The man with the mop

A remarkable healing

2012-01-24T09:00:00.004Z

Our church is one big hallelujah at the moment.

Tom, a young man who lives in one of our communities went blind six months ago, due to a rare, genetically-inherited condition called Lebers Hereditary Optic Neuropathy. It was very hard for his friends to see him suffering - and, of course, desperately difficult for Tom himself.

On Sunday night, Tom reached a breakthrough moment and re-committed himself to Jesus. This, in itself, was cause for joy as Tom found he was able to reach beyond the pain and literal darkness of the past six months and place his trust in Jesus again. But who would have predicted what followed?

Waking very early in the morning, Tom found to his astonishment - and excitement - that he could see! It wasn't long before the whole house was awake. It was true! Tom can see! Celebrations erupted. Yesterday the news was spreading round our churches.

This was the account given by Ian Clifford, the pastor of Tom's community:

"Tom came to faith in Jesus beginning of last year. Soon after he lost his sight in one eye and then a couple of weeks after lost sight in the other. The doctors diagnosed it as Lebers Hereditary Optic Neuropathy. He could see literally a few inches in front of him but that was very blurred and could only recognise some slight colour. His eyes couldn't cope with any form of light and had to keep his eyes covered with sunglasses.

"The doctors said he'd be permanently like this. Many people have been praying ever since.

"In the midst of all this he continued to live for Jesus although at times his faith was shaken. Last night he re-dedicated his life to Jesus afresh and then woke up at 5:15 to go to the toilet. Suddenly realised he could see and woke the whole house, we've been celebrating ever since."

I had the privilege of seeing Tom later that day, just briefly, through the window of my workplace. But - get this! - Tom saw me! He waved at me. My eyes welled with tears, I don't mind saying.

Should we be surprised? After all, we believe in miracles. We're supposed to expect them. We sing about them. We pray for them. But, flog the dogs, when a blind man sees - a blind man we know and love and have prayed for many times - that's cause for celebration.

Read the accounts of Tom's close friends: Aidan's is here (with some fascinating details from Tom's journey to healing as well); Jane's is here. Nathan's is here.

Good

2012-01-17T09:45:00.004Z

One of the reasons I love our church is that we know how to make sharing the gospel fun. Check out this video of a recent Jesus flash mob in Northampton:

On the theme of the gospel, check out this interesting blog post from Kurt Willems' Pangea Blog in which he makes the intriguing point that the important thing about the good news is that it is good - and that how we frame the content is secondary. (I'm not sure I fully agree, but he got me thinking before 10 o'clock in the morning, for which - hat off!)

Love, key to joy

2012-01-14T21:33:00.002Z

Tonight we sang 'This is my commandment that you love one another, that your joy may be full.' It struck me that Jesus didn't say 'that your stress may be full' or 'that your misery may be full' (of course; but stay with me...)

True love moves from the place I want to be to the place my brother or my sister needs me to be. And if it's truly love that moves me the result will be joy. Not resentment. Not strain. Joy.

Feeling stressed, miserable, down in the mouth? Love somebody.

Seasons in community

2012-01-09T14:13:00.002Z

My friends made this (I think rather wonderful) little video about seasons in Christian community:

One in a taxi, one in a car

2012-01-06T14:19:00.004Z

Forget greetings card images of three oriental kings offering gifts to a baby in a stable; the Epiphany story found in Matthew's Gospel is politically explosive – and politically incorrect!

We lose its impact because of storybook images that have grown up around it (Matthew doesn’t mention a stable; Mary and Joseph were simply living in a house in Bethlehem by then; the visitors were not kings, but astrologers; there were not three of them, just three gifts).

Why politically explosive? Because these men stride straight into the court of mafioso-style King Herod asking "Where is he who has been born king of the Jews?" – and they didn’t mean Herod! Result: Jesus’ family flee as asylum-seekers, the stargazers slip Herod's noose, while the megalomaniac massacres every infant in Bethlehem.

From the very beginning Matthew’s Gospel is subversive – right to its end with Jesus dying on Caesar's Roman cross, but rising with "all authority on...earth". Jesus is a fundamental challenge to the political powers of the world, a danger to the powerful status quo.

For make no mistake: the true "king of the Jews", the Messiah, is also the true king of the whole world ( just read Psalm 2 and you'll get the idea).

And this leads us to why Matthew’s account would have been politically incorrect. Because these wise men are not Jewish scribes – they're foreigners (Persians) and followers of another religion (Zoroastrians)! Many of Matthew’s Jewish readers wanted a Messiah – but they wanted him for themselves. He was going to be king of the Jews for the Jews – and all those scummy pagans better watch their assess 'cos they were about to get whipped.

Matthew explodes all that – this king has come for all people, all races, all religions.

I have to ask (if I'm to avoid the cultural and religious complacency Matthew seems so determined to upset in his readers): what challenges might this explosive story bring to me? Is Jesus just for the Jesus Army? (Well, no, of course not.) Just for evangelicals? (Well, no. Sure?... Yeah, I'm sure.) Just for Christians? (Well, er...) Just for – people like me?

Maybe, Jesus is less for people like me, and more for, well – people like Him: asylum-seekers, abused children, displaced foreigners, people of 'the wrong' religion?

If Epiphany demolishes some of my small-minded assumptions and makes me uncomfortable, maybe it's because that's what Matthew intended.

Prophetic change

2012-01-04T15:56:00.005Z

The prophetic word engenders change.

At our New Year celebration on December 31st, our main Jesus Army leader told us that the coming year would be a year of 'courageous faith and action'. He proceeded to unpack this with reference to courageous biblical heroes like Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, thrown into a furnace for refusing to bow to a mad king's statue, or Eleazar, who fought on when all his fellows fled. As we trust God and act on that trust, we will advance as a church.

Yes, 'courageous faith and action' could be a mere slogan. Yet I do believe it's prophetic for us - mainly because I trust the integrity of the man who brought it to us. (We're blessed with a main leader who is both spiritual and humble - good qualifications for being a conduit of God's 'now' word.)

Another leader, a mentor of mine, commented that 'Courageous faith and action' is certainly better than 'Action and hope for the best', which he confessed has sometimes been his approach.

The fact is that genuine prophetic words bring real change. Last night, at our little local Agape meal, I spoke a little about what 'courageous faith and action' may mean for us - in particular, being true to our radical call. So we explored Acts 2 again, and what it means to be 'devoted' - to word, fellowship, sacrament and worship (Acts 2:42). It produced some truly hearty discussion and a sense of change in the air for the coming year.

I think if I'd just chosen my own topic it wouldn't have been quite the same. As a pastor I've learnt that something's released when I support and unpack the word of the prophets.

So I'm looking forward to 2012. God, grant us courageous faith - and the courage to put it into action.

Truly human

2011-12-16T16:47:00.004Z

Writing a study on Philippians 2 today, and found it arresting. Here's what I wrote:

Paul the apostle was not afraid to be vulnerable or to humble himself before his converts and churches. In this passage, he exhorts his readers to be humble, but also shows them how.

Epaphroditus, Paul’s friend and co-worker, "was ill, near to death", writes Paul; "But God had mercy on him, and not only on him but on me also, lest I should have sorrow upon sorrow" (v.27). Paul loved his fellow-workers in Christ; the thought of losing one through death was genuinely distressing to him and he wasn’t afraid to show it.

This perfectly matches what he writes earlier in the chapter about how, if you’re truly humble, you will "count others more significant" (v.3) and look "not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others" (v.4). Timothy is another example of such wonderfully human humility and love (v.20-21).

But the ultimate example of such humility is Jesus. In his hymn to Jesus (v.5-11), Paul shows that His humility makes Jesus the most human of all – indeed, Jesus embodies what a human should be.

Startlingly, Paul also says that Jesus’ humility is also the sign of His being truly God: Jesus did not humble Himself despite being God; it was because He is God that He humbled Himself.

The nature of God – and therefore of human beings who bear His image – is generous, self-giving, humble love.

Now to live the life...

Lark or owl?

2011-12-15T14:48:00.004Z

One of the many, many adjustments to other human beings that come with living in community is how you use time. I’m not, here, talking about scheduled time – meetings and the like (plenty of them in community, but that’s not what I mean). With them it’s pretty clear: be there or think of a really groovy excuse (‘Sorry! I was leading someone to the Lord...’).

No, I’m talking about the in-between times, the non-specified times.

For example, take mornings and evenings, those un-allotted hours before (or after) the timetable whizzes in (or out) of play. Put simply, some people are morning larks; others are night owls.

Me, I’m no lark. When it comes to mornings, I’m right with the biblical proverb that says ‘Whoever blesses his neighbour with a loud voice, rising early in the morning, will be counted as cursing.’

Too right. Don’t talk to me in the mornings. Please – don’t be jolly. Leave me alone.

For me, the challenge of the morning is how to get up at the precise, timed-to-the-millisecond, moment which will allow me to roll into the bus that takes me to work on time. I’m far too intent on this delicately-timed operation (and on the fact that I can’t remember my name until 9 o’clock) to talk to anyone – let alone in a loud voice.

I’ve tried to change this. I know the holy people in our community rise early and work their way through the more important spiritual disciplines before breakfast. They are the larks, and their morning faces shine like the sun. But I can’t. I promise you, I’ve tried. I’m just simply not a morning person. Getting up at 7 o’clock for work is a minor miracle for me, I assure you.

Mind you, others are even more owlish than I am (I’m a tired middle-aged-parent-with-small-kids type who tends to burn the candle at neither end these days). But some are huge night hour adventurers. We have a young woman living in our community house at the moment who comes alive at 10 o’clock at night. That’s when she wants to go off to the park for madcap swinging fun. Or walk to the sea. Or make up a play. Or play an epic game of the Lord of the Rings board game (with extensions).

Unfortunately for her, at that point, all the larks are off to bed (as are the tired middle-aged-parent-with-small-kids types). So she’s on her own for a few hours, wondering what happened to living in community.

The secret, as with several squillion things in community, is give and take. Sometimes people have to get up a wee bit earlier – miss their Saturday lie in of epic proportions perhaps – to join more with community life. Others may stay up later than they prefer in order to join that late night heart-sharing in the kitchen.

In community, love comes down to the little things like this.

Then there’s the issue of time together versus time alone. But I think I’ll leave that post for now – till I’ve got time to write it...

Wesley's words

2011-12-12T12:36:00.002Z

To say the Christians did this only till the destruction of Jerusalem, is not true; for many did it long after. Not that there was any positive command for so doing: it needed not; for love constrained them. It was a natural fruit of that love wherewith each member of the community loved every other as his own soul. And if the whole Christian Church had continued in this spirit, this usage must have continued through all ages. To affirm therefore that Christ did not design it should continue, is neither more nor less than to affirm, that Christ did not design this measure of love should continue. I see no proof of this.

- John Wesley, commenting on Acts 2:45 ("And parted them to all as any one had need")

Too busy to blog

2011-12-02T13:22:00.006Z

I confess, of late I've been a wee bit too busy to blog.

But, until I blog again, here's a few posts and things I've come across recently which I liked and thought I'd share:

Relevant magazine on why membership matters.

My housemate Tschaka musing about community - and while you're on that theme, another housemate Stu wrote some amusing (and searching) questions about community to a young aspirant recently and blogged them at my request.

Some fascinating early church perspectives on friendship from doctor Trevor (more to follow I think).

Only Peter Rollins could deny the resurrection and be so inspiring at the same time.

And on a lighter note: this vid of children and marshmallows has done the rounds, but since we watched it at both our Sunday night café at Coventry Jesus Centre and our staff meeting at work, I thought I'd share here.

Hope to blog soon.

True lies

2011-11-17T14:44:00.008Z

I’m re-reading The Lord of the Rings after many years.

It’s prequel, The Silmarillion, is a great favourite of mine, one of the most beautiful books I’ve ever read outside of Scripture and Shakespeare. And I’m reading The Hobbit to my 8- and 6-year-olds – so I thought it was time to revisit LOTR.

Tolkein expressed distaste for allegory, and the way that genre seeks to hound the reader into truth. He preferred the truths that come sideways through myth. Nevertheless, last night I read something which opened up a truth I’ll jot here, for those interested. (If mythic/fantasy literature doesn’t do it for you, feel free to stop here. See you next post if I haven’t put you off for good.)

So: The Lord of the Rings. I’ve arrived at that part in the story in which we meet Denathor, steward of Gondor. For those not familiar with Tolkein’s epic, Denathor has long ruled over that embattled country and its besieged capital, Minas Tirith. He rules in the absence of a king, just barely holding off the might and horror of neighbouring Mordor, the land of shadow.

Denathor is a man in despair – a despair that, a few chapters after we meet him, descends into madness. Convinced that all is lost and hope is gone, he tries to burn himself alive, together with his wounded son and heir.

The source of his despair, it transpires has come from having seen into a palantír (non-Tolkein readers, think crystal ball; Tolkein readers, forgive the comparison) in which he has wrestled with the will of the evil Lord of the Rings, Sauron. Through what he has permitted Denathor to see in the palantír, Sauron has deceived the steward into the crushing hopelessness which defeats him.

But it is what Sauron permits Denathor to see that struck me: he lets him see the truth.

Nothing that Denathor sees (or is permitted to see) in the palantír is untrue. He sees enemy armies amassing in great might and power, he sees the sparseness of his own and his allies’ strength. They cannot win. All hope is lost.

Yet Denethor is deceived by the truth. (In the end, it is two highly improbable heroes, two little half-size hobbits, that will bring triumph against Sauron’s might. But these Denathor did not see – nor did Sauron.)

When Satan, ‘the father of lies’, wishes to deceive, to wear out the saints, to sow discouragement and despair, he does not always lie outright. His most compelling lies can be those that are true. Lies that show truth – but not the whole truth.

“You’re not growing.” “That didn’t work.” “And you – you’re a sinner.” “Masses of people in the UK couldn’t care less about God.” “Sometimes, you couldn’t care less either.” “No-one’s listening.” “You make so little difference.”

And then, the whispered suggestion comes, so quiet, it seems to come from your own thought: “Why not just give up?”

But it’s a deceit. God delights to perform his greatest acts through the little people. He works in the small, the hidden, the ordinary, the overlooked. Watch out for mangers – they’ve been know to hold Messiahs. Watch out for executed criminals – they’ve been known to save the world. Watch out for that ragtag, disregarded, often odd, usually confused, rather-behind-the-times bunch called the Christian Church: they’re the firstfruits of God’s glorious new creation.

Let me learn the lesson of Denathor. I want to avoid listening to lies – especially when they’re true.

The kingdom is coming. Come, O Lord!

Mark and Helen

2011-11-08T13:21:00.006Z

We're grieving the deaths of two friends we hadn't seen for a while, Mark and Helen. We first met them through the Coventry Jesus Centre (see yesterday's post and others), but they became part of our family for a little while, often visiting us at White Stone House, our community home. They even spent a few days away in Kent with us all last February.

Mark was an active, intelligent man, always stimulating to talk to. His devotion to Helen was obvious. Helen was quiet and sweet, with a wonderful impish sense of humour that could take us by surprise at times.

We lost touch in the early summer. They had been beset with difficulties, and found it hard to come all the way to Coventry (they lived in the next town). Also, I got the impression that Mark found the way his heart was being opened up by the love of a big family rather scary: when hurts run deep, it's not easy to open up.

We remained on very warm terms, I exchanged friendly emails with Mark from time to time, and they popped into Coventry Jesus Centre sometimes, too.

So imagine our shock and grief when we heard, the other day, from Mark's mother, that Mark and Helen had been found dead in their house.

In all the pain, in the fond memories now tinted with sorrow, in the regret, the inevitable stabs of guilt ('could we have done something more?'), in the anger ('why were they failed by the system?') and the helplessness, I cling to this: they tasted love - for each other, certainly, and also, for a time, among us; they knew Jesus; they received his love; they're in heaven.

Another friend of mine wrote a poem just recently after the death of his mother. But as I read it, I was thinking of Mark and Helen.

It was a long time
But she could see now.
All those tears that had poured from her eyes
And those inside
Blurring her vision and drowning her heart
Were all wiped away
She could see.

She came from a long line of broken hearts
Just an ordinary woman longing for righteousness
But she shone brighter than any celestial body
When she landed here upon this New Earth.
She used to be my mother,
But she is taken up with bigger things now.

It’s been a long time,
Something like and not like a thousand years
All spent gazing at this daisy
But as she will tell you
Its fascination is endless
(Like everything else here)
And there’s no rush,
For if time is here at all
It is a river without end
If not, then time has poured into a shoreless ocean
Either way there is no rush.

Mark and Helen - you will be sorely missed. Until we meet again, rest well - and enjoy those daisies.

Naked ladies and raised eyebrows

2011-11-07T16:03:00.005Z

So, there's this Christian chap touring 66 cities around the UK, speaking on all 66 books of the Bible as he goes (one in each). While he was in Coventry, he dropped by our Jesus Centre and interviewed the manager, Piers.

He was very enthusiastic and affirming about what we seek to do and to be. So encouraging, I thought I'd share his blog post (which includes the interview vid) here. Enjoy.

A funny postscript: the blog post is entitled '"Bombs and naked ladies" - a good way to pick up attention from Googlers, even if their not the kind of Googlers likely to be interested in a preaching tour. As I was looking at it earlier an old friend dropped by. As we were chatting, I noticed him raise his eyebrows as he glanced at my PC monitor. Only after I left did I realise he may not have realised the blog was about two icons of Coventry's past (the blitz and Lady Godiva) rather than anything unsavoury.

I think he may be praying for me right now. Hey ho. I can always use people praying for me.

