Trying to gather my thoughts...

World Spelling Day…

2012-03-06T12:11:00.000Z

Today is designated World Spelling Day and every dyslexic bone in my body wants to scream out NOOOOOOOO! I know people find it hard to take my dyslexia seriously, after all I myself find it hard to be anything other than flippant about it, until it comes to things like ‘World Spelling Day’, scrabble contests or crosswords. People seem to find it so hard to grasp just how scary I find a crossword. I mean I can handle the clues, I can cope if I am given the first letter, but the concept of trying to work out that a word is blank, blank, ‘n’, blank, blank, ‘r’ is totally beyond me; where as for many of you your brains are trying to think what word now fits into that pattern!

I can read, slower than most, but at least in reading I take in what I am reading for I need to in order to make sense of the jumbles. I can handle accounts, despite the associated dyspraxia, through years of working with such things. And again I can handle them quite well, but mainly because I don’t just read them, but need to make sense of them in order to comprehend. The way my brain works has actually been an aid, not a hindrance to me, as it has meant I have had to master the complexities of my memory and word association in order to function and cope, yet still there are moments when the horror strikes. Recently I had a young person pushing me to do a Mensa test, but the idea of trying to read all those words at speed was a horror to me… for my brain works faster than my ability to unjumble the letters and numbers.

Perhaps my biggest pet hate is text speak, and yes, I do know how I have spelt it, but I refuse to write txtspk! How am I as a dyslexic that often reads primarily by patterns, rather than by phonetics, supposed to cope when this mishmash of letter and numbers wants to say to me ‘C U L8tr’. Come on, we live in an age of unlimited texts, please for my sake proper words, capital letters and proper punctuation and grammar. Oh yes, I know my grammar is not perfect, and I know my spelling is only saved by this being typed firstly in a word-processor with an operational spellchecker, but have pity on me!

Perhaps my greatest horror was learning Biblical Greek and Hebrew at college. The more recent task of having to master academic German at least had mostly the same alphabet, but Greek with letter reminiscent of the Latin Alphabet that we use and yet pronounced so differently is a nightmare to my brain…and as for the spider crawl of Hebrew that one of our college tutors used to scribble in a felt-tip pen across an overhead projector truly fried my brain. It took time and a desire beyond imagining to begin to work with these new shapes and patterns… the world of phonetics with which Aged Seven now struggles remains a mystery to me even today!

Yet communication matters, matters more than we can imagine, and for many of us we take it for granted. Most of the time I am as guilty of that as anyone, after all it is the bread and butter of my life. And communication is complicated by writing, reading and the mysterious world of idioms and metaphors. Yesterday I declared to my son that ‘you take the biscuit!’ to which he responded guiltily that he didn’t, that he always asked mummy before he went near where the biscuits were stored. He didn’t understand, though it was only later when we noticed the crumbs and the shortage of biscuits that we fully understood why he was so adamant! Words are an amazing things…and for some of us truly mysterious!

Perhaps this also conveys more of the truth of what it means for Jesus to be ‘the Living Word’. Maybe in a literate culture the concept loses some of its mystery and wonder…maybe we take the meaning of ‘word’ as being comprehendible rather than revealing the wonder that something so difficult to understand might come alive to us to reveal its true meaning to us. In our culture we also lose the sense to which words, meaning even grammar are philosophical concepts and carry philosophical meanings that take us deeper. Maybe the greatest gift my brain has endowed me with is a sense to which words, numbers and meaning is treated with a sense of mystery and wonder.

So yes it is World Spelling Day, and yes this, like every other one of my blogs is no doubt littered with grammatical errors and appalling spelling mistakes… I cannot claim them to be typos as what I type I do so with a deliberateness that comes from my dyslexia. Yet what I type is my attempt to grapple with the meaning of life and a genuine desire to seek to communicate the wonder of the otherness of reality from my perception of it.

So sorry about the spelling… but the meaning is a conscious choice…

The wisdom of sloth…

2012-03-05T11:07:00.000Z

The BBC News love cutie items, yet few have managed to be cuter than the one broadcast on the 2nd May. Ever since I clapped eyes on the footage, and the accompanying news interview, I have wanted to blog about it, despite the fact that ‘News Cuties’ do not usually hold a massive appeal to me. The news item was to do with a documentary that had appeared on YouTube and received a vast quantity of hits… a documentary about sloths. Ricky Gervaise, Stephen Fry and other luminaries have tweeted about it pushing up the number of hits. In fact what becomes clear if you go to www.youtube.com is that people are truly fixated by sloths!

So what is it about sloths? Well, in the BBC interview, the filmmaker, Lucy Cooke, suggests two factors. Firstly, the fact their faces are all so different and so we can identify them, which makes me wonder if she simply spent too much time with them. The other factor she thinks is significant is that they are named after one of the seven deadly sins, something she felt we all naturally associate with. Based on such an assumption would you think that a pig-like animal called gluttony, a vicious-fanged beast called wrath, or a bonobo monkey called lust would be cute. Actually there are a lot of people fascinated by bonobos, and lust would be a good name for them, so maybe she has a point!

Lucy Cooke’s theory is that we are fascinated by our flaws, our very human tendencies that we recognise as being wrong. It appears that a fourth century monk, Evagrius Ponticus, first came up with a list, in his case eight items, from which things were added and dropped until a final list sort of came into popular agreement:

Lust – For some reason, and you might need to ask the Bonobo monkey about this, it always seems to come top!

Gluttony – in a culture of over-consumption we need to remember that this includes a dismissal of the needs of others – a good one for Fair Trade Fortnight.

Greed – As Thomas Aquinas put it: "a sin against God, just as all mortal sins, in as much as man condemns things eternal for the sake of temporal things." Or to put it another way the sin of accumulation at the expense of others, and our focus on the things of God, is an offence to God! Therefore the excessive purchase of books on theology is not included as 'greed' - thanks Thomas!

Sloth – I suppose it should be noted that even the New Testament epistle writers have harsh words for those in the community who are lazy.

Acedia – Errr, what? A Latin word meaning apathetic listlessness; depression without joy, or melancholy. So clinical depression is a deadly sin… MMMmmmm… seems rather harsh for simply not counting our blessings…

Wrath – Uncontrolled feelings of hatred and anger, including self-destructive elements in our lives!

Envy – In a culture where the very purpose of advertising is to create a desire to possess this one seems almost inescapable.

Pride or Vainglory – To be full of oneself and to declare it – and we are in a culture where self-assertiveness courses are big business. Perhaps the problem is not the lack of self-assertiveness of some but the insistance of others on assert themselves?

The problem is that when you reflect on this list it is almost as if our culture encourages these with a vigour. Whether that is so called newspapers “where they offer you a feature on stockings and suspenders, next to a call for stiffer penalties for sex offenders” (to quote Billy Bragg); Burger Emporiums where they instantly ask whether that is ‘large or super-sized’, the bankers… I could go on! Today we almost sneer at the cardinal virtues that were proposed: chastity, temperance, charity, diligence, patience, kindness and humility. It is as though our culture choose to glory in… now hold on, I am beginning to sound very reminiscent of Sunday Evening's sermon on 1 Peter 4:1-7.

So we are called to be in this world as strangers, aliens, sojourners not living as the world does, but living for Christ and to reveal the nature of Christ to this world.

...but despite all that, I still think the sloths are cute…

Being God’s people…

2012-03-04T13:20:00.000Z

Today we had a baptism in the church morning service. I love baptisms, and we have over the last six or so months been very blessed by the seemingly constant flow of candidates to go through the waters. At the moment there are about four or five more, in varying states of readiness, who have approached, so this probably means that April (Easter Day) and May (Pentecost) services may well be baptismal services as well as joyful festival days. It is always good when we get to fill the baptistery up!

It is also good to recognise that as we fill it up, we are being who we are called to be as the people of God. As Baptists we believe that part of our identity is caught up in being a covenant community of believers who have entered into the church through the waters of baptism as believers. This is not a peripheral activity of the church, a service rendered to those who never normally darken the door, but something that speaks of the very essence of our identity. Interestingly even the Water Company recognises this as when they fitted a water meter to the church they consciously fitted it on the other side of the inlet valve for the baptistery; we may be charged for all the water used in the building, but the baptistery is filled for free!

And today, as a young lady passed through the waters, we focused on what it meant to be that community. For we are a community marked out by grace. Grace does not deny sin, does not turn a blind eye to what we believe is wrong, but it does accept that we are all sinners, all in need of grace and all only accepted by God because of grace. Therefore as a community we need to flow in that grace, not demeaning or pushing away, but rather accepting whilst declaring God’s ways openly and lovingly. God is the one who is truly other than us; he is holy, not set apart for self but choosing in his son to be set apart for his creation. It is only because of this that we can come, for in his selflessness he has paid the price for us, opened up the way for us, defeated sin and death and revealed the way for us to come to God. We, unlike him, are fickle human beings, we have our moment of selflessness but they simply punctuate our predominately selfish natures. Yet God by his Spirit, at work in our natures and our lives, seeks to remake us in the very image of his self-less son. And yet, even though we are but ‘works in progress’, and in cases like mine sometimes we can struggle to see the progress, still he accepts us, loves us and shows us mercy and grace.

God is of course the model, the one who sets and agenda for us, if we are truly to be a community of his people. God, the God of grace, calls us to be his people, the sheep of his pasture, the community of grace that is open to all that might come into the flock. Today the love and grace of God’s community was on display and today I want to give abundant thanks for being called in the midst of this particular flock, flawed shepherd that I am, and simply want to grow and learn how to do my job from the best shepherd there is… God himself.

As Baptists we believe in the baptism of believers and the covenant community of grace… living it challenges us… I pray we all remain up for the challenge…

Feeling the tension…

2012-03-03T12:18:00.002Z

There is a tension in the air around the church; you can feel it; as the saying goes you could almost cut it with a knife. Of course in a community as large as this it isn’t just one thing or even two, there are a whole host of contributing factors, some large, some only large to some, and some that really are trivial, but nevertheless it is there. And there is part of me that relishes it.

Now don’t misunderstand me, I do not thrive an anguish, pain or conflict. In fact these things cause me considerable discomfort, but tension does not necessarily imply that. Oh there is a potential for these things, especially if some were to have their way, but tension in and of itself is not a bad thing. Life is full of tensions, in fact without tension of one form or another there would not really be life. Do I always handle tension well? No, I am human, I have my moments, especially when people chose to make that tension personal, but tension is inevitable and unavoidable. Within a church community change causes tension, and yet a church that is stagnating and not changing will have its own tensions, and when it comes to the pace of change that in and of itself cause tensions from those who think it is too fast or too slow, or not incorporating the changes they think should happen or changing a shibboleth that someone has decided can never be changed. Even if you get a change through the joys of a church meeting some of those who voted for it will complain when you actually implement it… as I have recently discovered!

Yet tension is a creative thing, when we all work together and all seek to handle it together. For it is in the tension between that we find life in all its fullness. Life is not best expressed in absolutes but in the reality of tension…tension itself is only a problem when it is in overload. For there are many questions that, despite our modernist, post-enlightenment education system that held sway over many of our experiences of personal development, do not have an absolute answer. We so often like to deal in absolutes, handle truth as forensic, facts, and yet truth is surely a philosophical concept expressed as ‘logos’, and never simply confined to the flesh and blood of incarnational humanity.

God is Father, Son and Spirit, and not simply one of us, but always understood within the tension of being Trinity and so wholly other. Jesus Christ, Jesus the Messiah, is himself understood as ‘fully man and fully God’; humanity is being made in the image of God and to understand the Divine is certainly not to remake God in our image (to misquote Nietzsche). We have a God who is ‘just’ and a God who is ‘merciful’, which in a sense deny each other. There are so many tensions within our understanding of the God who is unknowable and yet chooses to reveal himself; the God who created time and space and yet dwells in all eternity; before we even dare to venture into verses that suggest that now, as you read, you are already ‘seated in heavenly places’, that speak of our renewed humanity being already intimately known in the very presence of almighty God, which leave us spinning and gasping for air.

Tensions in the life of the church are an inevitable and creative thing. Sometimes we need to simply rejoice in them and live with them, for in diversity we begin to find our identity. For my reflection of Christ is imperfect, as are all our personal representations of the Messiah in our lives; yet as the body of Christ we can reveal him through the Spirit that dwells amongst us and enables our relationship with the Father through the actions of the Son and his covenant cutting on the cross. And somewhere in the heart of that dynamic tension we find life!

…tension… live with it… for in it we find life!

At the end of the week that was…

2012-03-02T17:03:00.000Z

It has been quite a week. A weekend of someone else’s ‘preach with a view’, Special Deacons’ Meeting, Special Church Meeting, Church Officers’ Meeting and all that has resulted from those events. Then of course there has been the fair share of pastoral issues, preparation for this coming weekend, Bible Study, Small Group notes and preparation for Deacons’ Meeting and Church Meeting the week after, Missionary Action Group Meeting and so much more. Then of course there were things like taking a mid-week communion service at Warwick University, conversations on YFC and the gathering of ‘Purple’ that happened mid-week. This has also been the week for getting the Church Monthly Magazine out and… and so much more.

The great thing about busyness is the week has certainly flown! And today, my day off, has involved finishing off sermons and yet the pace has been relaxed and slow. It is as though after the week that was I have at last had the opportunity to slow up and take in the happenings. There has been time to look back, to reflect on wise, and some not so wise, actions; time to reflect on others’ reactions, as well as my own; and time to pause and reflect on tasks undertaken and the tasks still outstanding. There has also been time to think about what is to come; there is a baptism this weekend, another Deacons’ Meeting and the week after a Church Meeting; there is a Parade Service coming up, Mothering Sunday and at the end of the month a multi-activity service for Passion Sunday; Easter is just around the corner really and then a week away before the BMS Action Team return and then, before not too long, Pentecost arrives; the month’s ahead are more than a little crazy. In the midst of all of that preparations will need to be made for the eventual arrival the new Second Minister and arrangements made for an induction service. Life is not about to slow down, and yet today it has!

In the midst of it all a little time for reflection and relaxation; I’ve not been making plans on working on what will need to be done… just calm reflection taking it all in. It has been as though I have simply taken stock of what has been and what will be, as the past and future events have simply, calmly and comfortably folded into the present. Oh there will be stresses, moments of elation, manic and hard times to come; but in this moment none of that matters. All that counts is that in this moment between what has been and what will come there is a sense of wholeness, peace and justice… shalom.

After the craziest of times, and before the mania that is to come, there is in this moment, a moment to catch my breath. Oh, I will soon need to head into the office, work on the annual report, see the Girls’ and Boys’ Brigades about next week’s parade service and talk with Duke of Edinburgh leaders about the new appointment and then tomorrow morning take the Prayer Meeting, but that all feels like an age away… for even as write there is a very real stillness within.

Thank you Lord for this moment of peace; so much has happened, so much needs to be done; but in this moment Lord, I know your presence and I know, above all things, that you are good… glory to you name always… AMEN!

Reliance on technology…

2012-03-01T16:02:00.000Z

The email at the office is not working! I have rebooted everything internally, contacted the broadband provider and spoken to the company that manages our web-based material. Why I have bothered though I don’t know, as it is still not working. The internet is fine, as you can no doubt surmise as you are reading this, but no emails! We can send them and they leave here, but arrive… well, seemingly nowhere. People can send us emails, and they receive no response saying they cannot get through, but for some reason we don’t get them. MS-Outlook can go out there looking for emails, and find nothing…even my mobile isn’t picking them up… somewhere out there in cyberspace they are amassing.

Now this does have its advantages. I mean anyone who wants to complain about anything that we have been up to as a church simply isn’t getting through to us, though on the downside they may feel a little ignored, there is just nothing I can do about it. I have hooked my desktop up to my personal email address, rather than my work email, so that whatever I now need to send can get out there… and that works! And in the midst of it all the work, in addition to the emails in cyberspace, is piling up!

Of course this also means that contacting folk in response to the Special Church Meeting vote has been haphazard, though as the newssheets for Sunday are down in the reception area and they state:

“…this call has been joyfully accepted…”

I suppose it is now public knowledge and so can be safely stated here!

It is amazing how reliant we are on technology; mobile phones, laptops and pads, email, internet, facebook, blogs, satnavs, kindles and so much more. Our world is technologically driven and in the frenetic pace of life we live we really would struggle to survive without it. And yet there still isn’t an effective ‘God App’, the one area where we need time and space and our very being uncomplicated by our technological creations is in our dealings with our creator.

So I have now stopped trying to fix the email… I left the problem with the engineer who was denying they had a problem and took time out to pray. I didn’t pray about the technology, in fact I chose not to pray about anything specific, just engage in confession, thanksgiving, adoration and then stillness… listening. This was a blessing, a deep blessing, right up to the point where the engineer phoned back to acknowledge they did have a problem their end and were working on it!

Thank you Lord for technology, and thank you Lord for space from it…

Issuing a call is only part of it…

2012-02-29T17:31:00.000Z

Last night the church came together and issued a call to the prospective second minister. We met together; reflected on God’s word and prayed together; looked at the context of the call together; heard about the candidate together; and then together we heard each other on the suitability of the candidate. The discussion was good, impassioned and very positive. Then we considered the balloting process, distributed the papers and then prayed… and then, only then, did we put that little mark on that bit of paper. The count was taken and the result was a very positive call. As this was announced to the church there was spontaneous applause, which I chose to mute as we prayed for unity, acceptance of all present of the result and for those who had not voted yes to know God’s love and ours in the days ahead. Many people breathed a huge sigh of relief at the decision… but it’s never over, till it's over. A call had been issued, but there needs to be a response.

I suppose it is a bit like the call to the church to attend a church meeting. We make the call regularly, yet some never attend. If there is something interesting, or dare I say controversial, then attendance will increase. Yet even last night, which was a big meeting, it was far from the potentially overflowing numbers that could have been there if the whole church had turned out. Now don’t mishear me, I do very much appreciate that not everyone can make a church meeting, though last night some brought their children and others had booked babysitters, yet still there were others who felt unable to do so, some who are ill or house-bound and still others who had to work. No, the purpose of saying this is that issuing a call, even for something as important as a decision on a second minister, does not ensure attendance. A call can be issued... it still requires a response.

Of course this is an age old story. In times of war or national crisis in ancient Israel, especially before the time of the kings, calls were issued for Israel to gather; to gather to fight, to gather to hear form God, to gather for a number of reasons. In those days it was recognised that those who responded were the true Israel. Again, I am not saying that only the real members came last night, but what is true is that those who came made up a quorum and so the decision reached is a decision made by the church to discern the mind of Christ together. And yet the understanding of the mind of Christ still needed ratification… still awaited an answer. A call is not enough… a call awaits a response.

And Jesus called people to follow him. Some like, the disciples, left their livelihoods and followed him. Some stayed with him, though the Bible recalls their were occasions where some dropped away because of the hard and difficult things that Jesus said. Some, like the Rich Young Ruler, heard Jesus’ call but walked away as it seemed too much for them to leave behind to follow the calling. Calling requires acceptance, response and stickability!

The truth is the same in all our lives. God calls everyone to the way of Jesus, to life in the New Covenant, but still he awaits an answer. God does not deny use free will, and so finally, though the offer of salvation is not dependent on us but rather established in Jesus and freely offered to us, it is down to us to answer the call.

…oh, and in case you are wondering, did he answer the call? The strong and overwhelming call made by the church? He spoke to me this morning on the phone, but I am not really at liberty to say in my blog! Then again he may just read this and, who knows, he might comment himself…

Beware of purple people eaters…

2012-02-28T11:36:00.000Z

I have put the reception volunteer at church (yes, we have a duty receptionist!) on warning today to look at for ‘purple people eaters’. In 1958 Sheb Wooley memorably had a hit with the song ‘Purple People Eaters’ which made it to number one in the States, his only top fifty hit on the US Billboard charts. And today we have ‘purple people’ around the building, and thought the song implied that the ‘eater’ itself was purple, rather than its preferred culinary indulgence, I thought if one actually exists this might be hard to resist.

Today bishops, and those of similar standing, from across Warwickshire are gathering for one of the meetings we are attempting to enable regularly to enable more effective ecumenical work. Amongst the many things I do, I have the joy of being County Ecumenical Officer for the Baptist Union in Warwickshire. This is an opportunity to talk, to pray and to look to the future. We do so over lunch, and the flash of purple is all around, I am wearing a mauve jumper today for some reason… so ensuring we keep those that might consume unity at bay seems a good idea.

After the meeting the Heart of England Baptist Association representatives for Warwickshire are meeting. As HEBA mission representative for Coventry and Warwickshire I will be there to hear about the developments and changes that are confronting the Association and the changes that will be transforming the Baptist Union. It will be a time to look to the future, to find out how the engagements will happen and how the future will unfold. A meeting to seek the future and work together for that future... unity matters and needs to be persevered and to do so means working at it.

Tonight we have a Special Church Meeting to discuss the possible appointment of a Second Minister. Inevitably in a church community as diverse as ours that there will be a range of opinions raised and yet somehow we have to find unity… a future… hope. To enable this we need to seek God’s will and not our own, and yet too often self-interest of one type or another can mar our understanding. Finding unity will be something that needs working at.

This morning, as we gathered in the office to pray, I turned to the lectionary readings for prayer. This year, for some reason, I have followed the BCP lectionary, and the set psalms for the day were psalms 132-135… I read out psalms 133-134:

Psalm 133 - A song of ascents. Of David.

How good and pleasant it is when God’s people live together in unity! It is like precious oil poured on the head, running down on the beard, running down on Aaron’s beard, down on the collar of his robe. It is as if the dew of Hermon were falling on Mount Zion. For there the LORD bestows his blessing, even life forevermore.

Psalm 134 - A song of ascents.

Praise the LORD, all you servants of the LORD who minister by night in the house of the LORD. Lift up your hands in the sanctuary and praise the LORD. May the LORD bless you from Zion, he who is the Maker of heaven and earth.

If we humble ourselves to praise God, to acknowledge his Lordship over us all and over our wills then surely blessing and unity come to us the people of God. Yes there are at times those who work for self-will and disunity, but in trust and hope we must approach the judgement seat of God and look to his rule and dominion. We must enter into hopefully and looking to the future.

Purple People Eaters, and anyone who would work for disunity beware… God is the one who longs to bless his people… and as they work together they will see that blessing flow…

A day in limbo…

2012-02-27T18:43:00.000Z

Today has been a strange day, a day in limbo, a day waiting for… well, many things. Sometimes we have them, a day where many things are thrown at you, they need to be addressed and handled, some big, some small, but somehow none of them are the main event that is coming. Today has had issues, a number of strange issues, some related to the search for a second minister and some unrelated. To the point where one feels like retreating into a darkened bedroom, placing a cold pillow gently over your head and attempting to sleep… but still what is to come is to come.

Tonight we have the Deacons’ Meeting to discuss the weekend visit of the potential second minister. In a sense this is the day’s main event, at least in the life of the church, for I am sure that for a number of other folk I have spoken to their own situations are understandably their own main events. Yet even this meeting is in effect only the preliminary event with the Special Church Meeting being tomorrow. Still, even after tonight, limbo will prevail.

We live in a world of the already and the not yet. There is a future, a possibility, lurking before us and yet still to impact who we truly are. A dependent future, a hoped for new beginning and yet still only a possibility. Such times have stress and tension, and are experienced within the heartfelt cry, ‘Maranatha!’

The Baptist Union also finds itself in such a place, with an unknown future ahead. The future is of course an opportunity, and has the potential to unite or divide the Union. From an email I received today from the regional team it appears that there are no real plans to include the whole Union in the final decision, but rather constrain the final approval to Baptist Union Council. This is a bit like the church’s decision on whether to call the minister being made tonight at Deacon’s rather than tomorrow night at a Special Church Meeting. This is the latest in a long line of decisions made by the Union concerning its future that seems to be selective in the way it is decided. Sadly divisive…I appreciate the difficulty of working with the whole family, but we are not a democratic body, that elects representatives, we are a Union of churches.

Tonight at deacons, we are not representatives. We are not there to represent our constituents. The deacons were each elected by the whole body of the church as those recognised by the church as having wisdom from God to input into the decision; a decision that brings a recommendation to the Church Meeting. Tonight’s meeting does not remove the sense of being in limbo… it just moves the state of limbo nearer a conclusion. The Union should act likewise and ensure that the decision is not taken at Council and that Council rather brings the decision to a meeting where the Union can gather and prayerfully consider together the future for us all. The danger otherwise is that limbo remains...

In the mean time we all need to live in the tension of the state of limbo we find ourselves… and await the mind of Christ, which we do not decide in advance of the meeting but which we seek together…

Today is here...

2012-02-26T08:37:00.000Z

I woke early this morning, or rather was woken early by ‘aged seven’. He normally sleeps in quite well these days, and had a busy day yesterday, but was excited because some friends stayed over so woke just after five fifteen and felt the need to share his awoken state with me. He did return to his bedroom, but began a series of very regular visits to ensure that his persistence would result in no-one going back to sleep.

I usually wake early on a Sunday to pray, though not usually that early, and so the opportunity to pray was embraced. This isn’t because I see myself as particularly holy, righteous of, God-forbid, pious; it is because I recognise my need of a relationship with God. I cannot do a fraction of what I need to do in my strength, the calling is too big for me, and that is in a sense the definition of a calling – a call from God to join in with him, to work alongside and assist in his purposes, whilst being enabled to do so by him. If we were to make it about us then we really do need to pack up and go home!

And today, as a Sunday, is a very different Sunday than I have been used to. Usually Sundays mean I am preaching, and often leading, morning and evening. Yet this Sunday we have a prospective second minister preaching with a view. Surely this affected my prayer pattern greatly and caused me to pray into that situation? Yes and no. Yes, because I did lift the minister up and pray for him and the church: but no, because these times of early morning prayer are primarily about listening rather than battering my father with my wish list.

I have times of intercession, usually at other times in the day, but in the morning I like in the quiet, today between the regular visits from ‘aged seven’, to listen. I begin the times with a time of confession, in which I acknowledge my need of God, lifted before my father my day, not in detail you understand after all he knows more what is going to happen than I have any chance of knowing, and then commit to listen for what he wants to say to me. Sometimes these occasions are times of stillness and quiet, and on these occasions I can be left with a deep sense of shalom. Other times they can be disturbing times, empowering times, thoughtful times and on occasions time of deep insight, yet whatever times they are they are God’s times to do with as he chooses rather than my times, with my agenda. After all a time of prayer is a time when we come before our Lord and seek the one who is other than us and say, ‘not my will, but yours’.

I am thankful to ‘aged seven’ today. My time of prayer may have had some gentle interruptions, but it was a little earlier and a little longer than it sometimes is. And I needed that time. I am also thankful to God… now, let’s see what happens…

Relaxing is good for you, or so they say…

2012-02-25T09:58:00.000Z

Yesterday was more of a day off than I am used to. There were no sermons to write, as we have a potential second minister 'preaching with a view' this weekend. So apart from a little bit of work on some bible study notes for the church’s small groups, I took most of the day off. I had the joy of going to Sainsburys… and yes, I do enjoy doing the weekly food shop. I watched a DVD, walked aged seven to and from school, and generally chilled. Oh, by the evening I felt rough!

