Had a momentary panic over the weekend when I was told I couldn't sign in to my blog to update it. Blogger (the hosts) have been taken over by Google - you know, the people who won't allow folk in China to do a browser search for 'democracy' - and I mistyped my email address when signing up to continue my account. For a few weeks that seemed ok, and I woudn't be getting any unwanted emails from Google either. Trouble is they discovered the email didn't exist and wouldn't let me get at my posts. All is now resolved.
So, a few links to be getting on with:
There are some blogging awards on the go at the moment - I have no idea whether these are the blogging Oscars or something completely worthless, but the list of nominated religious blogs is here: http://www.bloggerschoiceawards.com/categories/14
If nothing else, it answers the question about what all those Catholics who no longer go to Mass are doing with their spare time, as virtually every blog in the top 30 seems to be RC. MadPriest, one of the blogs linked here, is in the top 20 at time of writing.
http://learningmastery.wordpress.com/2007/04/11/presentations-that-dont-suck/ is a good place to visit for some online conversation about use of Powerpoint and presentations during sermons. As a church which is starting to get into this, and having spent most of the last fortnight lugging my laptop around Yeovil, it's quite helpful.
http://starttheweek.typepad.com/stw/ is a mission blog I visit regularly, and usefully it's updated at the same time every week. 2 really interesting things on it this week - at the top is a big plug for 'Back to Church Sunday', happening this autumn, then part way down some comments on some recent research by TEAR Fund which (the headlines reported) showed that 3m people might come to church if they were asked nicely.
The comments in question remind us that this means that about 45m people therefore wouldn't come to church if they were asked nicely (and also would need to be asked by a good friend or family member), which raises a lot of questions about whether 'Back to Church' is the right message or not. Someone else wondering aloud about that is Alan Hirsch, a pioneer thinker in the emerging church movement.
Finally, Venn that Tune, a series on someones blog, for those of you who like music and mathematical diagrams. Can't remember if I've linked this before, but he's put some new stuff up since then anyway.....
Monday, April 30, 2007
Thursday, April 26, 2007
Prayer Cards, and Empire Building
The prayer cards I mentioned earlier this week have arrived - thankyou to the Christian Enquiry Agency and their very nice people, go and see their website, or the rejesus website, if you haven't already done so.
Completely unrelated, a friend posted me this the other day:
I mentioned the PhD that a friend is doing around the whole issue of 'church and empire'; the purpose (if I understand it, which I'm not sure I do) is to identify how the 'spirit of empire' (power, control etc) has infected 'the church' over many centuries. Hopefully the outcome of this study will be to give some practical guidelines for how the church today can embody Jesus in a healthy way and model something counter cultural in the post Christendom society. When I floated the question of how we (church) could be free from this sort of un-Christlike 'empire spirit', you immediately (instinctively?) responded ".by going into exile".
It sounded good at the time, but I'm not exactly sure what I meant! I guess it is that until the church gives up power - owning property, having status, having parishes and seats in the Lords and a stake in the system - until we are thrown completely into dependence upon God and out of our comfort zones, we will always have power to exercise, so we will always think in empire-building ways.
Not for nothing did Jesus go on at great length about servanthood - the disciples could see fame, celebrity and influence coming over the horizon, and every one of them wanted to be first in the queue. "you should be pushing each other out of the way for the place at the back of the queue" Jesus told them (though obviously not in those words, as he was speaking Aramaic at the time). If the experience of holding and wielding power has corrupted the church, then the experience of being powerless is what we need in order for that corruption to be purged from our system.
Unfortunately, because the church is still also infected with post-enlightenment culture, there are many of us who still think that intellectual knowledge is the key to everything. Teach people the right truths, and their souls will follow. So all we need to free ourselves from an empire mentality is to get the right truths into our head. There is some truth to that, but not all of the truth. Jesus didn't just teach the disciples verbally, he put them through training experiences - go and preach, arrange a meal, heal people, hand out this bread etc., and then reflected with them on the experiences they had been through. They were apprentices as much as students.
So we have to take seriously the role of training experiences in the lives not just of individual disciples, but the whole church. Corporate experiences play a big role in the history of Israel (slavery, Exodus, exile) and the church, so what corporate experience is the one we need now? There are some Christians who pray that the church in England will enjoy the blessing of persecution, because only that way will we become strong enough Christians to carry out the mission of God. I personally hope there is another way, but what if there isn't?