Naturally speaking

2011-11-04T14:02:00.005Z

I’ve been thinking about natural strengths recently, partly prompted by writing a study on two pretty impressively able characters, one from the Old Testament – Elisha – and one from the New – Paul. On the one hand, God clearly chooses, calls, and uses people of capacity and character to further his purposes. On the other, he chooses what is “foolish in the world to shame the wise and what is weak in the world to shame the strong”. And he calls us to “die to” much that may be naturally good, for the sake of something spiritually better. (Or so Hinds Feet on High Places says, so it must be true, eh?)

So I posed the question on Twitter: “What is the right biblical attitude to natural talent? Die to it? Use it? Both? Half & half? Or what? Answers on a posttweet please.”

Most of the answers were basically positive towards natural strengths and talents, with the caveat sometimes added that we should “give glory to God” for them (Not always quite sure what this means in practice beyond putting pious expressions like “Praise the Lord” on our lips, which I can never quite get into despite being a passionate Christian. Post for another day?)

Anyway – Elisha and Paul. Some thoughts taken from the studies I wrote:

Elisha has many qualities: his determination (ploughing parched ground with twelve yoke of oxen); his full-blooded commitment (burning the tools of his old occupation when called to follow Elijah); his loyalty and resolve to follow his mentor closely once he sensed the time for Elijah’s departure was near, his heart-devotion glimpsed in his quiet grief at the thought of this departure. His boldness and faith are evident in his request for a "double portion" of Elijah's spirit.

Israel had many kings, but they were rarely her real leaders. True leaders were anointed not just with oil, but with the Spirit. In the era of 2Kings, the monarchy was so unspiritual that true godly authority in Israel had reverted to prophets. The issue of Elijah’s successor was vital because he would represent God’s authority in Israel. The Bible narrative hints at Elijah’s likeness to Israel’s founding prophet: his parting the water by striking it with his cloak is reminiscent of Moses’ parting the Red Sea with his staff. When Elisha is able to do this, too, he is shown to be the true successor of Elijah, just as Joshua was successor to Moses. Elisha now carries God’s authority.

Reading and pondering all this, I find myself asking: which of Elisha’s qualities can I aim to grow in? But also – how can we, in our church, ensure those with anointing (rather than just natural ability or a “leadership” label) carry true authority among us?

In Paul’s world there were three key groups: Jews, Greeks and Romans. Paul was the ideal man to represent the gospel across his world: a pure-bred Jew who studied under a leading rabbi; a Greek-speaker with good knowledge of philosophy; a Roman citizen by birth. He is at pains to stress his Jewish pedigree to an audience of zealous Jews; he makes use of his Roman citizenship on more than one occasion; in Athens and Corinth, he quotes Greek poetry and philosophy.

Sometimes these advantages led to gospel opportunities: impressed with Paul’s excellent Greek, a tribune allows him to speak to the Jews, whom Paul addresses in Hebrew. Sometimes they led to Paul escaping imprisonment or punishment, as in Jerusalem and previously in Philippi. And sometimes they did him no good at all: the Jewish crowd still turn on him in Jerusalem; the Athenians dismiss him as a "babbler"; tradition says Paul was beheaded in Rome!

Paul saw his natural advantages as rubbish compared to the “surpassing worth of knowing Christ” and having God’s power working in him. But he certainly wasn’t against using natural strengths when the situation called for them!

We’ve landed slap bang in the middle of another paradox, I feel. I must ask myself: what are my natural strengths? Am I able to “consider them as rubbish”? Conversely, can I freely offer them to God to use them for his plans and purpses, for the gospel?

Kirk, Spock and Samosas

2011-10-31T14:20:00.005Z

"The good of the one outweighs the good of the many" according to Captain James T. Kirk of the USS Enterprise.

Good American philoposphy, that. But is it true?

You might think that our life in community is an expression of the opposite view: "The good of the many outweighs the good of the few, or the one", a view, in fact, expressed by Kirk's famous pointy-eared comrade, Mr Spock.

Is this the case?

Last night our community house family all dressed in Indian clothes, ate samosas and bhaji's, improvised bhangra music - one even made a turban out of a scarf. Why? We were honouring the birthday of one of our newer members who is from India. We wanted to say "This is your home. You can be you here. We love what you bring to us."

In this case, "the good of the one" was uppermost - rightly and vitally so.

For any community, any family, the good of the many and the good of the few - or the one - cannot be separated.

"If one member suffers, all suffer together; if one member is honored, all rejoice together" (1 Corinthians 12:26)

Simple

2011-10-16T19:51:00.001+01:00

Yesterday was a sad day for some of our community - perhaps especially the kids: our cat, Lucy (named after a queen in Narnia), had to be put down after having been hit by a car.

At our little burial in the garden, my 3-year-old son said 'We'll see Lucy again when she wakes up.' Well meaning adults, including myself, stepped in to put the little chap right: Lucy wasn't going to wake up.

'When Jesus comes back, we'll all wake up' he retorted. Saving a debate about animals and the afterlife for another day, it did rather seem that his child's faith had trumped us all.

The next morning, our worship time had a strong strand of hope in Jesus' return. I thought of my son's simple belief that Jesus comes all will be well. Central to our faith, that. For Christians, hope has a name: Jesus.

A few days earlier I had gone to see a very old member of our church who lives in a nursing home. She talks quite a lot and is not always easy to follow. I listen hard because I love her, and because amidst the disconnected jottings from the war and her distant youth and memories, she throws in some gems.

'Do you have anything you'd like to say to the people back at church?' I asked her. She nodded.

'Sometimes you grow and then you stop' she said. 'Then sometimes you grow and then you stop again.'

Now this may not seem very profound to you. But let me tell you, dear reader, I felt I'd just heard the word of the Lord. I'd been agonizing over our lack of growth this year, despite plenty of effort. God was speaking to me about letting Him work different seasons into our shared life.

So there we have it. Out of the mouth of babes... and very old ladies.

Sometimes we complex types need to hear the simple word of hope in the midst of all our strivings. Sometimes you grow and then you stop and then sometimes you grow and then you stop again. But when Jesus comes, we'll all wake up.

Why live in community?

2011-09-29T15:16:00.001+01:00

My friends, Stevo and Olivia Scott, talk honestly and inspiringly about why they live in intentional Christian community.

Angry at the pigs

2011-09-19T12:03:00.003+01:00

Last week, I read some words of the prophet Amos, possibly the angriest man in the Bible. Here are some of my thoughts on Amos, chapter 8.

The rich ruling classes of Amos’s day resented the worship festivals in Israel’s calendar; they meant a day’s less trade for them to get fat on. What was more, their crooked and deceitful trade was riddled with injustice and oppressed the poor.

“When will the new moon be over,
that we may sell grain?
And the Sabbath,
that we may offer wheat for sale,
that we may make the measure small and our profit great
and deal deceitfully with false balances,
that we may buy the poor for silver
and the needy for a pair of sandals?..” (Amos 8:5-6)

Amos’s response to these selfish and corrupt fat cats, is to announce a judgement on their nation so fearsome that it makes difficult reading.

“So many dead bodies! They are thrown everywhere!” (Amos 8:3)

This prophet’s voice relentlessly carries within it God’s naked fury at the oppression of the poor. Perhaps, if we find the force of the anger in such passages ‘difficult’, it points to something of our own complacency or insensitivity towards the things that stir the white heat of God’s passion. God simply cannot abide the kind of selfishness that fattens itself at another’s expense.

“The end has come upon my people Israel” God declares through Amos; “I will never again pass by them”.

It was with Amos’s fiery words still reverberating around me that I read, today, an article about Sir Philip Green (knight of the realm), the multi-billionaire businessman who runs some of the biggest names on British high streets (Topshop, Topman, Dorothy Perkins, Burton, Miss Selfridge, BHS...)

According to this article, Sir Phil dodged tax on his self-awarded £1.2 billion paycheque. (His business empire is conveniently “owned” by his wife who has not done a single day’s work for the company, lives in Monaco, and pays not a penny of income tax.)

Any time it takes his fancy, Sir Phil can pay himself huge sums of money without having to pay any tax. A distasteful fact, made utterly disgusting when compared to the life of the sweatshop labourers in Mauritius upon whose back he has built his £5bn fortune. In these sweatshops, Sri Lankans, Indians and Bangladeshis toil 12 hours a day, six days a week, for minimal pay.

What would Amos say?

And what am I saying? How am I living? Where do I shop? What do I wear? (I don’t think wearing a wristband with WWJD on it is quite enough here.)

Do I get angry at injustice and oppression of the poor? If so, what do I do about it?

Honest to God

2011-09-17T12:20:00.001+01:00

This afternoon, we're going evangelizing in Leamington Spa. For those less than conversant with evangelical lingo, this means a team from our church will be talking to people on the streets about faith, about Jesus, about life. Maybe praying with some.

I for one will also be seeking to do a lot of listening, if I can, because I'm hoping to do more than just spray 'answers' around - I want to connect with people's hearts.

Which brings me to a question: which is more important in evangelism - honesty or certainty? Put another way, telling or listening? You see, we really do have something - someone - to proclaim. But it's not as neat and tidy as having all the answers. Sometimes knowing and walking with God is more like a wrestling match than a picnic in the park; more like a desert than a cool drink on a hot day.

So how do we tread the line between confidently, excitedly, spreading the reality we've found, at the same time as being real and vulnerable with people about the struggle faith can be at times?

Jesus appointed his followers 'witnesses'. Perhaps this is the key: we share what we've known and found of his life, and don't need to be bashful about what we still struggle with. And perhaps this is another key: Jesus appointed his followers 'fishers of men' - so there's room in our honesty and humility for a strong call.

I'll let you know how it goes. Pray for us. Pray for them.

How (Not) to Speak of God

2011-09-15T12:12:00.002+01:00

How (Not) to Speak of God: Marks of the Emerging Church by Peter Rollins

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Rollins' community, Ikon, 'describes itself as iconic, apocalyptic, heretical, emerging and failing' which gives you something of the flavour.

Rollins explores paradox after paradox with the delight and unapolagetic fervour of a true postmodern. Indeed, what makes this book so arresting is that Rollins is not a theologian talking about postmodernism; he is a postmodern theologian talking about God.

This book threw all my beliefs around, causing them to land more deeply rooted - but sometimes upside-down. If you read it, prepare to think hard in some counter-instinctive directions.

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The fidelity of betrayal

2011-09-15T12:03:00.001+01:00

The Fidelity of Betrayal: The Ir/Religious Heart of Christianity by Peter Rollins

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I read this straight after 'How (Not) To Speak of God'. As in that book, Rollins delves deliberately into paradoxes here - not as someone who wants to engage in apologetics and 'explain' the difficulties of faith (in either the slightly embarrased or slightly bombastic manner of some apologists). Unashamedly postmodern, Rollins delights in paradox - he shouts paradox from the rooftops - he sets paradox on fire and waves it from the treetops.

Central to this book is the (yes, paradoxical) assertion that in order to be faithful to God, we will sometimes need to betray God. In fact, if I understand him right, Rollins is actually saying we need to betray our idolotrous human certainties about God in order to continually stay alive to the possibility of encountering God more authentically (which is a subtly different point though I think I understand why Rollins puts his case more provocatively).

The worst parts of this book were those where the opaque prose forced me to read a paragrapah several times in vain for understanding (usually before giving up and moving on); conversely, the best parts were some of the stories and parables Rollins used to illumine my way through his arguments.

Stimulating read and it will go on affecting me. I will certainly be reading Rollins' next book 'Insurrection' due out in October.

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Love and madness

2011-09-13T10:26:00.005+01:00

My old schoolfriend - another James as it happens - has recently become the vicar of a church in Luton. His inaugural address to his new flock was based on Acts 2; he explored something of what it means to live with 'everything in common'. It was good to listen to him, even if he has developed a mysterious southern accent in the years since we were schooled near Liverpool. (Apparently his church is called 'Saint Frarncis'...)

Before he delivered his talk - which I understand was greeted with enthusiasm by the good people of Saint Frarncis - he tweeted to let me know he was going to mention me in it. His actual words were: In my first sermon at StFrancis, Luton, I intend to quote Tertullian, Tom Wright and @n0rma1 (that's me, by the way, for those unfamilair with Tweet jargon) - in no particular order.

Good heavens. Two titans of theology, one ancient, one modern - and me. And in no particular order!

James referred to me and the community life I and my sisters and brothers pursue as a noteworthy way of living out the challenge of Acts 2.

It was a blessing to be considered a blessing, though I did wonder if James was rather too swift to pidgeonhole our lifestyle as 'a calling for some'. It's not that I disagree, it's just that in my experience that sort of talk tends to lead to many Christians breathing a sigh of relief and getting on with being the same as everyone else.

But I mustn't be glib. You can't sustain a common-purse-community life without being convinced that you can do no other. A mentor of mine describes our community - of which he too is a member - as 'strenuous'. Shane Claiborne said to me recently that he sees us as 'community on steroids' (I loved that). And, in fact, the words James quoted me as having said to him, many years ago, were that Acts 2 had 'ruined my life - in a good way.'

A life of full sharing, no personal money, house and hearth shared, is a pretty tough call and cuts across a lot of natural preferences. Just for the record, I do not live in community because I like having no money or because I like having other people in my living room (all the time) or because I really enjoy other people choosing the colour scheme of my kitchen or because I always wanted to have my weekly diary substantially written by others or... well, you get the idea.

I live in community because I have to. Because I can't read the New Testament without it shouting community at me. Because God is a community and I want to be like him (even if he does bewilder me much of the time). Because I really do believe that radical, root-level, self-renouncing love is the way Jesus lived and because no disciple is above his master, I have to do so too.

I still agree wholeheartedly with what I said to James all those years ago - except perhaps the bit about 'in a good way'.

Okay, okay, it is a good way. But it can feel like madness. There have been times when I've felt like if I see another person I may kill them - with my words, if not with the kitchen knife. Times when I've walked round and round the block I live on, with my head pounding, thinking 'I can't take this anymore'. Times when some relationship tension has swelled to fill my entire emotional world and I can't escape from it, I can't 'go home' because they're in my home. Times when vision is dim and I can't remember why or what for. Times when I'm fed up with my family, neighbours and friends thinking I'm odd (or, worse still, thinking I'm 'radical') and I just yearn to be bloody ordinary like everyone else.

But in all this, just as much or more than in the times when living in community is inspiring and wonderful , I learn what it means to live Christ.

James said I gave up a lot of opportunities to live in community. Maybe. But I would not be even a tenth of the person I am today if were not for the madness that ruined my life - in a good, way.

Perhaps it would appropriate to leave the last words of this post to St Francis. This is from his Canticle of Love (if you like it, read it all here):

I have entirely renounced both the world and myself in order to buy love. If I owned all creation I would gladly trade that for love. But I find that love has deceived me. I have given everything and yet I do not know where I am being drawn to. Love has destroyed me. I am looked at as if I am mad, and because I have been sold, I am no longer worth anything...

...In this anguish of Love, Love, Love, O my adorable Jesus, I would die while embracing you, O Jesus, my sweet spouse. Love, Love, I beg for death from you; O pitying Jesus receive me and transform me into thyself. Remember that I am passing away killing myself with love. I do not know where I am, Jesus, my hope, destroy me with love.

L(h)eaven

2011-09-09T09:38:00.007+01:00

Adam was gripped with a passion to share God with others. He began to give himself to people in a local housing estate, serving his neighbours, speaking of God, listening to hurts and fears, laughing with people.

He started to be known as 'the Jesus man' - which was fine by him.

But as time went by, nobody was converted. No-one seemed to be having the same experience as young Adam had had. They were glad to be friends, genuinely appreciated him. Adam went on serving, praying, but he was frustrated.

Adam wasn't alone, of course; he was part of a church and drew huge strength of purpose from it. One day, Adam was talking to Guy, an old man and much-respected leader in his church, a revered figure, whom the younger man looked up to a great deal.

"You need to be braver" said the great man, "bolder, extend your faith. Call people with clarity and confidence. Make disciples."

Adam went away and thought a great deal about what Guy had said. And he went on serving, listening, laughing, praying, and no-one was converted. This went on for many years, in fact until the Adam was no longer young.

By now he had many, many friends. Indeed, some of the people in that estate would probably have died for Adam. He'd seen the Dodd children grow from birth. He'd spoken for Sarah's son in court. He'd been there for Pat's family while she was losing her battle with cancer.

It was many years later when the first healing occured. Tracey's baby was deaf the doctor's said. Adam held him and prayed quietly. After that, tests showed he could hear. Stan had been going downhill with Alzheimer's. But after one of Adam's customary visits, Stan got better. He just got better. Julie had a twisted leg before Adam did something - nobody had quite the same story but apparently it had something to do with olive oil - and her leg was straight after that.

Still nobody was converted, or at least not in quite the way Adam had hungered for when he was young. But by now a lot of people believed in God, followed Jesus, joined Adam and his friends in the church. Janice was speaking to Becky again. Margaret smiled these days. Jim was doing odd jobs for everyone in Chancery Street. A couple of younger lads, Tom and Steve, were so loyal to Adam, they ended up moving in with him and few other Christians from his church. In fact, Steve became a bit of a right hand man to Adam...

*

In heaven, Adam was surrounded with hundreds of those friends, many of whom had been healed and had healed others and loved and lived and shared over many years. One heavenly day, Adam met the old leader he'd spoken to back on earth, all those years ago.

"Well," said the leader, "You didn't do what I said."

Adam said nothing, but he slipped to his knees and grasped Guy's hand and kissed it. Then he said, "Thank you. For if I hadn't have decided not to do what you said, I would have never quite known what I was to do. It was all thanks to you."

And the older man smiled.

