“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 recently attended the Holy Spirit in the World Today conference hosted by St Paul’s Theological College, St. Mellitus and Holy Trinity Brompton, which I might post about later.  Quite unexpectedly I ran into a now ‘grown-up’ member of a youth group that I used to oversee at Union Baptist Church.  As I got over the usual shock that you get when you encounter people who you remember being smaller and younger and how old you feel now they are taller and all grown-up, the next shock was that he had the weekend before been ordained as a baptist minister.

Andrew Burnham, was one of the 20 odd young people baptised in 2001.  Andrew was in hospital when I went to see him and in the course of the conversation I just asked ‘do you want to think about being baptised?’  It was this question, Andrew told me, that turned his life around and led him to be where he is now, leading and serving in Sutton-in-the-Elms Baptist Church.  For me, encountering Andrew this weekend has been a huge encouragement, and has reminded me that I am quite clearly an Asker.

I am clearly building on the foundations of others here.  Firstly there is Andrea Donderi whose web post has seems to have generated a few ripples through the blogsphere.  This in turn has been picked up by Oliver Burkeman writing in the Guardian, which has in turn been picked up by a few others including now me.  The original web post, which you can read by following the link above, lays out two types of people: Askers and Guessers…

In some families, you grow up with the expectation that it’s OK to ask for anything at all, but you gotta realize you might get no for an answer. This is Ask Culture.

In Guess Culture, you avoid putting a request into words unless you’re pretty sure the answer will be yes. Guess Culture depends on a tight net of shared expectations. A key skill is putting out delicate feelers. If you do this with enough subtlety, you won’t even have to make the request directly; you’ll get an offer. Even then, the offer may be genuine or pro forma; it takes yet more skill and delicacy to discern whether you should accept.

The post goes on to explore a few of the issues that arise when Guessers and Askers live, work and play together.  Whilst these observations are interesting, what struck me was how these two cultures work in the life of a congregation.

The observation in many congregations is that 80%+ of the work is done by >10% of the people.  This kind of observation is often true for the finance of the church too, where around 20% of a congregation give 80% of the money.  Perhaps ecclesiastical life is being lead by Guessers who only ask the Guessers who can’t say ‘No’.  Leaders of congregations can find themselves spending time working out who to ask to do something or give something based on what they know of the person and how likely they are to say “Yes”, which often turns out largely due to the fact that they can’t say “No”.  Quite unconsciously, the leader can be perpetuating the congregations dependence on a few Guessers who can’t say “No”.  They can’t say “No” because they discern correctly that the leader has asked them because they are likely to say “Yes” and so perpetuate their own position of shoring up the congregation with their effort and availability.

Perhaps it is time for the leader to try on the skills of being an Asker.  An Asker spend time thinking about the question.  How to ask in a clear and straight forward way, being able to outline the cost of saying “Yes” and the support and training that will be on offer in order for the “Yes” to become attainable and sustainable.  They will also need to be able to paint a picture of what life will be like, both for the person being asked and the congregation as a whole, if they say “Yes”.  Such Asking leaders will need a think skin, because the will be some “No”s.  They will also need to be prepared to be surprised, because there will be a bunch of “Yes”s that they will not have found without asking.

As I reflect on my time in church leadership with this question in mind, it strikes me that most of the times of growth were when I was being predominately an Asker.

The meaning and significance of U2 lyrics is the source of many blogs and websites and a few books.  There is a great deal of mystery and misdirection from the band members themselves who rarely give a straight answers to questions about lyrics.  So at best, what follows is an exercise in eisegesis, a reading into the text of the songs, one in which I the reader supply the framework to find a meaning that may or may not have been planted there by the author and the band.  With any such project, I realise I may have missed the point entirely…  However, I am captured by this album and in particular the narrative that spans the tracks.  I’ll only manage touch on that in this post as I listen to the first two tracks; No Line on the Horizon and Magnificent.