I have a bit of a head cold, nothing to horrendous, not man-flu or anything, but slowing up rather than keeping on going left me feeling rather grotty. Fortunately, the weekend started last night, so now, even with the head cold that has begun to blossom in my time of relaxing, it is time to get going.

For starters this is the frenetic weekend of a ‘preach with a view’, and for three hours over this lunchtime the potential second minister, and a number of us from the leadership, will be around to meet, chat and be questioned by church members. Yet today is just the start! Tomorrow, though I am not preaching, it is a busy day. The ministerial candidate is preaching morning and evening, but I need to be around enabling things and in the afternoon we have ‘trial by sausage roll’, that occasion of public interrogation that we as Baptists seem to relish putting our potential ministers through. And of course there is a sense that the weekend doesn’t end there as Monday night we have a Deacons’ Meeting, Tuesday night a Special Church Meeting and on Wednesday a Church Officers’ Meeting to consider life in light of whatever the church decides. Surely that is enough to keep me busy?

Oh, but, like busses, times like this never come in ones. For this afternoon we have a family visitation with folk from Essex coming up to visit us, just for the afternoon. This happens about three times a year and is always a busy, and often a little stressful, time. It was booked prior to the decision over the date for a ‘preach with a view’ and definitely adds to life’s rich tapestry. We are probably going to take everyone, the delegation from Essex will be four or five strong, to the pictures… I can feel a Muppet Movie coming on! That I’ll ensure that some of the time will be taken up peacefully, with 'aged seven' and everyone else, having fun. By six-thirty they will be on the train back home. That surely fills the weekend?

But busses will be busses…at the end of last week we had a phone call from good friends in South London, who we never get to see, to say that Sunday morning they need to be up in the area for an infant dedication and could they stay over on Saturday night? When the call came in 'she who must be obeyed' and I looked at each other with one of those looks… and our desire to see our friends overcame everything else. The reality of ministry is often we are separated from friends we have made and do not have the opportunity of weekends to see them, so when the opportunity occurs you grab it! So they are arriving at seven pm, and it’ll then be time for aged seven’s bed and for the adults to tuck into a Chinese meal - Don't panic, we will ensure 'aged seven' is properly fed and watered earlier before anyone panics and feels the need to call social services on his behalf! Our friends will be leaving us at breakfast time on Sunday… and we are excited to be seeing them.

At that point, in theory, all the busses have pulled in. Yet the joy of ministry is that in the midst of all that you and I know that there is bound to be at least one pastoral emergency… which will have to be taken in my stride. That one, or two, I will just have to be ready for!

Just stopping and thinking about it may seem to some people exhausting, but as I reflect on it somehow the headache, sore throat and sinuses begin to feel a little clearer and through the time I’ve spent typing this I haven’t coughed once! Resting may have allowed the head cold to surface, but a return to the melee of life is certainly helping with the recovery!

It is good to stop, human beings are made to rest, and it is not something I am always good at. Many of us may have heard the adage that we are ‘Human Beings not Human Doings’ yet the reality of some people’s nature is that truly 'being' involves 'doing'; in the same way as James spoke of faith and works going hand in hand so life and living does. In our humanity we were made for relationship and relationship is found in being with others...and that is something we truly need to do. It doesn't always need to be frenetic, in fact having time is the joy and luxury in which relationships are truly formed, but sometimes just having a moment together to do is something that needs to be grasped. And with a weekend ahead of frenetic activity that reflects relationships, in all their diversity, I am truly coming back to life.

Well, I’m up for it… are you…

We’re all doomed! Doomed…

2012-02-24T12:16:00.000Z

The sight of Private James Frazer will always have those words ringing in our imaginations… at least for those of us old enough to have suffered the endless repeats of Dad’s Army. The character, a Scottish coffin maker who had served as a ship’s cook at the battle of Jutland, never had the most sunny of outlooks and given the slightest excuse the comedy writing team of Perry and Croft would have the words “We’re all doomed! Doomed, I tell you! Doomed!” ringing from his lips.

Recently I have heard this message a great deal. I have heard a variety of people, some of whom have surprised me, and in a variety of circumstances, again some of which were unexpected, where the overwhelming view is declared in terms of “We’re all doomed! Doomed, I tell you! Doomed!” Now personally I have wanted at that point to laugh it off, or deny it, but the comment that has come back at me, from these prophets of doom, is that we need to be honest about things, realistic and then a repetitive “We’re all doomed! Doomed, I tell you! Doomed!”

My favourite Far Side cartoon of all time is probably the one about ‘The four basic personality types’… “the cup is half full; the cup is half empty; the cup is half full, no half empty, no half full, eeerrrr; and Hey, I ordered a Cheeseburger!” Now I have to be honest, I have always wanted to declare myself the ‘Hey, I order a cheeseburger!’ type… but now there appears to be a new type not represented in this classic cartoon: “The cup is completely empty and I want to read the grouts in the bottom of the cup and tell you the future” – and that future is “We’re all doomed! Doomed, I tell you! Doomed!”

And in the midst of it all I want to ask about hope. You see, I do believe that in many areas the bulldozers are having a field day; I am not unrealistic about the economic climate, the society we live in, the state of the church in Europe, the state of the church in the UK, the state of the Baptist Union… or even closer to home the realities of what is going on within this city, the poverty within its economy and social care, the state of the churches or even the tensions within the church I minister in. It is just that again and again we are presented with opportunities by God; opportunities for us to take hold of and run with, work with God in and see his future come to fruition. Do we always take them? Sadly, no… for sometimes we lack courage, but we must at least approach each opportunity with the belief that this time we might seek God’s future with boldness and belief.

The future of the Baptist Union has its doom merchants… future, what future? Yet there are also others on the opposite wing, for whom the future is bright, those who I don’t think are facing the core problem. That problem is not the possibilities for the future but the pessimism and feeling of disassociation that the process has created. God has a future for us, but too many people seem to feel we won’t find it. This is sad, very sad, and does not bode well. What I suspect needs to happen is not first and foremost about a proposed outcome, but a revision of the process, that everyone might feel part of and believe in the process together, and so seize the future together. Things need to change… but for this change to happen people need to feel part of the discernment process. The biggest threat to the future of the Union is a belief that we are disenfranchised.

This weekend we as a church are exploring the possibilities of someone working alongside us in ministry. The calling of any minister is an interesting occasion, pregnant with possibilities; and this time, with the seeking of a team member to work with me; I feel this opportunity is strategic for the future of the church. So we are trying to help as many people to engage in the process as possible; opportunities to meet the new minister for young and old, open and free occasions; opportunities to question the new minister, both personal ones and even ‘trial by sausage roll’ which is a very public one. There will of course be opportunities to hear him (in this case it is a him) preach, as that is all part of the process. Will some people feel disenfranchised? Perhaps those who are used to having had some control in the past might but this is hopefully because the decision needs not to be based on who has the loudest voice, but on all being given the opportunity to share and pray together before coming to a point of decision on Tuesday evening at a Special Church Meeting.

“We’re all doomed! Doomed, I tell you! Doomed!”… No we are not! For our God is an awesome and powerful God, who has given us opportunities. Opportunities for being church, opportunities for being a Union of churches, opportunities as the people of God, opportunities in so many ways. We are not doomed… we have hope!

Now all we need to do is act in hope…

Back to the business of grace…

2012-02-23T19:25:00.000Z

Having spent a couple of days away at the regional Baptist Ministers’ Conference it was straight back to work and straight back to the business of grace. First stop baptismal discussions, but then the wider business of the church, which is always the business of grace. Baptisms are always about grace, for even as we approach the waters to make our commitment we need to recognise our fickle natures. The waters are never a moment of personal triumph but always a moment of acknowledging the triumphant victory that God has won for us in Jesus… a true moment of grace. It has been wonderful talking this grace through with the candidate and seeing that grace changing things in their life.

Yet if baptism preparation is so obviously a means of grace then just the usual business of church is again and again about showing grace and learning from grace. Life has been rather hectic over the opening months of this year… OK, if I am honest it has been hectic since I came here, but these last few months have been rather manic. In the midst of the mania grace has needed to be lavished and at time grace has been needed to be received. Yet sometimes, however much you model grace, you are not always on the receiving end… yet all that means is a fresh opportunity is given to show grace. It is amazing sometimes people’s inability to remove the logs that stick from their eyes before they engage in ophthalmics, yet before I can make such an observation there is usually a forest to clear from my own vision. Grace is perhaps the greatest lumberjack for it acknowledges the forgiveness we have received and in doing so recognise our own place as standing in the doc rather than sitting in the judgement seat.

Yet grace is the liberator, grace is the thing that brings the freedom to see good things happen. Today I have seen a number of good things happen, things that have excited and delighted me. Grace has been enabling and freeing situations. Does that mean today has been easy… oh no, grace never makes things easy! Grace may flow, but on many occasions it needs careful work. For grace does not deny wrong; real forgiveness acknowledges the thing forgiven; grace is lavished not in denial but in the genuine acknowledgement of sin. Grace isn’t easy but it is liberating!

So grace means that on the first Sunday in March we will be opening up the baptismal pool again; yet much to my joy it also means that as of this afternoon we will definitely be opening the pool up again on Easter Morning! Grace means that some things that seemed immovable now seem flexible. Grace means that some things that seem intent on destruction remain forgiven, despite the need for change, for to leave them unforgiven would prove more damaging to me than them. Grace is the cleanser, the healer, the liberator, the very breath of life.

Grace is the business of church!

As I look back to the conference I recognise that grace was at work there too, in innumerable situations, but somehow, as I arrive back at my desk after a few days away, I cannot fail to recognise that in the church grace is always the central and key element that must be present if we are to see growth and hope and change.

So let grace flow… let’s lavish it… let's spray it freely around and ignore rumours of a hosepipe ban...and who knows where it might lead…

The state of the union address…

2012-02-22T08:18:00.000Z

I could of course talk about the joys of staying in a Christian Conference Centres and the delightful practice of stripping the beds before you leave. Then again I have done so before, way back in November, so perhaps rather than get repetitive about domesticity lets get repetitive about the big issue… the State of the Union.

Behind all that is going on at the conference the issue of Beyond 400 and what is happening with the Baptist Union of Great Britain’s finances is bubbling away. Over breakfast, lunch and dinner, over morning coffee, afternoon tea and the occasional pint in the evening the topic that people keep returning to is ‘what will the future hold for the Union?’ The discussions people have had at the Union keep coming to surface and some of them have been alarming. Which departments will be chopped? What do we need with a mission department, when mission is done in the local church? What does the ‘Faith and Unity’ department actually do? Could we as Baptists exist without ministerial accreditation and a ministry department? And as for the pension scheme…

Before anyone starts defending any of these Baptist shibboleths you need to understand that this is not me asking the questions. I am aware of what different departments do, and as County Ecumenical Officer for Warwickshire I am well aware of the purpose for the Faith and Unity Department, but these are the questions, or at least some of the more repeatable questions, that folk here are asking. The discussions here are painful, and so much of what I am hearing is pragmatic; ‘How much would cutting so and so save us?’; ‘What would be the knock on effect of not having so and so?’; ‘Could Associations function without Didcot?’; rather than the ecclesial questions of who are we and what are we that should rightly precede these questions. To me this is very worrying and it appears that the deficit is leading to knee-jerk reactions… how typical, but also foolish, this seems.

And then last night we gathered in the evening for a more social time of corporate fellowship, with a quiz, some music and interviews with Roy Searle, former President of the Baptist Union, and then Pat Took, our current President. Roy was asked about his view of the church in Western Europe, and spoke of the church in exile, of ‘strangers in a strange land’ of times of trouble and persecution and despair. Not a particularly hopeful message but as he said, and had already said at the conference, we need to be honest about the state of things. When it was Pat’s turn the question was more specific, she was asked about the state of the Union and gave us a short ‘State of the Union’ address… as she did so I pulled up my sleeve and mimed cutting my wrist to the minister next to me, who smiled, raised and eye-brow and shrugged.

The reflection on the Union seemed grim; churches dying, not able to fund ministry let alone the Union; statements like ‘we have existed in the past without a Union we shall do so again’; a hopelessness and despair punctured the evening. Regardless of how many humorous video clips others might put on the main screen true doom and gloom had descended.

Is it that bad? I am not actually convinced it is. Maybe I am not being realistic, perhaps I am rose-tinting our world, but what I see is not the end and for a ‘church in exile’ I see an opportunity to ‘shine like stars’. Is the Union beyond redemption, not if we decide who we are and what we are about, before we start lopping off what might be essential organs and limbs. Yet the fear is that depression has gripped us and we no longer have the energy or desire to believe… this should not be!

What will become of the Baptist Union of Great Britain? Well, if it doesn’t snap out of this we may as well start planning the funeral service now…

…when you leave can you please fold up your bed linen and leave it outside your door… thank you!

An awful lot of listening...

2012-02-21T14:41:00.002Z

Is it me or is it rather oxymoronical (Is that a word? It should be!) in being talked at for hours on end about the art of listening? I mean if we are that bad at listening surely the very nature of the delivery mechanism by which the teaching is delivered is self-defeating. And if we were that set in our ways against the concept then we would have switched off by now? Maybe it is just me!

Now please don’t misunderstand me. I am away at the Heart of England Baptist Association (HEBA) Ministers’ Conference and we are exceedingly blessed to have Reverends Pat Took and Roy Searle, past and present Presidents of the Baptist Union leading us. They are speaking about ‘listening’, and the input has been of a high quality, yet there has been a lot of words. When we stopped for morning prayer, there was simply a huge propensity of words, and a lack of space to listen. There has been a lot of listening going on, in conversations, lectures and the prayer times, but how much space has there been for the deep listening we need to do.

Surely listening is a mutual process, a process that happens as much in the silences as it does in all the chatter. For listening to happen we have to be willing to hear and be open to our own understanding being changed. Listening, especially to God really matters.

When we bring someone into membership one of the commitments we make as a church to those entering into membership is that we will be willing to hear God in that person, and yet so often we come to situations with our minds made up. Do we really allow ourselves the freedom to hear or do we make up our minds in our own isolated worlds. If we take our commitment to being Baptist seriously then we will always enter into church meetings with an openness as we seek the mind of God. Pat Took challenged us again on this, acknowledging that church meetings do make mistakes, but suggesting that perhaps these mistakes might have more to do with our fixed preconceptions, our entrenched positions, rather than that the concept of congregational leadership is flawed.

Now of course this is a sensitive issue for me, as over the next week the church needs to make a big decision on the calling of a second minister to come and work alongside myself to help to carry the load and bring leadership to the church. Perhaps even my choice of defining the task that presents itself shows part of the tension I feel. There needs to be room for leadership alongside the discernment of the church meeting. There needs to be a recognition that people are called to a task, alongside a recognition by those who are called that they need to humble themselves to the discernment of the church meeting.

‘A minister should see themselves as responsible, and the church should give that minister the authority to exercise their calling. But if the minister thinks they have authority, then God help the church! And if the church holds the minister responsible, then God help the minister.’

Somehow a way forward must be found in mutual humility to seek the mind of Christ, for surely this is what we truly desire?

So I have been taking time out, trying to make space in the midst of all the talk about listening, to actually do some listening. To ask specifically how I should be handling the meetings that are ahead of the church and to listen for the answer, in the wisdom of others and above all in the wisdom of God. I am sure there is a multiplicity of wisdom on what I should do, probably more perspective than there are individuals to assert them, but I am trying to listen closely for God’s voice that it might be his wisdom that I seek to enact.

The HEBA Ministers’ Conference is good and for me timely as I consider the church’s future, the shape of leadership and my own future in the midst of it all. To talk about listening is good, but above all to listen and to hear is better. The company and fellowship is great but now I need to seize the opportunity of a little solitude this afternoon to pray, and importantly in the midst of prayer to listen.

Master speak, your servant’s listening…

Getting packed…

2012-02-20T10:35:00.002Z

I am away at the Heart of England Baptist Ministers’ Conference, a thrilling gathering held annually at Swanwick in Derbyshire. A gathering of Baptist ministers from across the West Midlands… when you think about it you do have to ask how this might be considered thrilling! Actually they are usually very good occasions. They provide an opportunity to talk, laugh and occasionally cry together. Each year lots of efforts are made to find good speakers, assemble a worthwhile programme… and every year someone will moan it isn’t what they are looking for! But to be honest I think most of us go primarily for the opportunity to meet up, share, pray and spend a little time together. I think it is called ‘associating’.

One of the areas Baptists are poor these days is the area of associating. Perhaps it is our church programmes that are too packed, or perhaps it is our lives generally that are too packed or maybe it is that we have lost a sense of what it means to be Baptist. If Beyond400 is to mean anything as a debate one of the things it needs to address is why we are not ‘associating’ together more effectively.

I have heard it suggested that the last reorganisation, the creation of larger associations out of the smaller county based associations is to blame, though these moans have really come from those who never liked the change in the first place. It never ceases to amaze me how some people struggle with change and how some people, especially within churches, hold onto the past as though the present had never happened. Yet the truth is that one of the reasons the change came about was that things were not working back then.

Yet without associating being a Union effectively means nothing. For we are not churches together, acting together, working together, supporting one another… being a union. Without associating, we are just isolated churches who operate under a banner that means nothing to those within each church. This may sound an extreme assessment, but this is the direction we are consistently moving in… somehow we need to reverse this trend.

I am rather busy at the moment. Pastoral work and other church commitments, including the search for a new colleague, are taking their toll. Home commitments are great at the moment, with aged seven needing a lot of support. My doctoral research is chugging on, in every spare moment, but there aren’t many spare moments! To be honest I could really do without going off to Derbyshire for a couple of days…

BUT… associating matters! One of the few ways that associating actually happens these days is at ministerial level, and who knows we may get to talk about ‘beyond400’. So I need to get on with my packing…

…now where have I put my slippers….

Normal Service is resumed…

2012-02-19T09:51:00.000Z

I suppose this is a little premature, after all the service does not start until ten thirty, but the shirt, jacket and tie are on, the PowerPoint is prepared and the sermon is printed – all is ready to roll. Despite the innumerable people who thought it would be funny to suggest that I should ‘do’ the morning service as ‘Rosie’, the pantomime is truly finished. Oh, this afternoon there is a ‘pantomime party’, though I think I may have a pastoral issue that will require my attention this afternoon so I may need to drop ‘aged seven’ off and nip to the hospital. Yes, normal service is resumed.

Mind you, in other ways, we still seek normal service to be resumed. On Wednesday afternoon the office printer/photocopier decided to die! We called out the engineer who turned up the next day to find that the drum had shredded… there was no way without some serious parts that the engineer didn’t carry in his van that it was going to be fixed. The parts were ordered but still we wait. So before I go to the office I need to print off the papers I need for today. Maybe Monday, maybe Tuesday, but I am assured that ‘normal service’ will be resumed shortly.

I suppose the same is true of the pantomime. For some, for good or ill, the memories of the pantomime will continue to taint the impression they have of me. Most people seemed to enter into the fun of it, to laugh and to enjoy the benefits it gave to being community. These folks happily played along with Rosie and seemed intent on having fun. Yet there were one or two who seemed to have decided, even before they came, that they would find fault… makes you wonder why they spent the price of the ticket? Perhaps they thought that it entitled them to complain… oh well!

I suppose that is part of being community too. Communities always appear to have those within them for whom the cup is half full, and others for whom it is half empty, those for whom the cup overflows and those who regardless of what happens seem intent on reading you your future from the dregs in their cups. Yet as a Christian community surely this is not how it should be? Surely if we recognise what Christ has done for us then we would recognise that our cups do truly overflow, that God has blessed us beyond our wildest imaginings… we, of all people, should redefine community! A community of believers should be those who together reveal Jesus, and not a mismatched bunch of desert wanderers living of the daily provision of Manna and complaining at the ‘fowl meat’ that comes our way.

And today we share in bread and wine; we gather at the table to remember, and to receive, to be touched in a moment of grace. Today, yet again, we identify ourselves as those

“who proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes”

As those who in sharing in the body and blood are redeemed and redefined in Christ. Today we receive the freely offered love of God as those who commit to share that love with those around us. Today normal service is resumed… service to each other, service to the world, Christ’s service enabled by the Spirit in us the body of God’s own Son. Today is such a moment, if we choose for it to be.

Personally I choose, with all that has happened throughout this week, for this to be the day when ‘normal service is resumed’… what will you choose…

Rosie RIP...

2012-02-18T22:28:00.001Z

We started casting in September, rehearsing in October and now the pantomime is over. I am so relieved it is all over, but I have to say it has been incredibly good fun! But now it is time to hang up my D-cups, remove all the make-up and live down the reputation I have made for myself. So now it is time for Rosie to RIP!

The pantomime has been incredibly good fun. The cast had a great time, especially the children. Aged seven had a whale of a time, but three late nights are bound to take their toll. He has acted, danced and sung... things I have never seen him do before. Mind you he wasn’t the only one doing things they had never done before. Lots of the folk in the pantomime had never done such a thing before and as for me... I have never donned a dress before, and I doubt I will ever do so again!

I will definitely not be going to BurgerKing dressed as a woman again though. The staff, the customers and fellow cast members enjoyed the floor show... but I'll never be doing that again!

Yet there is something to be said for all that happened, especially for the effect it has had on many in the community. Those within the pantomime and those in the audience, most of whom, though sadly not all, have taken it all in the manner in which it was intended. Now all we have to see is if anyone will look me the same way ever again!

Bring on Sunday...

Pantomime is truly here...

2012-02-17T12:47:00.000Z

The pantomime is truly here,
A time to laugh, a time to fear!
First nigh tonight, we’ve all the gear,
You know it’ll end with a sad face and a tear!

What can be said of script and lines,
At least the team are not levying fines!
Though we do get lots of moans and whines,
Just because we might ad-lib at times!

But that is enough rhyming for anyone to cope with!

I am spending the day with Aged Seven. Aged Seven is currently playing on my ancient PlayStation, a PS1, and is repeatedly crashing his Ford Escort rally car in the snows of Austria trying, and failing to catch Colin McRae. I have to say I am convinced, watching his incredible recklessness, that in ten years time I will not be lending him the keys to my car! He has now rolled it three times... it does not bode well! It is, of course, my day off but the stress of watching... oh no, that the fourth time!

Aged Seven enjoyed being in the panto last night, at least he got his lines right.

Now I could try and reflect on the Pantomime, Beauty and the Beast, theologically, talk about the themes of good and evil, of love conquering adversity, of redemption and grace... but then it would only seem like somehow I was trying to justify the plot. We are not ‘doing’ a pantomime in order to tell the gospel story. No, we are doing it all for the fun of it... or so I am told!

The truth is that as the people of God being community matters. It is together in community that we discover the truth of God in our lives and together in community that we journey with God. Therefore ‘doing’ a pantomime is about building community and having fun, about inviting folk along that they might discover a place of joy and laughter, and about ourselves rejoicing in the joy of being family together.

Now somehow I have to rejoice in watching my son crush the over revved Ford Escort in his pursuit of a rallying dream... I suppose that’s about being family together as well!

Am I ready to don a dress in anger…

2012-02-16T14:14:00.003Z

OK, so when I say ‘in anger’ please don’t think I will be ‘burning my bra’, no I will instead be padding it out effectively for maximum impact! Tonight the ‘Church Pantomime’ begins in earnest! In theory it is only the final dress rehearsal, but the reality is that we have an invited audience and it will be lights, mikes and action tonight.

“Tonight Matthew, I will be Rosie, the better looking of the two ‘Ugly Sisters!”

Am I ready for this? Yes, I think I am…but I do wonder if the church is ready to see their minister in drag! Oh I am sure most will take it in the sense of fun with which it is intended, but somehow I do suspect that someone will choose to take offence, despite the fact that the script is very sanitised for a pantomime.

And I suppose that is the point of this blog… to ask how we enter into things? What is the intention we enter into things with; what is our motivation that undergirds our approach? Do we engage with things looking to criticise, to find something to condemn, with the desire to sit in judgement on others? You see if we do, if we come at life, relationships, church, with such a graceless and judgemental attitude, scripture tells us that we are the ones who will find ourselves condemned.

This should concern us and yet sometimes the more we would like to see ourselves as ‘mature in the faith’ the more critical we appear to be, the more we look down our noses at those who we see as immature. But can this really be right? Surely the more mature we are, the more we are aware of our own sinfulness and our need of God’s grace, and consequentially our need to lavish that gift of grace on others. Maturity is surely revealed not in knowledge but in grace; not about seeing ourselves as experienced, but in seeing ourselves as those in need of love and forgiveness and in showing that love and forgiveness to others. We should never be those who seek to humiliate or attack others, but rather those who lift others up recognising how far God has raised us up.

We also need to be those who throw ourselves into being the people of God. That means being those who enable and encourage community, even when it may mean a little humiliation. Being a minister can be humiliating in so many ways… but I have to say this is the first time it has involved me wearing a dress.

So yes I am ready… just need to go and polish up my Doc Martins, after all no Pantomime Dame would be complete without a pair of cherry red Docs! I am even looking forward to it...just a little bit! As for the church… only time will tell!

Oh, and if there are any video clips, pictures or similar, I will be sure to ensure I don’t tell you where to find them!

Has the Queen only just opened her mail…

2012-02-15T18:38:00.002Z

Today has been a day for writing blogs… not literally, I haven’t had time, but as I have gone from situation to situation, meeting to meeting, there have been so many blogs conceived. And all but one has been scrapped. They have been scrapped for good reasons, in some cases very good reasons, and shall remain scrapped.

It began with me laying in bed trying to get to sleep as the clock turned midnight… now that was definitely a blog that is scrapped. The revised one I wrote when I woke early shall never see the light of day. The concept blog that formed in my head as I did my daily Talmud reading (no I am not committing apostasy, it’s called study) might possibly be written one day…but needs more study yet. By the time I had been through the breakfast ritual with 'Aged Seven' I could have written another one, and that was all before I showered, shaved and dressed and headed off in the car to work. The blogs I could have written at church have been numerous, but today has been filled with sensitive and confidential matters; so no, those blogs will not be written! Then the photocopier broke, the photocopier that is also the office printer and I thought, but no, it is properly broken, the drum is shredded, and that is too stressful at the end of a stressful day.

And then Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, to give her the correct title, decided to get all Baptist on us! Now that rather surprised me!

In 1616, three hundred and ninety-six years ago, approximately for the date isn’t that certain, Thomas Helwys died, at the age of forty, in Newgate Prison, London. Now deaths in prison were not uncommon, but Thomas was there, at least in theory, on the orders of the King of England, which is a little more unusual. Thomas was the founding Father of the Baptist movement, having led, with a guy called John Smyth, a group of Congregationalist over to Amsterdam when they began to be persecuted in East Anglia. In Amsterdam they met a group of Anabaptists, to whom John Smyth defected, but Helwys remained true to the Congregationalist approach, whilst also taking on the doctrinal practice of the baptism of believers. This fledgling group of Baptists then return to London. It was whilst leading this new Christian community, in the Spittalfields area of London that Helwys wrote ‘A Short Declaration of the Mistery of Iniquity’ and sent a copy to the King of England, James I. Now it might not seem unreasonable for the King to imprison Helwys for crimes against spelling, but it was not the book that specifically caused his imprisonment but the covering letter that declared:

“For men’s religion to God is between God and themselves. The king shall not answer for it. Let them be heretics, Turks, Jews, or whatsoever, it appertains not to the earthly power to punish them in the least measure”

In other words he appealed for the freedom of worship for all, elsewhere including Papists (Roman Catholics), Free Church and men of no faith at all. It was this that caused his imprisonment and death… it was for fighting for the rights of all to worship!

