“Children are part of our geography of hope.” An almost throw away comment by Wade Davis in his 2003 TED talk endangered cultures around the loss of language and ethnocide. I completely agree, children are part of it, but it got me to thinking about what ‘it’ is and what else is part of it? I love the idea of a geography of hope.  It demands you to ask questions like, What is the terrain like?  Is the going tough or light? Is the land fertile? and Tell me about the landmarks?  Here are some of my first thoughts

The dreams and visions and ideas and desires of our children should be like the planning office for this geography.  Questions about how and what and where and when should we, those with the power, do, should be examined by the imaginative, joyful unhindered minds and hearts of those who will inherit the benefits and costs of such doing.  Such a planning office should be culturally cross-referential: the doing in the west should be examined by the minds and hearts of the east and likewise those in the east, and north and south by those in the west and south and north.  The force of this is not driven by ideas about our children being the ‘world of tomorrow’, which clearly they are, but because when Jesus said ‘unless you change and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven’ [Matt 18:3].  For a long time my children equated height with age; if you were taller, you were older.  An easy mistake for someone who has almost their entire biological chronology set on growing.  As an idea though, it is at the end of the day, daft!  For a long time now we have equated age, learning and experience with wisdom and insight.  How daft is that!!

In this geography of hope the going will be tough.  Not generally, but by choice.  Wisdom, faithfulness, honesty and joy come because you work at it, it’s tough by choice because hope is cultivated through hard work.  I don’t mean being hopeful is hard work, but the way to become hopeful, being full of hope, is by working hard at growing wisdom, faithfulness, honesty and joy; the flora and fauna of this geography of hope.  And to grow such things as these at the centre of your being and the being of a community demands hard work.

The going will also be slow in this geography of hope.  At least it will seem so for those whose current geography is an upward desire to upgrade.  Once the wheel began to roll, the desire for speed grew in strength and results.  The arena in which this desire for speed is unleashed changes from time to time and culture to culture.  In my world, which is indicative of many in what we call the technologically advanced, this arena is captured by the word and concept of upgrading.  A counter-movement to this is to mend-and-make-do, which is always much slower than replace-and-upgrade.  At the moment for me this is about my lawn-mower, which has a cracked petrol tank; the battle is between my patient efforts to repair and the height of my grass.  The deeper battle is about our efforts to mine, trawl, squeeze and suck all we can from each passing moment instead of wishfully hastening onto the next with the empty hope that by doing the same in that one and the one after that and the one after that we will somehow achieve more than we did in the last one.  Hope is fuelled by what we carry from the past, which we can only really appreciate if we experience what it was.  We will therefore travel much slower in a geography of hope.

In this geography of hope, the significant and noticeable landmarks will be small gatherings of people who are committed to each other, to place and to Jesus; and these expressions of church will be found in the most unexpected of places.  When we find ourselves encountering depth, if we take time to notice, we will find people whose sense of self is concentrated and distilled from their relationship with the divine, with other people and the space and place where they are.  This is in sharp contrast to the movement of the age which has dislocated people from the land of their ancestors, from the place of their birth, from the people of their family, from their neighbour and from their selves; and in that process has found that they have been dislocated from the divine.  The challenge to find oneself is not answered by running and escape, but through stillness and staying.  The geography of hope is not based on finding fertile ground somewhere else, but staying and working the ground until it becomes fertile, until you begin to feel yourself putting down your roots, establishing yourself where you find yourself and becoming stable and embedded enough to survive the sharp frosts and the long hard days of winter.  And winter turns to spring and your bare branches begin to bud and hope begins to blossom.  A hope that is shaped not by the things that change, but by the things that don’t, which is what a landmark is after all.

These thoughts are of course riddled with my own heart and passion.  I wonder what your thoughts are?

I went to see many of the headliners at greenbelt this year. Athlete were great, Martyn Joseph with Stuart Anderson was brilliant and then there was Rob Bell.