“No Line on the Horizon [NLOTH] starts loud and fast, almost too difficult to keep up with.  The girl Bono is singing about is my life; I am her and she is me… she, it, changes everyday, one day it is quiet, the next it is big;  my life is open to the whole of the universe as it streams across my screen.  I give myself to too many things, the love I have is pouring out of my heart… there’s too much, too many, infinity is where it starts and infinity does contain a finish.  I have too many options, too many ways, too many possibilities.  Times of the day, days of the week, seasons of the year are diffused as they are no longer a constraint and do not constrict the openings through which I can pass.  I can loose myself scheming schemes and hatching plots.  Choice paralysis is my constant headache and I constantly exercise my right to change my mind.  I am lost, all at sea, in the confusing sounds of the sirens of choice and I have forgotten where I am going!  There is no line on the horizon.  My life is full of means and the lack ends.  I have many ways to get there but I am no longer sure where it is that I am going, and yet I am longing to get somewhere, anywhere, some place, I need to get away – there is NO LINE ON THE HORIZON !”

I feel myself spinning and there is nothing and everything to see.  This is where NLOTH leaves you.  Zygmunt Bauman describes the scene as “unprecedented vistas” where the “freedom of self-creation has never before achieved such breathtaking scope, simultaneously exciting and frightening.  Never before has the need for orientation points and helpful guides been as strong or as painfully felt.”  I find myself in NLOTH; its poetry, noise and speed captures those hidden and nagging feelings that I lack a vocabulary to express meaningfully.  What is there to provide an orientation?  Where can I look for a stable place in the changing sea?  Who is there that can save me from this place?

Magnificent, Magnificent, I was born, I was born to be with you in this space and time. In the reality of a life without a place to go, without an orientating point, without a helpful guide, I, like Bono, turn to the Magnificent One!

Magnificent plants your feet firmly on the ground, in the here and now, and orientates you towards the ‘you’ – Magnificent.  It is in part Bono’s testimony of his orientation, his ‘line on the horizon’ that enables him to navigate the changing seas in which his life is cast.  To know you, to sing to you, to love you, to be marked by the love of you and from you.  Love, God’s love, is the line on the horizon; always there, being the ever present guide and always much bigger than you ever thought it was.

U2 have captured the reality of most inhabitants at the front-line of western culture in a way that the church has not managed to engage with.  It is here that the following Jesus needs to make sense, in the wide horizons of life in which orientation is painfully rare and difficult to find.  It is easy to say that the answer you are looking for is Jesus, managing to express the question is much much harder.  For those who have grasped the answer, the question is no longer an issue, at least that is the illusion they live with.  Having hold of Jesus does automatically mean all lives issues are solved, especially when you do not know what the issues are.  Similarly, if we are offering Jesus to those who do not and have not yet, the offer makes little if no sense if there is no question being asked, or at least a pertinent one.  Here we hear not only U2 offer the Magnificent answer, we hear them express the question sufficiently and  eloquently.

No Line on the Horizon is the album title and title of the first track.  Album released 27 February 2009. Listen on Spotify. Buy on itunes.

Art of Life, Zygmunt Bauman, Polity, 2008. Quote from page 87. Buy at Amazon UK

Next week, trains permitting, I am presenting my first academic paper that relates to my PhD research.  The Conference is the British Sociological Association: Sociology of Religion Study Group gathering in Edinburgh.  The proposal is below and the full paper should appear as a pdf attachment below.

‘The Changing face of Christianity in the 21st Century”

The BSA Sociology of Religion Study Group Conference
6-8 April 2010 University of Edinburgh

Liquid Faith: looking for anchorages in 21st century cultures

Given the rapid changes in C21st Christianity, counting membership and observing new forms and hybridisations capture only part of the picture.  There is a strong historic approach by which to define Christianity, which represents a break from the more institutional language and categories used to trace changes in religious groups. One that is grounded in the practical and in the everyday relationships that a Christian lives within: with the Divine, with the community of believers and with those outside the faith [Charry 1999].  This relational approach focuses on these unique social bonds within the Christian worldview.

Taking a lead from work by Gordon Lynch [2002, 2003] and early experiences in the field within evangelical communities suggest that Bauman’s [2000 - 2008] Liquid metaphor offers a significant key to understanding the changing nature of these social bonds.  Focusing on these unique social bonds, this paper will allow Bauman to draw out how the Christian experience has become increasingly individualised, how much poorer it is as a result of the loss of it’s own public vocabulary and how individuals cope with that responsibility.  The results will be a much richer understanding of declining numbers and new forms within contemporary Christianity.