So perhaps James I never got the letter? I mean I doubt he actually read it himself and no doubt it was a minion who actually had this dodgy Baptist bloke, in whose line I am proud to stand, imprisoned. Perhaps it is only now that an actual monarch has got around to actually reading it! For today, almost four hundred years after Helwys’ death our dear old Queenie has declared:

"Woven into the fabric of this country, the Church has helped to build a better society - more and more in active co-operation for the common good with those of other faiths."

She said, in a speech at Lambath Palace, quoted on the BBC News website, that part of the Church of England’s role should be to defend the right for people to worship as they felt appropriate and from whatever faith. And those present included representatives of the Baha'i, Buddhist, Hindu, Jain, Jewish, Muslim, Sikh, and Zoroastrian communities, as well as Christian representatives. Now I don’t know if our beloved leader, Jonathan Edwards was there, but if he was I do hope that there were bells ringing.

Perhaps it is time to approach the Palace for a Royal Pardon, all these years down the line, for Thomas Helwys. Then again, one thing I have learnt from his stories is not to go writing publicly published letters to the reigning monarch of our land… Then again I suppose that is what a blog is… I do hope that isn’t Special Branch at the door!

Good on you Queen Lizzie, congratulations on sixty years and even bigger congratulations on suggesting that the Anglican Church should become Baptist… now is there any chance we can look at issues of splashing babies and hierarchical power?

Hot water…

2012-02-14T13:39:00.001Z

You know and I know that it was inevitable that sooner or later I would get myself into hot water with my friends and the Baptist Union. Yes, I do love the saying

“ Hot water is good for you, it is what keeps you clean...” (paraphrasing GK Chesterton)

but I have tried studiously to avoid it. If ever there have been ‘comments’ I have tried to cloak them, ‘let those who have ears hear’, rather than be blunt. But we also knew that sooner or later I would have to be outspoken about people and organisations I deeply love and care about, and that when that happened the flak would fly.

No I am not talking about last night’s blog, that seem to have got a few people concerned for me. I am OK, honest; I know it is not like me to take some time out of my schedule but I really am OK. No, the blog I know will cause upset people, even if that is not my intention, is the previous one to this, published just minutes before this one, the one that does not have a link from my FaceBook page. Therefore if you want to read it you will need to look at older posts at the bottom of this page.

So if you know you are going to upset people why do it? Especially when some of these people are friends, people you care about? Look, I don’t want to upset anyone, I really don’t, and despite the fact that some of the things I have said may be taken personally that certainly was not the intention. I have a huge respect for the particular friends who might be hurt, more respect than those folk possibly realise. I am not being critical of what they have done or said, or even about their involvement in a particular project. I just passionately believe that something prophetic needs to be said, and though I really don’t want to say it, I also feel I must.

Apologising for something before you do it is the coward’s way out. I know that. And I did write this before I wrote the previous blog. I am not feeling particularly brave or bold, or even pious about this. What I know I need to write causes me deep hurt and pain, but I do know I need to write it. It isn’t written out of a disagreement with the organisation of which I write, but a deep personal love of the Baptist Union of Great Britain and what it is we stand for together. I am expecting to get into ‘hot water’, but believing I must write this I also know I have to embrace the consequences of what I write. So to those who will be angry with me… I am sorry, but in apologising for any hurt I may cause in advance, I also am revealing myself as unrepentant of the actual words I do use!

I write out of a conviction, and I believe, perhaps revealing myself to be delusional, I write because I believe God has called me to write. I write out of love, not out of spite. I write seeking a future for all, and not out of sour grapes or any other motive anyone might place onto me. I write because I care and I believe God cares!

OK, I now need to go away and carefully, thoughtfully, but with this deep sense of conviction burning within me, write the blog…

As for you, you now have the choice as to whether you want to read it…

The ‘Usual Suspects’…

2012-02-14T13:39:00.000Z

The Baptist Union is engaged in a little ‘soul-searching’ at the moment, asking big questions about its future. The questions have been seemingly prompted by the financial situation it finds itself in, running at a deficit it cannot afford to maintain. This is partly caused by pension issues, the international financial crisis and lots of other issues outside of its control. And it is also caused by us, the churches of the Union, and our lack of contributions to the central infrastructure…

(the last two churches I have been called to I have followed ministers who have vacated those churches to go into Regional Ministry within the Union, and yet neither of those churches were paying anywhere near the contributions they were supposed to be paying to the Union when I arrived… surely those going into Regional Ministry should care enough about the Union before they enter it to ensure the churches they were leading were paying the required contribution whilst they were in leadership – or have I missed what it means to be part of the Union?)

Yet it is not simply others who need to recognise what is happening. This is not simply a case of external forces exhibiting pressure on the structure, the 'powers that be' within the Union also need to stand with us all and accept responsibility. Yet how will they hear if they are not listening…really listening!

To listen we need to listen to voices and the Union is seeking to do this, or so we are told. They have engaged in a consultation and have started a website ‘www.beyond400.net’ to give people a voice to speak and a space to respond. So far thirteen of the forty proposed ‘blogs’ have appeared. The first was by Peter Dominey, a new golden boy in the Union and behind the ‘Churchfromscratch’ project, who wisely declared this was a time to hear ‘prophetic voices’. I agree Peter, I agree with a passion, we and the Union desperately needs to hear prophetic voices about the future of the Union if we are to stride beyond four hundred years of being Baptist into the future God has for us.

This statement has been followed by twelve others. Some from hand-picked ministers-in-training, newly accredited ministers, a Regional Minister, a former BMS person, those working in church-planting, those working in our colleges, the president of the Union himself, two dear friends of mine, one who is on council and another who works closely with Didcot on inter-faith matters and others. These are faces you see at Assembly at the front, the new 'great and the good', the people who are seen by the structures as being the future of the Union. These are the voices that we are being called to hear, the voices the Union is already listening to who already have the ear of the powers that be. Words like cronyism would be too strong and clearly offensive, and I am not seeking to be offensive, though I feel some will see it that way, but I could almost have picked out the names of the forty folk before they start. There is part of me that wanted to play Baptist Union Bingo, to see how many of the names I could guess before they were even called out and then shout ‘HOUSE!’

(Incidentally if I was playing BUBingo, which would of course be rather childish activity to engage in and surely might be viewed as 'conduct unbecoming in some quarters, I would already be up to nine out of thirteen… sorry Simon Goddard but the work of RE:NEW had passed me by, which is my failing and not yours… and I am not sufficiently familiar with those in or leaving our colleges!)

If I could just get into double figures then… but that isn’t good, it is predictable, oh so predictable. For we are listening to the voices publically that we are already listening to privately; have we already decided the outcome; do we know what we want to hear?

Now some maybe be rightly thinking that no-one has asked me to write one, and you’d be right, but if you are then thinking that is why I am blogging this you’d be wrong. This is not sour grapes, honestly it is not. I know that is how it might appear, and perhaps the easiest way of dismissing me and my words, but truly that is not the case. My fear is that all we are listening to are the voices we are already listening to… simply listening to the hand-picking the future 'great and the good' who we have already nominated as such!

Do I have a problem with what they are saying? Actually I do! Even as I wrote the question I was expecting to say no I don’t, but prayerfully I have to say I do. This is a time for challenging talk, really challenging talk, this is not what I am hearing. It is time for us to be challenging our contemporary Baptist methodology in a big way, going back to our roots and reinterpreting for the twenty-first century, but instead it feels too much like let’s tweak what we are doing. We are at a watershed point… the time has come for us to ask deep and important questions, fundamental structural and financial questions:

questions about what being a ‘Union’ means?
questions about whether we ought rather to be a denomination?
questions about whether our structures are right, about power and where true authority should stand?
questions about unity, fellowship and the autonomy of the local church?
questions about finance and who pays, and how people might be made to pay, for the Union?
questions about mission, church planting policy and church growth?
questions about the relationship between larger churches and smaller numerical communities within the Union? (and no I am not saying the bigger numerical churches get things right, especially on the finacial front, but I am saying their are huge questions in this area that go unasked)
questions about the role of Didcot, the President, the General Secretary,the Assembly and the nature of BU Council?
questions that we dare not even voice... and questions that being so entrenched in our ways of doing things we dare not even imagine?
Questions that feel uncomfortably non-Baptist, or at least to the way we have become Baptist through these four hundred years, but perhaps not so alien to the early years of Baptists all those generations ago!

...and, of course, these are just the tip of the iceberg.

Now please don’t mishear me… I am not trying to be some kind of Mark Driscoll… God forbid! I enjoyed reading today the brave thoughts of Julie Aylward, who was daring to raise some of these issues. I've enjoyed nearly all the 'blogs' and think they are so much better written than this. But the issues don’t need simply to be raised they need addressing with dynamic and dangerous suggestions. And some of these suggestions need to be made in a very non-Union way. What we are currently doing is rather typically of what we as a Union appear to have become, a bit of an in-club, with those close with the centre’s ear, speaking out on behalf of those of us who might say things that make the centre feel rather more uncomfortable!

I say that as someone who supports and believes in the Regional Team of ministers operating in the West Midlands. I say that as someone who believes in being Baptist. I say that as some who thinks Richard Nicholls and Didcot do a remarkably good job. And I say that as someone who likes Jonathan Edwards and believes in his ministry as General Secretary. I am sure when I get to meet Chris Duffet in relation to the mission that is being done here in the city with him I'll think highly of him too! But I have to say it nevertheless!

So no, I am not condemning the usual suspects, and yes I have read their comments, but this is not a full and frank discussion, rather this feels like the Union selecting its present and future champions to speak on its behalf. I am not suggesting these folk are stool pigeons with a strict agenda set for them, but I am suggesting that in picking your own, who you know and listen to, the danger is you know the line that will be taken. The demise of the Baptist Times is a relief in some respects, after all some of the letters that appeared in the pages made me despair, but those that made me cringe often started debates because they spoke from such an off the wall position. Beyond 400 instead feels like a Baptist Union mouth-piece, not because these are stooges, I really don’t believe they are, but because they are invited voices who speak from a known position and out of an intimate relationship with the powers that be within the Union.

If this sounds harsh then the fact that too many of the comments that appear against the blogs seem to be from those who have already, or seem likely to blog themselves, rather sums it up for me. I really love you guys, and a lot of what is being said I have sympathy with, but what we need is the boat rocking, our Baptist world shaking and the uncomfortable voice that upsets the structures, rather than concurs with the structures along the lines of your on-going conversations with the structures, being declared!

So do I want to have my say in the Beyond400 debate… to be honest I am not sure I do. What I want to do is remain autonomous, in my autonomous church. I want to be allowed to slowly up the contributions to BUGB on the basis already agreed at church meeting, because I believe in the Union, and to avoid unnecessary contact with Didcot. I want to keep my head down and if the structures have to be reorganised, then someone else can do it. It is not that no-one has really asked my opinion, it is not that I don’t think I might have something to say, it is not even that I don’t think anyone will listen, after all when I want to make myself heard I am capable of shouting rather loud. No, if I am honest it is that I am not sure I can be bothered to suffer the grief that will come my way when I do say what I believe needs to be said, and when I do propose some of the things that need to be considered, even if they are considered and then dismissed by the wider family.

That is a terrible thing to admit! I am admitting that I too am failing my Baptist sisters and brothers!

So this blog does not begin to answer the deep issues we need to address as Baptists in the UK. But it does acknowledge we need to. It is not a personal attack on those who have been asked to 'blog', or a complaint that I have not been asked, rather it is a plea that this debate need to be real and not ‘managed’ by the Union. And finally it is a plea that people like me, who sit on the sidelines and observe the efforts of others from a distance; who look at their own workloads and choose to keep their heads down; might have some courage, raise their heads up and start to shout out the answers that God is giving but we do not feel we want to bring! It is a plea to be radical as Baptists…not compromised by what we have become...

And if there is any anger in what I am saying, the anger is turned inward on me, and the likes of me, who looks on from the outside! I have tried so hard not to write this blog, but I felt I had to. And yet even as I do I have chosen to post this on my blog, in a cowardly way, rather than in boldness posted it on the Beyond400 website!

Now I need to deal graciously with what may come my way for saying this…

Looking for options...

2012-02-13T21:48:00.001Z

We like choice in life; we want options and don’t like it when our options seem taken away. And yet there are times when we feel decisions are taken from us as though we don’t have any options. Moments like this frustrate and exasperate; we feel trapped and sometimes react badly. In fact there is a sense that it is these moments that reveal our true natures.

The last few days there have been a number of different situations where I feel that choice has been taken from me. Each time I have stopped, looked at the situation, recognised the lack of choice and then accepted it. I have handled it really well, but, isn’t there always a ‘but’, inside I have felt the frustration rising. I have not been happy and so today I took some time out – time to stop to chill and to reflect, to consider my options, if I have any?

We love to have options and yet part of who we are, as 'Christians', surely is those who have ceded all options. We are those who recognise ourselves as being the slaves of Christ Jesus, slaves to the Gospel of reconciliation. When we serve a master, we learn the way of obedience to that master, which of course means we learn to live without options. Yet even in our walk with Jesus we want options and in that sense we stumble on when we should be learning to walk.

So what is the big deal with options anyway? OK, so the problem is that it is people who are taking away the options, rather than God. Yet, then again, surely God can act through people, so why not accept that when the options are removed it might just be God at work... then again...

I like having no options, I just like the remaining option to be the correct option...

The end is in sight…

2012-02-12T10:04:00.000Z

The end is in sight and with it a huge sense of release! Soon, very soon it will all be over. In fact by this time next week it will be finished and next Sunday afternoon it’ll be time for a party! It feels like we have been building to this point for months and months and in reality that is the case but now we have arrived at the final week and the need to truly perform. On Thursday evening we have the final dress rehearsals, and then Friday night and two performances on Saturday and I can hang my dress up forever! The end of the pantomime is in sight!

Aged seven is excited, but me, I am just conscious that there are lines to get right, song lyrics that still need to fully imbed themselves and I still need to work out what it is that I am going to stuff my bra with… whatever I seem to try they seem to end up different sizes! Pantomime is a very English tradition, but why as a minister it is deemed essential that I get dragged into it I am not quite sure. Yet, since I first got involved with church in a committed way, at the age of sixteen, there was church and a key event in the calendar was the church pantomime. In those days it was Dave who always wore the dame’s dress, I was far to insecure at that age, and there was no way anyone was going to wrestle the dress away from Dave. These days Dave works work the Foreign Office and is stationed ‘Overseas’…perhaps this says something about the British Foreign Office! And now all these years later it is my task to work out what to stuff the excessive cup sized bra with!

And as the Church Pantomime is this year is ‘Beauty and the Beast’ we don’t just have one ‘Dame’ but a pair of Ugly Sisters who get to, unusually, positive characters playing for laughs off each other and off Beauty who has to play it straight. As sisters we get to sing and dance, do a little slapstick and generally make fools of ourselves. It is fun, but an awful lot of hard work and I will be relieved when I get my Sunday afternoons back… so I can use the time to spend time with the family and occasionally go hospital visiting.

Yet the pantomime is part of being community! This is of course why I have thrown myself into the production… after all if I wanted to wear a dress I’d slip into a cassock and another denomination! Community matters in church, being a church family is key to what we believe about being church, and things that enable and build that community are important. This production has drawn in people from the fringe, new church members and potential church members, as well as getting children from the Brigades performing alongside those in Sunday church activities and adults from the community… all in all it has pulled down some barriers. Add to this the way that the ticket sales are going and the hope that many within the church and the wider community will be joining us Friday and Saturday for some fun and hopefully a few laughs is a good thing.

Oh, it hasn’t been hassle free, but then community never is. Yes, we have had to work at it, but it wouldn’t be community if you didn’t. Yes, at times there has been a loss of dignity, but community isn’t built on pride. Despite the tiredness, I can say that with a week to go, I think it has all been worth it! Even wearing a rather uncomfortable bra has been a learning experience! Times have changed a lot in the twenty-nine years since I helped with my first pantomime, but I can still see why we do it!

Of course in those days Dave’s ‘Dame’ wasn’t expected to sing ‘Girls just wanna have fun’ and ‘Man, I feel like a woman!’, but I am sure if he gets the opportunity he can still skip with the best of them down the Embassy corridors!

In the harsh light of the Sun…

2012-02-11T12:18:00.000Z

This is a time of year when I need to wear sunglasses as much as in the glare of summer. I am told by opticians that I have low colour pigment in my eyes, so when the sun is bright I do like to protect my eyes as much as possible. At this time of year, when skies are at times so crystal clear and the sun is so low in the skies sunglasses are always to hand, especially in the car. After all the glare can sometimes leave us blinded. Dangerous thing the sun!

When the ‘News of the World’ met its sudden demise, as the Murdoch Empire decided to make it the scapegoat for behaviour that was clear endemic in certain areas of the press, many in the media world were a little cynical. The consensus was that it wouldn’t be long till the Murdoch’s launched a new Sunday paper, and the speculation clearly believed that would be the Sunday Sun. After all, the Sun had the readership, a readership that had formed the backbone of the ‘News of the World’ readership, so the sharp business minds of the Murdoch Empire would surely build on this circulation directly. And I have to say it was hard to fault the logic, even if the idea of an extra day of the Sun newspaper caused me to despair!

Yet today, following a police investigation that has been in the public arena for a while now, news comes that a senior police officer, a ministry of defence official, a serving member of the armed forces and five Sun employees have been arrested. Now of course arrest is not enough to find someone guilty, though with the high profile nature of the investigation it would be hoped that this hasn’t simply been done on a whim. The charges revolve around corrupt payments made, and these are serious charges for in our country we do not like to think that corruption really exists… we dismissively place such ideas with nations we consider less civilised. Sadly it would appear that the veneer of respectability is only as thin as a stack of twenty pound notes. We cannot convict those who are simply charged, but we can recognise that even the accusation leaves a trail of damage!

Integrity matters and the damage that this does in a culture that is already cynical about those in authority over us is hard to imagine. We have already demeaned in our thinking bankers, who hold the reins of financial power in the nation, politicians who supposedly govern us, media people who seek to be the tellers of ‘truth’, and now civil servants and those who administrate and protect our nation are becoming tainted in our thinking. Where will this leave us as a nation, can we really move effectively into a future; is it possible to recover from this financial mess without leadership to take us forward?

In the Book of Judges we twice hear the refrain,

“In those days there was no king in Israel; all the people did what was right in their own eyes.”

Between these two verses (Judges 18:1 and 21:24) are six of the most distressing and inhumane chapters of scripture. Chapters in which human life, particularly of the weak and powerless are repeatedly abused and demeaned, and in which some of the worst and most ungodly actions are taken by people who were supposedly the people of God. We are quick to say ‘without vision the people perish’, misquoting the Proverb, but the truth is without a recognition of law and authority the people, and the society and culture in which the people live, decays and dies.

The time has come to seek leadership we can trust and to humble ourselves to that leadership. The time has come for politicians to stop squabbling and work together to find a way forward; the age of party politics is surely dead! Godly and unified leadership and people willing to follow and trust is what is needed. A financial system that is fair that does not see the rich getting richer at the expense of the poor. We need Civil Servants who we can trust to administrate the nation and not seek after themselves. Oh and those who are called to distribute the news recognising that they are there for the truth that transforms a nation, not to sell their particularly turgid rag with gossip, lies and the exploitation of women and other minority groups. In fact, when put like that we can almost hear Amos making the declaration… maybe, just maybe it is time for the church to raise a prophetic voice, just a pity that paedophile priests, graceless internal politics and a leadership that buries its head in the sands over its own shortcomings have left that voice equally distrusted.

Something needs to change… and change in all of us… and we need to start making that change here! We need to raise a shout and call for change!

Switching into automatic…

2012-02-10T15:20:00.000Z

At last, after a couple of months as a one car family, we now have a second pair of wheels. I am so excited! OK, so it is not exactly a new car, 03 plates, but hey it’s new to me. And it isn’t the Porsche 911 that I suggested to ‘she who must be obeyed’. Nope, it is a 1.4 Ford Fusion, a little family car…not that ‘aged seven’, either of the dogs or either of the adults are particularly small! It is nippy, has a good stereo, has a reasonable boot and is comfortable… that is about all that is important to me. I know a little sad for a man not to be a petrol head, but if it gets me from A to B at a reasonable pace, with a decent music system, then I am happy. So everything is great… accept… its automatic!

I haven’t driven an automatic for years, and when I did it was my father-in-law’s car. I’ve never owned one before! I couldn’t even remember how to start the engine when I first got in it… and when I got to the petrol station it took me ages to work out how to get the petrol cap off! At least I put the right fuel in it I suppose…. That’s a start!

Driving it felt so strange. I kept wanting to use my left foot and change gear, but of course the car itself had all that in hand. It knew what it was doing, even if I wasn’t always so sure. The trouble is that when I get used to it and get into the other car, our Ford Focus, I’ll have to adjust all over again… clearly I get easily confused!

It is amazing the things we actually do automatically, without thinking. Some are good things, like saying please and thank you, accept if we do say them automatically are they really that sincere? Like my desire to change gear, are this ‘polite’ words simple an involuntary response, yes a good one, but one that in truth lacks meaning? Yet there are other ways we go through life pre-programmed and these are perhaps worse; not simply insincere, but at times hurtful to others or even self-destructive.

God longs to step in to break these holds on us. Baptism is itself about putting to death the only life and being reborn into true resurrection life. Yet sometimes we allow the old ways to take old afresh. Yet as we co-operate with God’s Spirit new ways of being can be formed. Me? I want to resolve that when I hear myself saying please or thank you I want to stop myself, look up from what I am doing and say the words looking into the other person’s eyes… that’ll be a start. But I also need to work on other things… getting out of the way I am won’t be easy but I can relearn if I try…and let God’s Spirit help me.

As for the automatic car… I’ve just got to get used to it. And importantly I have to make sure I don’t bend this one!

Saying goodbye to a saint…

2012-02-09T16:45:00.000Z

Today I had the privilege of presiding at the funeral of a saint. This was the definition of a retired minister who delivered the eulogy, though this seems like a very reasonable definition. For the ninety-two year old dearly departed was someone I had never heard anyone share a bad word about or tell a story about that revealed her to be anything other than a paragon of virtue.

The dear lady had married a minister, and in her case he was a Baptist minister when she had married him, so to selflessly lay down your life to save some other woman the chore would probably suggest a saintly attitude. They had married months before Hitler’s Blitzkrieg had rolled into Poland and as war was declared he husband had gone off to serve as a military chaplain leaving his newlywed bride to look after the church in war-torn East End of London… she was bombed out of three homes while her husband was away, and still she cared and served the church! That was the start… and the story went on like that, when even following her husband’s death, she had nursed him at the end of his life when his memory was almost completely gone, she then started a house group and helped out in a major way at the Free Church nursing home in the city. This woman was an inspiration and a joy to have known.

Presiding at such a funeral is a humbling experience, and it sort of leaves you with big questions about yourself? What will people say about me when I shuffle off this mortal coil. I mean, find things to say about this lady was an easy task. In delivering the eulogy my colleague said his hardest task was editing it down. For me in delivering the address the most difficult aspect was pointing away from the lady and her deeds to God and his deeds, though this was made easier by the fact that this was what the lady had done all her life. So in a sense this service was easy. But would it be so easy for someone when I’ve gone?

I mean in one sense I don’t particularly care. It is not a legacy I wish to leave, but rather be someone who simply joins in with what God is already doing. BUT, is that what others would see in me or would they struggle to make the God connections or worse still, find anything good to say at all? A very sobering thought!

So have I learnt anything new from today? No, I don’t think I have, even though the day has given me food for thought. Yet what I have come away with reaffirmed in my thinking is the need to keep pointing to what God is doing. I want to join in with his purposes and to give all the glory to him, as this lady had herself done. In her life we saw a little of that glory rub off, the crowds who were present today bore witness to that, but even when it did rub off she gave that glory back to God too.

So that’s the aim, deflect the glory, accept the criticism, and in some way hope that someone, one day, might be able to find something not too distressing to say!

Stalled…

2012-02-08T15:56:00.000Z

So much to do, so why have I stalled? I was working on the Bible Study notes for tomorrow night and they were coming along fine. The first twenty-nine verses of Romans chapter nine and I was through to verse nineteen and I just stalled. I decided to look at tonight’s Alpha talk, ‘Why did Jesus have to die’, but even as I turned the pages of the manual for the study I just knew that my heart wasn’t, at that moment, in it. I collected myself a Coke Zero from the fridge (yes, this is advertising and if the Coca-Cola Company would care to provide a free case…) and returned to my desk to look at tomorrow’s funeral address… but still, even with the thoughts of a very special ninety-two year old in my head I still had nothing to say. My brain had stalled.

It happens occasionally. Usually when I am particularly tired, or occasionally a little stressed, my brain just seems to stall. Oh, I can write, after all I am doing so now, but what comes out isn’t something that has been particularly reflected upon… more just a stream of words somehow slotted together, usually without the refinements of good grammar, to make something resembling a sentence.

… I’m off to walk the dogs!

The cold air and trying to keep a pair of Airedale Terriers, Barth and Brunner, in order, got me thinking about the wonder of creation and the way sometimes, even when our brains have stalled, God can still break in. The park was very cold and crisp and the dogs delighted in the smells and the sheer fun of being out and about. They played and squabbled (Airedale play tends to involve jawing each other), ran and generally rejoiced in life as I plodded along trying to keep warm. Then there was one of those moments, maybe you’ve had one, where you see the delight in others, even dogs, and sort of catch a glimpse of your own sad lolloping self and give yourself a good shake. And as I did I smiled… and as I smiled my brain clicked into gear.

Thoughts of a dear lady, who had lived to serve her God and others, filled my head. Thoughts of Job, Isaiah and Jeremiah and the way Paul draws on them to communicate his unfolding theology in Romans. Thoughts of the Cross, and a new covenant and a transformed relationship. And thoughts of Brunner and Barth, of the wonder of creation, and the truth that it is through the Spirit and the word of God in combination that we can truly see, in the wonder of creation, the creator who chooses to reveal himself.

…Oh well, best get back to work…now my fingers have warmed back up!

Another evening, another meeting…

2012-02-07T17:53:00.000Z

Actually, in theory I have three meetings tonight, but as I have yet to work out how to manage that I am limiting myself to the first one I was invited to. So the meeting I have tonight is as a trustee of our local Foodbank. This means I have to stomach an evening of discussing food poverty, administrative and charity business in an Indian Restaurant.

Now I have to say that the first time I had a formal meeting in an Indian Restaurant was also for Foodbank and in fact, to date, this has been the only meetings that seem to occur in this way despite the best efforts of my treasurer to convince the Church Secretary that Church Officers’ meetings would best be facilitated in this manner. There is part of me that finds the concept odd. Food-poverty conversations over papadums, mango chutney, and a plate full of curry sort of felt morally wrong…or at least the concept did. But the reality was actually very different.

