she was a Christian. Anne thought this was a strange response and told him that she was a Christian and asked why he thought his daughter being a Christian was a problem.
He said he didn’t really know but got the impression they probably wouldn’t want him around. He added that his daughter had given him her phone number at his wife’s funeral, Anne suggested he ring her. What had he got to lose, after all?
She got her bus. That Sunday she told a leader at her church what had happened, who strongly advised her not to talk to strangers at bus stops but do something useful in the church instead.
She felt disheartened, guilty and useless.
About three week’s later, having prayed on and off for the elderly gentleman, Anne was getting off a bus in the centre of town when someone tapped her on the shoulder. She turned to see a smartly dressed, clean shaven man smiling at her. ‘I want to thank you,’ he beamed.
Anne was flummoxed. He’d never seen this man before as far as she knew. Sensing her bewilderment, the man said ‘you were the lady I spoke at the bus stop by the crem a few weeks ago, who told me Christians weren’t so bad and that I should ring my daughter?’ Suddenly she twigged: ‘Oh yes,’ she said.
She hadn’t recognised him because at that first meeting he’d been scruffy and unshaven and really down.
He explained: ‘I rang my daughter and then I went to see her. It was ok. In fact, I now live with her – she and her husband have a large house – and I worship at their church.’ He grinned broadly. ‘So thank you. Life’s come good since I met you at that bus stop.’
So in what sense does Anne have nothing to offer? I wish I had a church full of people who spoke to strangers at bus stops. God see3ms to have a habit of using such conversations to turn people’s lives around. And I wish church leaders would realise that Christians are more use on the streets than in the church building and let them get out more.
Sunday, April 11, 2010
A bracing week at Butlins
Today we're off to Spring Harvest, to the icy chill of Skegness, for a week of listening to stories and praying with people.
Being on the pastoral team at an event like this is a wonderful privilege as people entrust us with their struggles and joys, challenges and disappointmnts and we are able to walk with them for a while, offering pointers to where grace might be found in their circumstances.
We also work with a team with whom we have loads of fun. So we're looking forward to our week.
I'm taking Patti Smith's memoire, Just Kids, with me to read in the quiet moments as well as the manuscript of my book to start compiling a list of subjects and people that might go in the index.
For the journey, as well as listening to at least one Patti Smith album, we also have the soundtrack from Slumdog Millionaire, Lonelady's lovely, edgy Nerve Up, and Paloma Faith's still splendid Do You Want the Truth or Something Beautiful.
We'll be testing out the dongle. So I hope to be able to post from time-to-time through the week
Being on the pastoral team at an event like this is a wonderful privilege as people entrust us with their struggles and joys, challenges and disappointmnts and we are able to walk with them for a while, offering pointers to where grace might be found in their circumstances.
We also work with a team with whom we have loads of fun. So we're looking forward to our week.
I'm taking Patti Smith's memoire, Just Kids, with me to read in the quiet moments as well as the manuscript of my book to start compiling a list of subjects and people that might go in the index.
For the journey, as well as listening to at least one Patti Smith album, we also have the soundtrack from Slumdog Millionaire, Lonelady's lovely, edgy Nerve Up, and Paloma Faith's still splendid Do You Want the Truth or Something Beautiful.
We'll be testing out the dongle. So I hope to be able to post from time-to-time through the week
Friday, April 09, 2010
Good stories in the wash up
This might have passed you by, but in the wash up - that wonderfully named time when the government haggles to get as much of its programme on the statute book before Parliament dissolves altogether - the vulture bill was passed.
Vulture funds - many UK based - are investment houses that buy up the debts of the most heavily-indebted poor countries, often for a few pennies, and then sue those countries for the payment of the full amount owed. This is capitalism red and tooth and claw, a montrous injsutice backed by UK courts, and it is wonderful that our Parliament has voted to protect the poor from the rapacious rich.
The law restricts the ability of these funds to sue poor nations in the UK courts and so we should no longer witness the spectacle of a fund succeeding in getting a British court to uphold its claim for $20m immediate payment from Liberia, one of the world's poorest countries, on a debt outsanding since the 1970s. Hopefully, it renders their 'investments' worthless.
The bill gets Royal Assent today and so becomes law. There is a sunset clause built in, meaning that it will have to renewed in a year's time. So we need to remain vigilant.
But it's a good day for the world's poorest people.
Vulture funds - many UK based - are investment houses that buy up the debts of the most heavily-indebted poor countries, often for a few pennies, and then sue those countries for the payment of the full amount owed. This is capitalism red and tooth and claw, a montrous injsutice backed by UK courts, and it is wonderful that our Parliament has voted to protect the poor from the rapacious rich.
The law restricts the ability of these funds to sue poor nations in the UK courts and so we should no longer witness the spectacle of a fund succeeding in getting a British court to uphold its claim for $20m immediate payment from Liberia, one of the world's poorest countries, on a debt outsanding since the 1970s. Hopefully, it renders their 'investments' worthless.
The bill gets Royal Assent today and so becomes law. There is a sunset clause built in, meaning that it will have to renewed in a year's time. So we need to remain vigilant.
But it's a good day for the world's poorest people.
The stories we live in
Picked up all Patti Smith's wonderful 1970s albums in a slip case for a tenner yesterday. result! Five albums (the package included 1988's Dream of Life). I shall listen to Horses and Easter as I read her wonderfully observed memoire, Just Kids, chronicling her start in the business and her relationship with photographer Robert Mapplethorpe.
And I confess a frisson of sadness at today's news that Malcolm McLaren has died. I remember early punk washing over Manchester in gigs of complete anarchy and chaos that blew through the rather ossified rock scene in 1976ish. He was a true pop maverick.
Meanwhile, back in the study, I have been putting the finishing touches to a Spring series on 2 Corinthians. I am really looking forward to getting into this urgent pastoral appeal for restored relationships and a cruciform lifestyle. Paul is urging his hearers to a life of holiness based on the story of Jesus in a world of competing stories and spiritualities.
The stories we tell about the world and our place in it, gives shape to our lives. Tell the story that McLaren and Smith lived by and one's life takes on a particular shape and course. In many ways, the election campaign is a clash of stories - how does the world work, what's our place in it?
And here's Paul, retelling the story of Jesus and his story, showing how in that story, God works to bring people together in a community of justice and equity. That's a spiritual vision but also a political one. Paul's intent is not that we withdraw from the world and huddle together but that we live in the world by the values we encounter in the story of Jesus.
We're off to Spring Harvest in Skegness on Sunday to serve on the smallest pastoral team we've been involved in. I'm assuming that numbers are down - otherwise we're going to be really busy! We always enjoy our week, working with some great people, catching with up how God's been working in their lives since last year, as well as walking with a whole variety of folk as God speaks to them about all kinds of issues.
And then it's the Baptist assembly. Spring is so busy!!
And I confess a frisson of sadness at today's news that Malcolm McLaren has died. I remember early punk washing over Manchester in gigs of complete anarchy and chaos that blew through the rather ossified rock scene in 1976ish. He was a true pop maverick.
Meanwhile, back in the study, I have been putting the finishing touches to a Spring series on 2 Corinthians. I am really looking forward to getting into this urgent pastoral appeal for restored relationships and a cruciform lifestyle. Paul is urging his hearers to a life of holiness based on the story of Jesus in a world of competing stories and spiritualities.