“Because of individualization we are living with a lot of zombie categories
which are dead and still alive.”
[Ulrich Beck & Elizabeth Beck-Gernsheim, Individualization, Sage: London, 2002: 203]

Maybe 10 years ago you would have been able go into any evangelically inclined church building and find some kind of filing system for OHP slides.⁽⁽¹⁾⁾ The kind of churches that dispensed with hymn books to allow more physical worship freedom during the service. It usually saved a bunch of money too since they did not have to keep buying new books every time they wanted to sing the latest songs. You would be able to discover all kinds of interesting things about the congregation by looking at this OHP filing system and it’s content. One of the most common observations would be that the ‘i’ section of the filing system is the largest. In fact I challenge you to find a church where this was not the case. Great wads of songs beginning with “I…” the worshipper, although not just the worshipper but specifically the individual worshipper.⁽⁽²⁾⁾

I remember going to Brainstormers, an annual youth leaders conference, back in the late 90′s. The theme of the conference centred around the passage in Ephesians where Paul talks of Christ as our peace; peace between groups of us who at odds with each other. “For he is our peace; in his flesh he has made both groups into one and has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us. [Ephesians 2:14]  They did it very well, including having the visual impact of a person actually building a wall on stage during the conference, which was then demolished at the end.  Despite all this theological reflection on the issues that divide us, all the songs chosen for worship were really songs between God and “I…” as the individual worshipper.

Every Sunday in gathered congregations up and down the country our hymns and songs perpetuated and promote individualisation.  Even as we are gathered theologically as a body, as one in Christ, as brothers and sisters of a forgiving God we would still prefer to sing “Thank you for saving me” and not “Thank you for saving us“.  There is little sign of this changing and a survey of lyrics of recent worship albums and visiting a couple of evangelical congregations will confirm.  This is not to say that middle-of-the-road Church of England, more traditional and even catholic congregations are actively promoting a different approach.  Hymn and song books such as Hymns Ancient and Modern and Common Praise have a fairly rich stream of  “I…” the worshipper present in their lyrics too.

A common reply to this being pointed out is that the context of the sung hymns and songs is corporate worship, a gathered congregation: of course we are singing it together and we make the mental adjustments as we do.  The problem with this rather weak position is that the hermeneutic, the predominant perspective of those in the gathered congregation is life-as-an-individual.  Almost the entire cultural context in which we live is individualised.  Customised individual choice is king.  There is no remaining place where the individual is contextualised in a social network of relationships that has any permanence to it.  Everything is in a state of fluidity, and the individual is both the navigator and the shipwrecked.  So when they come to church and sing as “I…” the worshipper, the congregational context has very little theological and ontological cash value.

The theological idea of a congregation, or local expression of church, has both a practical and a ontological stream.  The congregation is part of the universal body of Christ, which is formed and sustained by the Spirit.  Each member of the body, each person, has been and is joined to the rest and is a fellow heir of Christ.  “Don’t you know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you?” [I Corinthians 3:16].  Most people are surprised to discover that the ‘you’ in this verse, the subject, is a plural you, Paul was addressing the congregation, not the individual Christian.  Practically the idea of a congregation is a community of disciples that are loving each other towards maturity in Christ.  Called and encouraged to bear with one another in peace and love, telling the truth to each other and allowing each other to be their unique part of the community.

Back in 2000 Zygmunt Bauman outlined his liquidity metaphor as an attempt to understand our present social situation.  His thesis is that the ‘melting of the solids’ drive of modernity has reached “the bonds that interlock individual choices in collective projects and actions – the patterns of communication and co-ordination between individually conducted life policies on the one hand and political actions of human collectives on the other.”⁽⁽³⁾⁾  It seems to me that ‘congregation’ and ‘church’ have become next to useless as human collectives in the politics of discipleship.  To all intents and purpose, ‘congregation’ and ‘church’ are zombie categories.  They are no longer places where my individual choices as a follower of Jesus are given the power they need to be transformative.  Instead I am sent away to work out my own discipleship-politics in my own strength and to bear the burden of there inevitable failure.  A burden that as a disciple, I was never meant to bear alone!

1. For those who have grown up with interactive white boards at school an OHP is an overhead projector. A sign of my age that I think I need to explain what this is.
2. Today, most of these churches will have a video projector and song projection software, so the immediate observation is no longer possible.
3. Zygmunt Bauman, Liquid Modernity, London: Polity, 2000: 6

If I’m towards right about ‘journey’ being a zombie category and it is no longer a useful idea for thinking about our ongoing relationship with Christ, then what is?  Most of my thoughts here start with a comment from Brian McLaren at an Emergent conference in 2003 (I think).   During a question time a very astute delegate asked Brian for a definition of ‘community’.  It felt very much like Brian had been put on a spot, but his answer seemed well rehearsed.  After a short story about a college lecturer and his family farm Brian’s simple definition of community was, and maybe still is, ‘staying’.