It is not at all that Rob was not good, he was, as expected, engaging, funny, full of compassion and very clear, but two things disturbed me. The first, which I guess I’ll have to live with, is the celebratory status that the crowd afford to this human being. Ok, so Jesus had crowds too and I in fact participate in crowds as well; most notably at a U2 360 concert this summer. So maybe I should just get over this. The second disturbance, which I find sad that we are living with, was captured at the type of questions that the crowd asked this super-christian.

One of Rob’s hour long sessions was titled ‘In Conversation with Rob Bell’ which was essentially an open Q&A time. Questioners were pulled from the crowd with easy questions, hard questions, funny and interesting questions etc. It seemed to me that the questions, while extremely difficult for the person involved, were of a very basic discipleship nature.

Now, on the one hand there is nothing basic about discipleship. Re-orientating one’s life towards Christ and then following as a disciple is enormously energising and draining. “I have just met Jesus and now I wonder what I need to do in my life to follow?” Such a question can and should have great impact on one’s life. What flows out of such a question is almost certainly a range of difficult decisions and situations. If following Jesus were easy, then there might be more people in church and the world might be worse of for it. However, the place for such difficult questions and life-giving support through such situations is amongst the community of believers, where the next basic theological questions gets asked. “We a community of believers, what does it mean to be the Body of Christ in this time and place?” How do we live faithfully and authentically together as disciples of Jesus. As well as addressing internal matters of nurture and support of disciples and life together as community, it is this group and only this group that can begin to think about how to relate to those not yet part of them: “How do we as the community of disciples communicate the love of God to those who have not heard?” Yes of course individual disciples are at the coal-face of being in relationship with on-disciples, but they can only do so out of their community of believers: theologically, emotionally and practically. This layering of theological questions, this ‘how do we talk about God’ conversation, is, or at least should be it seems to me, at the heart of ecclesial theology; by which I mean church based theology. So perhaps it is now easier to see my second disturbance in context. How come these attendees at a Christian festival asking this super-Christian who has been flown in from the states basic discipleship questions?

Perhaps it is because they were just testing him out. A whole group of festival attendants got together to form a list of questions which would essentially test out Rob Bell’s authenticity to be called a ‘speaker’! If this is the case, I wonder whether he passed? Perhaps those who asked questions were not in fact active members of a local community of believers and so in effect GB becomes their community and this is where you can ask the visiting preacher these type of questions. I’m sure this is the case for a whole heap of people who attend GB. They are either disaffected church-goers or never in fact went to church but found faith in the festival circuit and never made a connection with their local church.

Thirdly, and this is where this article has been leading up to, perhaps it is because these questions aren’t being answered in the local communities of believers, the local church. The preaching and teaching in local churches is not up to addressing these discipleship questions or local preachers and teachers are not brave enough to address them. Talking about non-believers who need converting strongly implies that we have it right and they have it wrong; talking about parents and partners who don’t believe who as a result face separation from God [assuming that we still have a lost and found theology], these are hard things and you can’t blame teachers and preachers for a little self-preservation. However, these are the questions that our people are asking.

This second disturbance of mine does cause me sadness. Not because we don’t have answers for these questions, or because it is so hard, but because I don’t think we talk about these questions enough. There are no easy answers to these and other difficult situations but the best chance we have is to have an ongoing space within the community of believers of support, care, prayer, love and wisdom seeking. Which we are probably not going to find in the hour session of a paratrooper preacher in a field a GB.

I was particular interested in listening to Rob Bell, primarily to here the questions he was asked rather than his answers, because I am convinced that on the whole we have a very low discipleship agenda in our churches. By discipleship I mean just asking those type questions that I outlined above; what does it mean for me to become and be a follower of Jesus; as a community of believers how show we life our lives together and how do we as a community engage with those who have not heard?

This is a late greenbelt post!

On the programme this year at Greenbelt was Matt Redman. This was very surprising and at the same time unsurprising as GB positions itself in the ‘broad’ camp someone like Matt ticks the conservative evangelical and charismatic boxes. As it happens it tick many peoples boxes.