Sharing in an abundancy encouraged a feeling of generosity, mutuality and common purpose. We listened, shared stories and spoke of our experience with clients and the desire to do something about the issues solidified as our hunger was met. The atmosphere led to a very different sort of meeting and one where resolve and commitment, to each other and the cause, grew. And of course the cost of the meal was not stumped up by the charity, before anyone thinks we are growing fat on food-poverty.

Hospitality transforms situations, transforms others and transforms those of us being hospitable. Abraham’s encounter with God mediated by the visitation of the three strangers, is a wonderful story of ancient near-eastern hospitality – with humanity truly welcoming and blessing the God who presences himself with them. Jesus washing the disciples’ feet similarly reveals the God whose hospitality truly knows humility. The many pleas from the epistle writers to show hospitality, and especially James and his desire for that to be shown without partiality or an expectation of reciprocal blessing, should make clear to us that something transformational happens in such moments. Ultimately the invitation God freely offers us all to partake in the ‘wedding feast of the Lamb’ is perhaps the ultimate act of hospitality.

For me I found the experience of breaking nan bread together to be one that fires my belief in the need to alleviate food poverty in the city. So as I head off to my meeting, I go expectantly, to enjoy a curry with friends and colleagues and together we will seek God for what we can continue to do, with him, to help those who are hungry.

Oooppss…

2012-02-07T08:36:00.000Z

Oh dear, judging by the traffic on my blog I think I might have caused a little confusion, concern or perhaps even cause for celebration? As I stated in the blog, the comments were a reflection on my nature rather than signalling any specific dissatisfaction or even intention on my part… and certainly not a suggestion that I was going to make a ‘statement’ of some kind at last night’s deacons’ meeting.

Oh well, it is nice to know you care… and a genuine apology if anyone was left confused by the title of the blog. Oh and this doesn’t count as the blog for today, just an apology for the confusion, just in case some of you are counting!

Knowing when to call it a day…

2012-02-06T16:55:00.001Z

I am not always good at knowing when to call it a day. There are times to say enough is enough, but sometimes I am a glutton for punishment; I keep on-going, when the wise man would stop; I bang my head up against a brick wall until I get concussion, and then I slump down until my head clears and then go right back to ramming it into the same old obstruction. You’d think I’d get better with age, at least I’d hope that a little wisdom might come, but on this sort of issue it would appear that all the head butting of walls has resulted in damage to the relevant brain cells. Yet there are times when you know the time has come. When the PC has randomly played the Clash’s ‘Should I stay or should I go’ for the umpteenth time and eventually the message begins to permeate through.

Now please don’t mishear me. Yesterday was not a high, a rush of adrenalin, that has resulted in some kind of crashing low as I ride the emotional rollercoaster of my feelings. No, regardless of the amateur psychologist reading of my blog this is not about the oscillations in feelings of a depressive. In fact, despite feeling generally rather tired I do not feel particularly low, or high for that matter. Similarly these feelings are not particularly about something that anyone else is going to find cataclysmic, or even for that matter a cause for their personal celebration. No rather what I am simply doing is reflecting on a particular aspect of my personality. I do find it hard to know when to quit!

Yes, but surely there must be something specific you want to quit to make such an observation? The thing is, if there was, I wonder if I would mention it here, in such a public place. Personally, I doubt it. I suspect to allow myself such a public moment of honesty I probably need to be feeling particularly secure, rather than particularly insecure. If we are honest it is only in those moments when we feel reasonably secure that we can truly be this open, especially in a role where the need to think about others, and how they will experiences our thoughts and reflections, is key. For surely the role of the minister is not to be there for themselves but to be there for others.

Does that mean there are no areas of my life I would like to change; nothing I could walk away from. Yes there are, of course there are, I am only human. What it means is that the constraints of my nature and my calling hold me captive in some areas and so some things for me are not optional, even where we would want them to be. Sometimes there are things that leave us feeling broken, damaged, torn and in pain; yet the nature of calling, of our being, leaves us recognising there are decisions that we could make, perhaps even want to make, that are just not really open to us. Does this also means that there are not circumstances or situations that may not cause me to walk away or quit something, anything? No, of course such a statement would be untrue, and certainly unrealistic. It simply means that despite all the turmoil that any of us can feel, and frequently do feel, I am currently in a moment when I can face and acknowledge my nature; the stubborn, belligerent nature of who I am; the committed, steadfast and persevering nature of who I am.

God reveals himself in scripture as being the one who is steadfast and loving, the God of חסד, khesed, a committed, forgiving, compassionate form of love; a love that stays true in spite of, not because of, who the person being loved is. This is God’s nature and surely the nature we need to reveal. I suppose you could say the God who bangs his head up against our human nature and refuses to stop loving us.

Hopefully the PC will avoid that particular track and hopefully I won’t be filled with the desire to get the picture disc out of its sleeve for a long while yet…

A prayer...

2012-02-05T22:17:00.000Z

I made a commitment, only a couple of days ago on FaceBook, that I would not blog more than once a day. And it was a good commitment... so this isn’t a blog, as I already blogged today, this is a prayer.

Dear God,
I come before you, recognising my need of you, recognising that without you I am nothing and even with you I am barely something, yet all I am I owe to you and all I am is yours.
So often we grasp at what we feel is ours, and in grasping lose the reality that it is yours, everything is yours.
Humble me, make me understand that all is yours and that all I experience is only because of your generosity, for you are the one who in spite of everything that is me does not hold out on me.
Lord, I thank you for this day, for all that has happened, for all I have seen, shared in, witnessed and witnessed to.
I thank you for others; those who have humbled themselves, opened themselves up to you and have allowed me to share in the moment.
Thank you for allowing me to partake in what you are doing and to share in your moments, in water and in bread and wine.
You have blessed me and honoured me, though I am so unworthy of you.
You alone make me worthy through your Son, my Saviour and Lord, Jesus the Messiah.
Lord God, by your Spirit transform each moment, lead me deeper, lead me on, lead me further into the wonder of who you are.
Do all this that in everything you might be glorified!
In the name of the Father, in the name of the Son, in the name of the Spirit.
Amen

What a day…

2012-02-05T13:41:00.000Z

Quite significant snowfall overnight greeted me this morning! As I looked out I knew that this was something I could really do without. For it was Sunday, a day of rest for some, but for me a Baptist Minister this was going to be a busy day. Now please don’t think I am complaining about the weather, I love the snow, or busyness of my day, or even the business of my day for that matter… it is just a fact that today was going to be a buy one and the snow was not necessarily something that would make it any easier!

The day begun with a shower and a pulling together of all that I would need for the morning; before packing spare clothes and other bits and pieces into the car. The short drive to the top of the slope by our house was an experience, but once onto the main roads all seemed clear and I soon arrived at church to realise I had to turn around and go home again as I’d left my memory stick with the service material on my desk at home. At that moment the thought that this day might not go smoothly did occur to me, but I dismissed it in favour of being hopefully expectant of better things.

And oh, such better things were to come. The morning was fun. Computers printed everything I needed first time. I got to shovel snow in the car park to try and show where the parking bays actually were. People came despite the weather. And, the baptismal candidates arrived with glowing smiles. The water was a little nippy, I think that the water probably could have done with another five or six hours to heat, but who cares! The testimonies were wonderful, as was the church’s laughter at my expense, and the service was a celebration of all that God wants to do in our lives. After church people were excited and happy and, much to my delight, the interview for church membership to enable the next baptism in a months time to go ahead smoothly took place.

I got away reasonably sharpish, because the day is far from over. I can smell the final preparations for dinner being made as I type. After dinner I need to zoom off to church, put on a bra, some stripey stockings, a dress, a wig and some Doc Martin boots and partake in a two hour plus pantomime rehearsal! OK, so perhaps most ministers might have more sense than to be an ugly sister in the church pantomime, but I do believe in throwing myself into being community. Oh I know I will be in trouble for not knowing my lines, or the lyrics to the songs I am somehow expected to sing, but I’ll do my best.

Then, of course, it is back home to get changed… after all doing the evening service dressed like that is not really appropriate! And this evening I am called upon to preside at communion, an honour and the second sacrament of the day. Unless of course you count preaching, opening up the word, as a sacramental act, which I do, so I suppose that is the third. By the time I get home tonight tiredness will overwhelm me as I slump in front of the TV before bed…

The Sabbath as a day of rest? Maybe not to me. But Sabbath is a day for the community of God’s people and God to be together, to rejoice in each other, to share together in sacramental acts and to fellowship. And this Sunday, in all its busyness is one such Sunday…

…so off I go to eat and to then throw myself into the rest of the day! Now what shall I use to pad out this bra?

Getting ready for Sunday…

2012-02-04T13:01:00.001Z

I’ve just spent a bit of time speaking to a second baptismal candidate for tomorrow morning’s baptismal service. She spoke to me only yesterday morning, my day off, when I was on the school run for ‘aged seven’. She wouldn’t take up my time yesterday, despite it being offered, and so after the prayer meeting this morning was the time. We have now spoken, and I feel truly humbled and overwhelmed by her decision… we have a truly awesome God.

My role, my calling, within the community of believers who are called together to serve God, has many privileges. To spend time with the dying, to preside at funeral services, to preside at weddings and dedications, to preside at the Lord’s Table, to open up the word of God in different circumstances, to be shared with in times when others feel burdened, the list is so long and any attempt to be comprehensive would both be tedious to read and always include the sin of omission. Yet one of the greatest privileges is to enter the waters of baptism with another person. It is not simply the occasion, which is a ‘God moment’, a sacrament, a ‘means of God’s grace’ to us, it is the privilege in sharing on that journey.

As a Baptist Church you sort of think of Baptism as being a beginning to that journey, a moment of decision for Christ, an entry point to the Kingdom, a formal coming into the body of Christ. But like so many other Baptist Churches in Britain today the church I currently minister in has an ‘Open Membership’ and so some within the gathered community have come from other traditions, where they made their personal acts of public confession, and so have not partaken in baptism as a believer. My previous church community in Staffordshire had ‘set in stone’ within its trust deeds that membership was ring fenced to those who had been baptised as believers, yet this is quite unusual these days in Baptist churches. So one facet of this decision to open membership up is that sometimes the privilege is not to join someone in the waters at the beginning of their journey, but to come alongside them as they come to, what often feels like, a most significant place of submission on that journey.

Baptism is a multi-faceted occasion: an act of submission and obedience, an act of witness, a ceremonial washing, a putting the past and old habits behind us and an entering into a newness of life, an entering into the body of Christ, a means of grace, a… in fact like the previous list this list too, if I attempt to complete it will suffer from the sin of omission. Yet in circumstances like this, where someone is active, serving, seeking God, and often resistant to what can be seen as a going back to the beginning, the act of Baptism can take on significant meaning in the area of submission. Submission is key to our faith, after all Jesus is not simply saviour, he is also Lord, and perhaps in our culture of self-determination perhaps this is one of the most significant moments in our journey with Christ.

So tomorrow my privilege is to see through the journey two dear friends, who I deeply respect in their journeys with Christ; to step down into the waters, which judging by the temperature out there might be icy cold, and to say:

“…in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit… buried with Christ and risen to newness of life!”

This privilege is not lessened by their existing walk of faith, in fact if anything this walk of faith and the willingness of these two co-workers of mine to submit themselves to baptism is something that humbles me greatly. Tomorrow will be a good day!

Now… I need to go off with these two and others from the church to huddle together and watch Coventry City Football Club beat the Tractor Boys, of Ipswich. This declaration is not result I am confident of, Coventry are slumped at the bottom Championship table, yet we can but hope! At least I know, that regardless of today’s result… Sunday’s coming!

It’s hard only being human…

2012-02-03T16:22:00.003Z

It’s my day off so I have done some sermonising, done the odd chore, including buying a second-hand car, and have just, over lunch, watched an episode of House. I need to get back to the sermons, but before I did I thought I’d have a quick look at the news headlines. Nothing I didn’t already know, but the front page of the BBC News website, and the episode of House I had just watched, caused me to stop and reflect on the truth that there are times when we mess up and in the process sometimes good people stumble.

Chris Huhne is accused of convincing his wife to take three points on her license for a speeding offence that was his. Did he do it? Who knows? I mean we can all speculate, and it fascinates me that it appears one of the reasons people give for why they think he is guilty is that if they’d been in his shoes they would have done it. Yet now it looks like what was a very promising political career could be over. My heart goes out to him. He may have done something wrong, but the witch-hunt that has ensued is because he is a public figure… and now he and his wife are accused of perverting the course of justice!

As for John Terry he has been accused of racially abusing a fellow professional footballer on the playing field. Like Huhne he still awaits trial, but the decision of the Crown Prosecution Service and the press, is enough. As in Chris Huhne's case, the consequences have kicked in. John Terry has been stripped of the Captaincy of the England Football Team by the Football Association. Now please do not mishear me, racial abuse is very wrong, yet Terry was brought up in situations where this was rife and footballers niggle each other all the time on the football field. Does that justify it? No, but it does not surprise me that it could happen. The accusation is that he has stumbled, and the price may be appropriate as we need to eradicate racial abuse in this country, but my heart does still go out to him.

I watched an episode from series three of House. That’s the series where the fixated cop goes after House on a personal vendetta, and those all around the star get hurt, both by the cop and House himself, whilst House goes through drug addiction withdrawal. House is of course in the wrong, but the programme is designed to tear you emotionally apart as we watch the witch-hunt occur over a series of episodes. Your heart goes out to House, and to those who are protecting him, despite the fact that we all know House is wrong!

The problem is we are all human; as John states:

“If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us”

Yes, over some things we think, wrongly, we have a right to sit in judgement, but the truth is we all mess up. We cover up, we deny, sometimes we even deny the truth to ourselves, but in those moments of clarity we do know we are all guilty. We can justify ourselves as being better than someone else, and always seem to have no end of candidates to cast in the roll of the villain, but the truth is inescapable, we are all sinners and all without any self justification. Thankfully God’s heart goes out to us!

There is only one who is without sin, and he is our judge but also the one who makes intercession for us; as Hebrews declares :

“For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet he did not sin”

And so our priest, our judge, our king, the one who truly defines our humanity is also the one who redeems that humanity and reconciles it, and us, to the Father. God’s heart goes out to us in Jesus, but it is not simply sympathy but also the solution to our perpetual problem.

My heart goes out to Chris Huhne, John Terry and those nearest and dearest; personally I draw the line at fictional characters like House and his medical colleagues. Our humanity messes up and there are consequences. I cannot sit in judgement on them, but I can, like my Lord and Saviour, intercede for them in prayer.

…now, time to get back to sermon prep…

Shouting out…

2012-02-02T11:25:00.003Z

A Durham University study has shown that children who shout out in class do better than those who simply raise their hand (BBC News Report). The co-author of the report, Christine Merrell, stated

“Although it may seem disruptive, blurting out of answers clearly helps these pupils to learn”

The report examined behaviour and the results from Maths and English tests. The study was extensive, being carried out in over five hundred and fifty schools. It included children who were considered ‘inattentive’ or who had recognised symptoms of Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder. In fact Professor Peter Tymms, who took the lead on this report, felt that this behaviour was a positive help to those with ADHD who appeared to benefit from the engagement with the teacher and being

"cognitively engaged and as a result learn more"

This caught my eye for two reasons. One was the fact that ‘aged seven’ is struggling a little at school and is very good at shouting out, though usually with the wrong answer. Could it be that this behaviour is not so bad for him? But life is surely not simply about him. Is it good for others in the class? Surely individualism in the classroom could mean that what is best for one is damaging for another, is it really as simple as this report suggests? Yes, I do want what is best for ‘aged seven’ but should we ever seek the good of one at the expense of many? I know that is an over simplification, and that if my son has some form of ‘disorder’, as is being explored by us and the school, then he will need all the help we can give and get for him, but at what point does one person’s demands become to the detriment of the teacher and, importantly, the whole class?

The other reason was it triggered me to thinking about Church Meetings! Our Baptist way of governance is intended to be a prayerful and reflective process in which we listen together for the voice of the Spirit amongst the community of God’s people. At least that is what it is supposed to be. It is supposed to be a place that appoints leadership, again by the discernment of the Spirit seeking those called and anointed to lead. It is supposed to be a place for finding unity together, for laying aside the individual’s wants and desires for the sake of seeking God’s good, the greater Kingdom good, rather than some kind of democratic exercise or, worst still, the place where the loudest voices, doing little more than shouting out, disrupt the whole. Not a place where those who demand attention cause disorder, but a place where leadership and membership together discern Christ’s will. Now of course I am sure that the individual feels better for the attention, and at times disruption, they may cause by shouting out, or writing letters, or the other activities that are sometimes resorted to, but does it help leadership and, most importantly, does it help the church community?

Now I wouldn’t want you thinking I am reflecting on a particular situation, or have a problem with any individual in the church in which I minister. My experience here does not seem to be particularly different from my experiences elsewhere, and seems considerable better than some of the horror stories I hear from others. I am thankful for being in a good place. It is just that as our culture has got caught up in the cult of the individual and in debates about rights and an overwhelming cynicism towards leadership I believe that one of the casualties has been good practice in Church Meetings. Of course I mean if I were to reflect more personally, to ask questions about those who seem unable to go through a church meeting without raising a point of order, then some interesting common factors and history might emerge… but I wouldn’t and I am not sure that would be particularly helpful, now would it?

Instead I think I will instead pause, pray for the church, for Baptist everywhere and our way of seeking to undertake church governance. I will also pray for ‘aged seven’ and his class and his teacher. And I will humbly seek to find a way forward in such situations as we seek to find a pathway forward for people in an age where every individual is supposed to be able to express themselves regardless of the effect that their expression has on others.

Business as usual…

2012-02-01T16:50:00.002Z

So Leonard Cohen has brought out a new album; a collection of melancholy, semi-religious imagery, simplistic tunes, philosophical refection, poetic gruff delivery with a healthy dose of cynicism and yet somewhere a faint glimpse of hope. In other words it is business as usual. This September Leonard will be seventy-eight, and yet as a poet his lyrics have lost none of their edge and in fact on first listening ‘Old Ideas’, incidentally a great title for a new album, is better than 2004’s ‘Dear Heather’. In fact the recent live tours seem to have rejuvenated the wondrously depressive lyrical lilt of the man. Perhaps it is me, but when the ‘Complete Studio Albums’ was released only last year I thought perhaps that was it; but no, a new album of original ‘Old Ideas’. And, as I say, on first listening I am richly blessed.

So, it’s business as usual for ‘Laughing Lenny Cohen’…

It’s been one of those weeks here at church. The usual suspects, the common issues, the usual mania, the usual level of interference and manipulation tried, the same old workload, the wonderful and yet normal level of support and care, the predictable comments and even the occasional surprise, but only to the normal degree. Life is never fully predictable as to content, and even when we do mistakenly think we have the measure of it there will always be something to take us by surprise or even shock us, but if you step back and look at things objectively change happens rather slowly in a place like this. It does happen, but in the minute of each moment, change is almost unobservable. Yet step back, compare now with, say for example, three years ago and quite significant changes can be seen. If one were to look back over an even longer period I suspect the change would seem enormous, though I do hope the core of who we are, a Jesus’ people gathered around the truth of Father, Son and Spirit, who are committed to 'Baptistic Values', has barely changed.

At church it is business as usual, it just depends on how you define ‘normal’?

So, feeling inspired, I have, while I have been working at my desk, trawled through Leonard Cohen’s back catalogue. To compare ‘The Songs of Leonard Cohen’ from the end of 1967 with 2012's ‘Old Ideas’ is almost impossibility. Building the awesome 1990 ‘I’m Your Man’ into that journey seems farcical, let alone accounting for the huge success of that song, 'Hallelujah'. And yet it is a journey and through it the music that has been released this week just over forty-four years later has been spawned.

Business as usual? The core is the core, but things change…

So is this a point to comment on ‘Beyond 400’ and the questions of the direction of the Baptist Union of Great Britain… perhaps it should be, but hey I think I’d rather listen to the melancholy tone of Leonard Cohen singing about… birth, death and most points in-between. Yes, Leonard maybe a little depressing, but the alternative...

What is in a name...

2012-01-31T21:27:00.000Z

So a campaign on social networks like Facebook has resulted in a supermarket, Sainsburys, renaming Tiger Bread as Giraffe Bread. It turns out that in May last year a young girl, Lily Robinson aged three and a half, wrote a letter to the customer services department saying,

“I think renaming tiger bread giraffe bread is a brilliant idea - it looks much more like the blotches on a giraffe than the stripes on a tiger, doesn't it?”

A customer services employee, Chris King, responded by telling her the story of how Tiger Bread was given its name, he mentioned the Dutch origins for the name, but also mentioned that he thought her idea of renaming the bread coated in rice paste as Giraffe Bread was “a brilliant idea”. Chris included a £3-00 gift card and even signed his letter on behalf of Sainsburys ‘Chris King (aged twenty-seven and a third)... what a guy!

Sainsburys have now given into the campaign... from now on in all their stores Tiger Bread will be known as Giraffe Bread. Is this a case of public pressure winning through or is it really a case of grabbing hold of a marketing coup not to be missed. I may be being a little cynical, but come on, when a large supermarket chain bows to public pressure there must something in it for them.

In the Bible names are important, they tell us essential truths about the person, and at times people’s names were changed. Jacob had his named changed to Israel, from a ‘twister’ or ‘deceiver’ to ‘one who struggles or wrestles with God’. Simon was renamed Peter, becoming the ‘rock’. I could go on, but one example from the old and one from the new is surely enough. Names matter and renaming is a very important process. Biblically it marks key transitional moments, moments that change the unfolding story.

But where is the key outcome here... I mean a supermarket has changed a products name, but that was probably simply for profit. Oh yes I may be a cynic, but you know and I know it is probably true. So where is the positive outcome, the God moment in this story? That moment for me is that Sainsburys acknowledges that Chris King no longer works for them as he has quit to go back to university to train to be a primary school teacher... and he will make a great one.

We have an amazing God, and despite my cynicism, and in honour of Chris King, I for one will be buying Giraffe Bread...

A window of opportunity, or an excuse for tittle tattle …

2012-01-31T09:58:00.001Z

So today sees the closure of the transfer window for the football leagues here in England. After the thirty-first January big clubs like Manchester City or United from the Premiership league down to the likes of lowly Tamworth in the Conference Premier League will be stuck with the squads they have and the trade in players will cease until the end of the season. Scotland, for some reason, alongside France, Germany, Italy and Spain have until Thursday night; I’m not sure what the Scots justification is, but perhaps the state of the Euro means some countries need a little longer to scrape together their funds? This makes for a fanatic day of negotiations, pen pushing, medicals and rumours… oh the rumours!

If the BBC website is to be believed the country is a twitter with rumours and sightings. Once upon a time such a statement might have been expected of the BBCs nature and wildlife department, but now it is not twitchers but twitters that get excited. Already the rumours are flying around, whether that is the persistent stories about Andy Carroll leaving Liverpool or that Wayne Bridge having a Medical with the Black Cats of Sunderland. The rumour factory is working well!

Of course it isn’t just the football transfer market that can create tittle tattle, in fact the rumour factory can go into overdrive in lots of different situations. It appears that gossip, rumours and careless talk is something that is part of our human nature. And yet too often it can cause considerable pain and damage, so why do we do it? The famous wartime posters declared ‘Careless talk costs lives’ and yet a juicy bit of gossip, unsubstantiated news, seems almost irresistible to us.

Now of course, as someone doing doctoral research into the Epistle of James, you will probably expect me to go rushing off to James chapter three and talk of forest fires, the problem with that is I am not convinced that we usually handle that text correctly. As you can imagine I could wax lyrical on that subject for a while, but it is likely to take us a long way from the subject. Altenatively, I could of course quote Paul from 2 Corinthians chapter twelve:

“…I fear that there may be discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, slander, gossip, arrogance and disorder. I am afraid that when I come again my God will humble me before you, and I will be grieved over many who have sinned earlier and have not repented of the impurity, sexual sin and debauchery in which they have indulged.”

Here Paul clearly places gossip, a far too common activity we so easily fall into, alongside activities that I am sure we would want to distance ourselves from. Gossip cannot simple be viewed as a harmless pasttime and perhaps in our churches we treat it far too lightly. Clearly it is easy to condemn the gossip, but is there another way, a better way, than simply saying ‘stop it!’

I suppose the answer is to seek to live open and transparent lives. Surely if we don’t live with secrets and seek to be open about things, then we will take away the opportunity and temptation from others to gossip... we would then not be leading others into the sin of gossip. This isn’t always easy, not everything can legitamately be done in the full glare of public display, but at the earliest opportunity openness is surely answer.

Here at church we are getting involved in our own possible transfer process. For us that means the joys of calling a second minister, the process of meetings and preaches, trial by sausage roll and the other activities that go on to bring the church to the point where they are able to vote to either confirm or deny an appointment. The early parts inevitably happen behind closed doors, yet as soon as it is possible total openness, at least here within the church, is essential. In our particular case the second minister we are bringing before the church currently works within another church community here in the city, a non-Baptist church. In some places the rumours are rife! But now the announcement has been made we are seeking to encourage total openness, in close relationship with others, and I am looking forward to the church meeting in a couple of weeks when we can fully share the story of how we came to this point. Will this stop the gossip, I doubt it… but we can but try, after all we wouldn’t want to cause others to sin!

The potential second minister is due to pop and see me for a chat, here at the office, over the next twenty-four hours or so… I wonder if anyone will post the news on twitter…

Just another day…

2012-01-30T15:33:00.000Z

I really don’t do birthdays, at least not my own. I never really have. I never begrudge anyone else a birthday, and what they choose to do with their holiday allowance is fine... but I just don't do my birthday. When I was little I used to end up at my birthday party sitting under the dining room table crying… despite the chocolate nestling blancmange rabbit sitting on a tray of green jelly that always seemed to grace those occasions. I do remember having a more ‘adult’ party, it was either for my eighteenth or my twenty-first, though the only thing that sticks in my mind on that occasion was my sister passing out face down in her mackerel starter! No… I don’t really do birthdays, which is why, I suppose, I am at my desk working.

It’s not that age bothers me, it doesn’t. I mean, why would it? I am wearing so badly that people always guess my age considerable older than I actually am, so my age is in fact a bit of a relief to me. Yes, once upon a time forty-six would have sounded old to me, but since many of my friends are older I can live with it… it’s not like I have a choice in the matter.

My Facebook birthday messages have included those from close friends, many of whom are fellow ministers, wanting me to take the day off. I mean each to their own, but why try and make me fit with your patterns? Every year the 30th January comes and goes, why this fixation with me not working? OK so in 1649 Charles I had his head chopped off… should that stop me working? Or is it that in 1933 Hitler was sworn in as Germany’s Chancellor; or that in 1969 the Beatles performed live for the final time on top of the Apple building in London, or the anniversary of Bloody Sunday in 1972; or, I suppose the anniversary of Jeremy Beadle’s death in 2008. What is it with the 30th January? OK, so I was born in 1966, but actually, cosmically speaking, that was rather an insignificant event.

And this year I am forty-six, not exactly a significant Birthday is it? I mean it is not forty or fifty? It is not sixty-eight, my anticipated retirement age. It is forty-six... one year older than forty-five. Sorry, but I don't see what all the fuss is about.