This was enormously encouraging and challenging.  Encouraging because at the time that was exactly where I was; looking for a place to put down roots and stay.   Challenging because it is!  As it happens, too challenging for us at the time since we have moved twice since then and will almost certainly do so again in the next two years or so! Staying has challenge on a whole bunch of levels, some which I hope to explore in later posts.   Here I would like to briefly consider the challenge it holds for our notions of discipleship personally and for us as a community [whoever 'us' are?].

There are readings set out in the Common Lectionary for everyday taking the diligent follower through a three year reading program.  The whole Bible is not quite covered as there are a few chapters here and there that are missed out.   As an Anglican priest I have essentially promised to follow this reading pattern since it sits hand in hand with Common Worship [the common prayer book for the Church of England since 2000].  There are other bible reading guides and notes of which I am sure most of my readers will at least be aware of if not experienced with.  There are all kinds of great things about a continuous reading pattern that takes you through Scripture, but there is also something transient about it too.   “I read this passage yesterday and the life changing thoughts and encounters I had were dealt with in 24 hours and now I am on to my next reading and encounter with the divine.”  I have similar things to say about ‘powerful preaching’; how many life changing messages can a person deal with in a month?

Journeying, moving, going, forward, progress usually also means both leaving something behind and speed.  For our personal spirituality this often means we don’t have time to engage, dig down, explore and harvest the wisdom and grace available from our engagement with spiritual disciplines: scripture, church going, prayer…  Fear of the Lord might be the beginning of wisdom, but experience tells us that wisdom grows through attention and examination; neither of which can be done at speed and in fact almost insist on being still: staying.

The Christian life is not just about loving God though, because its twin challenge is to love neighbour.  The bottom line here is the same as above, neither can be done at speed and in fact almost insist on being still: staying.  Yet our cultural pattern is to move on, quiet literally.  How long do you need to stay in one place, live there and be part of the community there, before you can experience and partake in ‘love neighbour’?  Have we repackaged this notion of ‘love’ into episodic acts of kindness?

A common word-association with discipleship is growth, but I wonder whether maturity would be more helpful.  Maturity is a staying word.  When we think of mature things like trees, shrubs, cheese, meat, they all need to have been in the same place for a long time.  ‘Long time’ is a relative term.  A long time for an Oak tree does not compare well for a long time for hanging beef!  Nevertheless, the point holds, maturity is about staying in the same place for a long time.  We are called to maturity in Christ, in fact to present each other as mature in Christ.  Such is the size of this call that maybe it trumps upgrading property, moving into school catchment, following a promotion. Whether such actions illustrate immaturity in Christ is a question that perhaps holds too much challenge for us to contemplate!  It might be that staying too has become a zombie category, alive but dead.  To say that I am ‘Staying here’ is usually, even if silently, qualified with a ‘until it is more convenient, cheaper, appealing or desirable to move to somewhere else.  We are training to think in such a way as part of growing up in C21st western society.  We are convinced that it is impossible to settle for something, because we are hooked on upgrades, thinking that these will give us better: experiences, feelings, tastes, efficiency, life-styles.  So does maturity stand a chance?  I think only if we are brave enough!

I have recently re-read Gordon Lynch’s Losing my Religion [I'll be reviewing this else where] in which he describes his own move away from evangelicalism.  There is a huge implicit assumption throughout the book that everyone involved in evangelicalism will want to move away and continue their journey elsewhere: whether that be within a Christian context or not.  There are a number of issues I want to engage with from this book but it is the idea of journeys, spiritual journeys, that I want to start with here.  But first, what are Zombie Categories?

Ulrich Beck, a professor of Sociology teaching in Munich and London, has this idea of Zombie Categories: categories that are dead and still alive.  Ulrich believes that “because of individualisation we are living with a lot of zombie categories…”  His ready example is ‘family’.