There were about 3500-4500 people at the mainstage for Matt’s worship gig. And as I was processing this phenomenon, [whilst not worshiping!], I wondered whether I was surrounded by fellow graduates? Those older teens and young adults who we with Soul Survivor in the early days of the early 1990′s and who frankly are now too old even for Momentum. But who also have diversified in there spirituality and prefer a place like Greenbelt than New Wine, the perhaps more natural grassing ground for SS graduates?

A huge part of my motivation and inspiration for research comes out of my own story and journey as a follower of Jesus. The first church I went to was a large town centre Baptist Church that was evangelical and charismatic. Since I came from a non-church background, the doctrine and practice that flowed from this church experience became normative. 20 months later I was at London Bible College, large, evangelical, slightly charismatic and quite baptist. Of course these are retrospective labels since I had no idea what an evangelical was before I was well into my time at LBC. Church experience at LBC was mixed but generally along the same theme. After LBC, I was at a mid-sized CofE Church in North London that was ‘generically evangelical’ [my label]. One year later I was an Assistant Pastor at a mid-sized Baptist church again that was conservatively evangelical and embarrassingly charismatic [they were embarrassed to realise they were charismatic]. And then in a very surprising [to me at least] move I became senior staff in a large CofE, conservative evangelical and recovering charismatic church. Finally in a very surprising to everyone else move I became an Ordinand at Ripon College Cuddesdon of liberal catholic fame.

These episodes in my journey lead me to reflect on my own diversification as an evangelical this is what I came up with.

Charismatic Evangelical [1992-1994] Describes where on the spectrum I was converted into.

Doctrinally Disillusioned Evangelical [1994-1996] Is how I felt when I realised you needed to go to bible college to discover who Jesus is and the resultant belief-melt-down that follows.

Post Post Evangelical [1997-1998] Is how I described myself at the public debate with Dave Tomlinson after seeing how scattered and in some places ‘obvious’ his arguments were.

‘Edge of the World’ Evangelical [199-2001] As opposed to Open Evangelical. That place where you are at the edge of the ‘flat’ world, since flat is how the doctrine felt, and wanting to take a step to get off or out, and yet finding nothing to step on to or in to.

New Kind of Evangelical [2001-2004] After reading book of similar title and seeing that it might just be degrees of perspective and there might yet be some life left in the old girl yet!

Cosmopolitan Evangelical [2005-] Since God’s call to Anglican Ordination; being neither Anglican or thinking about ordination up until that point. Cosmo because I know where I come from and don’t want to desert or abandon that past, despite trying to previously. But also wanting to be not just comfortable but actually at home in foreign places; to be able to encounter God, minister, lead, teach and live in a culture that is not my home. “To be ready to find God in the unexpected places.” To quote my selection application papers.

These diversifications have of course being supplemented with differing doctrine and practice, or least looking for such. It is with this background that I am engaging on the long process of exploring the stories of enrichment and division that emerge from other people’s diversified journeys.

Having played around with blogging for a while I have changed URL, blogging service and themes several times, but this time I have resisted this. I have had a blog-holiday for a little over 7 months and am now ready to start again with a slightly more focused approach; as reflected in the change of tagline. Let me explain…

I have officially begun my PhD on diversification within evangelicalism since 1980 and this will now be the focus of much of my thinking, reading and writing; but this is not just about a PhD. This research is as much about my own life and journey as it is about writing 100 000 words. A journey through the dark forests of evangelical spirituality and theology. A journey that has been travelled with friends and those who looked to me for leadership and inspiration. A journey that is by no means finished but one that already has the way-points mapped out in a curacy beginning in June 08.

So, in the context of life, mine and my friends, in the context of the on going ‘talk of God’, in the context of real life ministry, I hope this blog will now focus on the issues that arise from and feed into this piece of research that is set before me. I’ll use the tag / category ‘evangelicalism’, partly in the hope that this will be picked up else where too.

These episodes of flipside leadership won’t be in any kind of order. Partly because if I waited until I thought there were in an order I was happy with they might never get written.

Given that, let’s start with activism!