The stories we tell about the world and our place in it, gives shape to our lives. Tell the story that McLaren and Smith lived by and one's life takes on a particular shape and course. In many ways, the election campaign is a clash of stories - how does the world work, what's our place in it?
And here's Paul, retelling the story of Jesus and his story, showing how in that story, God works to bring people together in a community of justice and equity. That's a spiritual vision but also a political one. Paul's intent is not that we withdraw from the world and huddle together but that we live in the world by the values we encounter in the story of Jesus.
We're off to Spring Harvest in Skegness on Sunday to serve on the smallest pastoral team we've been involved in. I'm assuming that numbers are down - otherwise we're going to be really busy! We always enjoy our week, working with some great people, catching with up how God's been working in their lives since last year, as well as walking with a whole variety of folk as God speaks to them about all kinds of issues.
And then it's the Baptist assembly. Spring is so busy!!
Sunday, April 04, 2010
In the footsteps of Joanna the apostle
Happy Easter everyone. He is risen and the world is changed as a result. I thought I'd share with you what I'll be saying at church later thgis morning in our family Easter celebration. It focuses on one of the key witnesses of the events of that first Easter:
Joanna stuck to her guns. She had to. The men didn’t believe her.
She told the story again, even explaining it’s significance in the light of what they’d all been told a while back, when they were in Galilee.
Eventually Peter and John cottoned on and went to look for themselves.
No wonder Paul describes her as ‘outstanding among the apostles’. For she was one of the women who came with the news that the tomb of Jesus was empty on that first Easter Day and the first explanation of its significance.
Joanna had grown up with everything a little girl could dream of; she was rich and privileged, a proper Jewish princess. Then she married a wealthy and powerful man. She was part of the Judean elite, that small circle who enjoyed influence and power in Herod’s domain.
But one day her son became ill and desperate for him to get well, her husband had sought out Jesus, a wandering preacher who was gaining a reputation as a healer. The moment he spoke, her son recovered.
She had to find out more. So she joined the ramshackle band of disciples, became part of that group of women who met the financial needs of the group as they travelled proclaiming the good news, not caring that she was providing the lion’s share.
She heard Jesus’ parables, listened to his explanations over countless meals, watched him heal the sick, open the eyes of the blind, unstop deaf ears and even bring his dead friend Lazarus back to life.
And she watched as he was betrayed and deserted by his friends, denied by those closest to him, rejected by his own people, arrested, tried and crucified by the Romans.
Jesus had said to them that there would be those who’d not taste death until they saw his kingship in all its glory. Is this really what he’d meant – being enthroned on a cross of wood, under an angry sky?
Heart-broken, shattered but faithful to the last, she’d gone to the tomb on the day after the Sabbath to do what friends do for the dead, only to find the grave empty and Jesus gone.
Awe-struck and terrified in equal measure, she and the other women met two men who reminded them of what Jesus had said while they were on the road from Galilee to Jerusalem:
That he’d be handed over and crucified and on the third day rise again.
She was entrusted with this message: he is not here; he is risen! Go, tell his friends (even Peter) that this has happened and that he is going to meet them.
It was a life changing moment.
Yes, she’d been amazed at Jesus’ teaching; yes, her eyes popped at some of the healings – not least that of her son; yes, she’d given her resources to help fund Jesus’ movement…
But here as the sun rose on that first Easter Day, and the angels’ words sank in, she knew the world had changed; that something old had been crumpled up like wrapping paper, torn away to reveal something new.
And later that evening, she saw for herself as Jesus came to them, spoke peace and opened the scriptures.
In rising from death, Joanna saw that Jesus was right when he said that she would see his kingship in glory. She had truly seen without fully realising it on Good Friday as he was enthroned over sin and death, as he embraced and absorbed all the pain and darkness of the world, so that on this bright new morning, he might burst from the grave and make all things new.
And if this amazing, wonderful, mind-blowing news was true, then everyone had to know – the disciples, her neighbours, people in the villages up the road, those who lived in Rome; everyone.
So, now with her husband, she leads a congregation of Jesus followers in the capital of the empire, a privileged Jewish princess, bringing the gospel to craft workers, dockers, slaves and the like in the back streets of Rome itself, watching the risen Jesus change despair to hope, darkness to light, death to life for all kinds of people – just as he had for her.
He did it when he healed her son, when he told his stories and drew her into his circle; he did it as he hung on the cross on Good Friday; and most emphatically, he did it when he met her in his risen glory on that first Easter evening.
And what Joanna wants more than anything else, is that he’ll do it for you. That’s why she’s travelled, suffered, even done time in jail with Paul. If Jesus is alive, then everyone needs to hear about it, everyone needs to be drawn into the new way of living she’s found in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. Everyone. Including you and me.
[This story is reconstructed from Luke 8:1-3; 24:1-12; John 4:43-54 and Romans 16:7. It takes account of the fact that followers of Jesus were often only identified by one of their given names to protect their security and that Jewish people often had both Jewish and Roman names. For a full explanation see Richard Bauckham ‘Joanna the apostle’ in his Gospel Women: Studies of the Named Women in the Gospels (T&T Clark, 2002) Pp109-202]
May you all know the joy of the risen Lord this Easter
Joanna stuck to her guns. She had to. The men didn’t believe her.
She told the story again, even explaining it’s significance in the light of what they’d all been told a while back, when they were in Galilee.
Eventually Peter and John cottoned on and went to look for themselves.
No wonder Paul describes her as ‘outstanding among the apostles’. For she was one of the women who came with the news that the tomb of Jesus was empty on that first Easter Day and the first explanation of its significance.
Joanna had grown up with everything a little girl could dream of; she was rich and privileged, a proper Jewish princess. Then she married a wealthy and powerful man. She was part of the Judean elite, that small circle who enjoyed influence and power in Herod’s domain.
But one day her son became ill and desperate for him to get well, her husband had sought out Jesus, a wandering preacher who was gaining a reputation as a healer. The moment he spoke, her son recovered.
She had to find out more. So she joined the ramshackle band of disciples, became part of that group of women who met the financial needs of the group as they travelled proclaiming the good news, not caring that she was providing the lion’s share.
She heard Jesus’ parables, listened to his explanations over countless meals, watched him heal the sick, open the eyes of the blind, unstop deaf ears and even bring his dead friend Lazarus back to life.
And she watched as he was betrayed and deserted by his friends, denied by those closest to him, rejected by his own people, arrested, tried and crucified by the Romans.
Jesus had said to them that there would be those who’d not taste death until they saw his kingship in all its glory. Is this really what he’d meant – being enthroned on a cross of wood, under an angry sky?
Heart-broken, shattered but faithful to the last, she’d gone to the tomb on the day after the Sabbath to do what friends do for the dead, only to find the grave empty and Jesus gone.
Awe-struck and terrified in equal measure, she and the other women met two men who reminded them of what Jesus had said while they were on the road from Galilee to Jerusalem:
That he’d be handed over and crucified and on the third day rise again.
She was entrusted with this message: he is not here; he is risen! Go, tell his friends (even Peter) that this has happened and that he is going to meet them.
It was a life changing moment.
Yes, she’d been amazed at Jesus’ teaching; yes, her eyes popped at some of the healings – not least that of her son; yes, she’d given her resources to help fund Jesus’ movement…
But here as the sun rose on that first Easter Day, and the angels’ words sank in, she knew the world had changed; that something old had been crumpled up like wrapping paper, torn away to reveal something new.
And later that evening, she saw for herself as Jesus came to them, spoke peace and opened the scriptures.