Ask yourself what actually is a family nowadays?  What does it mean?  Of course there are your children, my children, our children.  But even parenthood, the core of family life, is beginning to disintegrate under conditions of divorce.  Families can be constellations of very different relationships.  Take, for example, the way grandmothers and grandfathers are being multiplied by divorce and remarriage.  They get included and excluded without any means of participating themselves in the decisions of their sons and daughters.  From the point of view of the grandchildren the meaning of grandparents has to be determined by individual decisions and choices.  Individuals must choose who is my main father, my main mother and who is my grandma and grandpa.  We are getting into optional relationships inside families which are very difficult to identify in an objective, empirical way because they are a matter of subjective perspectives and decisions.  And these can change between life phases.

So a zombie category is a social concept which is still in use but which has lost the content, or substance, of its original or intended use.  It is still in use because we have romantic ideas about restoring or getting back to a place of substance, or because we actually have not noticed this change has taken place.  I don’t think Ulrich is saying that we should be performing resuscitation on these categories, it is not necessarily about trying to restore these categories to former glory.  Instead, it is more about facing the reality that we no longer mean what we think we mean when we reference these categories.  We therefore have the option of redefining our category, or recognising that we do in fact work with a redefined category, or stop using it for what it is not.

I would like to suggest that journeys, discipleship journeys, spiritual journeys are a zombie category.  It is not at all that spiritual things don’t happen in our lives, or that we don’t grow as a disciple.  My point is that the category ‘journey’ is not helpful.

Most of our physical journeys today are over very quickly.  We could be the other side of the world, in a different culture with a different language, climate and landscape within 24 hours.  Even our very short journeys, into town or to a friend’s place, are generally over in minutes rather than hours.  Personally I have very little patience for these everyday journeys: I leave at the last minute and I drive too fast.  And I have too little patience for my spiritual disciplines!

When the category of ‘journey’ was used in relation to discipleship the actual physical journeys that people undertook where much more gruelling.  Walking to the next town, although a common occurrence, would nevertheless be measured in hours not minutes and in pain not comfort.  Travelling to a different part of the country would not have been undertaken lightly by ordinary folk like you and I.  A short look at some writing like Pilgrims Progress by John Bynam, will bring these categories of spiritual and journey together.

Again I need to point out that I am not saying that our spiritual life, our following Jesus, is not at time gruelling, difficult and drawn-out.  My own testimony will stand as an example of that.  I am saying that maybe the category of journey is not as helpful as it used to be.  We still use this category prolifically; it is still alive, but also somewhat dead.

If our category of journey has been empty of its substance and it is indeed a zombie, then continuing to use it as a framing concept for our discipleship might have adverse affects on that discipleship: our discipleship.  Today journeys are all about A-to-B and little about the path.  Journeys are about the ‘fastest route’ selected on the sat-nav.  Journeys are about air-conditioned cocoons removed from the elements, isolated from encounters with the environment through which one passes.  Journeys are to and not via, they are uninterrupted movements without the space for another.  Journeys need drive-through tactics for fuel and convenience only.  Journeys are too long and so need a thick layer of headset entertainment to ensure that it is not wasted time.

Discipleship, following Jesus, is all about the path and little about destination, choosing the narrow route along which we notice and listen, seeking encounters with others as we travel via their lives, willing turning aside for their convenience ensuring that each moment is not wasted but is filled with Presence.

The idea and concept of journey offers little substance for us when thinking about our discipleship and spirituality.  It is nevertheless used both casually in conversation, from pulpits and platforms in church services and by reflective and academic minded writers as a framing metaphor for containing and understanding our call to follow Jesus.  I wonder whether the time has come to put it out of its misery and shoot it dead.

The reflection is based on the BCP Gospel reading for the Next Sunday before Lent [Quinquagesima]

There is clearly something in these readings about not seeing and seeing.  Jesus is making statements about what will happen to him when he enters Jerusalem and the disciples do not understand.  Understanding was hid from them and they could not see.  Are we to understand that the disciples were like this blind man that Jesus and the crowd pass as they entered Jericho.  He too could not see and had to enquire what all the noise was about as Jesus and the crowd approached; except this man calls out to Jesus to be saved.  Jesus hears him, asks him what he wants and then gives him what he asked for: sight.  This man then praises God and follows Jesus.  Yes surely there is a parallel here between the disciples lack of seeing and this man’s new seeing.