Completely unrelated, a friend posted me this the other day:
I mentioned the PhD that a friend is doing around the whole issue of 'church and empire'; the purpose (if I understand it, which I'm not sure I do) is to identify how the 'spirit of empire' (power, control etc) has infected 'the church' over many centuries. Hopefully the outcome of this study will be to give some practical guidelines for how the church today can embody Jesus in a healthy way and model something counter cultural in the post Christendom society. When I floated the question of how we (church) could be free from this sort of un-Christlike 'empire spirit', you immediately (instinctively?) responded ".by going into exile".
It sounded good at the time, but I'm not exactly sure what I meant! I guess it is that until the church gives up power - owning property, having status, having parishes and seats in the Lords and a stake in the system - until we are thrown completely into dependence upon God and out of our comfort zones, we will always have power to exercise, so we will always think in empire-building ways.
Not for nothing did Jesus go on at great length about servanthood - the disciples could see fame, celebrity and influence coming over the horizon, and every one of them wanted to be first in the queue. "you should be pushing each other out of the way for the place at the back of the queue" Jesus told them (though obviously not in those words, as he was speaking Aramaic at the time). If the experience of holding and wielding power has corrupted the church, then the experience of being powerless is what we need in order for that corruption to be purged from our system.
Unfortunately, because the church is still also infected with post-enlightenment culture, there are many of us who still think that intellectual knowledge is the key to everything. Teach people the right truths, and their souls will follow. So all we need to free ourselves from an empire mentality is to get the right truths into our head. There is some truth to that, but not all of the truth. Jesus didn't just teach the disciples verbally, he put them through training experiences - go and preach, arrange a meal, heal people, hand out this bread etc., and then reflected with them on the experiences they had been through. They were apprentices as much as students.
(as an aside, which secular qualification is the closest parallel to being a disciple of Jesus? NVQ (vocational), PhD (intellectual), old-style O levels (memorise information and regurgitate for exam), or early years basline assesment (what skills and developmental milestones have you reached), or something else? I just wondered.....)
Monday, April 23, 2007
How to blog
The CofE now offers training in how to blog.....
This link at Dave Walkers website explains all.
The training will cost me £60, plus the rail fare to London. If I get 12 comments telling me I need the training, then to London I will go.... your call, dear reader.
This link at Dave Walkers website explains all.The training will cost me £60, plus the rail fare to London. If I get 12 comments telling me I need the training, then to London I will go.... your call, dear reader.
Prayer cards
The Christian Enquiry Agency is producing business-card-sized prayer cards like the one pictured, for Church Army evangelists to use. I think this is great, and have emailed the CEA to try to get hold of some.
Sunday, April 22, 2007
What Did Jesus Do?
Having just been to Spring Harvest (for those who don't know, its a Christian gathering over the Easter holidays at Butlins in Minehead and Skegness, pulls in around 55,000 people, and offers a great combination of worship, teaching, fun and laminated mattresses), the following story has been on my mind....
A few years ago, Spring Harvest joined up with another Christian festival, the Keswick Convention, to do a 'Word Alive' week as part of their Easter programme. It was directed more at students, and had greater input from folk you would normally find speaking at the Keswick event. In the last couple of weeks, Spring Harvest and Word Alive have parted company, over whether a particular speaker, Steve Chalke, should be allowed to speak.
Why is Rev Chalke such a bone of contention? Last year he published a book 'the lost message of Jesus', in which he spoke, in passing, of what happened on the Cross. Chalke takes issue with a certain understanding of the Cross, usually labelled 'penal substitution', and very bluntly calls is 'cosmic child abuse'. Why? The model in question understands that because of our sin, God, who is holy, must punish us. Jesus' death on the cross is deliberate, he is sent by God to bear the punishment we deserve, so that justice is satisfied (someone pays the penalty) but mercy triumphs (because Jesus pays the penalty for us). Hence penal (penalty) substitution (Jesus dies in our place).