Stop praying to the Lord!

2011-09-08T08:16:00.002+01:00

Here's a radical thought. How about if we stopped praying to the Lord?

In case you think I'm advocating defection to paganism, let me explain. We often address our praying to 'Lord' (or at any rate that's the word we use as commas in our prayers, along with the ubiquitous 'just' - 'and Lord we just ask that Lord You would just...)

But what resonance or meaning does 'Lord' have for us? Lords are the members of a possibly-soon-to-be-scrapped second chamber of Parliament. Or a cricket ground.

But it's not just that the word has no meaning for us. We no longer live in a fuedal system - when the word 'lord' had plenty of relevance. But even if we did, or even if our sense of history was enlivened enough to still engage with the word as a living one - does that make it a positive term of address for God. Many, perhaps most Medieval lords were harsh, even brutal. Do we want to name God after such oppressive power?

I'm fully aware that the Bible uses the term 'kyrios' - Lord (or even Caesar) - to denote God and Christ. In the New Testament and especially in Paul I believe there was some deliberate political subversion going on there, too. ('This is the true Caesar, and he's totally different to that guy in Rome.')

In the New Testament, whatever they were doing with the word we translate as Lord, it certainly had currency at the time.

I know some have suggested we use words with contemporary relevance like 'boss', but I can never take that entirely seriously. 'Master' has the advantage of freshness (and the advantage of being St Francis's favourite term of address towards God) but its reference to slavery takes us back into an unhelpful concept base.

Here's a suggestion. How about if we made it our common practice to address God as Love. Afterall, that's biblical - God is love, says John. Love is God's first best name as the hymn writer put it.

Now I'm aware that the word 'love' has come to mean all manner of petty or even selfish or lustful things in our day. I know that Greeks had the good sense to use different words for different loves.

But maybe if we were to deliberately address God as Love, it would rescue our concept of love a little. Maybe it would subvert those other petty loves, like Paul subverted the petty Caesars.

More still, rather than having a prayer life built round a distant, soon-to-be-abolished authority, we'd be continually reminding ourselves that the God we worship and pray to is love - self-giving, serving, generous love.

Imagine: 'And, Love, we just ask that you'd show us the way. Love, we pray you'd bring your healing power here. Dear Love, we give our lives to You again...'

Love could change everything.

RAW deeper

2011-09-05T09:56:00.003+01:00

And for those who'd like a deeper look into what RAW was about, here's three little vids showing snapshots of what went on each day... (Spot the little ode in my honour!)

RAW 2011 Highlights

2011-09-05T09:45:00.002+01:00

Here's the highlights video from RAW (Real & Wild) 2011, the youth event that I helped lead recently. My last one as it goes; they've put me out to seed now...

This video captures the essence of the event really well.

Brennan's blessing

2011-08-20T11:53:00.001+01:00

This benediction, often used my Brennan Manning, has got me thinking:

May all of your expectations be frustrated,
May all of your plans be thwarted,
May all of your desires be withered into nothingness,
That you may experience the powerlessness and poverty of a child
And can sing and dance in the love of God
Who is Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

It seems almost entirely a maladiction - but somehow speaks more genuinely of the blessing God gives than the syrupy verses and poems more likely to be found on fridge magnets.

Selah.

'Boris, where's your broom?'

2011-08-11T12:44:00.006+01:00

There have been two 'breakouts' on the streets this week. Two examples of people power.

Firstly, obviously, rioters; smashing, grabbing, looting.

But we've also seen people taking to the streets, brooms in hands, to clear up. One lad in Liverpool announced on Facebook that he was going out to sweep up - 60 people arrived to help him. The Mayor of London was asked 'Boris, where's your broom?' and joined in the sweeping.

I think both are revolutionary in their way. The first lot turned over more than just bins: bored kids (I've been told the average age of the rioters is 15) got drunk on a heady cocktail of adrenaline, selfishness - and group-power. An abuse of power certainly, but let's not overlook the fact that they had it - maybe fleetingly, certainly destructively - but they had it.

The sweepers were a grass roots movement of people banding together. It was people serving, not for reward but because they care. It was people joined in a cause they felt was simply right. I can't help feeling what they did was a more eloquent, powerful statement than any politician has delivered this week.

Power destructive; power constructive. Power that grabs; power that gives.

In a very deep sense, I think, the central question of every person who ever lives is: which power will I align myself with?

A grass-roots revolution of service, community, unity, positivity, peaceful resistance, which speaks eloquently of something better? Sounds like something I'd wanna live for.

Hang on - it sounds like something I am living for...

Deliver us from evil

2011-08-10T12:43:00.006+01:00

What makes violence and lawlessness suddenly erupt across a nation?

In pondering this question, and thinking about the recent riots in cities across the UK, I drew a comment on Twitter from a church pastor in Liverpool. 'What we are seeing is EVIL,' he said.

And who can disagree, when people turn feral, and smash, loot and burn indiscriminately?

Yet, it prompted me to delve a little deeper into the nature of the evil we are seeing.

Firstly, there's a well of social evil here. As a London-based youth worker commented to Christian thinktank Ekklesia yesterday:

'Of course there is a huge amount of criminality and copycat looting involved in all this. But to pretend it has nothing whatsoever to do with the erosion of our social fabric, the closing of youth centres, and the sense among a mass of people - not least the young - that they have no real future in a country where the poorest are being made to sacrifice most while bankers get away with murder... that's pure fantasy.'

I believe a truly Christly response has to include the recognition that society's rottenness has, close to its source, injustice, the divide between power-brokers and the broken. And the Church of Jesus should speak for those without voices. We cannot just shout 'thuggery' and call for tougher measures. We must ask 'why?' We must work for justice and stand alongside and among the disadvantaged.

But to leave it there risks excusing the execrable. Because there is another level of evil at work here: moral evil. 'I'm not really bothered' said a Manchester rioter. 'I'll keep doing it every day until I get caught.' 'We can do what we want' crowed a female London rioter.

Even psychologists, analysing group behaviour, admit the presence of basic selfishness in the mix: 'For most people looting is opportunistic' says Jason Nier, associate professor of psychology at Connecticut College. And greed is certainly a factor.'

At the heart of the human problem is the problem of the human heart, as a cliché I once heard has it. Like so many clichés, it's true. At heart, people are selfish. (My friend Andy had some thoughts about this which you can read here.)

It's not just the gangs, of course. Bankers gambled with economic stability - for greed. Politicians helped themselves to public money - for greed. Media moguls turned a blind eye when journalists were immoral - for greed... Gangs smash and loot shops - for greed.

But we must go deeper still. Under social evil, under moral evil, there is spiritual evil. As Paul the apostle describes it:

'We do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil.'

Spiritual powers, by their very nature, hide. They masquerade behind human evil - be it greed expressed in violent looting or greed expressed in high-level corruption.

How do we oppose them? How do we engage in a spiritual 'clean up' campaign?

We pray - 'at all times in the Spirit, with all prayer and supplication' as Paul writes later in the same passage quoted above. We share the gospel and see its transforming power at work in lives changing selfish hearts into new hearts. We speak out for justice and against what is unfair because apart from anything else, giving the voiceless a voice may prevent them from finding a voice through wielding a baseball bat.

'The weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh' writes Paul, 'but have divine power to destroy strongholds.'

Pray, love, evangelise, love the poor, speak for justice.

In fact - let's be the church.

Peacemaker

2011-08-10T11:16:00.000+01:00

A poem by my friend Wilf.

Peacemaker

A peacemaker is not a piecemaker-
Patching together
The ragged unravellings of relationships.
He is in the place of warfare
In the place of the Prince of Peace
As his pores
His tear ducts
His lungs
Sweating weeping breathing,
"Peace be with you"
In all he does.

Monday morning radicals

2011-08-08T17:39:00.002+01:00

Reflecting on the Jesus Army-ran youth event, RAW (Real and Wild) that we just got to the end of, last Saturday. It was the fifth RAW (and for me the last - I'm too old and they're putting me out to seed...)

But this quote from one of the rising generation summed up for me something close to the very heart of why we do RAW, and what it's, ultimately, all about:

I was asked this morning if, post-RAW, I felt a bit deflated after all the excitement and inspiration and fun. I thought for a moment and realised, No, I wasn't feeling deflated, but in fact this is what it is all about; reality, back to the normal life, Monday morning, Tuesday agape, Wednesday cell group.... that's the whole point right that after RAW it all carries on. Real changes aren't just for the weekend; real changes are still there on Monday morning!

Brilliant. Monday morning radicality. It's what changes the world.

A time to rest

2011-07-28T17:35:00.001+01:00

I got a lot done today. Unfortunately, almost none of it was what I set out to do at the beginning of the day. Phones ganged up on me. Emails ambushed me. My agenda was hijacked.

It's tempting, tonight, to hive off to the office at home and get some work done - some of that work I wanted to get done today. After all, I'm heavily involved in leading a national youth event next week. Et cetera. Okay, so tonight's supposed to be a night of deliberate friendship, yeah, but if you knew the pressure I'm under...

No. Wrong. I must not bow to the subtle workaholism that drives. Spending time with people tonight is life. I won't put life on hold.

Not many people get to the end of their life, look back, and say 'I wish I'd spent more time at the office.'

So. Tonight's time for rest. Time for friendship. Time for play. Time for worship, perhaps, or for sharing of hearts. But I'm staying away from the office.

I may even switch my phone off.

Now that would be radical.

Stop. Look. Listen.

2011-07-25T16:43:00.007+01:00

We're a community often at full tilt, so often doors open, welcome-all-comers, so it's important to have the odd occasion when, as the old road safety mantra put it, we 'stop, look and listen'.

Stop and appreciate the community God has made us. Look with fresh eyes. Listen to each other, and by doing that, perhaps, discern a fresh word from God.

Tonight we're doing just that. All our 'house family' (those who live and share life in the community house) are staying in; we've asked others, for tonight, not to come round. We're having a romantic evening in.

First a celebratory three-course meal (what are we celebrating? one another of course, with glorious unapologetic abandon). Then a couple of our sisters have something up their sleeves to get us opening up our hearts and minds to each other a bit. Then, we'll pile into the lounge for hot drinks and - later for those who want - we're going to project a nature programme onto the wall and be wowed by some elephants and their friends.

I hope we’ll all enjoy it (this can be a challenge as I’ve written before here and here). As an old Jesus Army song (so old, it was written before the Jesus Army was even called the Jesus Army) has it –

Slow down and appreciate your brother. Contemplate the grace of God in him...

Relating to Jane Austen

2011-07-14T11:54:00.004+01:00

My 88-year-old grandmother is staying with us this week. It’s lovely to have her, but represents something of a challenge in that she has next to no short-term memory. (Long term’s okay, so she knows who we are and all that.) One of our strategies in entertaining her was to get hold of a clutch of Jane Austen DVDs to watch – she enjoys them and can follow them pretty well because she knows the storylines from of old.

Thus it was that I found myself watching Pride and Prejudice this week.

Bit of background: I was put off Austen when I had to study Mansfield Park for A-Level (not her best novel). When I picked up Pride and Prejudice, only a few years ago, out of a sense of duty (I was an English teacher, after all, and it is supposed to be one of the greatest novels in the canon of English literature). But it was a wonderful surprise. Laugh-out-loud funny, bitingly ironic, penetrating in its insights into human nature. A great, great read. (I know, I know, I should have known. They were right.)

Quite apart from any literary/artistic pleasure in watching the film, however, I found myself freshly struck by the utterly different approach to courtship and marriage that society took, in those days.

In our post-sexual revolution era, Austen’s society may seem unutterably quaint. Here are some of the rules: Speak to the opposite sex only either in the watchful presence of others or in the formal and safe intimacy of a ballroom dance. Absolutely no physical contact, except the proffering of a hand to help a lady into a carriage or suchlike; to greet the opposite sex, a slight bow is quite enough. Approach not a young lady with any romantic proposals; approach rather her father or guardian to ask his permission. And so on.

Quaint? Charming? Or repressed? Perhaps all three. But it got me thinking.

One of the things we have had to work carefully on over the years, as we have worked out our Christian community lifestyle, is how to handle relationships between the sexes. A community like ours could all too easily be littered with “gone wrong” relationships or mired with sexual looseness and flirtation. Nevertheless, men and women will inevitably be (ahem) interested in each other and, as the Prayer Book has it, “marriage is an honourable estate”.

So how can we provide a safe, holy, yet human framework for such relationships to begin, flourish, maybe end (cleanly), maybe advance (matrimonially)?

In our community, we have developed a procedure we call “relating”, which helps with just these issues. We uphold a basic segregation between sexes; physical contact is kept within appropriate bounds; pastoral advice and involvement is encouraged before embarking upon initiating a “special” relationship with the opposite sex. Should a couple “relate”, there is guidance in how to proceed in a mature manner: a married couple will be involved to provide support and advice; time together is limited to an amount appropriate given the seriousness of the relationship at that stage. Physical contact and sexual desires are kept under control. And (unlike Austen’s society), we don’t rate the suitability of a match upon how many thousands of “pahnds” they stand to inherit, but by encouraging careful consideration of the couple’s compatibility and mutual vision.

Perhaps it all sounds rather quaint. Charming? Maybe repressed. But I dare to say it keeps us from a great deal of harm as a community, and has built some strong and superb marriages over the years, too. Indeed, we have a young man living with us who is advancing towards such a quality marriage right now. Statistics on divorce, broken families, teenage pregnancies, and the whole sorry state of the “broken society” incline me to thank God very much for the wisdom of such an approach.

I think Jane Austen might just have agreed.

I live with her!

2011-07-12T16:32:00.001+01:00

This made me want to move in. Then I realised - I already live with her (and twelve others, including my wife and three kids!)

For a glimpse of our communal lifestyle check out this vid:

WWJ(N)D

2011-07-04T16:06:00.005+01:00

I live with a remarkable young man. In fact, I live with 13 remarkable people, only four of whom are my natural relations. But right now I’m thinking about one young man of 22 who’s been living with us in intentional Christian community since he was 18.

What makes him remarkable is that rather than living for number one, this young man is pouring his life into something besides himself.

Not for him a life caught up in the petty pursuits of car and computer, beer and birds. Nor is he, as Anthony Delaney memorably put it, aiming for a life of “converting oxygen to carbon dioxide, then stopping.” He lives with generous and genuine desire for other people’s good. His youthful energy is thrown at the feet of Jesus with abandon.

He lives, he really lives – because he lives for more than himself.

And that is where this little musing starts. You see, yesterday, this noble young lion hit the deck. He’d been in the fast lane for several weeks. He had a major role in the Jesus Army’s big march and festival in London; days later he threw himself into helping organise a youth outing (complete with night slept under the stars) for about 25 young men; he runs a cell group with several lively lads in it. Then there’s a holy romance with a certain young lady, his betrothed. Oh and did I mention he works hard as a builder in between all this?

By the time yesterday morning came, he was jiggered. All it took was a well-intentioned question (about something he hadn’t got round to doing) and exhaustion felled him. He was in a bit of a state, really. Okay, he’d bounced back, moreorless, by later that day – but it was a bit of a warning.

He’d been skating on the thin ice and was close to burning out (to use a mixed metaphor worthy of Paul the apostle).

I talked to him later that day and was impressed again by his greatness of heart (the main thing he wanted to talk about was how to ensure that his wedding later this year is an occasion to honour God). But we talked about how he could pace himself and whether there was any opportunity coming up for a bit of recharge.

It touches on a wider issue. As a church, we are by nature aspirational. We aim high, pretty consistently punch above our weight, and achieve a great deal. It’s impressive. A day like the Jesus Army’s London Day (check out some pictures here for the flavour) is a good example of what can be achieved with an “aim for heaven, get the earth thrown in” mentality. I love the Jesus Army’s “can-do” outlook. I hope we’ll never be tamed, never cowed into “thinking smaller”.

And yet. There’s something to be said for pacing ourselves with wisdom, guarding the heart, finding the place for rest in all our activity.

A leader in the Salvation Army spoke to our whole church, some years ago. He spoke of being “contemplative activists”, combining reflection and aspiration, “being” and “doing”. He called us to the challenge.

“Contemplative activists.” It’s a phrase that has stuck with me. (Yes, it’s another paradox, for those who know I’ve been finding them under every stone recently.)

I realise, as I think about that sterling young man, and about our church – and about me – that that term, “contemplative activists”, sums up much of what we must seek to be. Deep, yes, Energetic, yes. Leisured; not lazy. Energetic; not enervated.

I’ve noticed that in Mark’s Gospel, everything happens to Jesus “at once” or “straight away” or “immediately”. Yet he was never stressed out, never stretched beyond suppleness (well, until Gethsemane, perhaps, but that’s a different point). Why? Because at the right times, he sought solitude. He recharged. He listened.

What would Jesus do? Good question. And here’s another: what would Jesus not do? And - more to the point, perhaps - what would Jesus be?

As I once blogged here before:

God, teach us silence, so that our words will not be empty, but carry power.
Teach us stillness, so our activity will not be frantic, but fruitful.
Teach us solitude, so that we can live in community.
Amen.

A parable about a paradox

2011-06-28T11:48:00.006+01:00

The city grew up around the source of the river. Her walls were tall and stately, her gates shining, wide and glorious. Within were spacious squares, lush gardens, warm dwellings; there were statues, and fountains, and libraries filled with the writings of the wise.

The city had stood for many years, a wonder in the world, and a destination of pilgrims.

Some saw the walls as the city’s chief glory: reaching for the heavens, both impregnable and beautiful. Rumour had it these walls were fashioned from pure gold, and certainly none could deny they shone with an ethereal brilliance, visible from many miles around.