However, this is not just about those disciples on their feet walking with Jesus into Jericho, it is also about us as disciples tying to follow Jesus in the villages, towns and cities where we live.  Is Luke, as he writes this, challenging his readers to think about who can see and who cannot?  Am I more like the disciples who cannot see, or more like the blind man who has received sight?

Perhaps even more challenging is, who else could the blind man be: my neighbour, my work colleague, my brother, my friend, the stranger whom I pass in the street?  Can they see or not see?

This reflection is based on the BCP gospel reading for Sunday 7 Feb 2010

This story has been heard so many times and it is difficult to come to it and expect to get anything else from it. It is over-familiar to us, but bear with me for a moment. In the middle of this gospel reading Jesus days “Let anyone with ears to hear listen!”

When we began to follow Jesus we had to learn, like a baby and child, how to recognise the Jesus’ voice. How to discern the voice of the creator in and amongst the chatter of life. Perhaps as time has gone on this voice has blended into the background once again. Just like the parable, the voice has become over-familiar and we don’t expect to hear much from it. Life has settled into the rut of discipleship: going to church, reading the scripture and praying for our needs; and we no longer expect the challenging, encouraging, life-giving encounters with Jesus.

Perhaps as we listen to this familiar parable expecting to hear very little, we might be challenged to pay more attention to listening to the One who speaks and become once again one who hears.

Welcome to those who are from our larger churches. Please tell your friends at larger churches to come to gatherings like this. We need your experience and wisdom. Can I also tell you that we need people from larger churches to be ready to go. To go to places in the diocese that are in need of mission, new housing estates for instance. And places where parishes are struggling, desparate for mission but with little idea or people to put it in to action.

I’ve paraphased a little, but this is basically what he said. What struck me about this is that in most of my chrisitan experience there has been a theme of staying. Whether that is in a home group or small group, youth group, congregation, cell and church staying, enjoying the comfort zone of growth and friendship is a clear theme.

Our culture has a different theme, movement, fluidity, flow and movement. It is fairly easy to argue that our much cherished freedom, particularly of movement, has been at the cost of security of place and stability.

You would think that the ‘be prepared to go’ that Bishop Stephen encoraged would fall on easy ears and find churches and people ready to stand up for. However, as the Bishop also noted, we don’t celebate success in other, neighbouring, churches very easily, in fact probably not at all. We like success in our own patch and find it uncomfortable in surrounding places.

And yet at the same time we are a faith that has at it’s core vlaues a ‘go’. Each one of these churches that we feel like we want to stay in was planted by some who left, arrived and planted the Gospel amongst a group of people.

Being someone who used to work in a large church, who considered the idea of sending people out as a resource to other local churches, but who never managed to get to a place were we could do it, I still find the idea of not planting a new church but helping a perhaps smaller one capture and move on with a vision for mission very exciting.

I wonder whether they might be willing to accept such help.

This coming Sunday is the last Sunday after Trinity and we are hurtling towards Christmas.  Before we get there we will glory in All Saints Day, remember those fallen in the wars, we will celebrate Christ the King and prepare ourselves during Advent.  As we come to the end of our long Trinity season the Gospel reading for Sunday has a little similarity to those signs on the motorway that count-down to a junction.  The 3 / 2 / 1 signs.

When I was younger, and in fact still occasionally today, I got fixated on working out whether these signs are correctly spaced out, whether there really do represent a correct count-down to the actual slip-road.  And I wonder to where they are measuring? Is it the beginning of the slip-road, where the white line begins to peal off?  Or is it to the centre of the slip-road?  I was concerned about all kinds of things about the signs, but of course, this is to completely miss the purpose of the sign, which is to tell you about something coming up, something ahead of you that you need warning about.  It does, in the end, matter too much whether they are correctly spaced out.

Our Gospel reading on Sunday is one of these signs.  There is still a way to go, but get ready.

Blind Bartimaeus was sitting by the roadside doing what he normally does, begging.  He hears that it is Jesus who is coming and begins to shout out, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!”  Some people told him not to be so silly, but this did not deter him and he shouted all the more.
Jesus hears him and calls him over.  Some people help him over and Jesus asks what he wants of him.  Bartimaeus asks for his sight back and Jesus, stating that it is his faith that has made him well, gives his sight back to him.  Bartimaeus, as you might imagine, begins to follow Jesus.
It is like God the Father is saying to us today, get ready, just as it was with Bartimaeus, Jesus is about to pass by.  Just as it was with Bartimaeus, we are begging for life to the full.  Just as it was with Bartimaeus, if we are prepared to shout it out, and call upon Jesus for who he is, the King, then we will be heard.