In rising from death, Joanna saw that Jesus was right when he said that she would see his kingship in glory. She had truly seen without fully realising it on Good Friday as he was enthroned over sin and death, as he embraced and absorbed all the pain and darkness of the world, so that on this bright new morning, he might burst from the grave and make all things new.
And if this amazing, wonderful, mind-blowing news was true, then everyone had to know – the disciples, her neighbours, people in the villages up the road, those who lived in Rome; everyone.
So, now with her husband, she leads a congregation of Jesus followers in the capital of the empire, a privileged Jewish princess, bringing the gospel to craft workers, dockers, slaves and the like in the back streets of Rome itself, watching the risen Jesus change despair to hope, darkness to light, death to life for all kinds of people – just as he had for her.
He did it when he healed her son, when he told his stories and drew her into his circle; he did it as he hung on the cross on Good Friday; and most emphatically, he did it when he met her in his risen glory on that first Easter evening.
And what Joanna wants more than anything else, is that he’ll do it for you. That’s why she’s travelled, suffered, even done time in jail with Paul. If Jesus is alive, then everyone needs to hear about it, everyone needs to be drawn into the new way of living she’s found in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. Everyone. Including you and me.
[This story is reconstructed from Luke 8:1-3; 24:1-12; John 4:43-54 and Romans 16:7. It takes account of the fact that followers of Jesus were often only identified by one of their given names to protect their security and that Jewish people often had both Jewish and Roman names. For a full explanation see Richard Bauckham ‘Joanna the apostle’ in his Gospel Women: Studies of the Named Women in the Gospels (T&T Clark, 2002) Pp109-202]
May you all know the joy of the risen Lord this Easter
Monday, March 29, 2010
With Thomas and Bono in the embrace of life
So, here's the piece I wrote for our church magazine which has just come out. I thought I'd share it in this format as probably as many members of my church will see it this way than in the print form. It's a generational thing...
We head into Easter with the world still reeling from two major earthquakes in Haiti and Chile, armed conflict in 38 countries and an economic recession that is blighting the lives of millions across the planet. Against such a global backdrop, our troubles can seem trivial. Except, they are our troubles and we feel their weight each day – whether it’s ill health, uncertainties at work, family and relationship pressures or just a feeling that life is hard work.
Easter is an explosion of life and joy after the fast of lent and the dark agony of Good Friday. But so often we feel stuck on Saturday. The battle is over, the tomb is sealed, everyone’s gone home and that’s it. Sometimes we feel too tired to realise that Easter has dawned, the sun’s up, the Son has risen. We need some one to remind us.
So many of us are like Thomas, sincere, well-meaning, loyal and shattered. We’ve had enough, as he had had enough. For him the cross was the end of the dream. He might have been the Eeyore of the disciple band, but he wasn’t alone in feeling that the world ended on Good Friday.
And he wasn’t going to be taken in the wishful thinking of a group of friends who wanted to keep the spirit of their movement alive. So when Peter and the others excitedly told him that they’d seen Jesus, he didn’t believe them. He wanted to see the evidence. Like any of the heroes of CSI he wanted to get up and close and personal with whoever his friends had seen to assure himself that they weren’t being deluded. Handling the wounds was the only proof that would persuade him.
John tells us that Thomas got his chance. Jesus invited Thomas into the embrace of life. Yes, the man before him was wounded from the cross but he was gloriously, triumphantly, luminously alive. No wonder all Thomas could say was ‘My lord and my God.’ Thomas knew what it meant that the battered and beaten Jesus was standing in front of him. By some great mystery that was beyond his ability to compute what had happened on Good Friday had created a new world and Jesus was at the heart of it. So whoever he was, he must at least be God.
Jesus is the one who brings God into focus. But more than that, he is the one who, having triumphed over all the forces ranged against us, invites us into his new world of love and life, justice and joy, the adventure of being caught up in his mission to put everything right. What this means for us, as Jesus says, is that as we believe, so we get to see who he is and what he’s doing. And he invites us to join him so we can see him more clearly.
As so often, it takes a great popular theologian to spell out what this means for us. So here’s Bono, sometime singer, sometime campaigner, a scribbling, wine-drinking, bible-reading band man.
'True religion will not let us fall asleep in the comfort of our freedom,' he says. 'Love your neighbour is not a piece of advice, it's a command. That means in the global village we're going to have to love a whole lot more people - that's what that means.' He adds: ‘if you’re going to enjoy having your sneakers and your jeans made by developing communities, you are already involved with these people. You cannot therefore just ignore some of the problems they’re negotiating. They’re living on your street. There was an old definition of generosity, which is that at the very least the rich man looks after the poor man on his street. Guess what? Now that street goes round the globe.’
And he reminds us that 'the poor are where God lives...God is with the poor and he is with us if we are with them. This is not a burden, it's an adventure.'
The words have a liturgical as well as rhetorical rhythm. I love that last sentence. Our lives with God in mission among the poor, in sharing what we have, in pooling resources and energy, insights and hard labour is an adventure not a burden.
And it’s an adventure because it’s led by Jesus. He invites us to travel through Good Friday to Easter morning, through the cross to the new world of resurrection, through suffering with a world in pain to the daw of a new creation with pain or tears.
We are Easter people because we follow a suffering servant who broke the tomb and spreads life in his wake everywhere he goes. Are we up for the adventure?
Purifying the temple with Nehemiah and Jesus
The trouble with the new blogger editing suite is that I can't find the spell checker. So if there are spelling infelicities in this it's down to me not being able to spell. Ah well.
We've had a good weekend. It's been lovely having our grand daughter staying with us for the past week - we went for a walk in Knole Park on Saturday which was full of deer and beginning to emerge from the winter with buds and leaves breaking out all over.
And yesterday evening we finished Nehemiah (hallelujah!). It's been a challenges 12 weeks. I think some good things have come from our wrestling with this text, but I can't escape the feeling that Nehemiah was the world's first spin doctor (as David Clines suggests in a fascinating essay on the book) and that it would be great to have Sanballat's autobiography on the same events!
But yesterday we pondered what we might learn from the two cleansings of the temple - one in Nehemiah 13, the other in the gospels; one by the outsider Jesus, the other by the insider Nehemiah. And we wondered what these events might have to teach us regarding creating missional communities (the subject of our journey through Nehemiah).
My reflection was that Nehemiah and Jesus, while superficially poles apart, are on the same continuum, with Jesus (as you'd expect) fulfilling and completing what Nehemiah was involved in progressing. In particular I drew two conclusions about being a missional community from all this.
The first is that to be a missional community we need to have a firm centre. A key lesson from Nehemiah is that at the heart of the community he was seeking to build was a covenant, the scriptures and prayer. These are the key to knowing who we are; these give shape to the values and lifestyle that creates the community that can truly be a city within a city.
The second is that a missional community needs to have fuzzy edges: We learn this from Jesus and the way he allowed any and everyone who wanted to to attach themselves to the band of disciples, to listen in and ask questions, to come along for the journey to see what it was all about.
It is in this way that Isaiah 2:2-4; Micah 4:1-4 (key Old Testament prophecies about the calling of God's people); Isaiah 61; Acts 3:17-21; Ephesians 3:5-7 (see the temple imagery in 2:20-21) will be fulfilled in little groups of Jesus followers; groups where people are moving from the edge to the centre, drawn by the possibility of becoming aware of who they are in Jesus and through that of discovering life in all its fulness.