Others could speak of nothing but the wonder of the city’s gates. Gleaming and expansive, they were open night and day, such was the great hospitality of the city, such her great heart to welcome all, to take the multitudes to her breast.

There came a time when a dispute broke out which – if it were possible – threatened the tranquillity of this wondrous habitation. The argument was between gatekeepers, on the one hand, and the watchmen, on the other.

The gatekeepers, ardent to spread their city’s fame and eager to extend her welcome to ever more travellers, had conceived of plans to widen the gates. Some had even drawn up plans to breach certain sections of the wall in order to erect new gates. “Open to every point of the compass” was their cry, such was their great passion for their city. Their hearts swelled at the thought of the shining eyes and open mouths of the pilgrims who would enter in their new widened gates, to breathe in the city’s sweet air and drink from her refreshing springs.

The watchmen, those eagle-eyed keepers of the walls’ towers and ramparts, knowing in their hearts that the city’s fame and glory depended ultimately upon the strength and purity of her walls, were uneasy at the ambitions of the gatekeepers. Widened gates too easily lead to compromised walls. And when the plans of the more impatient gatekeepers came to their ears, their alarm swelled to something akin to fury – and to fear. For these noble watchmen loved the city from the depths of their hearts, yet well they knew that a city without walls was in terrible peril. “Breach the wall, soon to fall” was their awful watchword.

Long were the debates in the guildhall and tempers were not always kept in the conflict. After much dissension, the matter had to be taken before the highest authority, and it was with confidence and the expectation of vindication – yet not without trembling in both camps – that the question was brought before the throne of the king.

There was silence as the gatekeepers and the watchmen awaited the verdict of their sovereign.

Thus he spoke:

“There shall be no breaches in my walls,” said the king (and great was the trembling of the gatekeepers as he spoke, and relief and pride coursed through the veins of the watchmen). Yet, without seeming so much as to pause for breath, the king continued, “There shall be no walls.” (Hope flared within the hearts of the gatekeepers, and swift came dismay on the faces of the watchmen.)

“No breaches,” sighed the watchmen, seeing in their hearts the vision of the city’s strength unsullied. “No walls,” breathed the gatekeepers, imagining all the nations streaming in. Yet a shadow was over both companies also, for the king had uttered both these dooms and contradicted neither.

There was a silence before the king spoke again.

“Long has it been told,” spoke he, “that the walls of my city are of gold. Yet hearken unto me as I tell you, yes even you O wise watchmen, even you O ardent gatekeepers: my walls are not of gold, but of flame; flame unbroken and unimpaired.”

And, even as he spoke, it seemed to them a wonder took place. For the walls of that resplendent city were suddenly become all fire in the eyes of their beholders. (Whether they were transformed at that moment or whether they were seen, at last, in their true nature no-one could say.)

And as the flames towered around the city, shining with beauty and brilliance, behold: from every direction, from north and south, and east and west, and north north west, and south south east, and from every degree of the compass, flowed a multitude.

Drawn like moths to the flame they came. And when they reached that fiery barrier, they did not stop, but plunged straight in, straight through, running, flying, dancing into the heart of that great city.

For behold: the walls of fire were all gate; and the gates of flame were all wall.

Absolutizing the present

2011-06-22T11:16:00.005+01:00

The other night my friend, who’s also a Jesus Army leader, experienced the worst meeting of his life.

It was truly appalling. A fellowship meal without fellowship, a love feast without love, he’d left it with his heart in his boots, wondering what the point was. Why go on? Did anyone else care at all?

That spiritless meal with those who were supposed to be his deepest comrades in the cause of Christ, left him feeling bereft of hope. So much so, he went into a room, lay on his face and cried out to God. “Why, Lord?” he cried. “Why, oh why?”

As a believer in quick and prompt answers to prayer, he shouldn’t have been surprised, then, when just four days later, his little church group had one of the best meetings he’d ever experienced. Fellowship flowed, love was abundant, spirits soared.

All was well and all manner of thing wast well; my friend went to bed a happy man that night.

Telling me about both meetings the next day, we both chuckled at our ability to see no further than the immediate circumstances, good or ill – particularly as leaders who do, in fact, care a great deal about our churches. How easy it is to measure our entire reality by what has just happened, by how things are right now.

A mentor of mine calls this “absolutizing the present”; being unable in that moment – be it of agony or ecstasy – to conceive of reality being anything else ever again.

I’ve often called to mind his wisdom, and sometimes it’s saved me from spiralling down into cynical hopelessness, prompted by some discouraging incident (or, for that matter, soaring off into the stratosphere over something encouraging, which can be as unhelpful in the long run).

Of course, the account I gave earlier of my friend’s two meetings was exaggerated. But that’s the point. Our feelings do exaggerate things: they absolutize the present. We have to be disciplined with our feelings at times (as my wise mentor also says, “Emotions make good servants but poor masters”). We must learn to keep some poise.

Sure, that Friday wasn’t so good. But Sunday’s coming. Oh – and that Sunday’s followed by a Monday.

In the final analysis, it’s probably not nearly as bad – or as good – as it seems.

Face(book) up to the future

2011-06-13T16:25:00.003+01:00

Yesterday morning at Coventry Jesus Centre, Andy, one of our regular preacher-men, announced that the title of his talk that morning was: “The Opportunities and Potential Pitfalls Presented by Facebook and other Social Media Websites”.

Snappy. He’s a master communicator is Andy.

Actually, Andy is indeed a very good communicator. Nevertheless, he, like many Christians in my church and beyond, has been unsure what to make of “the social media revolution” as some are calling it.

On the one hand – as a video Andy showed us yesterday showed – social media such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and all the rest are here to stay. Recently, Facebook crossed the 30-million-users mark in the UK. That’s half the population. This is, quite simply, the way people communicate these days. Any church with something too say (and really every church should have something to say!) can’t afford to ignore the possibilities offered by social media.

On the other hand, there are as many potential pitfalls in social media as John Bunyan’s hero, Christian, faced at Vanity Fair. From flirty pictures, to gossip, to just plain worldly time-wasting, Facebook et cetera can be a veritable Slough of Despond for the unwary pilgrim.

Andy spoke carefully, and what he said can be summed up fairly well by a verse in Paul’s letter to the Colossians:

“Be wise in the way you act toward outsiders; make the most of every opportunity.”

“Be wise” – avoid the pitfalls. In particular, don’t do on Facebook what your conscience wouldn’t let you get away with in the rest of life. Gossip is gossip, whatever the medium. Unkindness is unkindness. Lust is lust. Time is too precious for Farmville.

But – “make the most of every opportunity”. If half the population of our country is on Facebook, we need to be there. If we’re called to bring the message of Jesus to the people, we have to go where they are and speak the way they speak.

The right place for an ark is in the water. (Yet remember that the wrong place for water is in the ark!)

As something of a social media enthusiast, I may have been more enthusiastic in my endorsement of it all. But I realise there are real issues that need to be thought through, and I think Andy did a good job of treading the fine balance.

I’d like him to do a part two, in which he unpacks in more detail some of the creative ways we can “gossip the gospel” through social media, some ideas for how we can best chain this Leviathan and use it to add strength and effectiveness to our communication of Christ.

How about it, Andy? Up for it?

Backwards is forwards

2011-06-09T13:11:00.004+01:00

There's a few videos on YouTube with poems that say one thing, then scroll backwards and reverse their message. Here's one. Here's another.

We've shamelessly nicked the idea and written our own poem in this style. We're going to make it into a dramatic item to be be performed at Trafalgar Square when the Jesus Army hold our annual festival there (this year on June 25).

Maybe we'll make a video and post it as a response to the ones on YouTube. In the meantime, here's the poem. Read it down the page (obviously!), then back up from bottom to top to get the idea.

We are a lost generation
And we refuse to believe that
We can change the world
We realise this may be a shock but
God loves us
Is a lie, and
Money will bring us happiness
The truth is
God doesn’t care about people
We refuse to believe that
We can trust him
We will live our lives according to these beliefs
There is no God
It’s just empty talk to say
That Jesus died to save us
That divine compassion brings purpose to our lives
Is a reassuring thought however
It
Is a self-deceiving fantasy
We can be free without God
Our existence has no grand meaning or purpose
In a world without faith
There is freedom
But with God
Life is an endless cycle of guilt and shame
Without him
Everything makes sense
It is ridiculous to think
We need God

Wrong. It’s time we turned our lives around

Come to Trafalgar Square on June 25 and you can see the drama!

And another thing, God

2011-06-06T13:57:00.008+01:00

I am fed up with happy songs.

I’m not saying that joy isn’t a profoundly Christly sentiment, or that there’s any special virtue in misery. I agree with St Teresa of Avila who famously prayed for deliverance from “sour faced saints”.

But yesterday in our Sunday morning worship, as we sang song after song about how great God is and how happy he makes us, I wanted something else. I was feeling frustrated. Perplexed. Questioning.

Why this, God? I wanted to ask. And why that? But the songs were busy declaring goodness and glory. They weren’t asking anything.

Oh dear, I thought, maybe I’m in the flesh.

On Sunday nights, after supper, I usually set an hour apart for prayer, walking in a local park (we’re blessed with a big, beautiful one with trees and gentle hills).

Usually, I just walk and think – about our community, our church, people I care for, and myself (not always, I confess, in such a self-abnegating order). I pray in tongues quietly, as I think. More often than not I’ll settle on one or two topics on which I’ll express myself to the almighty, best I can. Sometimes I “hear” a divine response – a word, a mental image, or just an impression be it of peace or urgency or anything in between. Sometimes God just listens, a patient parent, to my childish prattle.

Last night I found myself chewing on some of the frustrations and yearnings I’d been feeling, in particular, the situation of the Jesus Army nationally. Putting it frankly, it bothers me that we’re not doing better. Fully aware as I am of the dignified wisdom in sayings about God’s calling to be “faithful rather than successful” (attributed to another even more famous Catholic Teresa), it nevertheless deeply concerns me that we are so often frustrated in our endeavours around the UK.

There is much to be thankful for – from individual lives changed to new Jesus Centres and our expanding network overseas. Yet there’s planty of heartache as some of our churches fail and quite a number of our newly baptised disciples slip back or fail to continue in faith. We’re not growing as we long for. Our northern front, from Liverpool to Leeds, is nigh-on a scene of desolation. We need many more leaders if we’re to plant the churches and communities we’d like to – and as we do really believe God has called us to.

Is God unable to bless us? I found myself asking God whether there was some "master sin" afflicting us corporately, hindering us, blocking God's blessing. Of course, we’re a church of sinners (no church I know isn’t), but it seems to me that, at heart, we genuinely desire to be faithful to God’s call.

I was left with the question hanging on the night air as I arrived home. It was one of those nights when God didn’t seem especially talkative.

Then this morning I read Psalm 44.

O God, we have heard with our ears,
our fathers have told us,
what deeds you performed in their days,
in the days of old…
But you have rejected us and disgraced us
and have not gone out with our armies.
You have made us turn back…

Often in the Bible, such agonized prayers are followed by a confession of sin. Israel’s exile, for instance, was recognised by the prophets as having been the result of the nation’s rejection of God. But this psalm doesn’t take this stance. Instead, it contains the following surprising lines:

All this has come upon us,
though we have not forgotten you,
and we have not been false to your covenant.
Our heart has not turned back,
nor have our steps departed from your way…
Yet for your sake we are killed all the day long;
we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.

This last line was quoted by the apostle Paul as a description of the experience of the Christian Church. Given that, whenever Paul quoted Old Testament scripture, he always had the whole passage in mind; and given that the passage in which he quotes this is about groaning and aching in prayer for the fulfilment of Spirit’s plans; and given that Paul knew quite a lot about setbacks and desires frustrated – I think we can see such frustrations as all part of what it means to be God’s people in the world.

And I think Paul had in mind the prayer that concludes the psalm:

Awake! Why are you sleeping, O Lord?
Rouse yourself! Do not reject us forever!...
Rise up; come to our help!

Shocking. Surely the psalmist should be telling God how beautiful he is, or how lovely it is to be resting in his arms, or how happy we are – not telling the almighty to wake up and remember his covenant obligations? Not suggesting that God isn’t with his people and he jolly well should be because his people have been faithful? Dreadful theology. Can hardly believe it’s in the Bible.

In fact, I reckon there’s a place for this in our praying and our worshipping. An important place.

“Come on, God! (Groan.) Go out with our armies! (Ache.) Rise up! Come to our help! (Sigh.) Don’t let us go down the pan! (Yearn.)”

We need songs and prayers that express longing, express questions, express groaning, even express impatience with God.

Time to read a few more psalms – and write a few new songs.

Questions, questions

2011-06-01T13:09:00.005+01:00

I got thinking as I sat on the loo (pardon the details, but that was how it was). Why are there 360 degrees in a full circle? Why not 400? Or 3600?

It probably has something to do with a base 12 numeral system. But someone, somewhen, must have decided that 360 were about the right number of degrees to cover the range needed. After all, if there’d only been 12 degrees in a circle, navigation would have been a tad haphazard.

Where am I going with this?

I’ve been thinking a little about questions and how we answer them. Some are mathematical or scientific or historical and with a little research a reasonably comprehensive answer can be found. I could probably “Ask Jeeves” or consult Wikipedia and find out the answer to my musings on degrees in a circle.

I suppose a pure mathematical question can be answered with a pure mathematical answer. But not all questions are so tidy – or so pure. Even this one probably leaves a few imponderables up in the air. Once you introduce science, you leave the realm of unsullied logic and get into the murkier territory of hypothesis and experiment – not to mention finance (“who gets the grant?”). Descend to history, and you’re soon in the ash cloud of human motivation and political struggle.

And when it comes to ethics or philosophy or (heavens!) theology? – Can there be such a thing as a pure answer, unsullied by human jockeying for power or money or even just the base desire for popularity.

Postmodernism says “no”. Every answer, every story (especially the big ones which claim to answer questions as they go along) is just about human power games.

As a result, everything’s fundamentally suspicious, and therefore uncertain. All that remains is the story you write for yourself – and that can change next week if you like. Because, actually, we shouldn’t even trust ourselves.

The “big answer” of modernism, Science, has been found wanting because the “big answer” of the Enlightenment, Reason, has been found wanting. The “big answer” of the Reformation, the Bible, has not so much been found wanting as not found because the Enlightenment threw it out. And as for the “big answer” of medievalism, Mother Church, she is now only fit to be the arch-villainess in children’s books by Philip “postmodern” Pullman.

We’re on our own folks under a cold sky. As Samuel Beckett expressed it, we’re sitting under a tree waiting for Godot – but he never turns up. “Nothing happens, nobody comes, nobody goes, it’s awful.”

The problem is that no-one I know can actually live in a world with no answers. (Friedrich Nietzsche tried it; he, at least, had the good grace to go mad.)

So lots of little answers flood in. Life now consists of a new pair of trainers. Because they are The Meaning of Life, they are given names like “Fire” or “Passion”. Life consists of the latest film in which someone triumphs against adversity while we sit watching them, cramming popcorn into our mouths before going home and putting the bins out. Life consists of the latest Playstation game. Or how many friends you have on Facebook to tell that your doing “nothin much” right now. Or – darker – life consists of anonymous sex via internet porn.

For the record, let me just say that I don’t think everything about postmodernism is wrong. Some big answers need to be treated with suspicion. Sometimes science needs its capital “s” confiscated. Sometimes relationships are more important than “getting it right”. Sometimes we do have to accept that we can’t know everything and make friends with mystery. Sometimes “being” is enough and “doing” needs to pipe down.

At its best postmodernism is humble because it recognises that modernism was about human pride. A movement that is “post pride” is not a bad thing – as long as it doesn’t become cynical and, ironically, take pride in not believing anything.

What if there is a story that’s true? Not just mathematically, purely, inhumanly true – but historically, messily, humanly true?

What if there’s a story that puts not knowledge, but love at the heart of everything? A story that starts in a garden and ends in a city because human life does have a direction and a destination?

A story which doesn’t try to hide the mess, the humanness, the sullied motivation and confusion of its protagonists?

A story in which one obscure family – just like everyone else only more so – is chosen, from whom one obscure family member turns out to be the storyteller himself.

What if that storyteller gathers all the wrong answers, warped motives and proud delusions in the whole story, brings them all to an end in a chapter called Death, and opens a new chapter called Resurrection?

What if Godot arrived? What if something happened, somebody came, and it was awesome?

What if the possibilities are endless? What if there’s everything to live for?

What if that story is still being written and we have the opportunity for a part in it?

Only questions. Just asking.

The path

2011-05-31T11:05:00.004+01:00

My friend Wilf wrote this poem yesterday. I like his poems. His words are simple; his thoughts are deep and worth pondering.

Testimony -The Path

No path could have been more hopelessly wrong
Than the one You led me along
But no other path could have brought me through
Intact sane warm and strong

So many times my protective skin was flayed
Leaving every raw fear displayed
But they were the times I cried to You
And learned to be unafraid,

In times like that You made me;
Answering my prayers and those You saw hidden
In the ones You didn't answer,
And I was given strength
By those who had little for themselves
I was helped to stand
By those who often fell
And if I can look on life now
With wise calm eyes
It is because of those crazy troubled times.

Countless alters on a road of strife
Hardly noticed among the rubble of life
But they are witnesses to
My trembling heart before Your knife

Many have walked a sharper road
Than that which I have trod
But these petty trials led me to You
And made me a man of God.

Saved!

2011-05-27T16:44:00.011+01:00

This is a bible study I wrote today for the Jesus Army to use as part of our weekly discussion over the scriptures each Tuesday evening.

I always find Paul's letter to the Ephesians widens my horizons, so I thought I'd share the inspiration, and post the notes here.