You know that feeling when you miss the junction?  When just too late you pass it by and then you become painfully aware of the distance to the next junction and what a right pain this will be?  Don’t miss this junction in your life of calling out to Jesus as he passes by in the coming season.  Here is the first count down sign in Sunday’s reading, get ready.

If this is what it is like for you, you who know the sign, know what it means, and can get ready for the junction, for Jesus coming down the road.  What is it like for those who don’t know about the sign?  What is it like for those who are also begging for life to the full, but don’t know Jesus is coming and won’t call out because they will be distracted by other things and will miss the junction where their life crosses the path of Jesus?  What is it like for those people?

As we begin to think about getting ready for the coming season, begin to get ready for Jesus as he passes through town, let us be prepared to warn other people.  It is so easy to join in with conversations that paint Advent as time to shop and Christmas as a time for gifts, lots of food and wine and good programs on the tv.  Joining in those conversations is easy.  But we are called to say, get ready, Jesus is coming.
This Sunday, in our reading is the first sign on the path we are on.  You today, have noticed it and will be getting ready.  Please, as the opportunity arises, talk about the coming of Jesus in this season to others who don’t know, who don’t even know that we have passed the first get ready sign.  Don’t get sucked into Christmas talk, without mentioning it’s Jesus who is coming!  What are you going to ask for this year?

Today I am launching my next writing project.  I have for a long time thought that the best people to offer insight into life as a curate are the curates themselves.  Hearing from those who have tread the path before us is great, their insights and wisdom is often invaluable and unique and we should be willing to listen and learn; but the expert at life as a curate today are the curates themselves.  Despite great wisdom and experience, those who have tread the path before us cannot appreciate life as a curate in these cultural times.  Not because they lack some thing but simply because times change.  This is just the general brush stokes before we get to the detail of personal circumstances and the experiences and perspectives that each curate brings with them and lives and works from within.  Add to that individual preferences of spirituality and theological twists and turns and it soon becomes very difficult for one or even a few people to essentially stand up and say what life as a curate is like.

Curates occupy a fairly unique position.  By curates I mean those who hold an office a Assistant Curate under a Training Incumbent in a training post for a fairly fixed time of between 3 and 4 years.  They will have come from some form of training sponsored by their Diocese and when they leave, the majority of curates become incumbents themselves.  This place of liminality acts as a furnace of leadership, where the curate is under authority of the incumbent and yet looked to for leadership from the congregation and community, where there is the constant presence of the promise of future authority and plans for leadership.  Experience is filtered into habits to adopt and practices to never duplicate. Where the training incumbent is both to be followed and avoided, mimicked and guarded against.  It is in these few years that habits at the core of their leadership will be formed and as they come out of the curacy furnace they cool and set and become fixtures of their ministry.

This project is a exercise in collective wisdom focused particularly around issues of leadership and will almost entirely consist of stories.  Stories told by curates about themselves in positions ans situations of leadership.  I will groups these stories and present them with a framework but only so they become accessible.  My hope is that this exercise will become a valuable resource for curates thinking about leadership as a curate.

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?

Trinity 14 Mark 8:27-end

Who am I?

This is one of the foundational questions of all humanity. It has been asked in all ages and is asked across all cultural divides. It is a question that has had many answers, perhaps as many as there are human beings. Although many individuals often have many differing answers throughout their lifetime.

The question gets to the heart of what it means to be a human and the way we answer it shows a lot about what we value. We are many things and we are often judged on the things that are easily seen; our work, or non-work, what we wear and look like, where we live, the way we speak… People can answer the ‘who are we’ question by looking at these things, but these things can and often change.

If I want to find some stability to the way I answer this big question, ‘Who am I?’, then I need to go much deeper to find the things that don’t change about me.

I can’t change that I am a son, first born of John and Sue Stacey, and as it happens, born white, British and working class. I’m also a brother, three times over. Even though I became a husband in 1996 and that became who I mostly am, I can’t forget that I am a son. But I am mostly a husband and this is something I can’t change either. I am also, of course, a father to my three children. With these ones at the core, I have many relationships that I can’t change and it is these things that are stable in my life, whatever life may bring. It is these relationships that enable me to answer the ‘Who am I?’ questions with some clarity, fear and hope.