It seems to me that that’s mission, that’s our calling; this is what it means to be a missional people.And if this is what Nehemiah has taught us, then it's been twelve weeks well spent - especially if we have actually learned it!
We've had a good weekend. It's been lovely having our grand daughter staying with us for the past week - we went for a walk in Knole Park on Saturday which was full of deer and beginning to emerge from the winter with buds and leaves breaking out all over.
And yesterday evening we finished Nehemiah (hallelujah!). It's been a challenges 12 weeks. I think some good things have come from our wrestling with this text, but I can't escape the feeling that Nehemiah was the world's first spin doctor (as David Clines suggests in a fascinating essay on the book) and that it would be great to have Sanballat's autobiography on the same events!
But yesterday we pondered what we might learn from the two cleansings of the temple - one in Nehemiah 13, the other in the gospels; one by the outsider Jesus, the other by the insider Nehemiah. And we wondered what these events might have to teach us regarding creating missional communities (the subject of our journey through Nehemiah).
My reflection was that Nehemiah and Jesus, while superficially poles apart, are on the same continuum, with Jesus (as you'd expect) fulfilling and completing what Nehemiah was involved in progressing. In particular I drew two conclusions about being a missional community from all this.
The first is that to be a missional community we need to have a firm centre. A key lesson from Nehemiah is that at the heart of the community he was seeking to build was a covenant, the scriptures and prayer. These are the key to knowing who we are; these give shape to the values and lifestyle that creates the community that can truly be a city within a city.
The second is that a missional community needs to have fuzzy edges: We learn this from Jesus and the way he allowed any and everyone who wanted to to attach themselves to the band of disciples, to listen in and ask questions, to come along for the journey to see what it was all about.
It is in this way that Isaiah 2:2-4; Micah 4:1-4 (key Old Testament prophecies about the calling of God's people); Isaiah 61; Acts 3:17-21; Ephesians 3:5-7 (see the temple imagery in 2:20-21) will be fulfilled in little groups of Jesus followers; groups where people are moving from the edge to the centre, drawn by the possibility of becoming aware of who they are in Jesus and through that of discovering life in all its fulness.
It seems to me that that’s mission, that’s our calling; this is what it means to be a missional people.And if this is what Nehemiah has taught us, then it's been twelve weeks well spent - especially if we have actually learned it!
Thursday, March 25, 2010
history lessons
Apropos of yesterday's post, I've just listened to Bettany Hughes' programme on women in the early church. It's worth a listen (on iplayer for the next couple of days before part 2 is broadcast on Sunday). It seems well informed though it doesn't really tackle the first century at all except in a few passing references to Phoebe and Priscilla.
I love her description of the early Jesus followers as a guerilla church, an underground movement where jobs were done by those who could do them regardless of gender. This seems spot on as a description of the gatherings we encounter in the first two or three centuries of Christian history.
Perhaps if we could recapture that sense of being a movement rather than an institution, our debates about who exercises 'power' would be seen in proper perspective. Of course, we can't shed 1500 years of history. But we can learn lessons from the early days of the movement that might help us to navigate our way through our post-Christendom culture.
I love her description of the early Jesus followers as a guerilla church, an underground movement where jobs were done by those who could do them regardless of gender. This seems spot on as a description of the gatherings we encounter in the first two or three centuries of Christian history.
Perhaps if we could recapture that sense of being a movement rather than an institution, our debates about who exercises 'power' would be seen in proper perspective. Of course, we can't shed 1500 years of history. But we can learn lessons from the early days of the movement that might help us to navigate our way through our post-Christendom culture.
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
Reflections on drawing the short straw
A couple of stories caught my eye in this morning's paper, hidden away from the torrent of speculation, supposition and spin about today's budget (easy boys, all will be revealed...)
One concerned the death of the singer-songwriter Lesley Duncan, a woman whose pin-sharp tones and lovely turn of phrase brightened up my university days. Her Earth Mother album was a particular delight.
The obit in today's Guardian tells the story of her and her brother touting songs in Tin Pan Alley in the 60s and being taken onto retainers, him at £10 a week and her at £7 because she had fewer songs and was a woman!
The other story concerns, in passing, Anne Moffat, deselected by her Scottish constituency for allegedly not being up to the job. As the ever-presceient Anne Perkins observes in her column 'how remarkable that in a thousand years of male MPs there has never been a case of deselection for incompetence before.'
I think I might have sensitised to these stories by David Kerrigan's insightful blog on the recent BU Council's discussions about women in leadership.
My heart sank as I read it and even more as I read the comments from able, gifted women like Julie and Catriona. Why after nearly a century are we still having this conversation? Why after accepting in the 1920s that God calls women just as he calls into men into church leadership, inlcuding full time ministry, do women find it such an uphill struggle to be settled in pastorates in our churches?
We have a truly exceptional minister in training serving with us at the moment. She is one of the sharpest thinkers I have the pleasure to converse with regularly, she preaches with insight, clarity and purpose, she is developing gifts as a listener. She would be an asset to any church anywhere in the UK of any size. When it comes to her turn to go through settlement, I would expect that she'd be snapped up by a church that recognises her gifts and calling.
Will this happen? Sadly, it seems, we baptists, like tin pan alley, undervalues the assets God has given us because some of them come in female form and, like constituency panels, seem to judge women more harshly than men.
And it's got to stop because it's an offense to the gospel, a cause of grief to the Holy Spirit and a major impediment to our mission.
One concerned the death of the singer-songwriter Lesley Duncan, a woman whose pin-sharp tones and lovely turn of phrase brightened up my university days. Her Earth Mother album was a particular delight.
The obit in today's Guardian tells the story of her and her brother touting songs in Tin Pan Alley in the 60s and being taken onto retainers, him at £10 a week and her at £7 because she had fewer songs and was a woman!
The other story concerns, in passing, Anne Moffat, deselected by her Scottish constituency for allegedly not being up to the job. As the ever-presceient Anne Perkins observes in her column 'how remarkable that in a thousand years of male MPs there has never been a case of deselection for incompetence before.'
I think I might have sensitised to these stories by David Kerrigan's insightful blog on the recent BU Council's discussions about women in leadership.
My heart sank as I read it and even more as I read the comments from able, gifted women like Julie and Catriona. Why after nearly a century are we still having this conversation? Why after accepting in the 1920s that God calls women just as he calls into men into church leadership, inlcuding full time ministry, do women find it such an uphill struggle to be settled in pastorates in our churches?
We have a truly exceptional minister in training serving with us at the moment. She is one of the sharpest thinkers I have the pleasure to converse with regularly, she preaches with insight, clarity and purpose, she is developing gifts as a listener. She would be an asset to any church anywhere in the UK of any size. When it comes to her turn to go through settlement, I would expect that she'd be snapped up by a church that recognises her gifts and calling.
Will this happen? Sadly, it seems, we baptists, like tin pan alley, undervalues the assets God has given us because some of them come in female form and, like constituency panels, seem to judge women more harshly than men.
And it's got to stop because it's an offense to the gospel, a cause of grief to the Holy Spirit and a major impediment to our mission.
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
Jets overhead - but no need to duck
I'm just rediscovering a rather wonderful Canadian band called Jets Overhead. I got their 2005 album Bridges (download for whatever you wanted to pay for it) a couple of years ago. And I've just downloaded last year's No Nations. It's rather lovely.