In Ephesians 2, Paul describes our great salvation in Christ:

* We are saved from 'the course of this world...the prince of the power of the air...the passions of our flesh' [v.2-3]. The world, the devil and the flesh form an ungodly ‘trinity’ which held us bound and made us 'by nature children of wrath' [v.3].

* We are saved by grace [v.5]. No human effort can earn our salvation – it is the gift of God [v.8] because of his 'great love' [v.4].

* We are saved to 'sitting in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus' [v.6]. We have the awesome privilege of being united with Christ, the ruling Man.

* We are saved for good works as 'his workmanship, created in Christ' [v.10]. The result of salvation, springing from our renewed nature, will be to work, build and pray towards new creation now.

For, through the death of Jesus, God has created, 'one new man' [v.15], the new humanity, in which all are united to become 'the household of God...a dwelling place for God' [v.19-22].

As to what it means, practically, for us to be ‘seated with God in the heavenly places in Christ’ or for us to work, build and pray towards new creation - well, we'll be discussing that a week on Tuesday. Pray for us!

Jesus Army: church of the (ungrateful) poor

2011-05-19T13:34:00.008+01:00

At lunchtime the other day, I went into a small town near where I work to meet an old friend for coffee. When we came back to the car park where I’d parked the Jesus Army minibus, we found a bloke sitting on the tail plate.

“Can you help me?” he asked, pointing at the word “Jesus” on the minibus. He had a wild look: matted beard, big pack on his back. To be frank, he was slightly scary. I opened my mouth to ask what help he’d like, but he was already saying, “No, I can see you’re going, don’t want to be any trouble. I just wanted to know about the Jesus Army.” I got halfway into saying, “It’s ok, we were about to leave, but what would you like to know?” But on the word “leave” he interrupted again in a sudden change of mood.

“F*** off then” he growled. “F***ing Jesus”.

Taken aback, and with half an eye on my friend who looked (like I was) a touch disconcerted, I asked him what he needed, and told him about the Jesus Centre, in the next town, where he could get some help.

“Take me there,” he said, and he pointed to his shoe. The sole was coming off. “I trod on glass,” he added plaintively.

“We’re not going there now,” I said, about to ask if he’d like the bus fare. But before I got to that, Hyde had taken over from Jekyll again and F-words being fired at me like bullets.

Now for a confession. I’m not proud of this. In a moment of horrible right-wing vitriol I wanted to yell, “F** off yourself, then, and get yourself a f**ing job, you scrounger!”

I didn’t, thank God. Apart from anything else, this man was not well mentally. Instead, I waited patiently, then explained again about the Jesus Centre, blessed him, and got in the minibus. As we drove out of the car park, I saw him swoop down on another guy, pointing at us, and gesticulating. I think I can guess the theme of his animated speech. (Something to do with “f**ing” and “Jesus”.)

My friend and I talked about the incident. I mused on how sometimes at the Jesus Centre in my own town, Coventry, people can get abusive – and are fairly regularly eye-wateringly ungrateful for food and other essentials that they are being given for free (or heavily subsidised).

Any idea how fussy people can be about how they like their fried egg – even one they’re getting for a few pence?

But I realised years ago that giving “the poor” the right to complain, the right to be ungrateful, is in fact an important part of affirming their human dignity. Why should only the rich have the right to complain? Or even the right to be ungrateful? Nobody thinks twice if a rich person complains in a restaurant if he doesn’t like his food. Why? Because he has money on his side.

Well – we revolt against money being the main measure of human worth. That’s one of the reasons I joined the Jesus Army. It’s a church of the poor.

The Dickensian view of the “grateful poor” can be deeply patronising, and part of our gospel work is to take complaints from the poor smilingly – and recognise something of justice restored in it.

So I didn’t feel I’d responded very well to the bearded brother in the car park. Maybe I should have given him my shoes. Maybe I should have taken him to the Jesus Centre. I’m quite sure I would have been sworn at a lot more for my troubles.

As it was, I drove away. And though I prayed for him, I felt uncomfortable as I recalled the biblical warning: “If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food, and one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace, be warmed and filled,’ without giving them the things needed for the body, what good is that?”

Here it is, then: my confession.

The one redeeming feature of the episode, perhaps, is that I gave him a chance to complain. And in complaining he was saying, “I too am human. I too am a king.”

Jesus still weeps

2011-05-17T10:27:00.011+01:00

Bigotry and hatred too often join hands with religion.

Jesus reserved his fiercest rage for the proud religious and his most generous (and scandalous) compassion for those they considered socially unacceptable. It makes me ache with frustration and despair when that same Jesus is used today as a figurehead for prejudice.

I say 'that same Jesus'. In reality, of course, it's not the same Jesus at all. It's just the same five letters, J, E, S, U, and another S, used to rubber stamp fear and loathing.

The shortest verse in the Bible is 'Jesus wept'. I think he still does.

Of all prejudices, homophobia particularly gets my goat, perhaps because it is still viewed as somehow acceptable in some religious circles. People who would throw up their hands in horror at racism, for instance, find it acceptable to talk ignorant rubbish about gay people - and feel a warm glow of orthodox righteousness as they do so.

"Woe to you! Hypocrites! You shut the kingdom of heaven in people’s faces. You neither enter yourselves nor allow those who would enter to go in."

(That was Jesus, by the way, with his goat got.)

Let's explore this. Faithfulness, tenderness, loyalty, self-giving - these are good things. They are Jesus-like qualities. Agreed? Yet some religious people would consign the faithfulness, tenderness, loyalty, sacrifice shown by a gay person to another to a bin labelled 'SIN'.

Because it happens to be Adam and Steve we're talking about, rather than Adam and Eve, their faithfulness, tenderness, loyalty and self-giving is rendered null and void. Worse, these virtues are given names like 'sodomy' and 'sin'.

I've even heard some religious people express the execrable view that heterosexual sex that is promiscuous or even exploitative is better than homosexual sex that is faithful, tender, loyal and self-giving - simply because the gender of the participants is the same.

This seems to me to be self-evidently ridiculous (and unutterable tragic). But it is held as orthodoxy in some quarters.

Let me be quite clear. I'm not advocating sexual moral chaos. This isn't about 'free love' (which in fact, comes with a very big 'buy now, pay later' label hidden in the packaging and is in any case nothing to do with love). Sexual morality matters. And faithfulness, tenderness, loyalty and self-giving matter. Promiscuous, exploitative, or even just plain selfish sex is a twisting of God's design. It is, in fact, sin - and brings all the pain, fragmentation and separation that sin always brings.

Human sexuality is too complex to be reduced to soundbites or formulae. But of this we can be sure: it is better saturated with the qualities of God's own nature - of love, in fact - than it is without them. Much, much better. So much better as to be a different thing altogether.

So I felt I had to sign a petition the other day to oppose the horrific anti-gay bill proposed in Uganda (see avaaz.org).

Human sexuality may be complex. Questions surrounding human sexuality may be difficult. But when we're faced with such flagrant abuse of humanity as is represented by such a bill, when the screeching calls for morality become this immoral, when hatred threatens to be enshrined in law - I for one have to speak out. I have to say no.

In the name of Jesus - no.

Jesus Army: rebels with a cause or regimented rule-keepers?

2011-05-16T09:12:00.005+01:00

“B-but that’s not allowed!” my friend spluttered, recently, at some minor infringement of some not particularly important rule at work.

I pointed out that it really didn’t matter, this time, for X, Y and Z reasons. But it didn’t make him feel any better. A rule had been broken – and rules are there not to be broken. Even if the rule is obsolete or unnecessary or just plain silly – well, that isn’t the point. It’s a rule.

It got me thinking about how different people are wired differently on this one. Some delight in rule-breaking. They’re the original James Dean rebels-without-causes. They just will NOT keep off the grass. Others, like my friend, find security in the rules, and find it upsetting when the universe is found to be not quite simple.

I probably occupy the rather dull middle ground. No great rebel, I, but I don’t mind a bit of humane rulebook tearing here and there either. Particularly if it makes life happier (and no-one’s going to disapprove of me for it).

But I think I must be slightly to the rebel side of the centre, even if only because I tend to admire iconoclasts and dissenters: the courage they have to stick their heads above the parapet, to declare the emperor naked. That’s probably part of the reason why I joined the Jesus Army.

And I have to admit, I tend to be slightly contemptuous of the rulebook types, my friend notwithstanding. For those who appreciate literary references, I’d like to think of myself as more of a Jean Valjean than a Javert.

But it’s not quite as simple, of course. Radicals and rule-breakers are important, but the quieter, less “sexy” virtues of duty, discipline, obedience and loyalty have their place, too. Let’s face it, we all (rightly) looked askance at MPs who took a “flexible approach” to expenses; we didn’t cheer them for their imagination.

It’s another of those paradoxes that I can only assume God delights in since he’s scattered so many throughout existence.

We need rules; but we must not be afraid to smash them to smithereens when they become soul-killing. We need freedom and humanity, but we must be prepared to have principles – and maybe to let them inconvenience us to the point of... well, dying for them.

After all, Jesus embodies both. Having rescued the adulterous woman from stoning, he tells her “Sin no more”. “Sell all that you have” he says to the rich, young, would-be disciple in Luke 18; a chapter later, half is enough for Zacchaeus. “Give to the poor” he says, but he’s having none of it when someone protests about a prostitute’s “waste” of expensive perfume at a dinner party. As for his famous disputes with the legalistic Pharisees, he also said “Practice and observe whatever they tell you.”

Something like this paradox is explored by author and emergent postmodern guru, Peter Rollins, in his book The Fidelity of Betrayal (if I’ve understood him, at all, which I possibly haven’t in the slightest). Rollins says that true faithfulness to God includes arguing with God and provocatively suggests that Christians ought to wear wristbands inscribed with “WWJD” – standing for “What would Judas do?”

I find this paradox runs through my experience of belonging to a radical church like the Jesus Army. On the one hand, we're very cause-conscious with songs about the Jesus revolution and plenty of holy rebellion against the system in our bloodstream. On the other, we put a high premium on lifestyle and holiness and have a healthy respect for, and need of, rules.

Rebel! Do as you're told!

Confused? Me too.

Isn’t it good to live in such a fascinating universe?

Psalm 101

2011-05-10T16:49:00.004+01:00

(Part 2 of some reflections on living in intentional Christian community)

Psalm 101 is a song about the way that a king like King David, a ruler with a “heart after God’s own heart”, should rule.

But as I read it, the other morning, it struck me as a good prayer for those living in – and especially for those leading – a Christian community.

So here are a few very brief, very undeveloped, starting points for thought on leading a Christian community – from Psalm 101.

I will sing of steadfast love and justice; to you, O LORD, I will make music.

Any Christian community must spring out of worship. It must start from a heart response to God’s “steadfast love and justice”. If it starts from idealism, or legalism, or any “ism”, good or bad, it will not be true Christian community. Any leader of a Christian community must be a leader in worship. I don’t mean a guitarist or and organist. I mean that the first task of a leader in Christian community is continually to call the community back to God.

I will ponder the way that is blameless. Oh when will you come to me?

Having dismissed idealism – there must be at least of a dash of holy idealism – pondering and longing for “the way that is blameless”. Otherwise, Christian community, to misquote Chesterton, will not be tried and found wanting; it will be found difficult and not tried. Community is not realistic. As I said in my last post, it is impossible. But oh! I long for it. I’ll pursue it. I’ll live it. (Let the miracle begin.)

I will walk with integrity of heart within my house.

Leaders have to be the same through and through. No double standards, no hidden compartments. I find the word “integrity” shines a light inside me, searches out the darker corners. It’s uncomfortable. I need it.

I will not set before my eyes anything that is worthless.

And here’s a good example of integrity made practical. Job made a covenant with his own eyes, not to fill his sights with filth. My friend, Laurence recently blogged on this, not once but twice. It’s vital a Christian community be uncontaminated by the rubbish that fills page and screen all too often in our media-soaked culture. I’m not talking about some Simeon style pillar of lofty separation. The right place for an ark is in the water. The wrong place for the water is in the ark. Do the math.

I hate the work of those who fall away; it shall not cling to me.

Sometimes people walk away. Sometimes, it’s worse than that: people betray. One of the most challenging things about Christian community is to remain untainted by bitterness when people let you down. Not to let it “cling” to you. The danger is, you make a silent vow to yourself: “I will not love again”. This way lies the death of community.

A perverse heart shall be far from me; I will know nothing of evil.

“Perverse” – slippery. Some hearts you just can’t get hold of, like the bar of soap in the cartoon, they just keep slipping from your grasp. But community must be made from open, shared hearts. If hearts aren’t shared, in time nothing else will be either. A wise community leader must gently encourage the sharing of who we really are with one another. This can’t be forced. But a culture of trust will encourage it.

Whoever slanders his neighbour secretly I will destroy.

I’m fierce when it comes to gossip. People may as well set the house physically on fire. Gossip is as destructive. More so, in fact, because it tears down souls. “How great a forest is set ablaze by such a small fire! And the tongue is a fire.” I will stamp out gossip from our community. Woe betide the person I catch at it!

Whoever has a haughty look and an arrogant heart I will not endure.

Perhaps it goes without saying that pride and Christian community cannot mix. But I’ll say it anyway: pride and Christian community cannot mix.

I will look with favour on the faithful in the land, that they may dwell with me; he who walks in the way that is blameless shall minister to me.

It is a commonplace that a leader must be a servant in Christian community. And that is true. But a leader must also allow himself to be served. That too is humble. And a deep appreciation of the “faithful in the land” (not necessarily the famous) is important.

No one who practices deceit shall dwell in my house; no one who utters lies shall continue before my eyes.

Deceit vies with gossip for the “public enemy number one” position when it comes to building community. Suffice it to say, that anyone fluent in the “devil’s native language” is unlikely to build the community of Christ. They need to learn the language of truth, openness and humility.

Morning by morning I will destroy all the wicked in the land, cutting off all the evildoers from the city of the LORD.

Not the kind of declaration very likely to elicit the response “Nice sermon, vicar”. Yet I’ve been relearning the importance of zeal. Zeal for God’s house. Not tramping around the place like the police. But unafraid to confront. To lead. Because once you’ve glimpsed the “city of the Lord”, the purity of God’s new kingdom society – it matters too much to settle for something shoddy.

Room 101

2011-05-03T15:21:00.005+01:00

(Part 1 of some reflections on living in intentional Christian community)

Room 101 is the creepy torture chamber in George Orwell’s novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. In it, the sinister “Ministry of Love” attempt to subject a prisoner to his or her own worst nightmare, fear or phobia. For Winston Smith, Orwell’s main character, this is to be attacked by rats.

My Room 101 would be a massive, dark, tank of water, containing just a great white shark – and me. Maybe I watched Jaws too young, maybe it’s the sharks’ jagged down-turned maw and lifeless, black eyes, maybe it’s because sharks have us at such a disadvantage in water, their natural element.

Luckily for me, living in Coventry, I’m hardly at daily risk of shark attack.

In Coventry, I, like many others in the Jesus Army around the UK, live in an intentional Christian community. I like living this way. I find it inspiring. I find it brings out the best in me. There are times when it can be hard (more on this anon). But generally I’m a fan of Christian community living, and I recommend it to Christians everywhere.

But I know that for some people, the very idea of sharing home with other people (beyond their actual family – or maybe even including their actual family!) is downright horrifying. Some agree with Sartre: “hell is other people”.

For some, living in community may even approach their idea of Room 101.

I remember a Christian colleague, when I was a teacher in a Coventry secondary school, saying to me, “I could never live like you do” (she meant community, rather than my poor dress sense or any other undesirable feature of my life; I know that because we’d been talking about it.)

“I could never live like you,” she said. I was tempted to retort, “Of course you could, if you let the Holy Spirit fill you with love like the first church in Acts 2” or some similar biblical harangue. I’m glad I didn’t – not least, because it would have been rude, and love isn’t rude according to the same New Testament that glowingly describes the first Christians’ communal living.

But I’m also glad I didn’t because it would have been glib. Living in Christian community isn’t the kind of thing anyone should do on a whim. It is a tough call at times and in order to stay committed to it, you have to have a strong call – from God. You have to know God is in it. I passionately believe that Christians living together in community demonstrates God’s new society in a way that shouts louder than any words can. I urgently wish more Christians would embrace such a call. Hang it all, I’d love some to move in with us.

But I’m not going to say it’s easy.

What I might have been better saying to my colleague is something like this: “You’re right. You could never live that way. Neither can I. It’s a daily miracle.” And then, maybe, I could get away with asking, demurely, “Do you believe in miracles?”

You can’t live in Christian community – long-term – without believing in miracles.

There’s the miracle of forgiveness. Any long-term relationship needs that for survival, but in community, forgiveness has to happen without natural ties that help marriage and family life to survive (like children, sex and in-laws) – it has to be sought and found in God’s heart. Believe me; we don’t spend all day in Christian community floating around on clouds contemplating one another’s perfections. Sometimes I want to wring some of my fellow-communitarians’ necks (if I can get to them before they wring mine).

There’s the miracle of financial sharing. We share all our money and are therefore accountable about how we spend: it’s not “my” money, it’s “ours” (actually, it’s God’s, which ups the ante even more). We tread the constant fine line between being answerable to one another in our spending and living simply, and not “policing” one another in a way that limits trust and hinders maturity.

There’s the miracle of harmonising our differences. I like bold wallpaper. He likes hot curry. She likes peace and quiet. They like board games. He likes to take the paper to his room to read it (and often leaves it there). She likes people to say hello in the mornings (and can feel offended if they don’t). He likes slightly risqué humour. I like to talk with my mouthful over dinner. She likes... well, you get the picture. And (as if I needed to say it) each of these likes is someone else’s loathe.