When Jesus asks the disciples “Who do people say that I am?” he is wondering whether people have been able to see beyond the miracles and compassion and gentleness and wisdom, to who he is in relationship. The answer that comes back to Jesus is that the crowd has not yet seen who he is. So then he asks the disciples plainly: “But who do you say I am?” When Peter said “You are the Messiah.” he probably wasn’t expecting the kind of answer he got, nor the rebuke he was to get for objecting to it. But Peter did see Jesus for who he really was and is. Beyond the things he did, where he travelled, the way he spoke, the job he did [by which I mean his teaching and healing], Peter saw that this person was related to the Divine.

You are the Messiah, or you are the Christ… you are the one sent by God, anointed by the Creator, filled with the Holy Spirit. You have a relationship with the Lord like no other human we have known! Notice that at this stage they have not made the giant leap to Son of the Father, even though Jesus refers to his Father as Father many times. What they have noticed, or what Peter has noticed is that there is more to this man who is the Son of Mary and Joseph, although there is rumoured that there was some tricky business about that. There is more to this early retired carpenter from Nazareth and Peter puts his finger on it by saying he is related to the Divine, the Lord.

Peter’s answer did not bring this about, it was always there; and our answer to the same question will not alter it one bit either. Jesus, as they were later to realise and we now declare, is the only begotten Son of the Father. Our answers to the same question that Peter answered won’t change that, but they do change us.

How we answer the same question that Jesus put to his first disciples; “But who do you say I am? Doesn’t matter what others think, what do you say?”; how we answer it has a massive effect on us. If we can perceive, can really see, albeit imprecisely and vaguely, that Jesus is related to the Divine in such a way that he is not just sent by but sent from, as one with the Divine, then…

then following, becoming a disciple, is probably more than we ever thought it was.

Common Worship reading for this coming Sunday: Mark 7:24-end

Here is this woman… who is desperate to see her child released from the pain and anguish she lives in day after day.  Some of you will be able to sympathise with her, knowing members of your own family who likewise struggle with some affliction day after day.  Such anguish, watching someone you love, in daily pain and misery, is very hard to bear.

This woman comes to Jesus, willing to endure insult and embarrassment and humiliation; crossing all kinds of social convention and expectations; to come to the only place where she knew to go.  The only place worth going to.  The only place to find peace: Jesus.
Things are very different for us today.  We have a health service that helps us to patch up our bodies and manage our pain.  We have an organised church to help us encounter Jesus in the security of social conventions and practices.  Our situation is very different from this Syrophoenician woman.

And yet on Monday evening I sat in a concert at Greenbelt weeping in public waiting for Jesus to do something for someone I love.

I guess things aren’t so different.  We still struggle with things we can’t explain and pain we can’t bear to live with.  Still the only place to go is Jesus, to find peace, healing, comfort, strength, grace, mercy…  And we still get desperate enough to humiliate ourselves in public, to ignore social conventions, risk insult and embarrassment in order to get to a place where Jesus will hear us.

Below is a longer exploration of the 5-a-day self-leadership tool.  This will eventually form part of a new web resource on self-leadership that is currently under construction.

For those being ordained this at Petertide, I hope this final week amidst rehersals and retreats you find the space to hear from God…

The files you need are linked below:

You can find plenty of confusion and misdirection in the Gospel of John. John seems to want us to conclude… conclude… conclude very little!
It’s clear that the early disciples were also in a state of confusion for much of the time; and so John’s writing is at least reflective of that.

But what about us, who like answers. Our ways of thinking, that are hugely influenced by a scientific approach to evidence and conclusions, don’t handle mystery very well. And we don’t appreciate misdirection!

So what can we say about our reading then? It appears as though Jesus is preparing the disciples for an emotional roller-coaster of a ride. It appears as though John is reminding his early readers of how confusing those last days in Jerusalem were. And for us, who live a long time after this event and the writing down of it, it appears to be reminding us that we live in the Days of Joy.

“Your hearts will rejoice and no one shall take your Joy from you.” Says Jesus. By any measure, we are living after the ‘little while’ that the disciples were finding so confusing. We are living in the Days of Joy

One man asks another, “Are you happy?” “Yes!” the man replies. “Well tell your face then.” Retorts the first.

So the question I’ll leave you with is: to what extent do we need to be reminded that we are living in the Days of Joy.