‘She who must be obeyed’ went to work early this morning, clearly she agrees with me on this one, a day for her to work in London, so cards and, possibly, presents will wait until just before ‘aged seven’s bedtime when she gets in. I had my Kindle from the office and volunteers at church on Thursday, so not expecting a great deal. Really it is just another day!

Please, don’t misunderstand, I am gratefully for the cards, the Facebook messages and especially the presents (you see I do have a slightly mercenary streak). I am feeling very loved and very cared for...including those who don't think I should be working as I know it is just because they care. But, let's get serious, my birthday is not the important thing, Christ and his purposes are what matters!

… so I had better get back to writing the Bible Study notes for this week!

Playing the game – the blame game…

2012-01-29T13:57:00.000Z

The BBC has carried an article today asking: ‘Did Germany sow the seeds of the eurozone debt crisis?’ The Eurozone crisis usually gets blamed on the economies of Greece, Italy, Portugal or Spain as though this is primarily a Mediterranean problem… and in the process the Irish economy just seeks to keep a low profile. And of course it is those countries that have strong economies, like Germany, and perhaps even more so those who would like us to think they have a strong economy, like France, that have led the complaints at the behaviour of others. And of course some of those countries have even wanted to point their fingers across the Channel at those of us who are not even part of the Euro. So the suggestion that the blame lies with those who protest about others makes good journalism… yet seemingly some good sense.

The article points out that when the Maastricht Treaty was drawn up, a famous bone of contention with many on this side of the Channel, there was a mechanism within it to deal with budget deficits and overspends calculated against Nation State’s ‘Gross National Product’ figures that would have stopped this crisis occurring. This agreement placed the deficit figure at 3% of GDP, which would have stopped countries doing the very thing that has caused this problem, which why it had been placed within the treaty. It was called the ‘Stability and Growth Pact’ as it was intended to stop anything that would undermine the… well, you know, sort of ‘exactly what it states on the tin’, stability and growth! So what went wrong?

In 2003 two countries broke the rule and the mechanism should have kicked into to fine those countries and bring them back into line. One of those countries was Germany, a united Germany seeking to deal with the financial repercussions of reunification. The other country was France, which I am sure thought it had an excuse at the time, but it is beyond me what they could possibly suggest was as good a reason as what the Germany economy was facing with unification… but hey I wouldn’t want to criticise! The European Union Commissioners activated the mechanism laid down within the Maastricht Treaty to heavily fine both nations but the finance minister of the then fifteen Eurozone countries came to Germany and France’s aid and the rule was in effect nullified. The ‘Stability and Growth Pact’, designed to ensure stability and… yep, growth, was made toothless. A blind eye was turned towards the action of Germany and France, and when others went onto ignore the rule no-one ever did anything about it.

So Germany, and, oh yes, France, are really to blame!

Stop it… Stop it, stop it, stop it! Time for everyone to grow up. The blame game doesn’t work. It’s not Germany’s fault, France’s fault… it is time for some collective responsibility, by everyone, ourselves included! We signed up to the Maastricht Treaty and even if the ‘Stability and Growth Pact’ did not apply to us, as we were not part of the Eurozone, we knew the terms of the agreement and could have shouted foul. Blaming others never works.

Grace is what transforms everything, helps us accept the past, forgive and move on into the future. We all need God’s grace as we are all sinners, but we also need to be transformed by that grace flowing through us to others. When grace flows we are transformed in the process, as we love, accept and forgive others, recognising that God has first loved, accepted and forgiven us, we are changed and transformed that the very image we were created in comes to the fore… it is only in being agents of grace that the likeness of God begins to emerge in our lives.

So smile, France and Germany have no right to sneer at Greece, Italy or others… so come on guys, it is time to stop the blame game and seek to actually address the problem that is our collective fault!

What kindles your fire…

2012-01-28T13:34:00.000Z

Sooner or later I had to return to the subject of my new kindle, and clearly this is sooner rather than later. I have to say that I am enjoying my Kindle and ‘she who must be obeyed’ has already joined in by downloading an ebook ‘Fun with training and understanding your Airedale Terrier Dog and Puppy’. And it struck me that this sort of summed things up a bit for me, I mean not exactly everyone’s first choice of books to read, but it certainly appears to be keeping the wife engaged. Our book choices say a lot about us.

And of course this is part of what makes the Kindle fascinating to me, the joy of looking through the books that are available to download. Yes, I know the point is that you use it for actually reading the books, but come on, it is amazing the titles you come across out their in the virtual bookshop that is the Kindle Store. Last night, with the laptop still awaiting a new charger, I was unable to sit and finish typing up Bible Study notes so I had a little play on the Kindle and, ‘Oh my!’, the wonderful titles I found!

Who wants to read:
“Torah Yoga: Experiencing Jewish Wisdom Through Classic Postures” Diane Bloomfield has excelled herself by writing a tome in which she teaches about ‘combining the practices of classic yoga postures with traditional and mystical Jewish wisdom’ – Oh my goodness… sadly this book, which in print has a list price of £50.50, is priced at £10.03 so somehow I have managed to restrain from buying a copy.
Or how about:
“Text Flirting: How to Win You Way into Her Heart” in which Prashant Kumar shares his winning formula for getting the girl of your dreams to love you by text. It includes a whole chapter on women’s psche, written by a man… wow this book is a must at only £4.61
Or:
“How To Start An Ironing Business: Essential Start Up Tips To Boost Your Ironing Business Success” Anne Cliffthey is not alone in writing on this rather specialist subject, with Lynette Williams wring a competing tome called “Need Extra Cash? Start Up An Ironing Business From Home” – is there really any money in writing books on such subjects?
Or perhaps the exceedingly practical:
“Apple Cider Vinegar Helps With Wart Removal” in which Ajay Kanda expounds the wonders of this apple based acid product to assist in the irradiation of unsightly growths…and all for a mere seventy-seven pence.
And then of course where would we be without the ‘For Dummies’ series with such titles as:
“Freemasonry For Dummies”, “Sex For Dummies”, “Flirting For Dummies”, “Dad’s Guide To Pregnancy For Dummies”, “Haircutting For Dummies”, “Self-Hypnosis For Dummies”, the essential “Happiness For Dummies” and the one that clearly too many people have brought “Getting Your Book Published For Dummies”!
I could go on, as you can no doubt begin to imagine, and maybe you have even seen a few better than this.

So why do I point this out? Well really to point out that my book choices are not so strange, just rather personal to me. Yes they are focused on the Talmud, Midrash, Greek Text of the New Testament and the Septuagint, yes they include some pretty specialised titles which I find very exciting, but hay each to their own!

Qoheleth may have declared “Of making many books there is no end, and much study wearies the body.” But study can also bring life and vibrancy!

So to those who ask… yes, I am enjoying my Kindle!

Let there be light…

2012-01-27T16:12:00.002Z

Last weekend the lights in the entrance hall at home decided to die, along with two out of the three lights on the upstairs landing. I tried changing one of the bulbs and simply wasted a bulb as it blew instantly. Clearly this was going to be an irritating job that would require some time. Both ‘she who must be obeyed’ and I have had busy weeks, so as today was my day off I knew what the expectation would be. So having got the important tasks, like getting a haircut and commencing work on Sunday’s sermons, an essential job for the day off, answering a few emails I had missed out during the week and eaten my lunch, I sort of got to the point where I was running out of avoidance techniques… and light!

The trouble is I knew that there was a list of tasks to do; the tree and decorations were still not up in the loft; we had a small rainwater leak in our bathroom; and a few other things to do… but how long could I continue to grope around in the dark and, perhaps more importantly, how much longer could I expect everyone else to do so? So as ‘she who must be obeyed’ went out for a walk with the dogs, scowling a little because I was still at my desk, I resolved to at least sort the lights out!

I started downstairs, after all we did at least have one of the landing lights working. I switched off the lighting circuit, removed the fittings, checked the wires, refitted the connections, replaced the bulbs, put the lights back, turned the power back on and as I flicked the switch I said outloud, to myself as the only person there to listen, “Let there be light”… and to my amazement there was!

I admit it, I was genuinely surprised! I am OK at DIY, after all, my father was a plumbing and heating engineer and I was brought up to spend my summer holidays labouring, knocking up concrete, cleaning drains and the like. He never did send me up a chimney, but that was probably only because he never had me available on a job when he needed someone to go up one! It is just that jobs can take time, and I always seem to be running around somewhere... OK, so I am making excuses!

I took the ladder onto the landing and repeated the process, whilst also fixing one light fitting that had been badly fitting since before we had moved in. Switched the circuit back on an… wow, again it worked. I was on a roll! With the ladder to hand the decorations were up in the loft in no time and I moved the ladder to the en-suite and quickly located the problem. By the time ‘she who must be obeyed' had returned I was back at my desk tapping away.

I met her and Barth and Brunner, our two Airedale Terriers, in the gloom of the hallway, and as she struggled to sort out their leads in the half-light I flicked the switch. I have to be honest, there was part of me that had a vague concern that the bulb might blow, but suddenly the hall was bathed in light. She looked at me bemused and slowly a smile spread across her face as I explained that the list of jobs had been ticked off whilst she had walked the dogs. It was then that she said,

“Why didn’t you do it earlier if it was so easy to do?”

Now I could have protested, but the problem is that Jesus once told a parable that had crossed my mind when I had packed the ladder back into the garage. The story was about a father who had two sons. He asked them if they would come and help in the vineyard. One son said yes, but just never got around to it. The other son point blank refused, but later changed his mind and went to help. Jesus asked the Pharisees “Which of the two did what his father wanted?” They reckoned that it was the son who eventually went to help. Jesus did not agree with them, but rather declared:

“Truly I tell you, the tax collectors and the prostitutes are entering the kingdom of God ahead of you. For John came to you to show you the way of righteousness, and you did not believe him, but the tax collectors and the prostitutes did. And even after you saw this, you did not repent and believe him.”

We are all sinners. Jesus was not denying the sin that had ruled people’s lives, but was rather seeking to make all aware of their sin and their need to respond quickly to God. None of us can have a relationship without grace being freely given for we all fail to do what is right one way or another.

None of us can claim to get it right all the time. Being indignant would have got me nowhere. As it was I went for the foolish smile option; the disarming look that ensured that grace flowed and I earned at least a couple of brownie points in the eyes of 'she who must be obeyed'!

Lost for words…

2012-01-26T16:50:00.000Z

I have a birthday coming up. It is not a particularly big birthday, and even if it was it wouldn’t stress me, after all others I know and love tend to hit big birthdays before I do. I will be forty-six – yes, this does mean I will be nearer fifty than forty, but hey, the problem with that is? I mean I am wearing rather badly, look older than my years, so the numeric of my age catching up with the wear and tear is probably not such a problem.

It was clear that the office was planning something today. The church administrator was asking if I was in the office at twelve, people who were not normally around today were popping in around lunchtime… it wasn’t difficult to guess that this was going to be a cake moment. What I wasn’t prepared for the card and gift. We usually do something in the office for people, a gift token or something, but folk were there from all around the building, the cake was bigger and more chocolatey than usual, and everyone seemed keen to be in on the act. I wanted to hide… hard for some of you to believe, but I did.

And when I opened the gift it was a Kindle…. A KINDLE! Part of me wanted to jump up and down, I really wanted a Kindle, and part of me wanted to die of embarrassment… why had these lovely people been so generous and loving to me… I don’t deserve it, I really don’t!

Sitting here now I still feel a little overwhelmed, even after a few hours working at my desk. I still haven’t got round to playing with it, I’ve been way too busy… but a Kindle! Yet what has struck me as I have been putting the finishing touches to the Church Magazine is that I have been overwhelmed by folks generosity, truly overwhelmed, and yet I so often take God’s generosity for granted.

God hasn’t given me the gift of a Kindle… no he has given me the gift of life eternal; the gift of a relationship with him; the gift of his Spirit, part of his very being; the gift of his grace towards me; the gift of… well so much. And the gifts he has lavished on me were purchased through the self-giving sacrifice of his only begotten Son, Jesus. God’s generosity far exceeds ours.

I have been humbled by those I work alongside today and I mean truly humbled. How much more should I be humbled before God? I am grateful to them, and a little embarrassed that I feel there is so much I long to give this community… how much more grateful and willing to serve God should I be. I am getting older, and maybe, just maybe a little wiser… and I pray with wisdom that humility, gratitude and a desire to serve will always follow.

What are we here for...

2012-01-25T20:28:00.001Z

Of course the answer is to be a community built around and modelled on God’s Mission; a missionary people who live and breath the mission of God; a covenant community that lives to open that covenant to others; the people of God who reveal the nature of God as the one who freely chooses to reveal himself; and… well, you probably get the picture. And put like that do you really want to disagree? OK, so there is always some bright spark who wants to modify or enhance any definition, and of course this is not a full, theologically worked through ecclesiology, but you get the gist.

As a Baptist Church, and yes I do appreciate that many out there would simply want to say as a church, we are those called to live out the Great Commission. A community of ‘Missionary Disciples’, as the Union itself wants to identify Baptists in the Unions strap line. Within our DNA surely it is this evangelistic imperative that is a significant factor in who we are.

Yet is it always a prominent outworking of who we are? I ask this question not in reflection on my current church community, on past communities I have ministered or worshipped within, or even for that matter in viewing from the outside any particular Baptist community. Rather, I ask the question in view of my total experience and observations… is mission really at our heart?

We are often good at creating a fringe to the church, running parents and toddler groups, youth work, social action projects and the like, but how much do we bout Jesus? I mean these things are great, and the church has so much to offer people, but how much time do we spend offering the best thing we have…which, of course, is a personal relationship with God, through Jesus, empowered by the Spirit.

I say ‘of course’, but I am sometimes left wondering if we believe it is true. You see if we look at what we do, how we act, what we say, I am left unsure as to how convinced we sometimes are. Now I accept this is a generalisation, and many may feel an unfair generalisation, but surely if we stop feeling defensive about it we might see some glimmer of truth in this.

We need to rediscover our ‘first love’. We have deeds, hard work and perseverance. We are good at being intolerant of wicked people and are quick to judge people as false prophets and messengers. But our ‘first love’, our passion for the good news of Jesus, our openness to gossip the gospel or to offer a prayer to a stranger seeking help is sometimes a little timid. We stand alongside the church at Ephesus and hear the words spoken by John on Patmos. At least if we do hear that will be a start… and maybe, just maybe, we can together seek to rediscover, get excited and start to share the wonder of all that God has done.

Beyond 400 we need to remember the truth that four hundred years ago people made a stand, took a huge risk, because their first love was everything. If we are to do anything more than limp forward beyond this marker to our final fate then we need to recognise where we have come from and the eternity God is calling us into.

“Whoever has ears, let them hear what the Spirit says to the churches…”

Warnings are for heeding…

2012-01-24T16:11:00.000Z

The International Monetary Fund is rightly warning that things are about to get worse. The UK economy is forecast to have very slight growth, not a good sign, but Eurozone is heading into recession if the IMF’s predictions prove correct. And the stated reason for this is a complete failure to act decisively. That is act… not talk about it, not blame others, not pull faces across the Channel, but actually do something decisive together to put things right.

Some commentators are saying that the IMF is scare mongering, but more and more economic and political figures seem to be facing the truth. The IMF is speaking of the recession of the 1930’s, a clear factor in the build up to World War II, and yet still there seems no will to truly bite the bullet. Politicians talk, some think we should spend our way out of recession with one breath and then talk about public sector pay freezes in the next… what do they think people will spend? Others just speak of tightening belts and yet even as they do, others will not allow the actions they want to take go through because the feeling is that people will suffer, which they will. Yet what does seem clear is that suffering is coming and is going to get worse. Over three years ago the West experienced a significant economic crash and after all this time still people do not seem to face the reality of the situation and continue, through in action, to make things worse.

When you are in a hole it is time to stop digging…and in our current case perhaps it is time to remove the keys to the JCB digger that some people seem intent on using the excavate us all deeper.

In Coventry there is a controversy going on…down at the London Road Cemetery. The Cemetery, a beautiful example of a Victorian planned burial site is full. It was designed by Sir Joseph Paxton, the architect responsible for Crystal Palace for the Great Exhibition in 1851, and has a number of famous residents. The council has now begun to act by digging up a significant pathway in the grounds, to make way for a further 300 bodies can be shoehorned into the cemetery. The place is full, access will be degraded, but hey we can get a few more in. This will of course keep some people happy, and bring in some considerable income, expensive real estate graves! But for goodness sake…come on… there comes a time to stop digging!

Humanity has made such a mess of the planet; landfills for garbage, non-degradable plastic bags littering our oceans, ozone and polar ice disappearing, nuclear waste stockpiled whilst some nations still crave the bomb as though it will bring them power and prestige. Economically, people quibble and try to gain power and vetoes on each other’s budget, rather than facing the more obvious answers that monetary union demands full economic and political union. Local councils work to reclaim the last few yards to dig holes to bury the dead six feet under. Yet the big issues of economic welfare, degrading poverty, personal debt, the environment and a future for our children go unaddressed.

Jesus sat on a hillside and looked down on the Temple at Jerusalem. Those with him admired the building; a building that spoke of power; a grandiose structure put up by a non-Jewish King seeking to be popular with the people; and they praised what they saw. But Jesus wept for the truth was obvious, the end was coming unless somehow they would turn and embrace the truth. Yet of course they wouldn’t! AD67 came and with it the end of Judaism as they knew it; the end of a sacrificial system, the end of atonement for sin, the end of the world for those who had not embraced Jesus. No wonder to this day Judaism gathers at the wall at the side of Temple Mount to mourn and wail.

The time has come, it is now! Now is the time to decisively act if we want to see a future and hope. The time to stop pointing figures, questioning who deserves triple A ratings, and calling each other names; the time to stop arguing as political parties in Westminster and unite to find a solution; the time to humble ourselves and together, with God and hope at the centre, to find a way forward. For if not 'our AD67' will leave us wailing!

We are in a hole... at this point in time a step ladder is far more helpful that a shovel!

Having one of those days…

2012-01-23T16:41:00.000Z

I woke early, but got into the office late… by late I mean by about ten past nine as I had to drop Aged Seven off at school. When I arrived I switched on the PC yet it very quickly became apparent that it was going to be one of those days. My PC refused to find the network drive, therefore all my files and even my emails were unavailable. Before too long it became apparent that I wasn’t alone in having the problem. It appears we had a power cut last night, so I closed the network down, and brought up the router, the server, the internet, the… until everything was back up and running. And of course we could get on again… for about half an hour! Then down it went and I had to start again, checking and rechecking… stabilising, and then off it went again. In the end I changed the router ports for the server… and all seemed OK.

Not that I hung around for long… then it was off to take the dog crate our of the boot of the estate to go and collect a Youth For Christ lighting system that had been stored at another church. An unplanned and urgent trip, the church were wanting to throw the piece of kit out. Yet a trip that proved worthwhile for it has, perhaps, addressed a trustee issue for YFC and may have found us a new Treasurer. After that it was off for a couple of pastoral visits, one rather unexpected, but seemingly essential. Then back home to pause for breath.

I meant to go back into the office, but am a little weary that the server might still be playing up, so instead I set to work here at my desk. I can check in on the server’s tonight before a deacons’ meeting. But being home enabled a couple more phone calls, including one from a Regional Minister.

I had plans for today. I intended to start the morning with this Sunday’s Orders of Service, before finishing off the Small Group Bible Study Notes, then one pastoral and preparation for tonight. I had a couple of phone calls to make (thankfully the car’s Bluetooth hands free enabled those) and a host of other things that remain undone. The best laid plans…

Ministry should be planned, but it also needs to be reactive. Yet sadly sometimes the reaction is to the wrong type of stimuli, technical complications, unplanned removal services, pastoral emergencies, rather than what appears to be God’s direct leading. Yet in the midst of it all I saw God, unfolding his plans, for the church, for others, for me, for YFC… Why am I so surprised?

God is at work… we may make plans… yet primarily God longs that we might join in with his plans!

Standing up for freedom…

2012-01-22T13:17:00.000Z

Part of our Baptist DNA, dating back to the days of Thomas Helwys and the birth of the Baptist movement, is a belief in religious freedom. The freedom for people, of whatever persuasion and none, to worship as they feel fit. Yet this is something we seem to struggle with today.

It wasn’t that Helwys wasn’t passionate about Christ, he was. It wasn’t that he didn’t think Jesus was ‘the way, the truth and the life’, he did. It wasn’t that he wasn’t committed to congregationalism, the baptism of believers, the Baptist view of the Lord’s Supper, or many other aspects of worship that were different from the state church, for he led a community that way. No, for Thomas Helwys it was important that ‘popeist, protestant, non-conformist and people of no faith, Jew or Turk (Muslim)’ should have freedom of worship. For this stance Thomas Helwys was incarcerated and would die in the harsh conditions of a London prison.

Yet today as Baptists the thought that freedom of speech and freedom of belief should exist seems out side of many people’s vision. We rant about others, about the BBC, about the media, as though the propagation of other’s views is wrong, whilst complaining that our view point is too poorly represented. To listen to some people you’d think we’d become the powers that be and persecuting those of a different viewpoint would be a good idea. Yes where others want to control and dominate, to suppress or abuse faith, we should campaign, but everyone is entitled to a viewpoint and to often our Baptist heritage is lost in the ‘Mr Disapproving of Tunbridge Well’ type response. We write letters complaining, before we have even seen the programmes we are campaigning against, and act as though we are the judge and jury on matters of all that is appropriate, based on what others say, rather than what we have seen.

I am not here demanding that we water down our faith… I passionately want to take up my cross and follow my Lord and Saviour. I am not in the business of inter-faith services, sea of faith theology, or a belief that anything goes or that God is a universalist… I don’t have the scripture to take such woolly stands and to me it will always be on scripture alone I stand. BUT, the day we treat fellow human beings in ways that deny love and grace, mercy and the redemptive actions of Christ; the day we think we are definitely right and all others are definitely wrong; the day we sit in judgement and cast sentence on others; then we have forgotten that the Judge of all the Earth went to the cross for our sake, taking our righteous judgement, our justified death, on his own shoulders. On that day we deny the dross and pour scorn on grace and God’s awesome power to work his purposes out.

So I will stand for freedom, others freedom and thus mine, to worship God… in my case the Father, Son and Spirit revealed in scripture!

Jelly and ice cream…

2012-01-21T09:26:00.002Z

Tomorrow ‘Aged Six’ changes his name as another year passes. I hope ‘Aged Seven’ will suit him as a name… we will have to see. ‘She who must be obeyed’ has been working so hard in preparation for this weekend and today my focus is supposed to be on helping. There is dog training to take ‘Aged Six’ to, not on the end of a lead you understand but to help him to understand how to handle the dog properly – or is it to help the Airedale to learn how to handle ‘Aged Six’? Then there is the party… a pack of children in the small hall at church. So today I am ‘off work’ to… if you can call this time off!

Yesterday was supposed to be a day off, but this wasn’t to be. The day would have failed to be a day off because it was the quarterly pastoral communion service, but as it was I was needed to preside at an internment of ashes. I also had a pastoral issue, and an administrative one, to do with the pantomime, that ended up taking about an hour of my time! Then of course in the evening there was the trustees’ meeting for our local Youth For Christ, that I chair, and a bit of time that was spent on the Bible study notes for the small groups. So a day off today for a children’s party sounds great… where can I hide?

Jesus ministry was busy and the people had needs, there was opposition and good things and at times heartache, but in the midst of it all Jesus recognised that the people were like ‘sheep without a shepherd’. The words echo Zechariah and other passages in the Hebrew Scriptures that spoke of the mess of Israel and how God would provide the true shepherd for the people. We are not ‘the’ shepherd, Jesus is the shepherd, but we can be faithful shepherds who serve under him. That does require us to rest, to spend family times and minister and care for ourselves and those close to us… but it also means we need to be about the father’s business and live for Jesus in the power of the Spirit.

So today is Jelly and Ice Cream, dog training and fun with ‘Aged Six’ before he mutates into ‘Aged Seven’… and who knows what else?

Where’s the power…

2012-01-20T12:12:00.000Z

The biggest issue in life, in communities and sadly in churches is, so often, where does the power lie? Power and who holds the reins of power so often seems to dictate our existence. Scripture tells us that Eve and Adam were created as help-mates for one another, to live in a mutuality with each other and to walk with God in the cool of the evening. Yet the first consequence of humanity’s grasping at equality with God, a power game in itself, is that power games entered into human existence. The serpent’s taunt "God is holding out on you, take eat and you’ll be like gods yourself", is the perpetual temptation drawing us into power games, domination, manipulation, seeking power, undermining authority – a continuous battle, not simply of the sexes but one that seems to embrace every area of human relationships.

Often it is not on the surface, sometimes it lurks beneath the veneer of a smile, or a call for due process, or a presence or an absence, a raised voice or a petulant sulk, a cutting comment or a harsh word, but whatever we do too often it is marred by the issues of power. We do not correct in order to restore or reinstate, but to assert self. And whether in the home or the workplace, whether seeking to establish or undermine pecking orders in our relationships, the issue of power continuously raises its hissing, fork-tongued head.

Now don’t get me wrong, it isn’t top of everyone’s agenda, but even where it isn’t it does affect lives and situations. And sadly it frequently raises its head in Baptist churches in contexts like leadership, deacons’ meetings and church meetings. The Baptist system does not simply have church meetings, as others do this, but church meetings are the place where ultimate power is held, or rather too often grappled over. Decisions are made, agreed, finalised in a church meeting, and yet the turn out for such meetings is often limited to those who are keen to effect a decision, rather than the community together. Too often it is those who see themselves as powerbrokers, or sometimes those who feel the reins have slipped from their hands and they want to hold them afresh, who can seek to turn a meeting one way or another. I love the saying

“A Baptist minister should feel he is responsible for a church community and the church meeting should give him the authority to be it; but God help the church where the minister thinks he has authority, and God help the minister when the church meeting perpetually holds the minister responsible for all things!”

Sometimes we are quick to apply a warped understanding of a theology of ‘servant leadership’ to those who we recognise as called yet do we really, in our Baptist churches, have a defined theology of ‘following’; we all like sheep reserve the right to stamp our feet, insist on our way, and bleat about it!

Oh dear, that sounds like I am stamping mine…and I genuinely do not mean to, I just have genuine questions as to whether in our Baptist ecclesiology our Baptist understandings of congregational leadership has become tainted by a cultural cynicism, a cultural distrust of leadership and a reliance on our opinion and wants. The origins of our congregationalism were so different, with democracy not being the overwhelming metaphor that it is in our culture today; there was a depth of spirituality in those who had, by definition of being Baptist, stepped into the cultural margins of non-conformity, and so a meeting gathered to prayerfully seek God’s will under the leadership of those ordained and appointed by the community for the task of leading.

Many others have sort to redefine their congregationalism, or even reintroduce and reinvent it and I applaud them for it. Yet, with the wisdom of watching from the outside, they have not always adopted the powerless structures that today lead to power struggles, that sadly sometimes mar Baptist churches. I am fortunate and blessed to have never suffered the worst of it; I have journeyed in communities where such things are very occasional skirmishes, rather than sustained battles, yet always the issue of power is there. As Baptists we negate hierarchy, but the melee that can ensue is sometimes more abusive that the structures some so despise.