There's the miracle of the mugs. Where do they all disappear to? (Actually, I think that one may be a demonic miracle...)

There’s the miracle of one heart. Despite all our differences, in our shared community and church life, in its weekly pattern of meals and meetings, being and doing, commotion and calm, we find, over time, that we have one shared set of deepest desires. It’s difficult to put into words.

Perhaps some words that we were given say it best:

“Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”

To Corinth with love

2011-04-13T14:30:00.003+01:00

I seem to remember Michael Green once wrote a book on 1 Corinthians with this as its title. Certainly, love is central to this letter.

I've been writing a series of little studies for the Jesus Army on 1 Corinthians and here are my thoughts on the closing chapter of this wonderfully varied correspondence, with its unifying strand of the call to 'agape' love.

If love is central to this letter, it is also central to this closing chapter: 'Let all that you do be done in love'.

Love is practical, not just a fine feeling, but worked out in actions. Paul spells out his plans for financial sharing between (mainly wealthy) Greek Christians and (mainly poor) Judean Christians. This is partly so that there may be equality, but also reflects Paul’s wider concern for unity between Jew and Gentile in Christ.

Love is personal, not just a concept, but about real people. The Corinthians, with their love of impressive speakers, were to receive Paul’s co-worker Timothy with respect, even though he sometimes lacked confidence. And devotion to Paul was not to prevent loyalty to God’s other workers.

Love is plainspoken, not soft or sentimental, but straight-talking: 'If anyone has no love for the Lord, let him be accursed. Our Lord, come!' True love for Jesus will love what He loves and long for His coming. Paul ends by expressing his love for the Corinthians: a love that will be sorely tested (as 2 Corinthians shows) but will survive – perhaps by grace alone!

Searching questions linger after reading: How freely do I share my money and possessions with fellow Christians who are in need? How committed am I to working out relationships, with respect and without partiality? And perhaps (for me at any rate) most searching of all: how honest, how straight-talking - how real - is my love?

Two weddings and a resurrection

2011-04-08T14:42:00.003+01:00

I haven’t blogged for quite some time. Not to get whiney with excuses, but life gets so busy. No really, it does: tomorrow some good friends and members of our church house group are getting married and holding their reception in our community house and garden. I’m speaking at the wedding. And the week after that, a brother from our community house is getting married – and I’m the best man.

I think I now stand justified in having been a little busy.

Anyway, all these nuptials have got me thinking about marriage. It’s been hard to think of much else.

My father-in-law wisely says, “There are three really important ingredients in a successful marriage: communication, communication, communication.” (More than a hint of Blairishness in this utterance, but I like it nevertheless.)

My wife and I have been meeting Mat and Georgia for the past few weeks, talking through marriage. A lot of what we’ve talked about that makes for a healthy marriage comes down to good communication; open, honest, frequent communication.

Anyway, at their wedding I’m going to talk about the story in the John’s Gospel when Jesus attends a wedding and helps out at the bar. Well – more than helps out, if you remember. (More wine, anyone?)

Ironically, given my earlier musings about the importance of communication, the story starts with what looks like miscommunication between Jesus and his mother. (Actually, reading between the lines, I think they knew each other well and there was a fair amount of sub-vocal communication going on. Certainly, Mary ignores Jesus’ apparent refusal to sort the wine – and Jesus does indeed “sort it”.)

Result: a miracle. Yet it wasn’t just a magic trick, however useful it was to the wedding party (running out of wine would have been a major social disaster). This miracle was, according to John, a “sign”.

A "sign" communicates. It point beyond itself, points to something.

John’s Gospel starts with that mystical passage about “the Word” – not a word on a page or a word in your ear – but a word who is a person: Jesus. And the “signs” all through John’s Gospel point to who Jesus is. Feeding 5,000 people – “I am the Bread of Life”; opening blind eyes – “I am the light of the world”; raising a man from death – “I came to give life”...

All these signs, from changing water to wine on, point to the ultimate sign, the one that Jesus referred to in this story as “my time” – the cross.

The cross says everything God wanted to say to us. The cross shows the love of God.

How? Love, true love, is a promise: “I give myself to you, I give myself for you”. Four dear friends of mine will be making such promises over the next two weekends (er, in two separate pairs - lest anyone start saying that the Jesus Army are embracing polygamy!)

The Hebrews had a special word for God’s love – hesed – which means “covenant love” or “promised love”. God wants to commit himself to us and looks for our committed faithful love in return.

But people mess up, they’re unfaithful, they break promises. And this is what the cross means – God takes on all the unfaithfulness, he bridges the gap. He renews covenant, he promises love forever and removes all the blockages into himself, swallows them up in himself.

Maybe this is why Jesus’ first “sign” took place at a wedding. Maybe this is why the bible describes God’s love for us as like a bridegroom for his bride.

Certainly this is the journey these two couples have ahead of them: exploring, learning and going deeper into this God-kind-of-love, this hesed kind of love. They’re going to have to forgive, many times. They’re going to have to take each other’s wrongdoings at times and not let it be the end of the relationship.

And that’s why they need to invite Jesus to their weddings, like he was invited to that wedding at Cana. To invite Jesus into their marriages. He’ll turn their water into wine; he’ll give them the love they need. (Oh and by the way, he’ll bring "his disciples" with him!)

And that’s why we all need to invite Jesus into our lives: he’ll turn our water into wine, he’ll give us the love we need.

In fact, Jesus actually will be at these coming weddings – because he actually is alive today. That’s what John hints at in his wedding story when he says it all took place on “the third day”, like Jesus' resurrection.

When Jesus rose, he poured away all the old stale water of our messed-up human failure. He started everything again. He starts a new world. He's getting married. We’re all invited.

FriendlY

2011-03-15T12:00:00.004Z

A wise elder in my church was musing a while back about what it is that draws people to belong to Jesus and to his church. I listened carefully and haven't forgotten what he said.

His generation, now over 50, he suggested, were attracted to causes. He's a baby boomer, grew up in the sixties, one of the "Ban the Bomb" generation ("get with the counter-culture, man"). Many of his generation flocked to join a radical church like ours in the early seventies. Indeed, "radical" is a word they groove on. (Younger generations are less keen, maybe because "radical" has come to mean something like "suicide bomber".) They revel in appeals for "blood, toil, tears, and sweat" which make their hearts beat faster and their eyes mist over. (Maybe, somewhere deep inside they long to display some of heroism of their parents, the war generation.)

The middle generation - that'll be my lot, in their 30s and 40s - Generation X as they have been called, are a generation more affected by post-modernity than their idealistic forebears. They can be suspicious of causes because they're suspicious about anything that claims to be "the answer".

But they're big on experience. If it's a buzz, they'll give it a try. Events, excitement, exhileration are three big Es for this middle generation. Trying to get commitment out of them is a tougher call, but key to winning their attention - and beyond that their heart - is to hold out a real, life-changing encounter with something (or Someone) undeniable.

The youth of today? Teens and 20s, Generation Y as some (rather unimaginatively in my view) call them? Well, said my wise sage, they revolve around friendship. It's about your network, your group, your gang - say it how you like, it's about who you belong to, rather than what.

Hence the huge popularity of online social networking with this generation. Many a British 15-year-old will share what he's doing and how he feels about it (banal though both may be) with dozens of his mates, via Facebook, before he even brushes his teeth in the morning. And he'll receive several replies, even if they only consist of lols and rofls and other arcane online acronyms, meaningless to anyone over 25.

For them the key is "Come and belong".

Now, of course, there's a danger of huge generalization in such thinking. Generation Xers like me can, in some cases, be fired up with commitment to a cause. (I like to think I'm proof of this. And I value my friends immensely, too.) Gen Y don't mind some excitement now and again, either, and they too can rally to a heroic vision. As for those idealistic baby-boomers - well, frankly, they're getting on a bit. Sometimes people settle down, if you know what I mean.

But the point is - and this, I think, was where my wise instructor was taking me - if we're going to reach the up-and-coming generation, we have to think relationally. It's most emphatically not about becoming hip and wearing baseball caps backwards in our 40s (as my mate, Aidan, pointed out recently). But church must be a place of love and friendship, not just a boot camp - or diary of coming events. Of course, church, at its best, is precisely that: friends. John the Apostle even calls church "the friends".

We need to rememer this: call them to belong - before they believe (and certainly before they behave!) Major on networking, making links, keeping in touch, being there - even if "being there" means you're their Facebook friend or you let them know you "like" what they're up to, via an online click.

Sure, we want such connections to blossom into face-to-face (indeed heart-to-heart) friendships (see old John again). But we ought to realise that online networking actually counts for a lot with the rising generation. If we oldies are inclined to look down on it as second rate (compared to "real friendship"), we should be careful, especially if we want to win their hearts. For them, friendship is friendship, whatever the medium.

So here's an idea: let's all be friends.

Look - you're on tele!

2011-03-07T13:19:00.001Z

Check this out - an intro to New Creation Christian Community (er, that's the big mouthful name for the community we're part of, which in turn is part of the Jesus Army). Hope you like it - it's an advance installment of a series coming out soon (look out for Thea - she lives in our house!):

Right

2011-02-28T11:39:00.002Z

Found this quite amusing:

When you write copy, you own the right of copyright to the copy you write, if the copy is right. If, however, your copy falls over, you must right your copy. If you write religious services, you write rite, and own the right of copyright to the rite you write.

Conservatives write Right copy, and own the right of copyright, to the Right copy they write. A right-wing cleric would write Right rite, and owns the right of copyright to the Right rite he has the right to write. His editor has the job of making the Right rite copy right before the copyright can be right.

Should Reverend Jim Wright decide to write Right rite, then Wright would write right rite, to which Wright has the right of copyright. Duplicating his rite would be to copy Wright's Right rite, and violate copyright, to which Wright would have the right to right.

Right?

Jesus - meet Jesus

2011-02-22T08:54:00.003Z

Chatting to a couple of young guys from our Birmingham church this morning, Pete and Chris, they were telling me about an outreach campaign they've just held in which which they led a young man to Jesus; his name is - Jesus.

Yes. "Jesus has given his life to Jesus - quite powerfully actually," said Pete, a glint of irony in his eye.

Turns out this chap has led quite a wild life. Not long ago his escapades looked like they might land him a stay at Her Majesty's pleasure. Worried about this, and determined to change his ways, our man prayed to God, asking to be given another chance, not to be sentenced to imprisonment. While he was at it, he asked for he and his lady to have a child (they'd been trying for some time without success.)

Months later she was pregnant - with twins - and he was acquitted.

In gratitude to God, he wasn't content with popping along to church or giving a few crisp banknotes to Christian Aid. No: he changed his name, by deed pole, to Jesus . "Jesus Jeremiah" in fact.

When our Jesus Army team met him on the streets of Birmingham, they found he was very ready to be helped into making a Christian commitment, and he expereinced a powerful touch of God's love over the weekend.

They call him "JJ". Afterall, admitted Pete, it would be a bit confusing having two Jesuses around.

Night hours are long

2011-02-14T12:05:00.001Z

A poem I wrote after a disturbed night:

Night hours are long
Minutes crawl lifetimes strung
Between seconds which drag and stretch
Like a murdered corpse
Trailing blood across a tiled floor
After the sudden sharp stab
The knife-edge jolt into wakefulness
The night horror quickly evaporates
Leaving only terror’s taste
And that strange static electricity
Amid the grains of grey half light
And each interminable tick of the clock
Or flick from one red figure
To another, to another, to another

And all the while thoughts congregate
Like a crowd at the gallows
Day’s innocent angels are night’s demons
And night hours are long
Pray them away these dark visitants
These satans of the night?
No Saint Antony I lie
Sweat-drenched lie breathless
As the red figures march by

When dawn’s first light, my amnesty
Arrives at the window
Only then I am saved
And then only by grace

And yet in quick bright hours that follow
I remember my captors – and laugh

Circle and triangle

2011-01-31T15:03:00.003Z

I entreat Euodia and I entreat Syntyche to agree in the Lord. (Philippians 4:2)

I know two women who I’ve long thought I could blog about. For their sake, I’ll keep this anonymous, though I have nothing but the highest regard for both of them, and nothing I write here is meant negatively or critically.

These two women both love Jesus. They are both committed to serving him and other people, both live in the same Christian community, both want to see their church grow and flourish and bring honour to God. And being in the same house, they get to work at these shared aims together.

Yet this is where it can sometimes get a bit – well – tricky. It’s not exactly that these two women don’t get on. Actually, overall, I would say they have a solid friendship. It’s more that they’re just different. They can tend to communicate ‘past’ each other. Too long spent without any effort to communicate with each other and they’re thinking, ‘What is she thinking of?’ or, ‘Now why did she say/do/think that?’

They want the same things; they just travel in very different trajectories to get there.

If you’ll permit me to express it abstractly, one of them is a circle, the other a triangle.

‘Circle’ thinks in curves. She tends to feel before she thinks, is naturally spiritual and empathises easily. She flows well. People feel at ease with her. She knows how to have a laugh, too. Confrontation is not her strong suit nor is organisation (without a bit of concerted effort) – but people feel she loves them (she does) and, frankly, this makes up for most things.

‘Triangle’ is more spiky. People enjoy it when she expresses fire and vision, and she can be very inspirational. She’s articulate and has a strong personality. She thinks things through; she’s more motivated by ideas and the ‘big picture’ than the feelings of the moment. But sometimes people find her ‘scary’ and she can indeed lack patience. Perhaps people feel she’s insensitive (in fact, she knows this and agonises over it privately).

The interesting thing about these two women is that they are, in fact, a great combination. To misquote the apostle Paul, ‘If we were all circles, where would the angles be? If we were all triangles, where would the curves be?’

The key thing is this: they need to communicate. When their hearts are in contact and they ‘see inside’ each other, they really are a great combination and a source of strength to our community. Without regular communication, as I’ve said, they tend to stop understanding each other, until they may as well be speaking to each other in Greek and Swahili.

We’re all different. That’s certainly something to celebrate. But let’s keep talking, let's keep on communicating.

Y Jesus

2011-01-18T14:50:00.000Z

Found this report interesting (from the Bible Society's Newswatch email):

Christianity a ‘faded memory’ for Generation Y

Most young people born since 1982 have only a ‘faded cultural memory’ of Christianity, a new Church of England study reports. Fewer than one in five of the age group – known as Generation Y – believe in a God ‘who created the world and answers their prayers’. A survey of 300 young people, published as The Faith of Generation Y, found that most were unconcerned with answers to life’s ‘ultimate questions’. Prayer was used to cope with family illnesses, bereavements or times of pressure, but a ‘secular trinity of family, friends’ and themselves were their main spiritual resource. However, despite their distance from traditional religion, the report found no active hostility to Christianity.

The beauty of temptation

2011-01-11T11:38:00.003Z

This intriguing and haunting poem was written by a friend who lives in another Jesus Army community house:

The beauty of temptation

Lord Jesus help me
Help me in my weakness
To cling more tightly to you
And if my nails dig in
And cause your hands to bleed
It is because there is so much
So much that dazzles and draws
And tries to pull me
From you the Being and Source
Of all true beauty.
But if my heart were purer
And didn’t see the beauty in these things
The temptation would not be so fierce
Lord Jesus help me

Pretty deep. G.K. Chesterton once said, 'The man who knocks on the door of a brothel is really looking for God.'

We all hunger for beauty - that's our nobility; we all look in the wrong places - that's our tragedy.

New creation has begun

2011-01-06T13:04:00.001Z

A quote from one of my favourite Christian authors, Tom Wright:

...made for spirituality, we wallow in introspection. Made for joy, we settle for pleasure. Made for justice, we clamor for vengeance. Made for relationship, we insist on our own way. Made for beauty, we are satisfied with sentiment. But new creation has already begun. The sun has begun to rise. Christians are called to leave behind, in the tomb of Jesus Christ, all that belongs to the brokenness and incompleteness of the present world. It is time, in the power of the Spirit, to take up our proper role, our fully human role, as agents, heralds, and stewards of the new day that is dawning. That, quite simply, is what it means to be Christian: to follow Jesus Christ into the new world, God's new world, which he has thrown open before us.

- From Simply Christian

More on silence

2010-12-21T09:52:00.003Z

I once spent a summer's day walking on my own in some quiet woods and towards the end of it, I tried to spend some time in absolute silence - stilling even my thoughts.

After slowly calming my busy head for a while, I think I may have managed total silence for about ten seconds - though of course I wasn't counting.

It was surprisingly powerful. I remember, afterwards, feeling more alive than I had for ages, as though my senses were all highly tuned - and that after just a few seconds. Some friends laugh at me or say I'm 'going Buddhist', but it was quite something, and I'll never forget it.

I know that Christian or biblical meditation is about fixing your mind on good things (rather than emptying it) but I think there's a place for a 'noise purge' every now and then.

New ears resolution

2010-12-16T12:09:00.003Z

I like New Year. A time to turn a fresh page and, yes, even make resolutions. The way I see it, even if a resolution does fizzle out after a few weeks, at least it probably brought something positive into your life that few weeks.

In our community, we're seeking to listen to God about next year.

We listen to God by pondering and listening in our own times of private prayer; also through the spiritual gifts we experience in our gatherings. There are simple prophetic words or glimpses of wisdom which can take the forms of symbolic pictures in someone's mind, the meaning of which they or someoen else will interpret. Most years, we have a special time near the turn of the year when we meet together to 'listen' like this, discerning our way forward.