It strikes me that one of the primary defining aspects of a gift of leadership is something about direction. Leadership makes sense in the context of a journey, whether that is physical, spiritual, emotional or, what is normally the case, a complex mix of these and others descriptors. Perhaps the best phrase might be ‘human journey’. The thing that the leader brings to this journey, the thing that they are best positioned to bring, is a vision of the future. The leader, if you like points to Point C of the journey. Point A being where you have come from and Point B being where you currently are. Since this is one of the moments when the leader is at their peak, a moment of looking forward, reaching ahead, urging movement and stirring active imagination, then they tend to embody these journey attributes of movement.

This embodiment of these attributes of journey is at an identity level [deliberately not using the words psychological or character]. The gift is planted deeply, probably at the core of personhood. Something that is not of course limited to the gift of leadership, a gift is part of the ‘knitting together of the person’ by God. This knitting together between conception and birth and during new creation i.e. between birth and death, affects the whole being. It is part of ‘the way you are wired up’, to use a phrase from Bill Hybels.
Since these attributes are so close to the core of who the leader is, then they naturally affect the whole being. The outworking of such is often labelled activism.

One of the ways I often describe myself is as a recovering-activist. Someone who is always on the go, mentally and physically. My wife generously describes this as an ‘enormous capacity for work’. But I have come to see this not as a blessing but as a curse, or more politely as the flipside of leadership.

There are many ways that this positive aspect of leadership, the perception and enthusiasm for direction and movement becomes a danger to the health and well-being of the leader and the congregation, church, organisation or company. At this point it is important not to mis-read what I am saying. I am not saying that we have not benefited from the leaders activity and capacity for work. What I am saying is that burnout amongst leaders is a serious matter, as is dis-empowered congregations!

Firstly the leader struggles to rest. I think that I began to learn what rest meant 3 years into full-time ministry when I was ‘sent’ to Malta to rest after losing my voice. Interestingly the voice returned the very first evening in Malta after a 6 week period of not being able to talk at all. In the days that followed I felt that God gave me permission to rest. Not of course that it had held withheld perviously. I would still say that I am learning to rest and release the need to follow-through on every thought.

Secondly, the congregation struggle to keep up. With a leader who is two steps ahead, doing everything and too much, the congregation become dis-empowered because they simply can’t keep up with the speed and plethora of ideas and action points. As a congregation they need someone to point the direction of travel, not someone who has their foot to the floor beckoning people to keep up.

Much of this, and other aspects of the flipside that I plan to write about, are about the leader living for themselves, even if they think they are serving the people. Controlling the flipside, living with the curse, is mostly about learning to live with oneself and serving the needs of the other.

A friend of my used to wind me up by calling me ‘smiler’. This was, and is, not because I have a glorious smile on my face all the time. In fact quite the opposite, my face struggles to indicate how I feel inside. Nevertheless, I have been, and still are, on a journey of changing that.

Given that, I am struggling this evening with the difficulty we have with smiling in Church. In particular, around specific seasons of joy, at least on paper anyway. I have been to a few advent / carol services over the years and only one, perhaps two, remain in my mind as joyful occasions. The rest have been at best sombre and at worst dire and misserable! Partly due to the choice of hymns/songs/carols, but mainly due the the lack of smiles.

It seems that the training given to leaders, choirs and those reading is similar to that given to the Queens Guard!! Who are not meant to interact with the teasing public, their are not meant to smile! The contrast was particularly noticeable this evening because the children’s choir where also taking part and children can’t help but smile when there is a sea of parents and grandparents smiling right back at them from the pews.

My journey of smiling has reached the point where I actually look forward to advent, and indeed Christmas festivities. The ‘bah-humbug’ approach is becoming a thing of the past. A journey helped enormously by my joy-filled wife and my joy-filled 3 children. Having got this far on my smile journey I am determined not to let dull and dire services put me off!

Apologies to anyone reading this who thinks or knows that they were involved in one of the advent / carol services I am referring to. But I have to say: Beautiful singing, and indeed words [I did encounter God this evening], but smile, this is good news we have.