You can check them out here and listen to the whole album before committing to purchase. Give them a spin; I don't think you'll be disappointed seeing as how as you're all discerning music listeners with impeccable taste!
I'm also using the upgraded blogger software which is smooth and easy...
You can check them out here and listen to the whole album before committing to purchase. Give them a spin; I don't think you'll be disappointed seeing as how as you're all discerning music listeners with impeccable taste!
I'm also using the upgraded blogger software which is smooth and easy...
Figuring out the reasons
I've been pondering the church's teaching programme on off over the past few months (as regular readers will know). I've completed the first draft of a feedback form for sermons which I will distribute to interested parties for comment this weekend.
But as we veer towards the end of our series on Nehemiah, I have been asking myself whether some books of the Bible lend themselves to Sunday ministry better than others.
I've made no secret of my struggles with Nehemiah as we journeyed through his memoir and I think I'd have to say that I'm not alone. this series has seen attendance at our later service drop off quite significantly.
And most noticeable among those who aren't attending are our young adults. This is a major disappointment. Clearly what we're offering is not seen as essential or even worth checking out.
In this we are not alone. Earlier this morning I read a series of papers posted on the EA website (here) examining why churches struggle to attract and hold onto 20s and 30s. The stats have been available since Peter Brierley published The English Church Census in 2005. They tell us that while 12.84% of 65-74s are in church on Sunday, only 3.5% of 20s and 4.5% of 30s attend regularly. I gather the figures for Scotland are if anything worse.
Only 7% of the average congregation of an English church is aged between 20 and 29. You don't need to be a genius to work out the implications of this for the future of the church. As David Voas, consistently the most interesting and challenging commentator on the sociology of church life in the UK points out: 'on average people experience little change in their beliefs and practices once they reach their early 20s.'
He draws a wider lesson from this with implications for church thinking across the board: What secularization does is to change the environment in which children are raised and the likelihood of an effective religious upbringing.'
Those looking across the pond for answers on this will find only questions. Barna tells us that six out of ten teenagers who are active in church will drop out in their twenties and Pew Forum figures suggest that only 17% of the members of evangelical churches in the US are aged 18-29.
I'll reflect further on the implications for us in due course. This is one of the challenges facing the new leadership our church is choosing at the moment. My prayer is that we'll be up for it.
But as we veer towards the end of our series on Nehemiah, I have been asking myself whether some books of the Bible lend themselves to Sunday ministry better than others.
I've made no secret of my struggles with Nehemiah as we journeyed through his memoir and I think I'd have to say that I'm not alone. this series has seen attendance at our later service drop off quite significantly.
And most noticeable among those who aren't attending are our young adults. This is a major disappointment. Clearly what we're offering is not seen as essential or even worth checking out.
In this we are not alone. Earlier this morning I read a series of papers posted on the EA website (here) examining why churches struggle to attract and hold onto 20s and 30s. The stats have been available since Peter Brierley published The English Church Census in 2005. They tell us that while 12.84% of 65-74s are in church on Sunday, only 3.5% of 20s and 4.5% of 30s attend regularly. I gather the figures for Scotland are if anything worse.
Only 7% of the average congregation of an English church is aged between 20 and 29. You don't need to be a genius to work out the implications of this for the future of the church. As David Voas, consistently the most interesting and challenging commentator on the sociology of church life in the UK points out: 'on average people experience little change in their beliefs and practices once they reach their early 20s.'
He draws a wider lesson from this with implications for church thinking across the board: What secularization does is to change the environment in which children are raised and the likelihood of an effective religious upbringing.'
Those looking across the pond for answers on this will find only questions. Barna tells us that six out of ten teenagers who are active in church will drop out in their twenties and Pew Forum figures suggest that only 17% of the members of evangelical churches in the US are aged 18-29.
I'll reflect further on the implications for us in due course. This is one of the challenges facing the new leadership our church is choosing at the moment. My prayer is that we'll be up for it.
Monday, March 15, 2010
More than a stand-up
There's a lovely Times article by comedian Frank Skinner about how Christians should live in our society. He revels himself not only to be a very funny man but also one who is well acquainted with scripture and church history.
In particular, he says that Christians should stop whingeing about people being beastly towards us and start living as Jesus wants us to.
He says: 'Lord Carey feels that Christians have been too soft. He said that if you behave like a doormat, you get treated like one. I’m a little wary of muscular Christianity. It’s been used to justify everything from the Crusades to the shooting of abortion doctors. It seems to be in direct contradiction to “Resist not evil, but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also”. This is the doormat as positive role model — a doormat who’s more concerned about the “welcome” than the muddy feet. Surely the central image of Christianity is someone who can shoot fireballs out of his fingertips allowing himself to be nailed to a wooden cross — submission as the ultimate show of strength — love as impenetrable armour. Most British Christians are badly dressed, unattractive people. We’re not pushy and aggressive members of society. We’re a bit like Goths — no one can remember us being fashionable and we talk about death a lot. I love the glorious un-coolness of that.'
I reckon there's a lot of wisdom here.
He adds: 'I went to a debate this week. The motion was “England should be a Catholic country again”. I ended up voting against. The marriage of Church, any church, and State seems alien to the teachings of Christ. Power corrupts and British Christians should be happy to continue relinquishing it. The Catholic Church lost more than it gained when it got into bed with the Emperor Constantine.'
Can't argue with that, can you?
And then he concludes: 'Christians tend to save their best work for the “voice in the wilderness” genre. We are most impressive when operating as a secret sect, kneeling in small, candle-lit rooms and scrawling fishes on walls. I’m enjoying this current dose of persecution. It’s definitely good for the soul.'
Read the whole article here while I listen to my old mate Alan Billings on Thought for the Day (he's one the reasons I'm a Christian!)
In particular, he says that Christians should stop whingeing about people being beastly towards us and start living as Jesus wants us to.
He says: 'Lord Carey feels that Christians have been too soft. He said that if you behave like a doormat, you get treated like one. I’m a little wary of muscular Christianity. It’s been used to justify everything from the Crusades to the shooting of abortion doctors. It seems to be in direct contradiction to “Resist not evil, but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also”. This is the doormat as positive role model — a doormat who’s more concerned about the “welcome” than the muddy feet. Surely the central image of Christianity is someone who can shoot fireballs out of his fingertips allowing himself to be nailed to a wooden cross — submission as the ultimate show of strength — love as impenetrable armour. Most British Christians are badly dressed, unattractive people. We’re not pushy and aggressive members of society. We’re a bit like Goths — no one can remember us being fashionable and we talk about death a lot. I love the glorious un-coolness of that.'
I reckon there's a lot of wisdom here.
He adds: 'I went to a debate this week. The motion was “England should be a Catholic country again”. I ended up voting against. The marriage of Church, any church, and State seems alien to the teachings of Christ. Power corrupts and British Christians should be happy to continue relinquishing it. The Catholic Church lost more than it gained when it got into bed with the Emperor Constantine.'
Can't argue with that, can you?
And then he concludes: 'Christians tend to save their best work for the “voice in the wilderness” genre. We are most impressive when operating as a secret sect, kneeling in small, candle-lit rooms and scrawling fishes on walls. I’m enjoying this current dose of persecution. It’s definitely good for the soul.'
Read the whole article here while I listen to my old mate Alan Billings on Thought for the Day (he's one the reasons I'm a Christian!)
Friday, March 12, 2010
Let's hear it for the album
Pink Floyd have struck a blow for the album. In the age of the track-by-track, pick n mix digital download, the finest purveyors of concept albums in the history of the genre have won a case preventing EMI from filleting their best work and selling it track by track.