I'm sensing God say 'Make space', so we've started thinking of practical ways we can up our levels of contemplation and 'being' amidst our busyness and 'doing'. Not just physical decluttering (though that's part of it) but introducing a bit more 'stop' amidst all the 'go' in life. I think this will be important next year - not just for me, but for the whole community I live with as well.

Another member has been speaking of the phrase 'steps onward, steps inward' and we've found inspiration through this to pray for members and friends who've lost ground in 2010 to regain it.

Our hope is that as we listen together, we will discern what God is saying to us, amid all that he is always saying to his whole church and the world. It's heartening how very often we do find a real thread running through. 'We have the mind of Christ' - together.

Eff and blind - a postscript

2010-12-13T09:44:00.007Z

Following my sustained meditation on four letter words, I saw a book in a bookshop. I felt I just had to mention it here:

According to the author, saying the blunt little mantra that adorns the cover (minus the polite asterisks) 'is like massage for the mind – relaxing you, releasing tension, giving up on things that aren't working... it is the perfect western expression of the eastern ideas of letting go, giving up and finding real freedom by realising that things don't matter so much (if at all).'

I'm not recommending it; a quick flick gave me the impression it's mostly quasi-spiritual, self-help guff.

But it made me smile - especially after what I'd written.

Eff and blind but now I see

2010-12-09T11:46:00.006Z

I swear it’s come up a lot recently. Swearing that is.

I’m not talking about “by my troth” style swearing, just to be clear. The other night, as I was reading to my two eldest children, my seven-year-old daughter was troubled when one of the heroes in the Chronicles of Narnia “swore by the Lion”. After all, isn’t swearing what only naughty children do?

Or Naughtie radio presenters. For the next day saw the ill-fated morn of James Naughtie’s BBC radio gaffe in which a spoonerised “Jeremy Hunt the Culture Secretary” meant Naughtie introduced said politician in less auspicious terms.

A brief explanation to my daughter cleared up the Narnian misunderstanding over the difference between rude words and strong promises. But her question started me thinking about words, and the difference between “good” and “bad” words generally.

Then the BBC incident. Then, later that day, a frustrated outburst of some colourful language from a good friend (who, because I want him to remain a good friend, shall remain nameless). It did him good really. And later still that selfsame day, an odd episode in which I quoted, with schoolboy glee, the King James’ rendition of Isaiah 36:12 to my boss (and immediately felt rather foolish).

Put them all together: they all got me thinking about swearing.

The BBC was inundated with emails following the Naughtie word; some saw the funny side, but as many were seriously upset, not least over those (including Naughtie himself) who had clearly found it funny. Words have power; especially, it would seem, swearwords.

The word which Naughtie inadvertently uttered live on radio is widely considered one of the very worst words in the English language. But it was not always so. Enter Chaucer, pillar of English literature. “Prively he caughte her by the queynte” he writes jollily of the secret amorous act of one young character in The Canterbury Tales. (Does it take an expert in Middle English to see the last word in the quotation is the direct forebear of the one so untowardly mentioned on the radio?)

Certainly words change their meanings and their impact over time, including in some cases “going bad”. One YouTube commentator felt the shock over Naughtie’s slip was nothing more than silly Victorian prudishness about “words related to bodily functions like sex and going to the toilet”.

If that’s all there is to it, I thought, then why not throw off these Victorian vestiges and reclaim the wonderful power of all those four letter words? After all, we all know there are certain times – of rage or of outrage – when only those words quite seem to cut the mustard. What’s more, as someone who spends much of my working life searching for the right words, indeed the most powerful and arresting words, should I not joyfully reclaim them? Lace my next Sunday sermon with a few effs? Pepper a tweet with some blinds?

Perhaps not. I recall the Apostle’s stern words. Christians are to rid themselves of “filthy language from their lips” (and presumably their pens, not to mention tweets).

But what exactly did Paul mean? After all, what was “filthy” for BBC listeners this week didn’t seem to worry Chaucer overmuch. What was the “filthy language” outlawed by Paul?

Surely it’s not simply about putting words in two lists, “clean” and “dirty”, “good” and “bad”? This seems arbitrary at best. One man’s swearword is another man’s poetry. No, surely the important thing is that our language speaks – beyond the words we choose – of something worth saying. As Paul wrote elsewhere, “Let your speech always be seasoned with salt”. It’s the flavour of the message our words bring that is important.

Could it be that sometimes even those verbal villains, swearwords, have their place?

I once heard that Tony Campolo, that consummate Christian communicator, when facing a large crowd at some evangelical conference or other, had opened with the question, “What the f--- is going on?”

Shocked silence. Campolo went on to describe the plight of South American street children before rounding on his audience and saying, “And look at you lot! You’re more concerned that I, a preacher, used a four-letter word then you are about this awful injustice.”

Point made, and I think made very well. Three cheers for the eff-word. Camplo’s message was, in fact, well-seasoned. But I wonder how many lesser mortals, hearing that story, have copied his shock tactics only to end up conveying little more than a smutty or upsetting cheap stunt?

The key, it seems to me, is the heart and spirit behind the words. It may, just very occasionally be absolutely right, like Campolo did, to use a “bad word” to drive home a good point or express something with sufficient strength. I’ve even heard it suggested that the Apostle Paul did something similar in the Bible, though his strong language there is usually made more polite in translation.

But such calculated strong language remains the exception that proves the rule. The fruit of the Spirit is self-control in this area as in any other. Christians should reflect the Life within them. This seems to be Paul’s main concern. Loose, crude, or derogatory speech can’t achieve this.

I find it easy to forgive poor Jim Naughtie his spoonerism and even his desperate attempts to stifle the giggles that followed all through the 8 o’clock news headlines. But as for those of us who hope to speak for Christ – we should remember the trenchant words of another Apostle: “If anyone speaks, they should do so as one who speaks the very words of God.”

That’s quite a responsibility. No short cuts. No cheap stunts. And no eff-words – unless I’m absolutely sure.

Little blog about silence

2010-11-23T09:51:00.004Z

Things come round again. Like silence. Along with stillness and solitude, silence is a vital ingredient of life in Christian community. (I’d say it’s a vital ingredient to healthy human living of any kind, but that’s quite a claim, so I’ll leave it in parenthesis.)

And silence has been coming up again recently. I keep bumping into it. Is it the influence of The Big Silence, recently screened by the beeb? One of our senior leaders shared about silence at a recent staff meeting; another leader blogged about silence; a young leader told me the other day how his church household spent almost an entire Agape meal in deliberate silence (and some found it transformational).

“When we enter into periods of silence, we start to see things with greater clarity.”

The words of Christopher Jamison, Abbot of Worth Abbey, the monastery featured in The Great Silence. “We come to know ourselves, and come in touch with that deepest part of ourselves. That is our soul.”

Not that it’s all about a mystical version of an hour on the therapist’s couch. “The reality [of silence] is very different,” says Jamison. “We bump into our deepest selves.”

Our community, New Creation Christian Community, is one more marked for its activism than its contemplation, closely tied as it is to the work of the Jesus Army and the Jesus Centres. Our challenge, frankly as much as for the frantic secular society that surrounds us, is to find, make and protect silence and stillness within all that we do and say.

That said, people still say, when they come to our community houses, “Isn’t it peaceful?” (Sometimes the harassed members look at them gone out when they say it – but say it they do.)

I wrote a prayer a couple of years ago and still pray it now:

God, teach us silence, so that our words will not be empty, but carry power. Teach us stillness, so our activity will not be frantic, but fruitful. Teach us solitude, so that we can live in community. Amen.

I believe there are things to explore and dig into here. I believe this could be part of our journey into the future as a community.

Coventry Jesus Centre - a week in the life (part 2)

2010-11-19T09:52:00.000Z

Check out this homespun and for real account of the place that means so much to me (part 2) -

Coventry Jesus Centre - a week in the life (part 1)

2010-11-19T09:51:00.000Z

Check out this homespun and 'for real' account of the place that means so much to me (part 1) -

EDP in pictures

2010-11-16T11:03:00.011Z

As promised, some photos from last week's London adventure.

On the bus: chatting to Andrew (who God told us we'd meet)

Sam talks to Joe and Viktoria. He was into Norse religion (probably because she was Scandanavian!)

These guys camped out to see the Harry Potter premier. I asked this bloke if he was a wizard (he sported a fine wizardly beard). He said he wasn't which was mildly disappointing.

Church on wheels: the Jesus Army bus

Well, I hear them singing in the streets...

Earnest conversation. It's a matter of (eternal) life and death.

Bethan, giving out Jesus Army Streetpapers (and looking rather pentecostal as she does).

Not that it was all wet, windy streets. The team unwound by, er, pretending to be goats.

This young Latvian man committed his life to Jesus on Friday night. Which is what it's all about really...

(For more of my pictures of this Jesus Army campaign, click here.)

Eat, drink and pray

2010-11-15T14:55:00.004Z

I forgot my thermal long johns.

Wouldn’t normally be a problem, but last week I was on the streets of London until the wee small hours, for three nights. November nights are cold and I’d intended to wear that extra layer of insulation. As it was I had to resort to stamping and jogging on the spot from time to time.

Each month, for a three-night stint, a team of about a dozen Jesus Army soldiers take one of the church’s double-decker coaches and stay out late in London’s West End, serving food and drink, talking to people about the gospel, and praying with those who would like us to. We call it EDP - 'eat, drink and pray'.

Arriving on the Wednesday night at about 9 o’clock, a couple of young brothers and I decided to grab the atmosphere with a few songs. One played the guitar, one the bongos; I just gave it full throatle. After we’d sang for a bit (old gospel medleys mainly – ‘I’ve got joy’, ‘I’ve found a new life’) I turned round and saw a grinning face.

One chat later, I knew the person behind the face was that of Peteris from Latvia. He’d come to England a couple of year’s earlier and worked in Milton Keynes for a time. But Peteris’s luck had ran out when he had a forklift accident and lost his job. He’d drifted, ending up on London’s streets only a couple of weeks before I met him. He was grateful for the hot drink and appreciated the friendly company. He also told me how, back in Latvia, he’d been to a Christian meeting and been struck by the warmth and genuineness he’d found there.

The night rolled on. Many chats, many hot drinks. But Peteris stayed on my mind – and sure enough, the next night he was back. We talked again and he introduced me to his friend Georgs, also Latvian; they’d met on the streets.

The last night was an exciting night for the team, as several ‘words of knowledge’ (things people had sensed beforehand would come true that night) had come to fruition. ‘Someone’s gonna meet someone with the same name as team members’ – check, that was Andrew (we had two Andrews on the team). ‘Someone’s gonna be drawn to a draw-er’ – check, Bethan found herself very moved by the story of an old homeless man, only finding out later that he drew pencil drawings (he drew one of her). ‘Portcullis House’ – check, we went there and had a significant encounter with an ex-gangster who knew his need of Jesus (the person who gave us this word didn’t know there was a Portcullis House in London, and certainly didn’t know it was the main office block for the Houses of Parliament!) And so on. It does add a sense of working with God.

Peteris came back that night and we talked more deeply about what it meant to follow Jesus and be a Christian. He drank it all in. ‘Has not God chosen those who are poor in the world to be rich in faith?’ (James 2:5)

I was able to pray with him and help him pray his own prayer of commitment.

Frankly, there’s nothing better than that. I would go so far as to say that not even the birth of my own children quite compares with the joy of leading someone to new birth as they believe in Christ.

I put Peteris and his friend Georgs in touch with my friend from the Jesus Army in London. They stayed with them the next night and by all accounts are getting on well.

Being on the front line; serving many; sharing the gospel; I loved it.

Even without my long johns.

(Some names are changed. I'll put up some photos of the EDP tomorrow.)

A parable from real life

2010-10-19T10:10:00.006+01:00

Last week, a young community-brother and I repaved the patio at the back of our house. (Those who know me may exclaim ‘What! James shovelling sand and mixing mortar? James lifting heavy slabs? James soiling his manicured writer’s hands?’ But it’s true. We even have photos to prove it.)

I was the labourer, my young brother the skilled tradesman. In the course of our work, I had to shovel several barrow loads of hardcore gravel into the wheelbarrow and round the side of the house to the worksite. At one point, my five-year-old son, desperate to be a ‘builder’, arrived at my side to help. He brought his plastic toy spade. And he started to shovel.

For each large shovel-load of hardcore I piled into that wheelbarrow, he contributed a few grains. He was proud of his achievement; and I was really happy to have him working at my side – because he’s my son and I love him.

Later, thinking about this, it dawned on me how very much this is like God and us. We may talk grandiloquently about ‘building the church’ or our ‘ministry’, but do we really think we’re helping God? In one sense, we’re not ‘helping’ him in the slightest. He is building his church. Our contribution is like a few gravel grains in a plastic spade next to his almighty shovel.

And yet... I believe God is happy to have us working at his side. We’re his children, you see, and he loves us. We really can help him. The work certainly doesn’t depend on our contribution (thank God), however much we may feel it does. Stressed-out strivers (like me) do well to remember it.

Yet God loves to call us his fellow-labourers. He loves to have us by his side, in the heat of the day, doing our bit. He loves us to feel satisfied with our achievements. In fact – he just loves us.

Let's talk about sex

2010-09-23T14:49:00.006+01:00

Last Sunday morning’s talk was on sex. Andy, the speaker that morning, certainly had everyone’s attention. (How can my next Sunday’s sermon – on the epistle to the Romans – possibly compete?)

Of course, speak about sex and attention is pretty much guaranteed. The advertisers are onto that one: Andy himself mentioned the fact that on the road between his house and the church we were sitting in listening to him, there were at least two billboards using sex to market their products.

Another reason Andy held our attention that morning was, quite frankly, that he’s a marvellous speaker: clear, engaging, an apt analogy or memorable story to illustrate every point.

He didn’t pull his punches, either, as he took us on a trenchant tour of the New Testament’s teaching on sex and sexual purity. “Log fires are nice,” he said. “But light one in the middle of the lounge and you’re in trouble. Sex has its proper place too; it’s called marriage.”

“Keeping 'two chevrons apart' avoids crashes on the motorway,” he pointed out, “which is a good rule for male-female friendships in the church too.”

But there was another, much more unusual reason why Andy’s talk carried such impact, I believe, and it was this: Andy is celibate.

I don’t mean just ‘not-yet-married’; Andy, along with a couple of hundred others in the Jesus Army has made a lifelong commitment to remain unmarried in order to be freer to serve Jesus and love people. Do the adding-up. Yep: that means no sex at all for Andy – ever. For life.

This, curiously, gave him much more moral authority with which to say, to a hall full of people, that they ought to be sexually self-controlled. Think about it. If he’d been sitting there with his “lovely wife” on the platform (the kind that many American evangelical pastors seem to have beside them in the photograph on the back cover of their umpteen books), one might have been tempted to say, “Easy for you to stand there talking about self-control; what about those of us who aren’t cosily married like you?”

It occurred to me that very pillars of the New Testament that Andy was quoting were celibate, too. Jesus. Paul.

Not, of course, that married people can’t or shouldn’t address the topic. The New Testament gives us married Peter’s teaching about sexual conduct, too. Nor is celibacy a guarantee of purity, as the recent tragic revelations regarding Catholic priests have shown all-too-graphically.

Yet Andy, like many others I know (and like many, many thousands of Catholic priests and religious, by the way) is a sign of hope. He is a celibate for the right reasons: he loves people; he loves Jesus.

And his celibacy means he brings a moral and prophetic clarity to the sexual conversation.

We need it. Because all of us – married, single, celibate, engaged, attached, attracted, alone – are called to the same high vocation: to honour God with our bodies.

Spring in Autumn

2010-09-17T16:29:00.008+01:00

There are seasons in community. I'm learning to roll with them and not worry too much if they don't fit my preferences.

I'd really like us to grow in numbers (apart from anything doesn't it look good when the stats are passed round at leaders meetings?); cue a season of quiet. I'd like us to experience peace; cue a season of clashes and 'relationship reality'. I'd like us to go deeper together; cue a season of intensive outreach and activity.

I'm not always wrong. Just most of the time. It's His fault really. The wind blows where it will. I suppose 'going with God's seasons' is another way of expressing what Paul called 'keeping in step with the Spirit' - letting His rhythms become our rhythms.

Anyway, where was I? Yes - the seasons.

So, on Thursday nights we throw open our community house doors and invite people for dinner. We call it a friendship meal. If you're anywhere near Coventry on any Thursday night, consider yourself invited.

It had been quite quiet for a while; on some nights only those of us who actually live in the house. But recently, we've been experiencing a bit of a Thursday night renaissance: lots of different people coming, lively friendships being formed, new people. It came just as my longing for new people had almost settled into acceptance that it was a season of 'consolidation' (the word we use when nothing seems to be happening). I was a little out of step with the season, that's all.

And right now it's great to have new people around. Too long without that and a community becomes stagnant and turns its energy in on itself.

So for the past few weeks we've had a houseful on Thursday nights. Last week it included a trainee vicar and a missionary family (and some skaters). Last night a young family that we're coming to love more and more were round (oh, and the skaters again - for about five minutes. Where did they go?)

Last night was particularly special because it was the birthday of one of our much-loved brothers - so we revelled in making sure he was well celebrated, sung to, bigged up, clapped. And we enjoyed sharing his cake - as well as plenty of life, faith, love & laughter.

I love friendship. It is, in essence, the heart of our faith. The cross speaks of friendship restored - vertically (God reaches down in atonement) and horizontally (we're reconciled to each other). Whatever the season, friendship will be somewhere in the mix.

But I'm glad that right now its bubbling to the surface. God is moving; new people are coming.

It's like Spring in Autumn.

Thank God.