There are parts of Scripture which point towards this - Isaiah 53 speaks of the punishment which all of us deserved falling on Jesus. However the good news of Jesus is far more multi-layered than this. In fact, the 'gospel' which was declared by the early church was more to do with the resurrection of Jesus as God's installation of Jesus as king of creation, and the need to declare whether you would follow God's king or keep going your own way. The problem with penal substitution is not whether it's biblical - I think it's there in scripture - but whether it is the whole story. Most heresies happen when someone picks up part of the truth and assumes it's the whole truth. There are plenty of other images which the Bible uses about the Cross, and of course if it weren't for the Resurrection, the Cross would just be another miserable death of a good man in a bad world.
I must admit that I'm far more of a pragmatist than a theorist. That means that if things work, they will appeal to me, and I have to remember to engage the part of my head that asks 'but is it true?' As the church wrestles with many practical questions about mission, it's important not just to ask 'does it work' but 'is it true', because Satan himself presented Jesus with several practical and workable courses of action during the tempatations. It's just that none of them had integrity, or were consistent with God, his word and his character.
Most of what we call 'theology' is reflection on experience. Christian thinking normally finds itself catching up with what God is doing. We focused on the Holy Spirit in church this morning - it took the early church 300 years to work out what it thought the Holy Spirit was, 300 years during which the Spirit carried on filling people, giving them spiritual gifts, filling them with power for mission, and building up the church. Our understanding normally follows God's activity.
Sorry, no neat conclusion to this blog entry, maybe I should just be praying for unity among my Christian brothers and sisters.
A few years ago, Spring Harvest joined up with another Christian festival, the Keswick Convention, to do a 'Word Alive' week as part of their Easter programme. It was directed more at students, and had greater input from folk you would normally find speaking at the Keswick event. In the last couple of weeks, Spring Harvest and Word Alive have parted company, over whether a particular speaker, Steve Chalke, should be allowed to speak.
Why is Rev Chalke such a bone of contention? Last year he published a book 'the lost message of Jesus', in which he spoke, in passing, of what happened on the Cross. Chalke takes issue with a certain understanding of the Cross, usually labelled 'penal substitution', and very bluntly calls is 'cosmic child abuse'. Why? The model in question understands that because of our sin, God, who is holy, must punish us. Jesus' death on the cross is deliberate, he is sent by God to bear the punishment we deserve, so that justice is satisfied (someone pays the penalty) but mercy triumphs (because Jesus pays the penalty for us). Hence penal (penalty) substitution (Jesus dies in our place).
There are parts of Scripture which point towards this - Isaiah 53 speaks of the punishment which all of us deserved falling on Jesus. However the good news of Jesus is far more multi-layered than this. In fact, the 'gospel' which was declared by the early church was more to do with the resurrection of Jesus as God's installation of Jesus as king of creation, and the need to declare whether you would follow God's king or keep going your own way. The problem with penal substitution is not whether it's biblical - I think it's there in scripture - but whether it is the whole story. Most heresies happen when someone picks up part of the truth and assumes it's the whole truth. There are plenty of other images which the Bible uses about the Cross, and of course if it weren't for the Resurrection, the Cross would just be another miserable death of a good man in a bad world.
I must admit that I'm far more of a pragmatist than a theorist. That means that if things work, they will appeal to me, and I have to remember to engage the part of my head that asks 'but is it true?' As the church wrestles with many practical questions about mission, it's important not just to ask 'does it work' but 'is it true', because Satan himself presented Jesus with several practical and workable courses of action during the tempatations. It's just that none of them had integrity, or were consistent with God, his word and his character.
Most of what we call 'theology' is reflection on experience. Christian thinking normally finds itself catching up with what God is doing. We focused on the Holy Spirit in church this morning - it took the early church 300 years to work out what it thought the Holy Spirit was, 300 years during which the Spirit carried on filling people, giving them spiritual gifts, filling them with power for mission, and building up the church. Our understanding normally follows God's activity.
Sorry, no neat conclusion to this blog entry, maybe I should just be praying for unity among my Christian brothers and sisters.
Saturday, April 21, 2007
when to quit
A big day of endings in the cricket world today - Englands coach (Duncan Fletcher) and the West Indies star batsman Brian Lara both in their last games. The consensus seems to be that Fletcher hung around too long, and will always be remembered for the Ashes success of 2005. The 20 months in between is a long time in cricketing terms, and England have faltered badly in that time. Question marks now hang over Michael Vaughan, the current England captain, and whether he too is living on past glories.