Personally I give thanks for the monthly church meeting, and though I have seen other Baptist churches decrease frequency and purpose, I have no desire to see such things happen here. Church meetings, like deacons' meetings and the ecclesiological structures we work with, are part of our heritage and they are there for good and God-glorifying reasons. I have been blessed, as well as saddened, in the context of such meetings, and overall, I would say, there have been more smiles than post-meeting tears. Yet we all need to move away from the icon of democracy, of shibboleth of ‘having our say’ and recognise the pain that can be caused, whether through the poverty of our leadership or the lack of a belief in actually following anyone! After all, I am not sure there will be democracy in Heaven... are you?

Now I have no doubt got myself into deep trouble… just wait till the next church meeting!

Before I continue…

2012-01-19T19:16:00.000Z

I suppose I have embarked on a little task now. A task of reflecting on what it means to be a Baptist, a task that in some quarters has as many variations as it has dogmatic individuals who think they know. It is actually a task that I find quite fascinating. So perhaps, before I continue, I ought to say a little something about why I find the task so fascinating.

What amazes me is how few people in Baptist churches would claim to be Baptist. For those who were born and brought up in the church the word ‘Baptist’ seems to be associated with traditions that they so long to stamp out. I have known people who use the word with disdain, often in reference to hymn books or a desire to rip out pews. Others I speak to and meet in churches come from other backgrounds, some even want to continue referring to themselves as a closet-this or that… anything other than suggest they are actual Baptist. Ahhh…but I am a Christian. Ye, well, so am I, I just happen to also be a Baptist!

We seem to have lost sight of our heritage, our history and our distinctiveness. Yet what always amazes me is when people leave a church and then a few years later, still refusing to call themselves a Baptist they return, complaining that elsewhere leadership, baptism or other distinctive aspects were handled differently. Yes, of course they were… it wasn’t a Baptist Church.

Now I would hate to see us go back to the early seventies, when there was more uniformity, service books and Green Hymn Books (not that I have anything against the old Green Hymn Book you understand). I don’t want a Baptist Distinctiveness that constrains, dictates and dominates our identity. But it would be good to remember what lies beneath our identity, what our Baptist DNA looks like and to challenge elements of how we apply it today.

And that distinctiveness is about a collision of a number of different elements that come together in a unique way in being Baptist. Of course the ‘Baptism of Believers’ is one important element of this, but this isn’t unique to Baptists. The ‘new’ churches, the Pentecostals and even some of the long standing denominational groups are catching occasional glimpses of this… even if they do this alongside infant baptism which we will not partake in. But there other factors that these other groups will not accept, for instance our views on scripture, the Lordship of Christ, church defined as a community of believers, church membership and meetings, the ‘priesthood of all believers’, independence, Religious freedoms for all and the evangelistic imperative. Many churches will share our views on some of these things, some perhaps may share many, but what defines us as Baptist is these particular views held together.

Yet even in sharing these things so many seem to fail to see, comprehend and stand up for these things that this DNA is in danger. So ‘Before I continue…’ I do need to acknowledge that these are things I hold dear to, for I am a Baptist! But I do think we need to go back to our roots on some of these things, re-examine their origins and be radical about them in the twenty-first century.

So, one down…but a whole host of fresh studies lay ahead.

Where should I stick the apostrophe? Answers on a postcard please…

2012-01-18T12:17:00.000Z

Whilst writing the previous blog I was left in a quandary, where does one stick the apostrophe in ‘believers baptism’, for surely it needs one? There are a range of options and the options all say so much about what we personally believe… mind you, so does that statement for it implies belief is personal! So let’s work through some of the options, and in the process perhaps we might discover something more of what we ourselves believe. Yet also we might challenge some of the shibboleths…

Believer’s Baptism – Well this is surely correct after all it is the option that you find in all the books and on the Baptist Union of Great Britain website which surely cannot be wrong? Why would I even question this? The apostrophe is the reason why, for the apostrophe implies that it is the individual’s baptism. Now please don’t misunderstand me, I have no problem with this being the action of the individual and, of course, I believe that it is essential for the individual who is undertaking this action to be doing so in light of a personal faith, belief, but is it truly believer’s baptism. As Baptists we believe this is a multi-faceted event and one facet of this is that it is a ‘witness’. A baptism is something in which all present engage and all participate. It is a community event, someone is baptised ‘into the body of Christ’, and as the local expression of the body of Christ, baptised into membership within the church. Rightly understood the two aspects, membership and baptism, should be inextricably linked, even if sadly our Baptist practice has so often severed this link one way or another. So to simply speak of this in an individualistic way is surely grammatically incorrect?

Believers’ Baptism – So if it is a corporate activity, something that in its essential truth is an event of the Christian community, should it not be referred to a believers’ baptism? Perhaps you might just think I am playing with grammar now, but I am serious; if this is not simply an individualistic event, but a sacrament of the church, then surely it should be called believers’ baptism? We do not engage in Baptisms behind closed doors, or with a few, selected witness, rather we see baptisms as a corporate event, a church event to which many are invited. This is because we see this event as so much bigger than the individual’s experience, despite believing also that this is a Holy Spirit event that affects the individual’s life, and this might point to the flaw in my revision. For though we see this as a community event and a personal event for the individual, having an apostrophe at all places ownership in one of these two positions and I am not sure that either of these would be the correct place! If that is so then this formulation is as grammatically inaccurate as the previous one.

Believers Baptism – So what happens if we take away the apostrophe? We still have Believers Baptism, it is just that it no longer is the possession of either the individual or the community. So if it is not theirs then whose is it? Well perhaps, just perhaps, John the Baptist was right when he said

“I baptize you with water for repentance. But after me comes one who is more powerful than I, whose sandals I am not worthy to carry. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.”

Could it be that baptism, rightly understood is an action of God, in which the church community and the faith-filled individual only take part? After all, faith is a gift and so the action of believing is God enabled. Yes the individual needs to be obedient; but if we recognise that we in truth we live and breathe and move, in and through and by God, even that obedience is God enabled. As to being a community surely we are, as a community, a community born of the new covenant, a covenant cut in Christ’s self-giving sacrifice, maintained in the bread and the wine, the cup of the new covenant, enabled by the Spirit in the community mantianed by the manifestion of the fruit of that same Spirit. So if our actions are not fully ours, and if Baptism is so much more than making a splash in church, how can we claim ownership of it through an apostrophe?

OK, so an apostrophe has distinct similarities to the Hebrew letter ‘yod’ and scripture tells us that Jesus declared that not one ‘yod’… look, the apostrophe is something we have placed there in our desire to be grammatically correct. Yet our grammar seems flawed! And grammar forms our understanding, and sometimes informs our misunderstanding of things? Is it really right, in our individualistic culture to put it where we do?

Am I serious? Do I really expect others, the church in which I minister, the Baptist Union of Great Britain, to revisit the location or otherwise of a apostrophe? Of course I don’t… ‘cor even I am not mad enough to think any of you take me and grammar seriously. If you did then I’d be having copies of my blogs returned to me with corrections. BUT, and a big, bold 'but' in capital letters, we need to reassess what we understand, rediscover what is meant by, re-imagine the wonder of what baptism is all about if we are to be Baptists!

Is this intended as a theological reflection on Baptism, no it isn’t even close to that…but perhaps we all need to stop and rethink, to remember that this is truly a God-event and move forward in light of that truth… if you really want me to theologically reflect then you’ll need to do a lot more reading than this!

Now… I wonder what we should be thinking about other things… like ‘the priesthood of all believers’, congregational governance, leadership and so many other things like the Lord’s Supper (at least the apostrophe seems to be in the right place there)… but hey, that can wait for another day!

What is it that holds us back…

2012-01-18T10:37:00.000Z

Have you ever sat down to ask yourself what is it that holds us back? Individually what is it that frustrates and exasperates, whether that is our own personal characteristics or those things and people outside of ourselves; or perhaps as a family or a community, seeking to move forward and yet hamstrung; or for that matter as a region or as the Union? The Baptist Union is asking questions about its future and has launched a website (why not have a look for yourself) as part of its reflective process.

The title of the engagement process, and the website, which is being used for this project is Beyond 400. This reflects that Baptists have been a recognisable group since the fledgling days of Thomas Helwys four hundred years ago. He came from a congregational background, yet resisted the urge, not resisted by all, to move away from this basis and yet alongside this stance adopted believers baptism (where should one stick the apostrophe?) from the Anabaptists and so birthed the movement we today call 'Baptist'. Four hundred years is a significant history, though in terms of some groups maybe it can appear quite short, and yet the question the engagement asks is how do we move beyond four hundred?

What we inherit in this life can weigh us down; history can hamstring us, leaving us walking with a limp. Many of us will have heard someone say ‘well we’ve tried that before and it didn’t work’ or for that matter ‘we’ve never tried that before, because we’re not that sort of people’ and sadly some of us have even heard that on the same people’s lips! The past can hold us back, lock us into ways that are constrictive, controlling and even fatal. The past can be the source of palliative practices, controlling the rate of dying, and easing our pain, rather than offering a curative solution which might require a radical choice.

Yet that is the clue to it all, isn’t it? The past is not wrong, it just needs a proper understanding. It is under the rock entitled ‘radical’ that the answer has crawled and this is not a place we like to look. Radical is a word that many find unnerving, especially amongst the ‘old guard’, and yet it is a word that if any of us individually, corporately or even in larger structures, like the Baptist Union of Great Britain, are to thrive in the future it is a word we need to truly rediscover. Radical comes from the Latin root word ‘radix’ that means… well, ‘root’. To be radical means to get back to our roots, to understand our origins and history and re-imagine how this might be in the here and now, and the next breath and each emerging lungful of air. Yes being radical is dangerous, after all so often we have built on our history in ways that bury our foundations rather than build on them in true and honest ways, and sometimes these monuments to the past that we have built are crumbling because they are not true to the foundations. Is it time to tear down some of these edifices, to be truly radical? If we don't do it now will the opportunity to rebuild ever again be open to us?

Biblically we find God revealing himself to the people in many and different circumstances and yet so often speaking of himself as ‘the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’ taking the people back to their roots rather than the fresh mess they had got themselves into. Jesus took the Hebrew Scriptures and helped people to re-imagine them, tearing up their man-made rule books and presenting them with an image of God for their here and now and our future. Paul took those same Old Testament Scriptures and used them to reveal the truth of Jesus who had come to reveal the fullness of God. As for John, Jude, Peter, the writer to the Hebrews or James… come on, you know that what I am saying is true. The New Testament calls us to be a people who perpetually go back to our roots, not the preceding administrations, but our roots, to ask the what is the way forward for us.

If Beyond 400 is to make any difference we need to re-imagine our future, hearing the core truths of our history but truly re-imagining our future in light of the leading of God’s Spirit, in the way revealed in the coming of the Son and the relationship that coming opened up with the Father. A Triune conversation with the roots, the foundations of what we believe and who we are. A sort of ‘core principals’ that isn’t simply rolled out as a package to our churches, but the sort of ‘core principals’ that impact our structures, our hopes, dreams, college training, preaching, teaching, church meetings, our lives and our future.

And in our churches and communities there needs to be a radical edge; something that moves beyond our propping up of past administrations and reputations and starts to embrace the emerging future. If we always look to our pasts in homage, rather than seeking out the truths of what we believe and radically applying them that we might have a future, then our churches will become monuments of disrepair that simply spend their time looking for lottery funding to prop up the crumbling frontages rather than truly taking steps of faith into the future.

What about as individuals? I believe we all need to look at ourselves… and maybe spend a little less time looking at others. Self-awareness is important, though interestingly maybe sometimes we spend too much time questioning other’s self-awareness and not enough time looking at our own. And so, for example, we do need a theology of leadership, but we also desperately need a theology of following, for even in our Baptist understanding of ‘the priesthood of all believers’ we are not all leaders and all of us, even those who are leaders, are called to be followers of someone.

So I am going to watch, listen and even possibly contribute to the Beyond 400 consultation. But I think I also need to undertake a task for myself. I need to reconsider, reflect on, even theologically reflect on, the basis of what it means to be Baptist and seek to re-imagine what this might look like today for me as a church member, for me as a minister, for the place in which I minister as a church, and for those structures like the Heart of England Baptist Association and the Baptist Union of Great Britain, of which many of us are a part. So over the next few weeks maybe some of my blogs will be focused on this subject.

And I think I will start with the quandary an earlier statement in this blog posed me: ‘where should I stick the apostrophe?’

Mark my words...

2012-01-17T10:57:00.001Z

On returning home last night amongst the post on the doorstep was my copy of Christianity magazine and the Scottish Journal of Theology. And yes, before anyone says it, I know I am strange but I joyfully went to open my copy of the SJT with its academic articles on Augustine’s De Trinitate, Apophaticism in Thomas Aquinas and so much more, when the cover of Christianity magazine caught my eye. Staring out at me from the front cover was Mark Driscoll; I scowled and read the strap line: ‘I go too far sometimes’. ‘Yes you do’ I muttered to myself; put down my beloved theology journal and unwrapped the magazine. I suffered the usual spillage of advertising leaflets, checked the index and turned to page twenty and the article on the man who has rather stuck in a few people’s throats recently!

I suppose you could moan at the Baptist Union Communications department and its regular updates on things in the world that ministers and others might need to be aware of (stating that way is one way of keeping my blogs out of their communications :o) always a good ploy!). They recently pointed some of us to an article (Christianity Today) where Mark Driscoll, the pastor of an American Mega-Church who has made his name making extreme statements, declared that pulpits in the churches in Britain are full of cowards. Driscoll was being over the top, offensive and, well, showing his complete ignorance of the British scene, but having such offensiveness broadcast far and wide through the Christian media was… exasperating.

The news first broke around the time American Soldiers were making the news for urinating on dead Afghani rebels; the temptation to make an analogy with Mark, or even to suggest the need for them to put their own house in order was enormous. The temptation to get defensive or angry was great. I bit my tongue and folded my arms rather than tap away on the keyboard. I prayed for Mark, for wisdom in the Christian Press and for the grace in my own life not to judge. So when I saw his face, trendy and fashionable and in need of a shave, staring at me from the front cover of Christianity, I had to open it up and read.

The article is worth a read, and maybe even the most interesting article the magazine has carried for some time. Do I agree with Mark? No, and for a whole range of reasons. Yet perhaps the biggest reason is that he goes out of his way to court controversy and makes extreme statements…many of which seem indefensible. He attacks and rebukes others, judging quickly and in ways that deny grace. He is not just combatative in defence of God, but actually downright macho and muscular… he is out looking for a fight.

Now please don’t misunderstand me, ‘gentle Jesus, meek & mild’ is a fallacy. Some people do believe some things that are clearly wrong and need correcting, or hold views that lie outside of anything that can be defined as orthodoxy and should be ‘re-educated’. Sometimes making people think, by saying something that raises their bloodpressure a little is not a bad thing, but there are clear limits! And using offensive terms about others is definitely beyond the pale! The wishy-washy approaches to faith are clearly wrong and frequently I pray that the church might ‘man-up’. But the testosterone fuelled abuse of other is one I believe is equally wrong and there is clearly an issue here. I want to declare that there is a need to ‘take the log out of your own eye before you start playing at being an ophthalmologist’, but even as I do so I recognise the need for us all to do the same. I cannot throw rocks at Mark Driscoll, but I can cry out to God that he might humble us all to our knees and seek him and his ways first.

Mark Driscoll has a new book out, entitled ‘Real Marriage’, which of course he is promoting. So the more publicity the better, eh Mark? Have I ordered a copy? If you do get to read the Christianity article you might catch a glimpse of some of the more controversial aspects, so yes I have… I do believe in keeping a watching brief on the people I don’t agree with in case others are drawn in by their self-promotion. Yet what I noticed when I ordered the book was that it was co-authored by his wife… and her name is Grace.

Mark, I am not judging you or condemning you; I am praying for you and lifting you up to God. I am not a coward, but declare the truth even when those around me call on me to be quiet. I don’t live in America, I live in a different culture, with a different history, and am called by God to bring the reality of who I am, and who he longs for me to be, to the full service of the gospel in this place in the Heart of England. Yet there is one thing I would like to say… you have a wife. I gather you think you are superior and head over her from the way you speak and write, but her name is Grace… and I think it is her name, and her nature, that you appear to have forgotten. Perhaps, just perhaps, a man, a real man, moving in harmony and mutuality with Grace, might be even more effective in serving the Lord?

Trial by media - a contemporary 'ducking stool'...

2012-01-16T17:19:00.003Z

I note that the blame game has started into the cruise ship tragedy off the Italian coast. The ship’s owner are already declaring their captain guilty and the press seems happy to, by its reporting, declare his guilt. It seems the owners, who might otherwise have some liability, insist that the captain deviated from his course and ignored a whole series of alarms before the ship went aground. Surely that would remove their liability…convenient isn’t it? Of course, I couldn’t comment, after all I like everyone else, probably including the owners, do not have the facts. Yet it seems that the press has now joined forces with the owners, they always know where the sound money is, and are reporting the owners’ statements as fact. It is a good job the captain has been arrested or there might be a lynch mob looking for him! I think I’ll wait until someone has properly examined the ship, the seabed, the instrumentation and the naval equivalent to the black box… after all who really knows what went on?

We seem so quick to judge, and the way we demand instant news, and instant verdicts and judgements, before the proper evidence has been gathered in, becomes increasingly common. It was not that long ago that the press sought to convict a landlord of murder, seemingly on the basis that the police were suspicious and he was a bit of an odd bloke, and yet it was the press that was found guilty themselves. And obviously now they understand they cannot hack into the captain’s mobile phone they are a bit stuck for any real form of ‘proof’.

We live in a world where everything is demanded in an instant. We don’t want food lovingly prepared, we want it ‘fast’; we don’t want to save up for our products, we want plastic credit; we don’t want news items researched and balanced, we want a verdict! And if the verdict is a bit dodgy, hey we’ll live with it even if it destroys someone else’s life.

The MPs are having their revenge on the press for the expenses scandal reporting… one dubious bunch picking on another, seemingly turning into a mutual feeding frenzy. Yet, surely the people really to blame for it all, is us. We vote for them, we buy the gossip soaked rags, we demand something for nothing, and that very something we want now. Why do we blame anyone other than ourselves?

In Galatians Paul offers us two lists: the fruit of the ways of the world and the fruit of a life spent in relationship with God through the work of the Spirit. One is a pretty quick and messy business and one takes a lifetime to even begin to ripen; one is rotten and one leaves a beautiful taste in the mouth; one is instant and one most definitely isn’t. And the one that isn’t speaks with a voice of grace and reserves judgement for the one who is qualified to judge.

So I think I will seek to reserve judgement… owners have interests, the press wants new angles, lets wait and see how it all pans out. Somehow we need to hole and sink this need for the ‘instant’ if we are ever to re-float our culture and society successfully… and if not then simply our calling to be Church, and so counter-cultural, in so many ways mitigates us being sucked in by it all.

So I will wait, after all we are not always sure what is lurking just below the surface, are we?

God has plans and sometimes we glimpse them in our preaching plans…

2012-01-15T09:54:00.000Z

I have never been one for using lectionaries, but equally I have never simply picked texts week to week. I sit down every few months and pray about the next quarter, where I feel God is leading us as a community and what it is that I am being led to preach. I then draw up the preaching plan for the next quarter. Does this mean I become inflexible? No, I don’t think so, in fact last summer I scrapped a series having preached the first two of the series, because I felt a certainty that God was leading me to preach on a passage in Jeremiah, which then redirected what we were studying in church for a month or so. Yet what does amaze me is how so often what has been prayerfully considered becomes uncomfortably topical…why this should surprise me I don’t know, after all if I really do believe God inspires, but hey in my humanity God still surprises me.

This morning, as reports were coming in of the South Korean couple rescued from the stricken cruise liner of the Italian coast, I was doing my final preparations on a sermon linking the story of Noah’s Ark with Moses in the basket in the bulrushes and the salvation that God brings through the water. The images reminded me again of the hope that we need to hold and of how God can transform even the horrors of the judgements that come; the God who redeems and who calls us to be part of that redemptive process; and the God who longs that we might work with him, trusting him, obeying him and working with him for his purposes.

What an amazing God we have…

The joy of…

2012-01-14T18:46:00.004Z

I am such a fortunate minister. Last year I got to preside at three weddings and they were a joy and a privilege to prepare and do. And now in 2012 I have taken my first one of the year, and again this one was a delight.

The happy couple had joyfully engaged in marriage preparation, taken time to reflect on themselves and their partners and had been very open and honest with me. Sometimes, in the past, I have had couples who you were made to feel they were only coming under sufferance and, if I am honest there are times when you almost feel you are being used. Yet when people are open and share you simply feel that it is an honour to take the service for them.

The service seemed to go well today, though it is hard to judge as the minister. There was a multitude of musicians… a worship group, an organist and today a three string musicians playing a variety of instruments from a cello to a violin… and they all performed really well. The registrar did her job with style and a smile. The ushers and the volunteers on the doors, in the café and doing the flowers did their jobs perfectly as did the sound desk. It was like a well oiled machine.

And the guests were there, hundreds of them. The mums were dressed in their finery, the lads were all so smart, especially the little ones, the bridesmaids were radiant and the best man remembered the rings! The bride’s father played his part and kept the pace slow down the aisle. In fact all the supporting cast were great and the bride and groom… well, the groom had the smuggest smile I have ever seen on his face after the service, not sure if this is because he got all his words right or because he now had a ring on his beloved’s finger. And the bride… beautiful, radiant and so very, very joyful!

Yep weddings are a joy to preside at! But perhaps the greatest joy was the sense of the presence of God in today’s service. For me there was a real feeling of God being there, watching over my shoulder, smiling upon the couple, and as I pronounced the words of the Aaronic blessing over the happy couple the words seemed to echo directly the presence I was feeling:

The Lord bless you and keep you, the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you: the Lord lift up the light of his countenance upon you, and give you his peace.

So when I say it was a privilege and a joy to preside, perhaps the greatest privilege and joy in it all was the sense that I was just the stand in and the boss was there. The couple may have had to repeat their vows after me, but there was a real sense for me that I was speaking them out on God’s behalf.

I am a very fortunate minister, particularly in Baptist circles, for we only tend to preside at weddings from the families of our congregations and last year I had three to do and this year I have already presided at my first of 2012…bring on the next!

Keeping it all legit…

2012-01-13T14:26:00.001Z

I’ve just been to look at a new car. OK, when I say a new car I do of course mean a second-hand car, I mean get serious… I am a Baptist Minister! It is to replace the car I wrote off last year; in other words to replace ‘she who must be obeyed’s car. So I do need to get this right! There was only a small window of opportunity, after all it is my day off and therefore I do have two sermons to write and this week a wedding service and address to finalise for tomorrow, having my particular work-life balance does make fitting in such things a little difficult. Fortunately both ‘her indoors’ and a friend from church who knows a lot more than me came with me.

The process all began with surfing the AutoTrader website to find what we were looking for. ‘Her Ladyship’ and I settled upon the idea of a Ford Fusion and a search area of about twenty miles and a few came up in our price range. Then we started what now seems to be the obligatory checks. The website provided a check to see what service histories were available and whether the car had previously been written off. The one we initially liked the look of through up questions on mileage, and worst still revealed it had been written off six months earlier…not a good start! Of the two that were left one was solved and so we pottered off down the road to the next town to go and see the dealer about the one remaining car.

The car looked pretty good. Paintwork was OK, internally in good condition and the test drive felt pretty good. I have to say I was feeling quite excited! But then the garage owner just couldn’t deliver; an ‘05’ car but no service history, no handbook and incidentally no parcel shelf. I could have lived with the parcel shelf, but not the lack of paperwork on a car with supposedly one careful owner. He took my mobile number, for when he tracked it all down, but to be honest I don’t expect to hear from him. And so the search begins again…

What is it with human beings? Why can’t we be up front and do things in a legitimate way? Is that so difficult? If the car has been written off in the past and yet was repairable why not just sell it as such? If you don’t have the paperwork, or know it doesn’t exist, why buy the car to resell it and why try to fob someone off with a story? Seriously, be upfront with me, do things in a genuine way, but don’t try and spin me a tale.

Jesus spoke about the need for our ‘yes to be a yes and our no a no’ and yet too often we feel we can do better with a touch of deception. Jesus followed through on this, even though others convened kangaroo courts to convict him. He revealed, perhaps even defined, integrity for us. Yet even as Christians sometime we find it so very hard to model. Perhaps I shouldn’t expect more of ‘second-hand car salesmen’, but when we find that lack of integrity within the community, as sadly we sometimes do, the pain is so much worse.

OK, so the search goes on, and who knows I may find a nice, reasonably priced, fully validated car… then again perhaps I should just get realistic!

Retirement...

2012-01-12T19:00:00.004Z

Today I have been asking myself what I will do when I retire. OK, seems an odd thing to do when I have, at current projections of retirement age, over twenty-two years to go. Yet the reason I was asking the question is a little more complex than you might think.

The Baptist Ministers’ Pensions Scheme and the reality that I will probably have a considerably worse pension than the ministers who retire today is a fact I am well aware of. Yet working longer for poorer returns is a factor that many of us face. So though the financial questions are there, are always there, that wasn’t my primary concerns.

The time retired ministers get to study and write, those who have the ability and urge to do such things, is a more appealing factor as was highlighted to me by the article in the Baptist Quarterly, the Journal of the Baptist Historical Society, written by one of the retired ministers in my church, that dropped through my door today. The short article on why Baptist Associations did not function well between 1660 to 1689, a subject that this particular minister clearly finds fascinating, is well researched and, oh, to have the time to lavish on such things, though I suspect that mid-seventieth-century Baptist functionality would not be the focus if I had the time. But despite my love of study this wasn’t the focus of my reflections.

Other ministers seem to be abroad an awful lot. Some take holidays, some choose mission work, but the opportunity to travel is one I do feel a little deprived of these days. Retirement might create such opportunities. There are contacts around the world I’d love to meet up with and work with; there are places I have always longed to visit; a whole world out there to discover… but hey, we have recently booked a holiday for a week to the North Sea Coast of Norfolk so why would I complain? And no, this wasn’t the reason.

The reason is I was wondering just what I would do church-wise? Where would I worship and how might I offer my services to help others. My conclusion was that I would of course move out of the area as to remain in the same church, or even the same general location, might cause issues for those who followed me in taking up responsibility for the community. Yet even if I went somewhere else could I really not interfere, after all however well meaning I might be I wouldn’t know the circumstances of what was really going on and so my opinion and my offers for help might not be helpful to the person with the responsibility for the church in which I did worship. Was going to another denomination a possibility…well, of course it was, but would it really solve the issue? I was in a quandary.

I was thankfully it wasn’t a big decision that was staring me in the face; that the issue was not one I had to make a decision on imminently. It was then and only then that my mind went to the other areas. Foreign travel… come on I’d get bored! Study time… come on you’d all get bored with the results of my studies and reading things like articles on Baptist Associations in the Seventieth Century. And then of course there is the Baptist Union Ministers’ Pension Scheme, where it would appear that the best protection it offers is the death in service benefits that seem to be a protected hangover of the old scheme. All these things needed to be considered.