It means if you want Wish You Were Here, you have to buy the whole thing and not just your favourite song from it.
It seems to me, however, that the album is actually very much alive and well. For my birthday I acquired the lean and lovely debut album by Lonelady on CD which comes with a track listing indicating side A and side B. And when you listen with that in mind, it makes perfect sense that Immaterial would open the second side of the album.
This week I've been listening to the stunning new album from Gorillaz which has an obvious beginning and middle and end and demands to be listened to in the order of the track listing. It's not an album made for shuffle.
The Decembrists Album, The Hazards of Love, one of the best releases of last year, is clearly a concept album and demands to be listened to in the order in which the tracks appear on the CD.
Such works are more than just the sum of their parts, more than a collection of songs thrown together in random order. Listening to them from start to finish is to be taken on a journey, invited to see the connections that are made as songs are put in a particular order. So, let's hear it for Pink Floyd.
It means if you want Wish You Were Here, you have to buy the whole thing and not just your favourite song from it.
It seems to me, however, that the album is actually very much alive and well. For my birthday I acquired the lean and lovely debut album by Lonelady on CD which comes with a track listing indicating side A and side B. And when you listen with that in mind, it makes perfect sense that Immaterial would open the second side of the album.
This week I've been listening to the stunning new album from Gorillaz which has an obvious beginning and middle and end and demands to be listened to in the order of the track listing. It's not an album made for shuffle.
The Decembrists Album, The Hazards of Love, one of the best releases of last year, is clearly a concept album and demands to be listened to in the order in which the tracks appear on the CD.
Such works are more than just the sum of their parts, more than a collection of songs thrown together in random order. Listening to them from start to finish is to be taken on a journey, invited to see the connections that are made as songs are put in a particular order. So, let's hear it for Pink Floyd.
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
health, wealth and the credit crunch
I'm on the train testing out my new dongle (they can't touch you for it), on my way to Didcot for an Assembly Project Team meeting (less exciting than it sounds).
Yesterday I was preparing for the final leg in our look at what the Bible says about money and how that informs how we live. I'm doing some stuff on prosperity teachiung and the jubilee (building on what we last time).
I came across a great piece in the Atlantic, a US political and cultural monthly magazine. It's headline says it all really: 'did Christianity cause the crash?'
It shows that many churches promoting prosperity doctrine are in US sub-prime hotspots. On top of that, many of their ministers or senior leaders were loan oifficers at banks at the forefront of the sub-prime boom. Who is prospering whom? cherck it out here.
Yesterday I was preparing for the final leg in our look at what the Bible says about money and how that informs how we live. I'm doing some stuff on prosperity teachiung and the jubilee (building on what we last time).
I came across a great piece in the Atlantic, a US political and cultural monthly magazine. It's headline says it all really: 'did Christianity cause the crash?'
It shows that many churches promoting prosperity doctrine are in US sub-prime hotspots. On top of that, many of their ministers or senior leaders were loan oifficers at banks at the forefront of the sub-prime boom. Who is prospering whom? cherck it out here.
Monday, March 01, 2010
How to create a dialogue in church
It's been great to read the responses to my post on Lent with Stanley over on Facebook - especially as they're from members of my congregation!
What is really encouraging is the genuine hunger they reveal for having their lives shaped by God's word. This is, of course, music to a preacher's ears. So thanks for your responses.
For those who haven't picked this up on facebook, here's what people said:
Sara said
I have never commented on someone else's conversation but have been thinking about this a lot. If you guys want to know what is happening as a result of your sermons you have to ask. If there were a bit more testimony about then you would feel better and others would be inspired. My suggestion is to ask 5 people to feed back to you the next week what they thought God was saying to them in the sermon and how it played out during the week. We would all become a bit more accountable and focus on God changing us and our circumstances.
Becky said
Feedback and more testimonies....i like it! It is always great to have more people from the congregation involved in the services. .....and I would also love to have a 'bit more' to the sermons...I've been listening to a series of hour long sermons and they have been really challenging me - although i do pause and rewind and relisten fair amount!...not sure that would go down well in a Sunday service!
And Rob suggested longer sermons!
So, this week, I'm going to be working on a simple questionnaire/feedback form to give a few folk the chance to respond to what they've heard which could then form the basis to a testimony slot a week or so later that would enable people to hear how people's lives are being affected and shaped by what they are hearing.
It would also give the preacher the chance to clarify and expand on things said so that over a period of time a genuine dialogue between preacher and people would develop.
Yesterday, I had a number of people say to me how helpful the sermon was. This is always great for a preacher to hear but what I wanted to ask everyone who made such comments was 'So what? What difference is this sermon actually going to make to you this week?'
Well, some kind of feedback form would help me get a handle on this which in turn would help me to shape future sermons in the light of reactions to former ones.
And a regular testimony time would give the opportunity for people to say what they were learning, how it's affecting their daily lives at work and challenge the preacher to develop thoughts or even return to material that hadn't been clear enough first time round.
It's quite an exciting thought.
What is really encouraging is the genuine hunger they reveal for having their lives shaped by God's word. This is, of course, music to a preacher's ears. So thanks for your responses.
For those who haven't picked this up on facebook, here's what people said:
Sara said
I have never commented on someone else's conversation but have been thinking about this a lot. If you guys want to know what is happening as a result of your sermons you have to ask. If there were a bit more testimony about then you would feel better and others would be inspired. My suggestion is to ask 5 people to feed back to you the next week what they thought God was saying to them in the sermon and how it played out during the week. We would all become a bit more accountable and focus on God changing us and our circumstances.
Becky said
Feedback and more testimonies....i like it! It is always great to have more people from the congregation involved in the services. .....and I would also love to have a 'bit more' to the sermons...I've been listening to a series of hour long sermons and they have been really challenging me - although i do pause and rewind and relisten fair amount!...not sure that would go down well in a Sunday service!
And Rob suggested longer sermons!
So, this week, I'm going to be working on a simple questionnaire/feedback form to give a few folk the chance to respond to what they've heard which could then form the basis to a testimony slot a week or so later that would enable people to hear how people's lives are being affected and shaped by what they are hearing.
It would also give the preacher the chance to clarify and expand on things said so that over a period of time a genuine dialogue between preacher and people would develop.
Yesterday, I had a number of people say to me how helpful the sermon was. This is always great for a preacher to hear but what I wanted to ask everyone who made such comments was 'So what? What difference is this sermon actually going to make to you this week?'
Well, some kind of feedback form would help me get a handle on this which in turn would help me to shape future sermons in the light of reactions to former ones.
And a regular testimony time would give the opportunity for people to say what they were learning, how it's affecting their daily lives at work and challenge the preacher to develop thoughts or even return to material that hadn't been clear enough first time round.
It's quite an exciting thought.
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
On the finishing of a great undertaking
Ah rejoice, rejoice, rejoice for the great undertaking is complete!
I have just put the final full stop to the manuscript of The World of The Early Church.
Coming in at 50,679 words, it's a tad too long (about 2,000 words) but the excess will come out in the wash.
And I think I'm really quite pleased with it. I think it reads well and tells a good story. But the proof of that will be when I read it again next week or the week after.
Even more so, will be the verdict of my publisher. it is in her inbox now. Watch this space...
I have just put the final full stop to the manuscript of The World of The Early Church.