One comment from Spring Harvest which has really stuck with me is from Philippians, where the speaker Ian Coffey focused on Pauls statement about forgetting what is behind him and focusing on what is ahead. People, and organisations, can be drawn into focusing so much on past glories that the world passes them by. The secret of success in the present is to forget the successes of the past - in a world of rapid change, we're tempted to think that all we need to do is what we did before, and magically it will succeed. That's like aiming an arrow at where the target was last year, regardless of whether it's been moved or not. If we don't do this, then what was a movement can become a monument and end up as a mausoleum. Part of the secret of staying fresh is godly forgetfulness.
Having said that, we don't want to get so focused on 'results' that people who had a fruitful ministry in the past are forced out of leadership just because things are going through a slow patch. God's rhythms are different from those of the cricket season. At the same time, church leaders need to be able to let go if they are past their seasons of fruitfulness in a particular community. That's really hard for those of us in leadership who make our homes and lives in a certain place, because it's not just about giving up a ministry, you have to give up everything. When I move from this church, I'll have to move from my house too. How can we support leaders better in making these kind of choices, so that the church can continue to thrive without leaders and their families being sacrificed?
Also, not everything from the past gets rejected. Paul also gave us the concept of 'tradition' - handing on to people the teaching he himself recieved, and the need to preserve and take good care of what we've been entrusted with. So it's quite a challenge to sift out the things we need to remember from the things we need to forget. And we can go off the rails in both directions - churches which remember everything and forget nothing, and churches which remember nothing and wear their people out with a constant stream of innovation.
Maybe one of the skills we need is the ability to move on from the past without devaluing it. The media have been all over Vaughan and Fletcher, which is unfortunate, because they've both done great things in their time, and Vaughan may still do again. Can the church be a place where we honour the past without becoming captive to it? Can a spirit of generosity from those who remember past glories go hand in hand with a spirit of gratitude from those who are setting a new direction?
All of which leads neatly to the Westfield Youth Cafe, 'Cafe Izaya', which we did the official opening for this morning. Great to see a church which relates most directly to the elderly giving hospitality to this innovative (and award-winning - a national award for 'Team of the Year' from the Millennium Volunteer Awards) youth ministry. Young and old working together, and as we looked round the place today it felt like the teething troubles were worth it.
Finally, back to cricket. Yorkshire won. All is well.
One comment from Spring Harvest which has really stuck with me is from Philippians, where the speaker Ian Coffey focused on Pauls statement about forgetting what is behind him and focusing on what is ahead. People, and organisations, can be drawn into focusing so much on past glories that the world passes them by. The secret of success in the present is to forget the successes of the past - in a world of rapid change, we're tempted to think that all we need to do is what we did before, and magically it will succeed. That's like aiming an arrow at where the target was last year, regardless of whether it's been moved or not. If we don't do this, then what was a movement can become a monument and end up as a mausoleum. Part of the secret of staying fresh is godly forgetfulness.
Having said that, we don't want to get so focused on 'results' that people who had a fruitful ministry in the past are forced out of leadership just because things are going through a slow patch. God's rhythms are different from those of the cricket season. At the same time, church leaders need to be able to let go if they are past their seasons of fruitfulness in a particular community. That's really hard for those of us in leadership who make our homes and lives in a certain place, because it's not just about giving up a ministry, you have to give up everything. When I move from this church, I'll have to move from my house too. How can we support leaders better in making these kind of choices, so that the church can continue to thrive without leaders and their families being sacrificed?
Also, not everything from the past gets rejected. Paul also gave us the concept of 'tradition' - handing on to people the teaching he himself recieved, and the need to preserve and take good care of what we've been entrusted with. So it's quite a challenge to sift out the things we need to remember from the things we need to forget. And we can go off the rails in both directions - churches which remember everything and forget nothing, and churches which remember nothing and wear their people out with a constant stream of innovation.
Maybe one of the skills we need is the ability to move on from the past without devaluing it. The media have been all over Vaughan and Fletcher, which is unfortunate, because they've both done great things in their time, and Vaughan may still do again. Can the church be a place where we honour the past without becoming captive to it? Can a spirit of generosity from those who remember past glories go hand in hand with a spirit of gratitude from those who are setting a new direction?