Blessings and curses are opposites in both intent and result. Blessings tend to come with good will and curses tend not to. Blessings bring something good, fruitful, lasting, joyful from a heart of love towards the intended. Curses don’t tend to be any of those things. Which is why the idea of a curse does not quite fit with this little study I am embarking on.The Curse of Leadership has been the title since its conception in my thinking some 2 years ago. A title that reflects my personal experience over the then 7 years in full time church leadership of one sort or another. But as soon as I come to begin writing it ‘curse’ sounds altogether to hard. And yet there is something there that I can’t quite let go of because at the worse of times it just feels like it – a curse.The ‘flipside’ sounds altogether more friendly and palatable, almost funky and trendy as if it might represent some new insight into leadership and management – although I am fairly sure that is unlikely to be the case. So a double title it will be for a while.This writing exercise is meant to be an exploration of personal experience in the hope of dredging the depths of it for all the wisdom it contains. Personal experience of leadership in a few guises but mainly in the context of local church and ministry. Distilling something about the gift of leadership over and against leadership positions and skills – a distinction that will be explored – and what in particular that gift brings to the life of its holder. Perhaps contesting the widely held assumption that many of the perceived strengths of such a gift could in fact be its weaknesses.For me this is also an exercise in regular writing. So we’ll see how that goes! Given the wise contrast between training and trying, lets go for an episode once a week – or there abouts!Some of the title splash came from a piece by Vicky Newman highlighted in the Indepndent this week as taking part in the Stuart project.

It has been a while since Greenbelt and I have been meaning to record a few thoughts that came during that weekend.

My first thought was after Shane Claiborne who spoke about Big Beasts and Little Prophets.  What struck both Kate and I about his mix of anecdotes and challenges was that part of been Christian is to be ‘peculiar’ in the eyes of those around you.  Sharing extra-ordinary hospitality and demonstrating an unmatchable degree of grace in everyday ordinary situations where the people we meet are at their point of need.  This calls for a very hands-on approach to life let alone ministry.

Our second thought came after listening to Jim Wallis in conversation with Stephen Timms MP.  Jim talked about meeting congress[people] and the three types you meet. First those who follow through their convictions, then those who follow their convictions when they are in line with public opinion and then those who form their convictions by following public opinion.  Jim said that all three are walking around with their finger in the air trying to discern what’s on the current wind and where it might be going.  Change the wind and all three types will be affected.  I have to confess that this is something that excites me. Not that the hands-on life of hospitality and grace doesn’t.  Far from it and we have some stories of extraordinary things happening through such hands-on life. But changing the wind…

This custom has been one that has puzzled me for a while, since arriving at Rippon College, Cuddesdon for my ordination training. Coming from low evangelical background, these body movements were a puzzle and in fact boarder on idolatry. My first thoughts were “Well they seem no more crazy than sticking your hands in the air during singing.” This obviously has more meaning you might say, but even casual observations show that some songs do it better than others and generally you have to wait until the chorus or the second verse before it is appropriate to ‘lift them high’.

My second thought concerns an observation made by at fellow staff member at my last job [Holy Trinity Hazlemere]. He, Alan, observed that we more often than not fall into worship. We move straight from notices to full blown intimacy without as much as a by-your-leave.

In reaction to these I have been developing a practice of pausing an lowering my head when entering a pew and when leaving it. Not because I am not worshipping in my whole life nor because I think there is any more ‘real’ presence at the altar or reserve sacrament than any other particular place. It is more to do with what is going on in my heart: I am here, in this building in this pew, intentionally to listen, pray and acknowledge God’s grace in my life. It is to mark the beginning and end of this intentional time of becoming aware of God’s presence.

Now I come to Conrad’s observations. This tradition, that I have picked up from other people playing the same game as I am, indeed encourages and entices me to both acknowledge the grace shown to me and respond in an appropriate thankful way acknowledging the Godhead behind it. And in a BTW, showing other people that I am aware of what I am doing in the pew.