Coming in at 50,679 words, it's a tad too long (about 2,000 words) but the excess will come out in the wash.
And I think I'm really quite pleased with it. I think it reads well and tells a good story. But the proof of that will be when I read it again next week or the week after.
Even more so, will be the verdict of my publisher. it is in her inbox now. Watch this space...
Lent with Stanley
I am reading Stanley Hauerwas' A Cross-Shattered Church: Reclaiming the Theological Heart of Preaching for lent. I started this morning (slightly late...)
Hauerwas is one of the premier theologians of our age who says here about his craft and its practitioners, 'modern theology tends to be an extended exercise in throat clearing,' adding that 'even after the theologians have cleared their throats it often turns out they have nothing to say.'
I think he's an exception to this rule. He laments that modern theology has become less and less scriptural, suggesting that theologians have tried to see themselves as philosophers. 'Theologians are not "thinkers",' he says. 'We are servants of a tradition in which the creative challenge is how to be faithful to what we have received.'
And he thinks that the best form through which this is expressed is the sermon. 'I am convinced that the recovery of the sermon as the context for theological reflection is crucial if Christians are to negotiate the world in which we find ourselves,' he says
This is a challenge to those of us who find the sermon an inefficient tool for disciple formation in our churches. But perhaps the problem is less with the model than our execution of it(!), though I do feel that preaching is only part of the issue; listening and hearing is the other part and even the best speaking needs good listeners. As C S Lewis once said in a different context, there are no bad books, only bad readers.
As Hauerwas says: 'I hope the reader will discover that the problem is not that they do not understand what I say. Rather the primary challenge is how what I say challenges the way our lives are put together.'
All this magic and I'm only on p14!
Hauerwas is one of the premier theologians of our age who says here about his craft and its practitioners, 'modern theology tends to be an extended exercise in throat clearing,' adding that 'even after the theologians have cleared their throats it often turns out they have nothing to say.'
I think he's an exception to this rule. He laments that modern theology has become less and less scriptural, suggesting that theologians have tried to see themselves as philosophers. 'Theologians are not "thinkers",' he says. 'We are servants of a tradition in which the creative challenge is how to be faithful to what we have received.'
And he thinks that the best form through which this is expressed is the sermon. 'I am convinced that the recovery of the sermon as the context for theological reflection is crucial if Christians are to negotiate the world in which we find ourselves,' he says
This is a challenge to those of us who find the sermon an inefficient tool for disciple formation in our churches. But perhaps the problem is less with the model than our execution of it(!), though I do feel that preaching is only part of the issue; listening and hearing is the other part and even the best speaking needs good listeners. As C S Lewis once said in a different context, there are no bad books, only bad readers.
As Hauerwas says: 'I hope the reader will discover that the problem is not that they do not understand what I say. Rather the primary challenge is how what I say challenges the way our lives are put together.'
All this magic and I'm only on p14!
Christians and politcs (again)
Jude pointed to this fascinating Financial Times article on Christians and the Conservative party in a comment to a recent post (thanks). Here's the link. It's really worth reading.
Monday, February 22, 2010
Changing our maps
We went to a party in Essex on Saturday evening. It was a blast. Great to celebrate Juliet's 40th and catch up with people.
We needed the sat nav to get us there and fairly near the end of the journey we hit a dead end. The sat nav wanted us to go straight on and right but a no entry sign and barrier prevented it. It's maps were wrong. The landscape had changed and the map hadn't caught up with it.
Alan Roxburgh tells as similar story in his new book called Missional Map-making: skills for leading in times of transition. The first chapter is available on the publisher's website (here). The book will be available next month.
I think Roxbugh is the most interesting of the missional thinkers currently writing. I find his use of maps as metaphor really helpful. A key point he's making is that most us are still using maps that relate to a landscape that no longer exists, so it's not surprising that as churches we can't find our way in the world.
Equally, it's not surprising that none of our neighbours has much of a clue what we're talking about when we share our faith.
The environment in which we are seeking to be church has changed faster and more radically over the past 25-30 than at any time since the Reformation/Renaissance. The best guide to this is a wonderful book called The 500 Year Delta by Jim Taylor and Watts Wacker.
It simply means that our models for action and community are no longer up to the job.
Yesterday evening we began asking the question what is our mission and what do we need to be in order to do it. Next week we'll ruminate further on it. I wonder if most of us have grasped the scale of the challenge...
We needed the sat nav to get us there and fairly near the end of the journey we hit a dead end. The sat nav wanted us to go straight on and right but a no entry sign and barrier prevented it. It's maps were wrong. The landscape had changed and the map hadn't caught up with it.
Alan Roxburgh tells as similar story in his new book called Missional Map-making: skills for leading in times of transition. The first chapter is available on the publisher's website (here). The book will be available next month.
I think Roxbugh is the most interesting of the missional thinkers currently writing. I find his use of maps as metaphor really helpful. A key point he's making is that most us are still using maps that relate to a landscape that no longer exists, so it's not surprising that as churches we can't find our way in the world.
Equally, it's not surprising that none of our neighbours has much of a clue what we're talking about when we share our faith.
The environment in which we are seeking to be church has changed faster and more radically over the past 25-30 than at any time since the Reformation/Renaissance. The best guide to this is a wonderful book called The 500 Year Delta by Jim Taylor and Watts Wacker.
It simply means that our models for action and community are no longer up to the job.
Yesterday evening we began asking the question what is our mission and what do we need to be in order to do it. Next week we'll ruminate further on it. I wonder if most of us have grasped the scale of the challenge...
It's enough to make you weep
Well, you've got to hope that the election campaign rises above this morning's smearathon!
I don't mind people trying to sell books - I've got books to sell, so I understand the impulse. But having read the extracts from Andrew Rawnsley's new book, the best I can say of it is that he has a book to sell...
I don't know if anyone else caught a whiff of irony in the hectoring John Humphries interrupting his way through a process of trying to get answers out of two interviewees on the non-story of whether an anti-bullying hotline had or hadn't received complaints about Gordon Brown bullying staff at number 10.
The whole thing just makes you want to weep. It's little wonder that fewer and fewer are contemplating voting.
I don't mind people trying to sell books - I've got books to sell, so I understand the impulse. But having read the extracts from Andrew Rawnsley's new book, the best I can say of it is that he has a book to sell...
I don't know if anyone else caught a whiff of irony in the hectoring John Humphries interrupting his way through a process of trying to get answers out of two interviewees on the non-story of whether an anti-bullying hotline had or hadn't received complaints about Gordon Brown bullying staff at number 10.
The whole thing just makes you want to weep. It's little wonder that fewer and fewer are contemplating voting.
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
Food for thought
My last post referred you to the Theos website where you can find Tom Wright's excellent paper on God and Government.
Theos is a think tank really worth getting to know. Over the past couple of years they have produced some excellent material on Christian engagement with political issues. The organisation's reports are available for free download and are worth getting, reading and talking about in your churches, book clubs, huddles at a cafe, etc.
Currently, there's an opportunity for you to comment on religious programming on the BBC, something I know is exercising some members of my congregation.
In this election year it is more vital than ever that Christians are well-informed about what's going on and how the Bible and Christian tradition might help us to make sensible choices as we head to the polling station.
So go and check Theos out here.
As well as politics, there's a string of good materials by Nick Spencer and others on Darwin which shouldn't be forgotten just because the 150th anniversary year has passed.