It was then that I hit upon the right plan. A way of not exasperating others, not boring others, not globetrotting and leaving a terrible carbon footprint in the process, and a way of maximising my contributions to the Baptist Ministers’ Pension Scheme. And with the sort of week I am having taken into full account I decided to work myself into an early grave…

…I’ve spoken to ‘she who must be obeyed’ and with her actuarial experience and a wry smile agreed this was a cunning plan that seemed on the face of it best all round! I am pleased I thought of it and it actually means that I can stop writing about my work-life balance as I have probably got it just about right!

Confirmation...

2012-01-11T14:08:00.002Z

No, don’t panic, I am not recanting my position on rites of passage. I am a Baptist and passionately believe in Believer’s Baptism as being the ordained rite of passage. So when I say ‘confirmation’ I am not speaking about the adoption of a non-biblical ceremony… OOoooppps there I go again offending some of my Anglican friends. Come on this is me, you know I am awkward on this issue, let’s not fall out about my poor phraseology!

No the confirmation I am talking about is a passing conversation with the person at the centre of my ‘shocking’ news; a passing conversation that has opened up the opportunity for a non-threatening pastoral visit and further conversations. Within twenty-four hours or so of hearing the news I had the opportunity to ‘bump’ into the person and raise things in passing. What an amazing God we have who opens up such things.

Some people love to talk of ‘God-incidents’, rather than coincidences, and I can understand why they do, and yet to a degree is this because in the church today many of us, particularly in the Evangelical and Charismatic traditions of the Church, have forgotten about the doctrine of ‘providence’. Yet going back to Augustine of Hippo, someone I do occasionally blame for some of the failures of Western Theology, the doctrine of Divine Providence has had a place within the theology of the Church.

Augustine was not alone in his formulation of Divine Providence with the concept of God’s foreknowledge and action in and through human lives and circumstances working together for God’s divine purposes also being prominent in the teaching of Thomas Aquinas, Luther and Calvin to name check but a few Doktors of the Church. Ultimately God is working out HIS purposes for the whole of HIS creation, and in the life of HIS creation, so why should we be surprised, especially as those who have recognised that our lives belong to HIM, that we see HIM at work in the everyday out workings of life.

For me it was studying the story of Ruth, or should that be the story of God at work in the life of Naomi and her daughter-in-law, that brought this home to me in a bigger way. The God who could work things together in the lives of these ladies, in a difficult situation, at a particular time and yet also work that into the bigger and unfolding story of his salvation history, and ultimately his own Son is a God with a big game plan that encompasses his whole creation. God is the God who works actively in our lives by his Holy Spirit, but who is also working all things together, by that same Spirit in the life of the whole of his creation.

So today I received confirmation, of a situation and of the action of our God who in divine providence has all things in hand and with whom I simply need to work alongside following his lead to sort these things out. Confirmation that in God, creator, sustainer and redeemer I can trust in any and every circumstance.

Shockproof…

2012-01-10T11:57:00.002Z

Some people you meet like to think they are shockproof. You know the type, they insist you can tell them anything and they won’t be shocked; ‘seen it all in my time, you won’t shock me!’ And worst still they are right, they are incapable of being shocked. Yes, I do mean ‘worst still’, after all is it really so bad this ability to be shocked?

I am not talking about over-reaction, or acting in shocked and horrified ways, but surely if we are no longer capable of being shocked then it means we can potentially think people are capable of anything and that someone we know could do nothing that was beyond our expectations… how low can our expectations of others be if this is the case? Now acting shocked, making a fuss, this can too often be an issue and can make matters worse rather than help to resolve, improve or correct the thing that has caused shock. Somehow surely we need to find a way in which sometimes barely a ripple is seen on the surface even if below the veneer of calm the waves of turmoil have been whipped up.

Today I was shocked; shocked, surprised, possible even aghast at something that appears to have been going on. My world was suitably rocked, oh, not by a major earthquake, but it did feel like an unexpected tremor.

A few years ago at a Baptist Ministers’ Conference in Swanwick I was sharing a room with a good friend and fellow Baptist minister. We had socialised with others in the bar and were continuing to chat in our twin beds. Knowing us we were probably discussing Karl Barth and yes it is sad what some Baptist Ministers chat about into the early morning! As we talked the whole room shook, the wardrobe made a terrible racket, we looked at each other and I remember, a little smugly, saying ‘Did the earth move for you too?’ In the morning we heard the news that there had been the strongest earthquake in years in the area.

After I got over the initial shock of the news today I smiled. Not at the thing that had shocked me, that I suspect is something sooner or later I am going to have to address, but I smiled because I had been taken by surprise by the action of someone who surely knows better! I smiled with a degree of relief that I was still capable of being shocked and surprised by the actions of people. Much to my relief I was not as cynical and hardened to it all that I could believe anything of anyone.

You see my fear, and yes sometimes in the daily onslaught it could become a possibility and something that concerns me greatly, is that I could become so hardened by others actions that I develop 'Rhino Skin' and become this creature that no longer feels the shocks, hurts and pains… for that would make me a poorer pastor. Perhaps this is part of the very truth of Jesus and the cross. That for the sake of our humanity it is essential that we have a God who can feel the pain of an abusive, horrific and terrible beating; has experienced what it is for splinters and nails to tear into the body; and can know what it is to gasp for every breath. A God who is not hardened to humanity, who may know all there is to know about each one of us, even the very things we would deny about ourselves, and though he may not feel shock he can truly understand the pain of our worst actions. A God who may have made the Rhino, but not in his own image; rather in his own image he made humanity, male and female, and knows and understands the vulnerability of our own realities. Such a God we can trust with our lives and our eternity, with our successes and our failures, and with our moments of smugness and a moments of shocked insecurity.

So what am I going to do with the situation that shocked me today? I truly don’t know, at least the fullness of what I will need to do, but this I know that I will continue to take the shock, sadness and questions to God in prayer…even as I begin to seek to deal with the situation.

Paperwork… climbing the wall…

2012-01-09T18:36:00.000Z

When I am not producing piles of paperwork, others around me seem to be doing it. Policy documents, Health & Safety, accounts and budgets, proposals for spending, reports on activity… not to mention all the promotional and fundraising material… keeping up with the paperwork is like climbing a wall on an assault course sometimes. And of course none of this reflects the mountain of paperwork I tend to produce in reports, study notes and so much more… if I didn’t seek to keep as much of it confined to electronic media then the Forestry Commission might be on my back to plant more trees!

Sometimes ministry today can feel like a paperwork marathon and the things that pass over a minister’s desk, especially in a church this size, would amaze people. And of course when it leaves my desk, and a small fraction of it gets put before others, the complaints that are then raised. “How was I supposed to read all this with only two days notice?” they ask… without it occurring to them that this is simply the tip of the ‘tip of the iceberg’, and that if they opened their eyes they would see that there is more above the surface and so much more below the surface, that never comes their way.

What a lot of metaphors! Icebergs, assault courses… and I could find more, but what I want to do is not bemoan my lot, or defend against the complaints of others. I do not want to bemoan the lot of the contemporary minister, or suggest that being in a large church is more difficult than being in a smaller church, for it is just that some of the tasks are different. I do not want to say that things were not like this in the past, for I am sure that if I had to write things out by hand my lot would be harder. I simply want to acknowledge how it is and… and… and… and commit that in 2012 things will be different.

But how? Before anyone quotes the story of Moses and his Father-in-law Jethro to me and says delegate, they need to realise that this is how we get into this situation in the first place. People reporting back on delegated tasks! We could have more meetings to report back in… but then someone would want me to agree the minutes! We could call a second minister, though one of the current task that causes the issue is the meetings that have to be attended to call a second minister. We could…

Mmmm… what would Jesus do? The trouble is I am not a peripatetic preacher on the shores of Lake Galilee in the first century and if I was to try and do that in the twenty-first century I would probably need to fill out permits, visa forms and lots more paperwork… I bet someone has a Health and Safety document to cover the task and I’d need a Food Hygiene certificate to embark on feeding the five thousand! MMMmmm… what would Jesus do in my situation?

Maybe my flippant comment about the Forestry Commission is the answer? Maybe before I agree to read anymore Policy Documents, Health & Safety procedure or the like I should insist that the person who is producing it goes out and plants a tree? Now how could I word that more appropriately, an new church motto, “Before you write anything go plant a tree”? And how could I circulate the information… I know I’ll write memos to everyone and put one on every notice board!

Working for the Pharaoh

2012-01-08T09:07:00.003Z

Pharaoh he sits in his tower of steel
The dogs of money all at his heel
Magicians cry, Oh Truth! Oh Real!
We're all working for the Pharaoh

A thousand eyes, a thousand ears
He feeds us all, he feeds our fears
Don't stir in your sleep tonight, my dears
We're all working for the Pharaoh

Egypt Land, Egypt Land
We're all living in Egypt land
Tell me, brother, don't you understand
We're all working for the Pharaoh

Hidden from the eye of chance
The men of shadow dance a dance
And we're all struck into a trance
We're all working for the Pharaoh

Idols rise into the sky
Pyramids soar, Sphinxes lie
Head of dog, Osiris eye
We're all working for the Pharaoh

I dig a ditch, I shape a stone
Another battlement for his throne
Another day on earth is flown
We're all working for the Pharaoh

Call it England, call it Spain
Egypt rules with the whip and chain
Moses free my people again!
We're all working for the Pharaoh

Pharaoh he sits in his tower of steel
Around his feet the princes kneel
Far beneath we shoulder the wheel
We're all working for the Pharaoh

Richard Thompson “Pharaoh”

from the album: Amnesia

(published by Capitol Records in 1988)

Today I start a new series in the morning preaching through the book of Exodus… a book set historically thousands of years ago. Yet surely it speaks into our capitalist driven society in which, with the weekends statement from New Labour that they are fighting for a fairer capitalism, that all the political parties that seek to rule our land melt into a homogenised mass.

It is capitalism that is the ‘Pharaoh’, the god in this land. To that god we sacrifice our children – ‘even the every child matters’ policy, that supposedly underlies our education system, has as one of its central tenets that children are educated that they might become economic units of production. Marx was right ‘Religion is the opium of the people’, but the god of that religion is the ‘Pharaoh’ of capitalist self-seeking; the false idol that calls us to worship with the cha-ching of the cash-register, or more commonly today the simple press of a button on an internet site!

OK, rant over… I have some of it out of my system, though I am sure there is enough bile stored up to make the sermon have a slightly prophetic feel. Yet this is really a bit more than the latest credit card bill has appeared. I am serious. Our culture, and even our culture within churches, even driven by economic returns for investment and not by self-giving love, mercy, compassion and grace.

Jesus spoke of a different way of being and the Early Church sought to model it. The people around them thought they were crazy and yet daily people were added to their number and salvation was emerging in their midst. Am I suggesting we should all start living in communes, no I don’t think I am, but neither am I suggesting we just need a fairer form of capitalism. Somehow we need to find new ways of being; a personal and community transformation needs to happen.

Oh well, off I go now. I have a sermon to preach this morning…and who knows, if I don’t get stoned this morning then I may write more on this subject…

So can the weekend begin now?

2012-01-07T14:22:00.000Z

It’s Saturday afternoon, prayer meeting, wedding rehearsal, sermon notes for morning and evening tomorrow and small group notes are printing… so can the weekend begin now, at least for a couple of hours before Sunday starts? The problem is there are pastoral visits that need to be done and I do need to look again at my lines for the pantomime rehearsal on Sunday afternoon which is supposed to be the first without scripts. Following a manic week, with some very late nights, yesterday was spent at my desk and the evening celebrating with the church’s Duke of Edinburgh scheme their awards service… when does the ‘hamster wheel’ stop turning and is it before it spins off it s axis?

But thanks be to God that he is the one who enables and strengthens and empowers by his Spirit. He is also the one whom I can entrust with all things. He does not need me to accomplish his purposes, but rather it is through his magnanimous grace that he allows me and assists me to take part in a fraction of what he is doing. God knows I need rest and God is big enough to take care of business without me interfering... in fact it might even be easier for him without me being at it for a bit!

So yes… the time has come to stop for a couple of hours… to go home and… see the family (I suspect putting my feet up is not on their agenda).

Having an Epiphany…

2012-01-06T11:55:00.002Z

Twelfth night…Epiphany has arrived! But what really is an epiphany? The word comes from the Greek, ἐπιφάνεια, a ‘striking moment, manifestation, sudden realisation’… I suppose to use another Greek word you could say it is a ‘Eureka!’ moment. Thing is I spend too little time in the bath, just a daily nip in and out of the shower; the rush and bustle of the day does not always allow us the time that sometimes a ‘Eureka!’ moment requires.

Epiphany is of course also more than that, it is also a Christian festival; a festival that is a fixed date, 6th January, and so is not always a Sunday celebration and one that in British Baptist circles we tend to miss even if it does. In fact we seem to spend Advent with people demanding to sing Christmas carols, and once we get beyond Christmas Day, and enter into the season of Christmas, we start singing songs about new beginnings, and celebrate New Year, and forget it is still Christmas. Epiphany is a time filled with stories of wise men and gifts, of circumcision and old men and women speaking words of prophesy over a small baby recognised as the long awaited king and liberator of humanity. Epiphany is about seeing beyond what appears to be apparent to the very truths of God revealed in Jesus… a ‘Eureka!’ moment.

So the decorations are down, and packed away. A trip into the mysteries of the loft awaits and then the long wait to get them out. My phone tells me it is three hundred and fifty four days to Christmas ( it also tells me that it is 8,484 hours or 509,059 minutes, but that is just too much to comprehend) and so Christmas can now be fully put to rest for another year and the Christmas CDs can come out of the car.

As for a personal epiphany… I suppose for me this year this has caught up in some theology I am still working through in my mind and is causing me to ask fresh and deep questions of the implications of what it means for Jesus to be ‘fully man and fully God’…but that still has a few more days to gestate before it is ready to be fully birthed, so you'll have to wait a little longer for those thoughts.

For now I will live with the wonder and the strangeness of the last twelve days… I will celebrate wise men, old men and women with prophetic words on their tongues and the truth that God came in Jesus to change everything and through his presence in our lives is still in the process of changing everything today. I will live with it, celebrate it and take hope from it that despite the things that sometimes appear apparent to us, God is doing deeper and more wonderful things than we can comprehend.

Thank the Lord for coffee…

2012-01-05T16:08:00.001Z

It’s been one of those weeks and it isn’t even Friday yet! Friday is of course my day off, which means the day I get to write sermons and catch up with all the other work related things that I haven’t had time to do during the ‘working week’ before the working weekend looms. Yes, I do know this isn’t a particularly good work-life balance, or even a particularly good work-work balance! Yet the reality is that without a second minister in a reasonably large church, this is the reality of things…and as we are now searching for a second minister this only creates more work.

Monday this week was a Bank Holiday so I took some time out and worked on the Bible Studies for the small groups before hitting the office on Tuesday. Tuesday and Wednesday were very late nights/early mornings and now as I sit at my desk, my brain has stalled. So it is time for my umpteenth cup of black coffee and a few moments to reflect before it is back to the grindstone. The final spur to stop was my PC waking me up with a start as Ian Gillan screamed out ‘Sleeping On The Job’… the strange things that my PC chooses to play at random!

I was brought a coffee mug for the office, it proudly declares ‘Is it Friday yet?’ And I think the intention of the person who purchased it was to remind me that Fridays are days off and not simply another working day. Not only was this a wise purchase, after all it holds a lot of coffee to help keep the brain buzzing but its message of the need for rest is one that I do admit to needing constantly reminding of.

Jesus of course used to rise early, ‘while it was still dark’, in order to spend time with his father in prayer. Jesus took the disciples away on retreat, but on catching sight of the crowd his heart went out to them, for they were ‘like sheep without a shepherd’, and it was straight back to the task in hand. Even when he did get to have a sleep, like whilst out on Lake Galilee, people used to wake him up to sort out the weather. The Son of Man had nowhere to lay his head and there was no escaping the task to which he’d been called.

But then I am not Jesus… you’ll be glad to hear I haven’t developed a Messiah-complex. I am an under-shepherd and as such I do need to look to the shepherd’s Rod and staff for direction and to rest and drink when instructed. I am fully human…and not also fully God… so there are moments that need to be grasped to rest.

But it isn’t Friday yet, and the coffee is now drunk. The computer has moved on in its musical voyage of discovery to Trisha Yearwood and ‘Thinkin’ About You’ and the choice is between daydreaming with a tear in my eye or refocusing on work… so back to the Bible Study notes I think with a resolution to seek to try and ensure I do make sometime this week to rest!

Inspired by a book...

2012-01-04T19:13:00.001Z

You know how you buy books that you wonder, even at the time you buy them whether you will ever use them. Now of course I don’t do that today, but once upon a time I brought a published MPhil on a eighteenth century evangelical just because it was written by a tutor I respected… but even at the time I wondered what the use of it was. I mean F B Meyer was a ‘Regent’s Man’, and I am a Spurgeon’s man. Now the book was written by Ian Randall, so it was unlikely to be pointless, even if it was an academic reflection on the contribution of this ex public school boy who came from a financial affluent background to become a leading figure in nineteenth century evangelicalism. Note ‘a leading figure’ not ‘the’ leading figure… I haven’t forgotten I am a Spurgeon’s man!

Well Mr Randall, today I used that book in anger! OK, I wasn’t actually angry but I told the story of F. B. Meyer to the Senior Fellowship here at church. I always tell a story from church history, and quite often from Baptist history (though don’t tell the Ministry Department as they might go into panic), whenever I go to speak with churches Senior Fellowships right back to when I was at college and was sent out as a first year to speak to a ladies group one afternoon at a local Baptist Church (I am sure some of my contemporaries will remember the church). Yet I have never chosen to speak about Meyer before.

Yet today I also needed to talk about FoodBank and as I had laid in bed at one o’clock this morning asking how I could speak about Mission and Social Action, food poverty and helping people to find answers in the face of overwhelming poverty, whilst also helping them to discover Christ, somewhere at the back of my head this published study in ‘Evangelical History And Thought’ came to mind. And you know in that moment of sleeplessness, having not long been in from a meeting, clarity dawned and I weaved together Meyer’s business acumen, belief in conversion, cruicentric passion, experiences of God in the Welsh revival and belief in social action and the need to impact and change people’s lives with a holistic gospel, with what we are seeking to do as a community. And having done it I embraced sleep.

A few short hours later, having flicked through a few pages of the book I cobbled something together, which thankfully appears to have gone down well and left our Senior Fellowship with a hunger for FoodBank.

So Rev. Ian M. Randall, former Deputy Principal of Spurgeon’s College, thank you. I will honestly say that at the time I brought it I did think this was going to be one book I would struggle to find a use for, but you know me Ian, I am a completist (I mean I even brought that book you wrote about LBC – London Bridal College – and I can’t imagine I will ever find a use for that one!) but this book proved a true inspiration. Or at least because of this book I had heard of F. B. Meyer and after this morning and the excitement some seemed to gain for the work the church is engaged in to address food poverty I am so glad I learnt something about him.

What do we want from leaders?

2012-01-03T16:13:00.001Z

A number of years ago I got into a bit of a public disagreement with the then Archbishop of Canterbury. It was a polite disagreement, after all it was in public and I was on my best behaviour, and dear George was a lovely man, but it was clearly a disagreement. I of course politely backed off; well, eventually I did.

George Carey was a very nice man, or at least so it always appeared to me, and he happened to be doing a tour of educational establishments doing a lecture tour towards the end of his tenure as Archbishop. On his schedule was the University of Essex and as one of the local clergy, oh how we as Baptists dislike being referred to as clergy, I was invited. To be honest I wasn’t overly keen to go, but many of my Anglican ministerial friends urged me to attend. I mean I like a good lecture, but the subject matter was ‘leadership’ and I wasn’t really sure what an Anglican Hierarchical leader thought he could say that would be that relevant to a Baptist context. Yet as George began what became clear is he wanted to speak into leadership in general, whether in the secular or sacred realms, more gibberish that as a Baptist I don’t particularly like. What also became clear is that post-modernity appeared to have past George by. For he wanted to say that what people looked for in leadership, the single most important quality that people sought after, was integrity.

I have to be honest this upset me. You see I believe passionately that it should be, that integrity should be top of the list. My personal integrity as a leader is really important to me and when it is challenged it causes me deep offence. Manipulation, deceit, manoeuvring, ‘playing politics’ and words to that effect are things I abhor, and sadly however hard we seek to play things with a straight bat these are things that people can accuse leaders of. Yet the reality of the time was that what was clear was that what people wanted in their leaders was success not integrity. It was just after the re-election of Bill Clinton, despite the blue dress incident; the cracks were already being revealed in the New Labour administration, with spin doctors being forced to resign only to be reappointed before more dodgy deals led to further resignations. What people looked for in leadership was success, their own pockets being lined and their comfort zones maintained, and integrity and the sexing up of the odd document seemed to be something that could be overlooked. Perhaps if things had been different we wouldn’t be where we are today... perhaps if integrity had been more important to the leadership and voting populations on either side of the Atlantic we might not be living in a world where phrases like ‘austerity measures’ never seem too far from politicians lips.

So when it came to question time I found it impossible to hold back a polite but firm challenge… ‘Thank you so much for your most erudite of lectures. It appeared to me that your central thesis is that people today look primarily for integrity in their leaders. I do want this to be true, however I do not believe current affairs on either side of the Atlantic bear this out. Surely the truth is they look for success and their own personal comfort being maintained by the leadership offered?’ or words to that effect. George responding by avoiding the question, restating his position and then asking if he had answered my question to my satisfaction. In hindsight I see that despite the fact that he hadn’t I was supposed to say he had… but sadly I had the bit between my teeth, so I simply responded by rewording my question, this time with stated examples. He clearly was a little unhappy with this response, but as I say George was a very nice man and again simply avoided the question and asked me again if I was now satisfied with his explanation. I wasn’t…but this time took the hint, and so politely thanked him for his response, without suggesting he had answered anything and sat down. It was only when one of his own Anglican clergy stood up two questions later and asked him why he hadn’t properly responded to my question when I realised quite what a can of worms I’d opened… cor, I bet that vicar had his cards marked!

Integrity is so very important to me. It should be important in leadership. Yet sometimes we are quick to impugn leader’s integrity without knowing all the fact. We live in a world of conspiracy theories and suspect our leadership of all sorts of things. Now don’t get me wrong, there are times when leaders in their protestations, whether about land deals, dodgy flats, cigars, strange loans, stains on blue dresses or so much more, do not help the case for leadership. But now we start from a position of cynicism. Austerity bites, our comfort zones impinged upon and our ability to trust in leadership appears to have evaporated. No success and so we question integrity, rather than seeking to trust leadership to lead us out of situations.

Leaders always seemed to have been challenged. Moses was even challenged by his siblings, who thought they could do a better job. And of course when someone who was ultimately a revealer of true integrity, Jesus, truth himself, those who saw themselves as having power challenged that integrity and ultimately having been unable to dent it decided that they would instead take from him mortality. And the people as they stood before Pilate chose the dreams of success over the truth of integrity and cried out that Barabbas be released and integrity be crucified.

After the lecture I went to sneak off but was intercepted at the base of the stairs. The University Christian Union President, whom I knew well, had been tasked with the job of finding me and informing me that I was required by his Grace to attend the champagne reception. I went in, grabbing a glass as I entered, and was taken straight to the Archbishop. George it turns out was keen to try and explain that he felt unable to respond to my line of questioning because of the particular pastoral issues involved in the ‘matters of state’ I had raised. I responded that it wasn’t their actions I was challenged, but rather the actions of those who went to the ballot box to simply affirm my hypothesis. He looked at me and said, ‘tenacious aren’t you?’ I smiled back and said, ‘Well, it is a matter of integrity.’ On that note we parted.

Do I think I come out of this story well... No, not really. I suppose I needed to admire George's integrity a little more. But sorry George, at that moment I was probably looking for the success in all this. too often we all stumble and fall.

Integrity should matter to us and we should perhaps be a little slower to challenge. Yet as leaders we also have the responsibility to stand up for what is right! Today, like every day, I need to act with integrity. I know that, and people have to sometimes learn to trust that I know that! That is if we want good leaders...

Urban surfing...

2012-01-02T16:55:00.006Z

An ‘Urban Beach’ is defined as ‘a space that includes an intellectually, artistically, or culturally sophisticated water feature that is also an aquatic play area, and is located within a culturally or artistically significant area of a city’. Sounds like pretentious tosh to me! The Wikipedia article goes on to talk about the social dynamics of the village well, pump or even the office water cooler. I understand the concept, but I am just left feeling that in a time of economic belt-tightening even the water and electric bills for such things are a poor investment.

I have spent a bit of time at my desk today having started writing a set of Bible Study notes for the church house groups after discovering that the material I had envisaged using this term is out of print. Writing such things involves times of tapping on the keyboard and extended times of reading and reflection on the material before the tapping begins again. This means when I do look up the screen saver has kicked in and is showing random photos from my hard disc. Today when I looked up it showed me the water feature I built for ‘She who must be obeyed’ at the cottage we used to own. I liked that water feature, but sadly it went with the cottage and on our last church move the cottage had to go to pay for the deposit on our current house…hey ho! I wave to admit of fancying building one here, alongside the pond that needs a total overhaul, but the time and that finances just aren’t available – it had been the intended project for last summer, but it just never happened!

Having worked a little too hard, for a Bank Holiday and the last day of the Christmas break, I then took aged six out for his second skateboarding lesson with his dad. I managed to get him back home, after only an hour, without any breakages, though with rather a lot of frustration. He loves the idea, the concept of surfing the streets, but even at the park on a gentle incline he struggles to try standing on the board and too quickly resorts to sitting on it to ride down the slope. He has reasonable balance, but poor foot placement, and despite all the protective gear too quickly looses his bottle.

Water features, skateboarding, urban beaches and urban surfing… but what has any of this got to do with life, real life? Water features and urban beaches are an investment in the quality of life and people’s experience of life. They can seem like an indulgence, but actually, for people to thrive and not merely survive, the quality of the environment in which we live matters. God knows this and has indulged us with the beauty of his creation. As those photos have flicked across my screen savers, I have been confronted by so many things that might seem to be God’s indulgences… the Cornish coastline, Welsh Mountains, the Fens, the Scottish Borders, even the wonders of the cuspate foreland that is the Dungeness Peninsula. The diversity, the beauty, the overwhelming wonder… and in such a small place like the British Isles… which is nothing when you consider the phenomenon we call planet Earth… and, beyond that, the vast expanse of the galaxies! God doesn’t do things by half but rather invests in our environment even when we appear ‘hell bent’ on destroying it.

Yet to enjoy it we need to be bold and throw ourselves into it. Oh the right protective gear should always be worn, but there is no point continuously keeping one foot securely rooted to the spot. No, the time comes when we need to kick off and surf the wonder of this creation; to enter into the wonder of it all with excited abandon! Yes, but it is almost inevitable that we will come a cropper sometime, isn’t it? Of course we will, but it’ll be fun, and the God who loves us, our Heavenly Father, will pick us up and dust us off and put us back on the board… he’s like that you know!

The urban surf is up… does anyone fancy dipping their toe in and riding a few waves with me?

On the seventh day…

2012-01-01T14:14:00.001Z

On the seventh we rested and reflected on the nature of the incarnation… and Psalm Eight seems a good place to start:

LORD, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!

