“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.

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?

We begin Passiontide today, the week before Holy Week, the last week of Lent. There is a whole bunch of getting ready for this huge event on Good Friday.  Although of course this Good Friday event does not make sense without Easter Day. The death of Jesus does not mean much by itself, it only makes sense when it is connected to the resurrection. But you know this. We cannot disconnect any one event from the others.
Creation only makes sense once there is incarnation, God becoming human, the Son of God becoming like us. The incarnation only really makes sense on Good Friday, when like us, Jesus suffers and dies. But this is just another death and only makes sense on Easter Sunday, when death becomes nothing in light of the Love of God. The resurrection in turn only makes sense on Accession, when Jesus returns to his Father’s side in heaven and that in turn only makes sense on Pentecost; when Jesus sends the Spirit freely to whoever desires it without prejudice; enabling us to become like him. And that finally only makes sense today, in us, in your life and my life.

We are sat here at the beginning of Passiontide on the brink of the biggest festival in the Christian calendar and it only makes sense because of you.

It relies on you making sense of Jesus’ charge to us. And during our lent readings it is right that we are reminded of these charges. To pick up our cross and follow, to be prepared to be last instead of first, and today in our reading: Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life.

Leaving aside the cultural explanations and the literary analysis about why Jesus is using these particular words, these kind of statements are just impossible. What does it mean to hate my life, or pick up my cross, or be last, or die to self and give it all up for others. These are just massive, impossible statements.

And so is running a marathon. You are all wise enough to know that setting yourself impossible tasks and trying to do them by sheer will is just asking for failure. I cannot decide to go and run a marathon this afternoon, just as much as I cannot decide to give my life away, pick up my cross, live for others and hate my life here in this world.

But I can train. The running analogy is brilliant because it make such sense of the spiritual life. Paul uses it time and time again, and we’re using it today. Following Jesus is like training to run a marathon. Not trying to run, but training to run. You have to do it a bit at a time.
It might look like, being prepared to be wrong for the sake of a friendship. Who cares if my side of the story is accepted as true if it means losing a friend or a potential friend.

It might look like putting your task off to another day, in order to assist someone else. How often does my own personal agenda and to-do-list mean that I miss out on the life giving opportunities to help someone else.

It might look like giving something away because it would be more useful in someone else’s hands than in mine.

These small, although sometimes difficult tasks are great training for following Jesus. It is when we can handle, without thinking about it, these small chances of preferring one another’s needs, that we might be ready to notice when someone else is in real need, and have the strength of character to do something about it.

Palm Sunday, Holy Week, Good Friday, the Resurrection, it only makes sense if in our lives the marks of Jesus can be seen and witnessed; if just as we have benefited from the life, death and life of Jesus, others will benefit from that same life, death and life of Jesus in us.

Unlike lots, I like Trinity Sunday. More particularly I like preaching / teaching / talking on Trinity Sunday, as I am tomorrow.

Although every doctrinal statement is an interim statement, since we only know through a glass darkly, we can discern between good theology and bad theology. Good theology is harder to identify, primarily because the fruit of good theology takes longer to grow. Bad theology is much easier to recognise, if one has eyes to see and ears to hear. Unfortunately, I think the culture in which we swim has dulled our hearing and smudged our sight. Trinity Sunday is a good place to start trying to unblock and clean-up

Trinity is not a question of Maths. The problem is not 3=1. It is not something that we can think our way through and arrive at an understanding that is repeatable and teachable.

Trinity is not about substance, how are 3 things 1 thing as if the things in question are the same thing. by which I mean, it is not a question of divinity; if there is one God how can it be 3 God’s? What are apparently cultrually acceptable explanations of Trinity that involve eggs or clover leafs fall at this point. The persons of the Trinity are not bits of God like the yoke is a bit of an egg. Neither are they only part of a clover leaf! The question is not about bit, things or substances.

Jesus is a person and so perhaps rather than things it is about a person. Perhaps God is a person, who appears to us in different ways, as the Father, the Son and the Spirit. This is captured by another popular trinitarian analogy: H2O. Just as water appears to us as steam, liquid and ice in different circumstances, perhaps God appears to us as the Father, the Son and the Spirit in different circumstances. This would of course mean that God talks to himself! As Jesus prays to his Father in Heaven, as the Father audibly acknowledges the Son at his baptism etc. But maybe we are happy with this idea of a God who can talk to himself – we do after all!!

No none of these popular explanations of the Trinity make any sense!

There are 3 persons, the Father, the Son and the Spirit.

The other thing we know, or say about God is that God is Love. Perhaps it is this love that has something to do with their oneness?

We say a similar thing in our culture. When two people love each other enough, they shall leave their mother and father and shall be joined together as one in marriage.

This is not a good parallel though since these statements are either going out of fashion or in fact, when it comes to it, don’t actually mean anything!! But maybe that’s the same difficultly we have with the Trinity, we can’t grasp at a Love that would mean Oneness to the extent that it is eternally faithful?

The Trinity is not a maths question, or a question about things or appearance. It is primarily about encountering persons, persons of Love, a Love that encourages us towards itself and each other.