Long time no blog – but essay is in and interviews for MPhil and RDP successfully negotiated.

For both my interviews (with Andrew Walker for place on MPhil/PhD at King’s, and Judith Maltby for Ministry Division permission and money for said MPhil) I was sure that I would be asked: how would you describe yourself now in terms of church-person-ship? [my changes]. So after a little pondering I came up with these descriptions of my journey.

Charismatic Baptist Evangelical describes where on the spectrum I was converted into. 1992-1994
Doctrinally Disillusioned Evangelical is how I felt when I realised you needed to go to bible college to discover who Jesus is and the resultant belief-melt-down that follows. 1994-1996
Post Post Evangelical is how I described myself at the public debate with Dave Tomlinson after seeing how scattered and in some places obvious his arguments were. 1997-1998
‘Edge of the World’ Evangelical as opposed to Open Evangelical. That place where you are at the edge of the ‘flat’ world, since flat is how the doctrine felt, and wanting to take a step to get off or out, and yet finding nothing to step on to or in to. 1999-2001
New Kind of Evangelical after reading book of similar title and seeing that it might just be degrees of perspective and there might yet be some life left in the old girl yet! 2001-2004
Cosmopolitan Evangelical since God’s call to Anglican Ordination; being neither Anglican or thinking about ordination up until that point. Cosmo because I know where I come from and don’t want to desert or abandon that past, despite trying to previously. But also wanting to be not just comfortable but actually at home in foreign places; to be able to encounter God, minister, lead, teach and live in a culture that is not my home. “To be ready to find God in the unexpected places.” To quote my selection application papers.

So there we are I am a cosmo evangelical ordinand still having culture shock episodes in a college with liberal catholic history and tendencies.

Picture btw is just dreaming!

Went to my placement, New College Chapel (NCC), for the Ash Wednesday Eucharist and Imposition of Ashes.

NCC has a coral foundation, which means it has a choir, one of the best in the country it appears (see). So the service is imbued with beautiful singing, which given the right posture can do something to lift you, or transport you, or just open the veil a little for a glimpse at God.

So what is it about music, and in this case a male (small and older boys) choir, that enables this momentary thinning of the veil? Why in fact, in whatever, tradition or culture, is music so linked with access to the transcendent?

My other experiences have largely been in the evangelical wing of the church, part of which was standing in a cow shed, or more latterly in a large tent, with thousands of others singing songs, which on the face of it have very little meaningful content, but nevertheless have the same thinning effect! To the extent that we were falling over ourselves to experience this thinning, or more precisely who is on the other side (as it were)

Oh, I also had a black cross on my head, which at first looked like I and the others belonged to some cult that you might encounter in a work of fiction; a cult that was either guilty of some conspiracy or there for laugh material only.

I did however, amuse myself thinking about a contextualised version of this very ancient practice that involved permanent black flipchart markers?!?!

I have been wondering recently about eye contact in church services; particularly during the Peace and when receiving Communion. I struggle with eye contact too, so maybe I am the wrong person to be writing about the lack of eye contact during these aspects of our community life. Is this just reflective of the level of discourtesy that we are prepared to accept in public life? Or is it a give away to something much deeper, and our understanding of ourselves and the ontology of the community. It is eye contact during the Peace in particular that I focus on in this piece. But eye contact during services would be a v.interesting enthological study; anyone up for it! . Peace be with you.

We there was just me and the chapel sacristan (person who prepares the room and looks after everything). At 10 I was ready to say ‘O well’ and make it an early night. But Paul the sacristan beat me to it and said ‘Just you and me then brother!’

There followed Paul and I going through the service, (which included a song that we elected to say since neither of us were that comfortable about singing). During this I glimpsed closer the privilege of praying on behalf of the community.

Praying for God’s peace throughout the night, for rest and protection, praying on behalf of the community; giving thanks for the mission work of the church and offering to God our thanks for his grace and mercy during the day knowing that I was there to do that and that no-one else could come was ok.

Perhaps there is a priest in me after-all!