All of which leads neatly to the Westfield Youth Cafe, 'Cafe Izaya', which we did the official opening for this morning. Great to see a church which relates most directly to the elderly giving hospitality to this innovative (and award-winning - a national award for 'Team of the Year' from the Millennium Volunteer Awards) youth ministry. Young and old working together, and as we looked round the place today it felt like the teething troubles were worth it.
Finally, back to cricket. Yorkshire won. All is well.
Thursday, April 19, 2007
Spirit of Life
Spirit of Life is a festival happening on May 7th (May Day) at Coventry Cathedral. Okay its quite a distance from Yeovil, but I'm hoping it'll be worth the journey.
What is it? A Mind, Body and Spirit -style festival, but with a Christian rather than New Age core, so that spiritual seekers get the chance to explore following Jesus but without it coming in the normal 'church on a Sunday' packaging. Here's some examples of what's on offer:
Angels, Halos, Animal Blessing, Healing through touch, Icon making, 'Soul art', Storytelling, Mystery of Creation, Sacred Prayer beads, Holistic therapy, Dream interpretation, and so on - 60 workshops, seminars, zones or activities in the amazing setting of Coventry cathedral.
It would be normal for the average Christian to look at the seminar list and go 'what has any of this got to do with Jesus? Sounds like a load of New Age mumbo jumbo to me?', but maybe that's the whole idea. Jesus, Paul and the other early missionaries were great at taking great spiritual truths and putting them into everyday language.
Trouble is we're so used to certain bits of language being used that we've confused the words themselves with the message we're trying to convey. Take 'gospel' for example. The word meant 'royal proclamation' in its 1st century context, so if you said 'I'm bringing you the gospel about Jesus' you're immediately raising the temperature, because any royal proclamation which wasn't about Caesar was an act of treason. Nowadays we've lost the context, but still use the word 'gospel' as though it's a magic word with special power.
The research from TEAR Fund released a couple of weeks ago (which found that 75% of former churchgoers and 95% of 'never been' churchgoers wouldn't go to church even if their best friend asked them nicely) shows that many people percieve 'church' in a negative way. We don't want to scrap the church, and many folk who join one are pleasantly surprised. But another tactic is to try to say the same thing in a different way. Coventry Cathedral are trying to do this for spiritual seekers - for the 50% or so of the population who believe in God, think there might be something in this angels business, have had a supernatural experience and occasionally pray.
So, if you live in the Yeovil area and fancy a May Day bank holiday day out with a difference, let me know, there's spaces in the car......
Expressions DVD 2
The CofE has produced it's 2nd DVD on 'fresh expressions' of church, here is the blurb on what it contains:
All over the country, Christians are beginning new initiatives to connect with those who are currently outside the church. Presented by Diane Louise Jordan, this DVD focuses on four specific areas where fresh expressions of church are breaking new ground:
Work, rest and play - Fresh expressions of church in places of employment (20 minutes)
A new harvest? - Fresh expressions of church in rural areas (20 minutes)
The Lord is here - Fresh expressions of church in the sacremental tradition (20 minutes)
Generate - Fresh expressions of church for young people (20 minutes)
A new harvest? - Fresh expressions of church in rural areas (20 minutes)
The Lord is here - Fresh expressions of church in the sacremental tradition (20 minutes)
Generate - Fresh expressions of church for young people (20 minutes)
In addition there are six discussion starters. These feature experienced contributors, who will help you and your team unpack your thinking about contemporary mission and fresh expressions of church.
1. Why is being mission-shaped so important? (6 minutes)
2. Listening to your community (6 minutes)
3. Starting a fresh expression (6 minutes)
4. Sustaining fresh expressions (6 minutes)
5. Discipleship (6 minutes)
6. The allotment - a short story ( 6 minutes)
2. Listening to your community (6 minutes)
3. Starting a fresh expression (6 minutes)
4. Sustaining fresh expressions (6 minutes)
5. Discipleship (6 minutes)
6. The allotment - a short story ( 6 minutes)
This is an excellent training tool for those interested in contemporary mission and fresh expressions of church.
If you want to buy it go here, alternatively order it through a bookshop and save the postage. I'll try to review it here in a week or two once my copy has arrived.
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