Theos is a think tank really worth getting to know. Over the past couple of years they have produced some excellent material on Christian engagement with political issues. The organisation's reports are available for free download and are worth getting, reading and talking about in your churches, book clubs, huddles at a cafe, etc.
Currently, there's an opportunity for you to comment on religious programming on the BBC, something I know is exercising some members of my congregation.
In this election year it is more vital than ever that Christians are well-informed about what's going on and how the Bible and Christian tradition might help us to make sensible choices as we head to the polling station.
So go and check Theos out here.
As well as politics, there's a string of good materials by Nick Spencer and others on Darwin which shouldn't be forgotten just because the 150th anniversary year has passed.
Monday, February 15, 2010
Tom Wright lecture on government
The Tom Wright lecture mentioned last week can now be downloaded here (scroll down to find the link). It's well worth reading carefully and even using as the basis for a group discussion in church in the run up to the election.
Wright's lecture is a robust analysis of the issues facing British democracy seen through the lens of the Biblical narrative and the post-enlightenment history of the West. There's nothing in the lecture about the biblical story and especially that of Jesus as the bringer of the Kingdom that is emphatically for this world, for the here and now, that we haven't read in Wright before. But here it's delivered as a brief and accessible overview that's then applied to how Christians might think about the contemporary political process.
Wright's lecture is a robust analysis of the issues facing British democracy seen through the lens of the Biblical narrative and the post-enlightenment history of the West. There's nothing in the lecture about the biblical story and especially that of Jesus as the bringer of the Kingdom that is emphatically for this world, for the here and now, that we haven't read in Wright before. But here it's delivered as a brief and accessible overview that's then applied to how Christians might think about the contemporary political process.
Thursday, February 11, 2010
Hearing the Bible as it really is
Well I have just completed the fifth of eight chapters of the book. So i am on track to finish by the end of February.
It's been a challenge but I think what I've written so far is good. Hopefully the publisher will agree!
I have to say that immersing myself in the culture of the Roman empire - albeit pretty superficially - has made me more aware of the need to see how the gospel earths itself in our culture.
we had a fascinating gathering at church last night. it was the first of three sessions on money matters. Last night was looking at the New Testament world and I shared the fruit of that day's writing.
What intrigued me about the questions was how they all came out of a Christendom heritage and not the New Testament as rooted in its culture. That's not a surprise I guess since it's how people have been trained!
It'll be fascinating to see what happens next time as we tackle issues that people are concerned about in the light of our understanding of the gospel. I guess my hope is that knowing a little of the context will help us to hear the New Testament as it was heard by its first hearers.
Of course, we'll never be able to do that perfectly but I'm hoping that its message will gain a fresh clarity and a fresh purchase in people's lives as a result of what we're thinking about.
We'll see...
It's been a challenge but I think what I've written so far is good. Hopefully the publisher will agree!
I have to say that immersing myself in the culture of the Roman empire - albeit pretty superficially - has made me more aware of the need to see how the gospel earths itself in our culture.
we had a fascinating gathering at church last night. it was the first of three sessions on money matters. Last night was looking at the New Testament world and I shared the fruit of that day's writing.
What intrigued me about the questions was how they all came out of a Christendom heritage and not the New Testament as rooted in its culture. That's not a surprise I guess since it's how people have been trained!
It'll be fascinating to see what happens next time as we tackle issues that people are concerned about in the light of our understanding of the gospel. I guess my hope is that knowing a little of the context will help us to hear the New Testament as it was heard by its first hearers.
Of course, we'll never be able to do that perfectly but I'm hoping that its message will gain a fresh clarity and a fresh purchase in people's lives as a result of what we're thinking about.
We'll see...
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
A healthy dose of scepticism
It's an interesting week for the news.
I'm listening to Simon Jenkins on Radio 4 telling us how the media were all swept along by climate change hype that is now being exposed as less credible than we all thought. Does that mean we should all be climate change skeptics now?
At the Church of England Synod, a Ugandan bishop has confirmed his support for legislation in his country outlawing homosexual behaviour with the death penalty being proposed for repeat offenders. Are we all going to sign up for the government's proposed equality laws in revulsion at such a view?
I guess what this tells me is that what the media increasingly leads us by the nose into how we should feel about things. Jenkins, not a man I always agree with, has just said that the media should always be sceptical. And I agree wholeheartedly with that.
Scepticism is essential for evaluating the truth of anything. It's how science works and in many ways it's how faith works too. The trouble is that we seem to want to be told what to think, so if the media changes its mind, so do we!
I'm currently writing about the economic location of the early Christians for my book. One of the distractions historians need to be aware of is the tendency of Roman writers to speak of a binary economy in the Roman empire - a few very rich people at the top and everyone bumping along the bottom, one missed crust away from penury.
Such a view is reproduced by some historians and NT scholars. But the evidence of it is slim indeed. They appear to have fallen of the hype of the empire's reporters. Reality is always much more nuanced and interesting.
When I was being trained as a historian, I was always taught to run a sceptical eye over the evidence looking for those nuances, the bumps on an otherwise flat sheet that lets the light fall on the era under study so that we see it as well as we possibly can.
Then when I was being trained as a reporter, I was told to ask the how, what, where, when and why questions always backed by the prove it riposte. Would that our media did that more often.
I'm listening to Simon Jenkins on Radio 4 telling us how the media were all swept along by climate change hype that is now being exposed as less credible than we all thought. Does that mean we should all be climate change skeptics now?
At the Church of England Synod, a Ugandan bishop has confirmed his support for legislation in his country outlawing homosexual behaviour with the death penalty being proposed for repeat offenders. Are we all going to sign up for the government's proposed equality laws in revulsion at such a view?
I guess what this tells me is that what the media increasingly leads us by the nose into how we should feel about things. Jenkins, not a man I always agree with, has just said that the media should always be sceptical. And I agree wholeheartedly with that.
Scepticism is essential for evaluating the truth of anything. It's how science works and in many ways it's how faith works too. The trouble is that we seem to want to be told what to think, so if the media changes its mind, so do we!
I'm currently writing about the economic location of the early Christians for my book. One of the distractions historians need to be aware of is the tendency of Roman writers to speak of a binary economy in the Roman empire - a few very rich people at the top and everyone bumping along the bottom, one missed crust away from penury.
Such a view is reproduced by some historians and NT scholars. But the evidence of it is slim indeed. They appear to have fallen of the hype of the empire's reporters. Reality is always much more nuanced and interesting.
When I was being trained as a historian, I was always taught to run a sceptical eye over the evidence looking for those nuances, the bumps on an otherwise flat sheet that lets the light fall on the era under study so that we see it as well as we possibly can.
Then when I was being trained as a reporter, I was told to ask the how, what, where, when and why questions always backed by the prove it riposte. Would that our media did that more often.
Saturday, February 06, 2010
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.
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.
Thursday, February 04, 2010
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.
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.
Monday, February 01, 2010
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...
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...
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
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.
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.
Sunday, January 24, 2010
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
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
Thursday, January 21, 2010
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.
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.
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
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?
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?
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
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.
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.
Monday, January 18, 2010
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?
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?
Friday, January 15, 2010
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'.
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'.
Wednesday, January 13, 2010
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.
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.
Monday, January 11, 2010
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!
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!
Friday, January 08, 2010
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?
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?
Wednesday, January 06, 2010
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.......
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.
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.
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.
Tuesday, January 05, 2010
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?
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?
Saturday, January 02, 2010
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.
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.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