You have set your glory in the heavens.

Through the praise of children and infants you have established a stronghold against your enemies, to silence the foe and the avenger.

When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is mankind that you are mindful of them, human beings that you care for them?

You have made him a little lower than God and crowned them with glory and honour.

You made them rulers over the works of your hands; you put everything under their feet:

all flocks and herds, and the animals of the wild, the birds in the sky, and the fish in the sea, all that swim the paths of the seas.

LORD, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!

OK, so I will acknowledge that I have gone for the footnoted version of the first clause of verse five, but the usual translation here in the NIV is bit of a stretch. “You have made them a little lower than the angels” feels more comfortable, after all the suggestion that humanity might in some way be like God seems to be counter to our understanding of God’s otherness. Yet the word that lies behind the phrase ‘the angels’, elohim, seems more accurately to be applied to God, or even gods, than it does angels. But what on earth could it mean; or perhaps that should be what in heaven or earth does that mean?

Genesis 1:27 declares:

“So God created humanity mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.”

Sorry, correcting the NIV translation again…not sure what it thought it was playing at with that shoddy piece of work in the latest translation (of which I am generally a fan). If humanity is made in the image of God, and if we are created a little lower than God, then what does this tell us about the very nature of humanity and deity?

And how does this relate to the Incarnation and to the declaration of the Church Councils, imbedded in the Creeds, that ‘Jesus is fully man and fully God’? Traditionally the answer has often been found in Hypostatic Union, based on the concepts first espoused by Apollinaris of Laodicea, who died in 390 C.E., the battles with the Nestorian Heresy, and ultimately in the Chalcedon Creed, where the council agreed the wording as:

‘εἰς ἓν πρόσωπον καὶ μίαν ὑπόστασιν, eis hen prosopon kai mian hupostasin’

These are the questions that have preoccupied my thinking today. And when I say today I do mean since the clock struck midnight and the New Year was beckoned in. Have I come up with answers… no, but I am formulating ideas.

Grappling with the truths of incarnation are at the very heart of the Christian Gospel. Of course they are concepts and ideas that are too big for us; as Paul said:

‘For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known’

We cannot truly claim to grapple successfully with the truths of the nature of God, for these are the things of eternity. Yet what is clear, by the very truth that God has chosen to reveal himself to us, God longs that we might try. As a Minister of the Gospel part of my responsibility is to seek to engage in that struggle. Will the answers to all things become clear? Not this side of eternity, but who knows some things might become a little less hazy.

What does appear clear however is that I think 2012 is, I think, going to be a very interesting year!

Waiting...

2011-12-31T11:13:00.000Z

We are waiting; New Year’s Eve is always about waiting. The old year departs, the new year comes and everything has the potential to change. Of course it is all a bit artificial and arbitrary date. The Gregorian Calendar, the Julian Calendar, Islamic Calendar, Lunar Calendars, Luni-Solar Calendar, there are a lot to choose from and so many different possibilities for a date for new year. So I suppose the idea of a day being fixed and the one and only date, yet the idea that an old year passes and a new year seems to be part of our nature.
The hope of new beginnings, opportunities for change, a time to lay things to rest and step forward hopefully; without the concept of a new year hope can shrivel and die. And so we await hopefully and wondering what 2012, and hoping that there are aspects of 2011 that we can lay to rest.

2011 has been an interesting year and a tiring year; a year filled with opportunities and more than a few frustrations; a year of excitement and sadness; a year in which no end of things happened and as it isn’t lunchtime yet on the 31st I suspect that it is not over yet.

There are of course aspects that are over, aspects that are on their way to being over and some things that just seem to go on and on and yet need a final conclusion. Listing them is not my responsibility but stating the reality and reflecting on the meaning is. This has been a hard year, a year of being in a large church that has usually operated with three ministers as the only minister. A year in which some people have been so wonderfully supportive, where others have tried to be supportive and where some have just ploughed their own furrow because they feel certain they know better. In other words it is a community, a large community, a normal community, a community filled with people, some of whom know better, and a community that is... well, a biblical community.

And as the New Year beckons there is, of course, the possibility for such a community to change, to grow, to become... to become something that is closer to the very heart of God. There is always such a possibility and a time of New Year brings such hopes and dreams to the surface. Yet for such things to happen there needs to be brave actions, fearless decisions, prayerful steps forward taken.

And so we enter into the 2012 with hope... Hopes can be dashed, hopes can be blighted, but still we must always step forward hopefully believing that the God who can do all things will enable and empower us to step forward into his greater purposes...

Happy New Year... or rather, I hope it will be!

Apes, i-pads and Christmas presents…

2011-12-30T12:51:00.004Z

The story about orang-utans in Milwaukee zoo using i-pads has had my attention for a couple of days. Somehow I have avoided the inevitable swipes at users of Apple products, but it has been hard to resist. You must understand where I am coming from. Less than ten percent of those who read this use Apple equipment, according to the providers own stats on my blog, and of course Apple advocates are always such evangelists for all things Apple, that any opportunity like this is so very tempting. Video chatting hairy orange primates using i-pads… HHHmmmm… but the temptation has to be resisted!

The problem is that I quite like i-pads! I was playing with one the other day in Currys and I have to say I was actually quite impressed with it. I wasn’t sure what use I’d put it to, but as a gadget it was fun. The price tag rather put me off, but hey gadgets are never cheap.

I also have to admit to the hope that someone might buy me a Kindle for Christmas… but I hoped in vain. I had dropped lots of hints… OK, if I am honest they weren’t really hints, I had blatantly told ‘she who must be obeyed’ what I wanted and she had given me that look, and not given me a Kindle on the day. The present I got was wonderful, but it definitely wasn’t a Kindle. Tablet technology of any shape or description remains outside of the remit of this household.

Gadgets do have a certain appeal… especially to the guys! We love to have something to fiddle with, whereas many things may hold an appeal for the ladies, us guys really just prefer to fiddle. Perhaps that places us a little closer to the primates! Aged six is currently fiddling with his electric train set as if to prove that the next generation is the inheritor of this generations habits, and in fact it was him who drew my attention to the i-pads in Currys!

Exodus tells us that God’s love stays steadfast for a multiplicity of generations for those who love him. That God is forgiving and restorative to those who show love and adhere to the covenant ways of God. Trouble is it also says that we are a stiff-necked people, haughty and proud, and who seek our own way; the bad habits of one generation overflow to the next and judgement follows. I do hope that fiddling with gadgets isn’t considered sin?

Maybe in the New Year I’ll stop fiddling with gadgets… then again maybe I’ll get a Kindle for my birthday… we’ll just have to wait and see what 2012 brings! But one thing does seem certain... I cannot see me taking a bite out of the Apple any time soon...

Is it just me or does the whle world keep on changing?

2011-12-29T18:19:00.001Z

Sometimes you feel like you can see the whole world in colour, high-definition or even 3D…but then you realise that you are still watching in black and white! Or perhaps that is just me?

No I am not talking about the change to digital, after all that happened here in the Midlands months ago. No I am talking about the realisation that what you thought was reality has just mutated… a paradigm shift. My experience of life has been a series of paradigm shifts; changes in the understanding of reality that radically change my understanding of what really is normality!

Moments like our own recognition of our sinfulness; the realisation of what Jesus has done for us; the recognition of the power of the Holy Spirit in our lives; or the transformational ability of grace as we allow it to flow in our lives; can all dynamically affect every area of our comprehension until nothing looks the same again. Oh it isn’t that things like that hadn’t been told to me in the past, they had. It isn’t that they were not within my consciousness, my cognitive understanding, they were. It is just when each of those truly hit me for the first time they turned my whole world upside-down, transformed my world, I went through a paradigm shift. And with a paradigm shift nothing looks the same again!

Often we have ideas, concepts, even theological understanding, but it remains little more than head knowledge. We know something. We may choose to live in light of that something; you know, seek to do something about it; but we are not often transformed in and of ourselves by that very something making us see the whole world differently. When that happens the shocks, and after-shocks, in our lives are seismic and inevitable effect those around us. Acting in light of a piece of knowledge is optional, sometimes we manage it and sometimes we don’t, but a paradigm shift is seismic and the terrain of life is transformed by it. If you’ve been through it then you’ll understand; you’ll know the impact, the shock, the trauma, the… well, the life-changingness of it all!

I have been through a few in my time, perhaps it gets a little easier with repeated transformations – makes it sound a bit like Dr Who and his regenerations, eleven so far! Yet the truth is when you emerge from the other side, your understanding transformed, you are still unprepared for what you discover. This time was no exception! The impact is deep, the insight sharpened, the wonder magnified, and my perception of God and in the process my understanding of me, transformed beyond recognition!

Will anyone notice? Who knows…maybe it depends on if they are listening!

Given so much, but it costs us more…

2011-12-27T12:36:00.001Z

Christmas with aged six was chaotic, exhausting, frustrating, exciting, noisy, messy, infuriating, tiring and fun! I am sure that there are many other adjectives that could be added to that list, and one of them would be expensive! Oh it is not just the presnt buying that goes on in advance of Christmas, after all many of his presents are brought by family and friends (thank you all for another generous Christmas), whilst much is also hand-made by elves at the North Pole; no, Christmas is expensive because of all the bits that you then need to purchase in order to make what has been purchased for him actually work!

I am still getting over a couple of years ago and the Hornby train set, which seems to continue growing requiring new rolling- stock, track, signals, electrification and… oh so much more. Last year it was the bikes… plural because to keep up with him we needed to refurbish Chris’ and buy me a new one! And of course there is the endless supplies of batteries that are required to keep the Christmas period at fever pitch - and you know and I know that whatever batteries you have in the cupboard there will always be something that arrives that requires an LR44... what the heck is an LR44?

And this year there was the skateboard… a skateboard for aged six! OK, he is nearly seven, but a skateboard! Now of course when I was young skateboards were short, thin, plastic and new to the UK market. I also have to be honest that I also had no idea how to use one and also never had the inclination to try. I was happy with my bike, even if my mum and dad would never let me have a chopper so I could fly over the handlebars or slip forward off the saddle and ram my more delicate parts into the gear stick!

Yet aged six has mastered his bike, which is sized for ages eight to ten. He has been zooming around on his twin-wheeled scooter, aged eight plus, since he was four. And so now I am told it is the right age for him to have a ‘cool board’ so he can surf the recreation park… OK, if that is what 'she who must be obeyed' thinks, and I have to add what aged six wants, then he can have the skateboard. So the outlaws (the technical term for in-laws that are actually wanted!) brought him a very trendy skateboard. Broad and long, non-slip upper surface, coolly painted underside and swish fluorescent wheels… OK, I admit I rather fancy one myself now!

So off we went today to Toys’R’Us to make the additional purchases. A new helmet, something that offers more protection for the inevitable tumbles, and of course a full set of pads, knees, elbows and even wrist protectors. And helmets, I mean they need to be the right size and of course they cannot be boring! (And we all know that you cannot actually go to Toys’R’Us with aged six in tow so he can try on the helmets without buying a third BeyBlade to do battle with the two that arrived with a battle arena at Christmas.. so that is another purchase! Somehow I made is past the Nintendo DS games without having my wallet forcibly dragged from my pocket - I am not a complete push over!)

Now of course it might sound like I am having a moan… but that is not really in my nature is it? No, my mother and father-out-law did a wonderful thing, especially in the eyes of aged six, and they did picked up a very cool skateboard, it is just that almost whatever you get for Christmas comes with a price if you are to get the most out of it.

Of course this is an eternal truth of Christmas. God has given us the greatest gift of all at Christmas, he has sent us his Son that we might know of the fullness of God’s love and know the wonder of eternity breaking into our lives now by his Holy Spirit. God has given us his very self that we might have the wholeness, the shalom, that God made us to share…but it comes at a price. Yes a huge cost for God, for in coming Jesus came that he might die for us, but there is also a cost for us… and that cost is in a sense everything! For the more we give over to God the more he fills and entrusts us with our eternity in the here and now! Oh there truly is so much that God has given us, yet there is still the need to enter in if we are to discover it…and even now the more I give over to God, and trust him with, the more amazing and generous is my experience of God!

So has the expense finished from the Christmas presents… no, personally expect there is a lot more to come, after all even if the health insurance is up to date I bet there is an excess to pay when Rhys manages to break something when he is out on his new skateboard!

I wonder what tomorrow might bring…

2011-12-24T17:40:00.000Z

I have to be honest there is always part of me that wonders what presents I’ll get. Yes, I love seeing people’s faces when they open the presents I have brought them, but there is always part of me that longs to see what presents I will get. What I of course most hope for is music and books, yet so few people seem brave enough to buy me CDs or books. People seem to live under the illusion that I have most things and that they are unlikely to be able to get me something I haven’t already got… so most folk buy me something else. Now I don’t want to sound ungrateful, I’m not, I love all the presents I receive and they do make me feel loved, and we all like to feel loved occasionally, but I do like my books and music.

And today I read about the completion of the relocation of the Bodleian Libraries from Oxford, and I do admit to feel a slight pang of jealousy. I know that to covet my neighbour’s ass would be wrong, but as part of the ongoing extension of the library’s contents they have just taken deliver of their seven millionth book! Seven million! You’d think they could spare a impoverished minister like myself a commentary or two?

I suppose the problem of having that many books is the storage, and this no doubt explains why the Bodleian Libraries, the pride of Oxford, are now located in the historic town of … Swindon! And they are now located in… a warehouse! This sounds like a travesty, until you realise that they are stored on one hundred and fifty-three miles of shelving. So before anyone tells me I have too many books… they need to think again. However I do acknowledge that the bookcases that now seem to be being set up on the windowsill do suggest that space in my church study is getting to be a premium!

Oh well! Maybe Qoheleth, the author of Ecclesiastes was right:

“Of making many books there is no end, and much study wearies the body.”

Christmas is almost here… a time to rest… and read!

The significant news...

2011-12-23T21:09:00.002Z

We could talk about La Senza, UK lingerie retailer, going into liquidation. We could talk about the French, breast implants, and the thirty thousand French women who may need a new bra after a drop in cup size. We could talk about Russians, rockets and fragments of satellites or George Michael’s lungs, or even jurors who claim to be sick in order to attend a West End Musical; but why would we? I mean it’s almost Christmas. Lingerie, breasts, defective rockets, gay celebrities and ‘All that Jazz’ are great, but they are not Christmas!

And we are almost there... Advent is almost over, Christmas is on the verge of beginning, the clock is ticking. Today I finished my pastoral visits, though I possibly have another unscheduled one looming, sermons are written, the homeless night shelter is taking shape, the lighter has been refilled for lighting the Advent candles and the office is now closed; and then there is the personal stuff, she who must be obeyed has done nearly all that needs to be done whilst I have brought and wrapped a few presents, signed all the cards I was required to and I’ve even managed to go shopping with aged six! Good grief I am running ahead of schedule.

Yet again all these things are truly insignificant, even the homeless night shelter which maybe a life-saver this Christmas, compared to the truth of Christmas. The truth of Immanuel, the truth that God in all eternity chose to be Father, Son and Spirit, freely chose that humanity might reside within God’s very nature that our nature might be reconciled his. The truth of Immanuel that God has stepped into our time and space in the vulnerability of a baby lain in an animal fodder holder. The truth of Immanuel that from the outset there were powerful people wanting to kill him and yet when his life was extinguished it was not taken from him, but freely given up by him and given back to in resurrection life. The truth of Immanuel that has transformed everything and everyone’s existence; whether celebrating with family, slumped in front of a TV on our own or kipping down on a church hall floor nothing is the same because Jesus came to be, as the angel told Joseph in Matthew’s gospel, Immanuel.

The news is full of things that some people think are important. Some are life and death to people, and of course people matter. Our personal lives are full of things we think are important, and even some of these things are life and death to people, and of course these things matter. Yet these things, even the things that are life and death, do not matter in the cosmic way that the truth behind the stories of Christmas matter. The cosmic truth of Immanuel!

Ultimately Immanuel matters; and in comparison French boobs or Greek Cypriot singers, even the wonderful city Christmas night shelter, are insignificant... though if you want to make a financial donation towards the care of the homeless I am sure you can through the church office.

So the French don’t like Turkey at Christmas...

2011-12-22T22:00:00.004Z

The French, having done their best to upset the Brits, trying to get us in trouble with our lenders, and all to no effect, have now decided to upset Turkey. The French National Assembly has passed a law, against the wishes of the French Foreign Minister, Alain Juppe, making the denial of the Armenian Genocide an offence that carries with it a year in prison or a 45,000 Euro fine. And the Turks response was to recall its ambassador and announce ‘measures’ against France.

Turkey has been pursuing membership of the European Union, in one form or another, for a long time. It has always been one of the most controversial applications, with some states supporting but some not so keen. Strategically, militarily, politically it makes so much sense... but the human rights record of Turkey is diabolical. There are a series of historical issues, with Armenians, Kurds and in fact any minority group in Turkey, the trouble is the cases on a smaller scale seem to continue.

So the French National Assembly, against the will of movers and shakers in government, has decided to act. There is of course little they can do to effect European Union policy, but they can upset the Turks and create enmity between France, who see themselves as the ‘Kingmakers’ of Europe at the moment, and the inheritors of the Ottoman Empire. And of course it was the Ottoman Empire that killed, raped and assaulted Armenians, Assyrians, Greeks and others in the ‘Genocide’ between April 1915 and 1923. And this is part of the issue for in the middle of this time the Ottomans were deposed and yet still the genocide continued. Whose hands does the blood stain?

The trouble is that we in the West, and specifically in Europe, dance around the issue of Human Rights. We want NATO access to airspace, we want influence in the region, we want... and so we ignore the abuses.

Edmund Burke is famously associated with the quote:

“All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing”

And even if he didn’t make that particular quote himself he did state:

“When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.”

The truth is clear, either people stand up to bullies, or in complying with their abuse and bullying we place ourselves in jeopardy; moral jeopardy, complicity and the dangers it means to our own views of civilisation. As the Church we need to make a stand and yet we are too often wooed by access to ‘Biblical sites’ and so prop up the governments that have such appalling human rights records with our tourism, and having compromised ourselves do not raise our voice in complaint. The Church, governments, all 'good people' need to stand together and oppose such abuses, whether in Turkey, Syria, Israel, Palestine or wherever else. I have nothing against the Turkish people, but where governments act in ways that damage their own, or other people, they should be opposed.

And so I find myself writing a blog to applaud the French! Not of course the French Foreign Minister, and possibly not those who want to play at being the power-brokers of Europe, but I do want to applaud the French National Assembly for taking a brave, defiant and ethical stance! Well done the French... now get it through the Senate!

It’s been a funny old day...

2011-12-21T21:54:00.000Z

As Christmas approaches the days seem to get more surreal, today felt like the proof of the pudding. Christmas pudding, in my case served with custard, which was preceded by a Christmas turkey dinner and a before that broccoli and stilton soup. The office Christmas lunch, where church staff and some volunteers, along with Youth for Christ staff, volunteers and trustees, went out to celebrate together and open our ‘Secret Santa’ presents, was fun and a little fattening. Yet before that there was a pastoral meeting, paperwork and a couple of phone calls to make. After the lunch there was paperwork, a pastoral chat and a meeting with the council to have. The council meeting was about the Foodbank and within half an hour of the meeting the news came through from the charities commission that full charitable status had been granted for the work addressing poverty in the city. I could go on... but it has been a funny old day.

The thing is that most days seem to be! And it is not just because it is Advent and Christmas is fast approaching, it is always odd, which is part of what helps me keep going. You see I never really know what will happen next. Oh I make plans, diarise and arrange meetings, but so many more things sneak into the day. Odd things, strange situations, pastoral cases, evangelistic opportunities, social action connections, ministerial opportunities, things beyond prediction and things I somehow should have seen coming, but didn’t, and yet God knew. In Advent those things are often different, often to do with the wonder of incarnation, but to be honest it is not really busier, just different!

So how in the midst of it all does one ‘do’ ministry? The truth is I don’t! Oh I am sure those who would agree with that, but they would probably do so for the wrong reason; and others who’d protest that I was showing false modesty, and would do so probably for the right reasons; but i do mean it. You see I genuinely do not believe I have a ministry; I believe Christ has a ministry in the here and now, enabled in our lives by his Spirit, and our task is simply to join in with what he is doing. Luke tells us at the beginning of Acts that he “wrote about all that Jesus began to do and to teach” (Acts 1:1), and so the story of Acts that begins with Jesus’ Ascension goes on to tells us of Christ’s continued ministry. A ministry that is called to be like that of Jesus himself, who spoke of his own ministry, in John's Gospel as:

“Very truly I tell you, the Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does.”

Ministry is not about us, about our purposes, our thoughts about our ideas; ministry is rightly lived out in response, response to God, response to his purposes, response to what we see that God is already doing. Diaries? Essential, but only as essential as being open and responsive and free of our own agendas that we openly respond to God’s.

Is that an easy image of ministry? In one sense it is the easiest, after all it means that my responsibility is to be an under-shepherd, responding only to the will of the shepherd, but it is also an incredibly hard way to be... for too often we want our ideas to kick in. At other times the struggle is helping others to put their agendas aside and catch a glimpse of God’s amazing plan. Yet in the midst of it all I am but a bit-part player, even the role of opening other’s eyes is actually God’s. Whether in revealing to people, or even hardening their hearts as in the case of pharaoh, God is the active agent; even in the story of Exodus Moses was only the support actor to God’s lead.

You see life really is odd, because it is all about God... and that can lead to a lot of odd days!

When desperation strikes have a reshuffle and change nothing!

2011-12-20T13:16:00.000Z

Coventry City Football Club are in rather a desperate state. Six points adrift at the bottom of the Championship, nine points from escaping the relegation zone and a woeful goal difference. The Christmas period is critical, as the football pundits always say, for to pull themselves out of the spiralling descent into Division One requires urgent action now. Bristol City on Boxing Day and Brighton and Hove Albion on New Year’s Eve will either mark a time of change and hope or the death throws of an appalling 2011. The fans are restless…actually in speaking to a few I am not sure they are that restless. Depressed, resigned, angry, fearful... perhaps a little more militancy and restlessness might help!

So the club’s owners, Sisu Capital Limited, if they care at all about the club and know anything about football, need to do something; something effective, something decisive, something dynamic and they needed to do it urgently! And so they have done something that they claim is nothing. They have had a reshuffle in the boardroom that is so inconsequential that I am surprised it was even mentioned in the press. Yet perhaps it was mentioned for that very reason… I am not sure anyone can really believe how ineffectual they are being. Surely they must be planning to do something other than simply watch the club disappear down the drain of relegation?

The team is trying and not just the patience of the supporters. They clearly are trying and not playing that badly. They need encouragement, they need support, they need to believe what they do matters to the owners, but I am not sure what matters when all they do is announce that "...this move of directors is simply for administrative efficiency”. This is a football club… and that means it is not about making your lives easier or limiting the number of meetings people need to attend it is about winning on the pitch… and that is one thing that isn’t happening and something that is not being enabled by management and the owners. For goodness sake, if Championship football matters to the club then do something, and do it now!

Sometimes you do wonder how much some people actually care and how seriously they take the predicaments they are seeking to ‘manage’. It is like they cannot look beyond the past and the present to realise something needs to change if there is to be a future. In action, simply trying to keep the status quo, to administrate their way out of trouble, seems to be what is expected, but woefully inadequate response. Sadly the same is sometimes true in our churches. Sometimes we need to wake up and smell the coffee, to take the actions that need to be taken and not put off the big decisive actions until it is too late.

I was speaking to ministerial student from the North West who was serving a church that had formerly been a significant size, over eight hundred members, and who after years of decline is hoping he has helped the church to ‘bottom out’ with an average weekly attendance of fifty-four. I wonder how many times others had sought to decisively intervene, and yet perhaps had resorted to little more than a reshuffle for administrative convenience rather than take the bold and positive action that is truly needed. The church now faces all the usual issues of a building that is almost impossible to maintain and the heartache of losing its young ministerial student as he seeks his first pastorate that can afford to pay him. This change sneaks up on churches, but the slide, once it hits the critical tipping point, happens so very quickly! There is no point, once it happens looking back at those missed opportunities, rather they need to be grasped when they occur, with bravery, with courage, yes sometimes in trembling and trepidation, but after all something needs to be done… and not put off until it is too late. For then phrases like 'bottomed out' do not even begin to express the heartache that has occured!

Christmas, of course, is the time when God stepped in to make a decisive change. There was no reshuffle in the leadership of Israel that was going to sort things out…no, a decisive change was needed and God made it. Jesus, the eternal Son of God, stepped into time and space in what can only be declared to be a daring and dynamic change! The action would have its ups and downs, and at times it would look like defeat, but ultimately everything would be transformed forever!

As for Coventry City Football Club, well the former Chairman and current Labour MP Geoffrey Robinson declared:

“It's an utter disgrace. It's no wonder we're bottom of the table and facing relegation. The Sisu people should hang their heads in shame, put the club on the market and find a new owner for it. They've sold more players than they've bought and they've taken more out of the club than they put in it.”

The time has come for a decisive change. As for churches, or perhaps even the church I am pastor of, well… I know what I believe God is saying! The question is, as followers of Jesus, will we be bold or will we simply plan a reshuffle and think that somehow that’ll be enough?

As for humanity… I thank goodness God didn’t bottle it!

Sometimes you just can’t give things away!

2011-12-17T20:19:00.002Z

I’ve spent the day in the city centre acting like a South London barrow boy. The church ran a free gift wrapping service in the Lower Precinct of the city centre. I declared at the top of my voice, “It’s free! A free gift wrapping service. The paper is free, the selotape is free, the tags are free, the expertise is free, the smiles are free... this is totally free!” Some came, but so many walked passed looking cynical, people just refused to believe it was free. Those who did come asked, ‘How much does it cost?’ and those who dared to believe it wanted to know where the donation box was. But there was no donations sought... it was for free!

The trouble is it seems that we find it impossible to believe that someone will give us something for nothing! People gave their time so generously, and people found this hard to believe. We had wrapping paper, selotape and tags that people had freely donated, and people found this hard to believe. And there was nothing in it for us other than the pleasure of serving others, and maybe the opportunity to mention Jesus and the joy of his birth, and for people this seemed too much for people to believe was enough for us. Surely we must have been in it for more than that, or at least that is what others seemed to think. Yet when they did come, have their presents wrapped they went away with the most beautiful smiles...not something you often see when people are Christmas shopping, and that just added to it for me!

God is the one who loves us in freedom. There is nothing in it for him, yet he freely chooses to love us anyway! He sent his Son, Jesus that we might know of his love, he did not hold out on us. And that not holding out on us meant his Son gave us everything, even his life, nothing was too much for us. Through his self-giving came resurrection, eternal life, not simple for him, but the possibility of eternal life for humanity. And God did still not hold back on us for he pours out his Spirit, his being that our being might be enabled and transformed that we might live in the covenant he freely offer us through his Son, our Lord and Saviour, Jesus the Messiah. When God does something freely it is so very costly to him, and yet what is offered to us is simply there for us to take hold of.

We did give out a few invitations to our Christmas Carols by Candlelight invites, so who knows what Christmas will bring. God is so generous... he gives and gives so freely... it was so good to give a little today.