Our people

2010-09-10T09:46:00.004+01:00

Coventry Jesus Centre is our local church centre, which includes a drop-in lounge used mainly by homeless and disadvantaged people. Piers, the manager of the centre (also my dear friend, mentor, spiritual dad, and sometime rescuer), blogged this account of his fellow manager at the Jesus Centre, who described her recent journey from the Jesus Centre to the bus station.

"Down Lamb Street to post a letter. Outside the Sorting Office was NW - just been beaten up - asked for some money - gave him a little. Saw AS walking down. Walked down Bishop Street and along Corporation Street towards bus station. Saw DM and AM on bench by Transport Museum - waved. Saw NM on bench by bus stop - head bowed so didn't see me. Went into the bus station. Saw LE and AF being talked to by two policemen - nodded as went by. Went to bus stop. Saw SK sitting at table - a bit more sober than when previously seen after going on a bender from the dry house he had been in. Looking very battered. Encouraged him to make another appointment to go on the Bond Scheme. Asked for some money - gave him a little. Bus arrived and two guys we know (can't remember who it was) got off bus as I was waiting to get on - waved."

I found it a moving snapshot, illustrating life as a church of the poor. "We meet a lot of street folk," says Piers. "I can't walk through town without meeting some. They're our people in this big village; it's great."

(To read more of Piers' Jesus Centre blog, check out http://pierscjc.blogspot.com/)

Don't touch

2010-09-07T11:19:00.006+01:00

The point of the drama, performed at our recent big bash on Trafalgar Square, was very simple. If there's a "Don't Touch" sign what's the one thing you want to do? Yep: touch.

In the drama (which used to be performed by my mate Loz and I, till we got so old we were retired off), clown A gets stuck to the chair when he touches it. Efforts to free himself just get him more stuck. Clown B comes to help him, but gets thoroughly stuck too. Clown C suggests they pray, which they do and are miraculously freed.

Simple enough, but it tells an all-too-familiar tale. How often have I got mired in stuff that is against my own rules let alone anyone else's - or God's?

Sin is sticky, whatever the brand. Gossip (usually disguised as concern) - yep, sticks to me too easily. Lustful 'skating on thin eyes' (on the internet or in real life) - yeah, impurity superglue. Manipulation or manouvering for popularity. Stick. Harbouring grudges. Stick. Anger and hurtful words. Stick.

I'm not trying to be gloomy. But sin gums me up if I touch it. And sometimes even trying to help others gets me in trouble. Self-pity. Stick. Superiority. Stick. Callous indifference. Stick.

Thank God for the truth the drama ends with. There's a way out of the glue-trap.

As one famous and very ancient cry for help puts it:

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.

A bang in a teacup

2010-09-03T11:10:00.006+01:00

So physicist Stephen Hawking has blown up a media storm by claiming God cannot possibly be the Big Banger.

The Guardian ran a poll on whether or not you agree with his conclusions. But I was struck by the annoying secularist bias in the way the questions are phrased. Here was the choice:

'Yes. I believe in gravity, not divinity' (i.e. the two are incompatible and to believe in God I have to be a self-confessed ignoramus).

'No. God: Hawking 'not necessary' (i.e. believing in God means I'm not only an ignoramus but also quite prepared to dish out rudeness for my religion).

So, if I may, let me phrase my own answer:

'No, Hawking is wrong despite his enormous scientific intellect. The more wonders he explains the more I'm filled with wonder - and faith.'

Or as I tweeted it somewhat more facetiously late last night:

Science is hawking another explanation for everything today. The laws wrote themselves. Good night.

'Big Society'

2010-08-23T16:39:00.005+01:00

Is the 'Big Society' David Cameron's biggest and best idea?

In a recent report, the manager of our Coventry Jesus Centre says, "Big Society means more involvement of charities, community groups and social enterprise in tackling social needs. We are doing that, so watch this space."

He then goes on to detail how Coventry City Council have donated a garage to us to store furniture for homeless people we are helping to house, and given us money for a van.

Is a new day of cooperation on behalf of the poor dawning? If it is, and if the Big Society is more than just a soundbite, then I will do what I never thought I'd do: declare a loud hallelujah for Cameron and his coalition.

We shall indeed watch this space.

Dishes and paradoxes

2010-08-03T12:10:00.008+01:00

I heard a rumour the other day. Dangerous things rumours, particularly when - like this one - they're about yourself. But hey - I heard it and had to respond.

This time I heard someone had expressed the view that I don't set a good example when it comes to practical serving - like washing the dishes. After the initial fleshly reactions (why does my flesh always move faster than my spirit?) of hurt feeling and wounded pride, I realized two things.

First, it was a fair cop. I'm not to be found at the sink nearly as much as many others I live with in community. Secondly, there are reasons why that is the case and they're not all bad. (I promise this is not simply going to be an extended self-justification - I've got my pouting over now and I stand by point one, it was a fair cop and I resolved to be humble and get to that sink more.)

Yet, fairly often, I'm not at the sink because other responsibilities prevent me from getting there - anything from putting children to bed to preparing a meeting.

As I thought about this I found my mind ping-ponging between the fencing foils of a paradox. Thrust: you need to do the washing up more! Parry: no-one else can put my children to bed! Thrust: a leader must set an example! Parry: a leader cannot live for what others think! Thrust: imagine if everyone came up with their excuses and left the dishes to rot! Parry: the Body of Christ means we all have our different contributions... And so on and on.

Paradox is defined by Dictionary.com as something "that seems self-contradictory but in reality expresses a possible truth".

The Christian life is full of paradox. Perhaps this isn't surprising when you consider some of the Church's essential beliefs. (Is Jesus God or man? Er... yup. Is salvation predestined or freely chosen? Er... yup again. And so on.)

But - as the washing up rumour has already given away - right now I'm thinking not so much of those lofty theological paradoxes which have kept the sharpest minds of the Church whirring for centuries. I'm thinking of some of the more down-to-earth, daily seeming contradictions we have to negotiate as we live as Christians - and, in particular as Christian leaders.

For example - I've been learning over the past few months, sometimes painfully, that it doesn't do to be too concerned about what people think of you. People-pleasing is a particular danger to those involved in pastoral work whose daily work does, in one sense, revolve around being sensitive to how others are doing and feeling, and working hard to care for them. But it can all become tyrannical if I start to live with what people of think as my only guiding star. So I've been learning not to care too much about what others think.

But immediately danger looms. It's only a few short steps from thin-skinned over-sensitivity ('Oh help, I think I've upset you') to bloody-minded insensitivity ('Don't give a monkeys how I make you feel'). Somehow, I have to live the paradox: care about the effect I have on others - but not too much.

Live for the 'audience of One', as someone once put it - while acknowledging that that One is watching carefully how much I love and serve others.

It can feel like like walking a tightrope. As a good friend of mine often puts it, much of life comes down to a fine balance.

Here's another paradox, somewhat related to the first. For a leader it is particularly important to follow the apostle Paul's instruction "not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think". Too much of the "I'm the leader" mentality is a highway straight to pride.

But what about the opposite? "I'm just the same as everyone else and what I do doesn't matter; no need to set any example, no need to embody anything which anyone may find it useful to imitate." Well, clearly, that would be pretty rubbish leadership.

So: I'm just the same as anybody else - but people see me as a leader and rightly so: my example matters. Paradox.

Christian leaders: tender-hearted and thick-skinned; humble and confident; easily entreated and not easily swayed. Like Jesus, full of grace - and truth.

So this is what I've resolved: I'm not going to let everyone tell me to wash the dishes! And I will humbly let anyone tell me to wash the dishes.

I've got to live in the paradox.

"The center of the world"

2010-07-27T14:49:00.006+01:00

One of the celibates I live with in our community has long found Henri Nouwen's writings illuminating. She lent me 'The Genesee Diary' recently, Nouwen's account of seven months he lived 'as a monk' in the Abbey of Genesee in upstate New York. Along with 'The Wounded Healer' (see my last post), I've been finding this book pretty nourishing.

Here's a taste. Nouwen's starting point for thought is a statement by John Eudes, the abbot - 'The monastery is the center of the world':

The monastery is not just a place to keep the world out but a place where God can dwell. The [worship], the silence, the rhythm of the day, the week, and the year, and the whole monastic life-style with the harmony of prayer, spiritual reading, and manual labor, are meant to create space for God. The ideal of the monk is to live in the presence of God, to pray, read, work, eat, and sleep in the company of his divine Lord...
...In so far as the monastery is the place where the presence of God in the world is most explicitly manifiest and brought to consciousness, it is indeed the center of the world. This can be said in humility and purity of heart because the monk, more than anyone else, realizes that God only dwells where man steps back to give him room.

I found these words arresting. The place of God's presence is the center, not the periphery; prayer is engagement, not disassociation; Christian community is at the heart of the human community, even while it is different, even set apart, from it.

You may have heard the quip, "Christians are called to be 'in the world but not of the world', but are far better at being 'of the world and not in the world'!" Yet when a Christian community is truly a place of prayer, of faith, of brotherhood, and of worship - when God is really present there - then, precisely because it is different, it is acutely and vitally relevant and central to the surrounding world.

There is a danger in talk of monasteries and so on (particularly for an Anglo-Saxon-Protestantish type like me): 'monastery' can be a romantic notion, attractive in its 'otherness', rather than a lived-out reality. But when Nouwen writes of 'the monastery' he is not referring to the Tolkeinesque (elegant arches, grey habits, or haunting plainsong); he is referring to God, the reality of God living among people as they share all things and worship with their whole life.

And this is - and must be - precisely what any Christian community pursues, not least one like mine where we brothers and sisters live together and share all things in common, and eat, work and live together day by day.

For the meeting place with God is the Body of Christ, not some building (however beautiful) or some place of nature's majesty (however evocative). As Jesus put it, we worship neither in a temple or on a mountain, but in spirit and truth.

It's made real in the rhythm of Christian community: meals, prayers, conversations, silences, meetings, songs, boisterous times, quiet times... messy tables, rumpled furniture, upturned mugs on draining boards (and dried up mugs on the rack!)

Oh God - let us be a community in which You can dwell in all that we are: Your gathered people, Your dwelling place!

The center of the world.

Wounded healer

2010-07-12T12:27:00.008+01:00

Over the past few weeks I've been engaged in a humbling and painful dance with what some would call burn-out, others may call break-down. (Or maybe God just sent a worm to eat the plant I was sheltering under.)

I say a dance, but it's not very elegant; more like a drunken stagger. But - very, very strangely - there's a beauty in it, too. How to explain...

Maybe this would help. Recently a friend sent me a description of a vision he'd had while he was praying. He saw, he said

A man holding up a spear asked God, standing next to him where he should aim. He wanted to make the maximum impact on the world around him. God took the spear out of his hands and pierced the man's own hands with it. Wounded hands aren't able to slap faces, or even hold much. Wounded hands are tender. With pierced hands the man was much more able to show compassion.

This followed something quiet, but moving, that had happened to me a couple of days earlier. Arriving at my brother- and sister-in law's house (another Jesus Army community house) for dinner, I unexpectedly 'heard God' as I climbed the steps to their front door. (One of those 'thoughts I didn't think' you come to recognize as a Christian).

I'm making you a wounded healer.

'Strange' I thought, 'Isn't there a book called that..?' - and that was all I thought, at the time. But later that night I glanced at my brother-in-law's bookshelf (in a room I rarely visit) and there was the book - The Wounded Healer (by Henri Nouwen). So I'm now reading it - and finding it's the kind of book that reads me as much as I read it.

God moves in mysterious ways, as the old hymn puts it. Somewhere, even in painful and seemingly meaningless times, He is working out something of beauty in our lives.

I once heard this described as a wondrous tapestry: just a tangled mess of threads from one side - but when turned round, when finally revealed in its full glory - perfectly beautiful.

The Cross is the ultimate example of this. 'Why have you forsaken me?' cried the bloodied wretched mess of a man nailed to it. And I think he cried it in genuine, agonized despair. But there was a wonderful 'why'. For the joy set before Christ. A Father obeyed. A bride won. A world saved.

I'm not always quite so serene about it. I've had my own very small brushes with the despair of the word 'why' thrown at a brass heaven. Yet, behind it all there is hope. He is hope.

He's making me a wounded healer - and a little more like the Wounded Healer himself.

Viruses, viral, and va va voom

2010-05-27T09:09:00.003+01:00

On August 5, 6 & 7, the Jesus Army are hosting their annual youth event, RAW (Real & Wild), at Cofton Park, Birmingham.

As part of promoting the event and motivating all Jesus Army youth types to invite all their mates, we've started releasing a series of home-spun promo videos. Have a look at some of them here.

We've been calling them RAW virals, 'viral' being one of those neologisms that the web has spawned in recent years. Wikipedia defines viral marketing like this:

marketing techniques that use pre-existing social networks to produce increases in brand awareness or to achieve other marketing objectives (such as product sales) through self-replicating viral processes, analogous to the spread of pathological and computer viruses. It can be word-of-mouth delivered or enhanced by the network effects of the Internet. Viral promotions may take the form of video clips, interactive Flash games, advergames, ebooks, brandable software, images, or even text messages.

Well, thanks Wiki. And there was me thinking viruses were nasty semi-living thingums that give you colds - or worse. (Having had a spate of people in our Christian community going down with a nasty chest virus, I find it hard to feel positive about anything viral.)

But, putting it simply, something is viral if it spreads. So we want these little vids to spread about from friend to friend - because we want as many people to get together at RAW as possible.

Because RAW's going to be a powerful event. It's about Jesus. It is, as the name suggests, a raw call to radical Jesus following.

So spread it. Get all your mates and get there.

realandwild.com

Everything I do... makes me laugh out loud

2010-05-12T15:06:00.004+01:00

Saw this on a friend's Facebook wall and it made me chuckle.

A couple asked for their wedding cake to be inscribed with 1 John 4:18 which reads: 'There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear.' Unfortunately the bakery misread the instruction, and presented a cake with the words from John 4:18: 'For you have had five husbands, and the man you have now is not your husband.'

Wonder if it's true? It reminds me of a couple in the 90s, at the time of the Kevin Costner Robin Hood film (with its famous Bryan Adams theme song, 'Everything I do I do it for you'). They asked for 'the Robin Hood theme' to be played as the bride walked down the aisle.

The bride approached, the church hushed - and suddenly the gaudy sounds of 'Robin Hood, Robin Hood riding through the glen' blared out.

Does it say something very damning about my personality that I find that so very, very funny?

Guilt? Leave it out!

2010-04-30T10:43:00.009+01:00

Someone said to me recently, 'Isn't religion just driven by guilt?'

It got me thinking (not for the first time) about the whole topic of guilt - and in particular how, as Christians, we communicate our faith.

I think evangelicals generally are far too inclined to use guilt as the starting point for their message. (I call this the 'bad news first, good news good' approach.) It's driven by the central place evangelical theology gives to penal substitution ('Jesus died to take the punishment for our sins'). For many evangelicals this simply is the gospel.

It's not that there isn't truth here; but it's not the whole picture. A lot more happened at the cross. Jesus overcame violence with love. God demonstrated His enormous will to forgive. Satanic and systemic evil was unmasked, exhausted and undone. The great story of God and His people came to its climax and turning point. (And don't forget the resurrection!)

But there's another thing about guilt - the distinction between guilt as an article of theology (i.e. 'we all stand guilty before a holy God') and guilt as a feeling.

Which brings us to what is perhaps the biggest problem with the old school evangelical 'guilt first' approach: our society just simply doesn't feel guilty anymore. (Possibly because of the retreat of religion in public consciousness - how's that for chicken and egg?) Some evangelicals just shout louder about guilt - witness the hysteria-tinged outcries from the Christian right recently.

But I think there's a better way. Start with a call to belong. Emphasise church as friends, as brotherhood and shared lives. Make it open to all. Proclaim God's crazy grace. And live it out, joyfully, unpredictably: no prejudice, church for all. Guilt? - Leave it out!

As people come and belong, they will discover, bit by bit, the wildly loving God who is behind it all (and through and within and over and under it all). In time - and I say it with care - the right kind of guilt will come: the desire to be deeply reconciled with God, to know Him, to live clean.

That's when baptism comes into its own. A bath and a door into the family - all in one.

'Twill be grace that teaches our hearts to fear, and grace our fears relieves.

But let's not start with a browbeating. People find it hard enough to believe in a man raised from death who also happens to be God without us having to place in their way something even more difficult to believe: their own guilt.

No racism please, we're British

2010-04-27T11:13:00.003+01:00

Some old friends who live in Leeds put up a notice by their front door letterbox. This is what it said:

Please put racist leaflets straight in the green bin. We welcome refugees. Put God’s world before the ‘rights’ of the British. If you’d like to discuss it, please knock on the side door. Thanks. The Marlows.

I thought this was so excellent I wanted to pass it on.

Body builders

2010-04-21T15:34:00.004+01:00

When Paul wrote to the Corinthians he called them something awesome: “You are the body of Christ”. This group of not-very-perfect people in big, bad Corinth expressed Christ all on their own – fully.

But maybe you want to correct Paul: “Hang on there, Mr Apostle: they are part of the body of Christ – don’t forget those Christians up in Thessalonica or over the bay in Ephesus? Not to mention further afield?”

Most Christians know “the body of Christ” means the church – but they get twitchy about any one church being “the body of Christ”. “Part of the body” of the body seems more correct, not so OTT – safer.

Yet the body of Christ is most powerfully real where people are joined together in day-to-day life. “I’m a part of the whole body of Christ across the world” may be true enough (and wonderful in its way), but if you don’t actually belong to specific people it’s dangerously airy-fairy.

The more you belong to the brothers and sisters you’re actually with, the more you belong to the body of Christ. The whole body was at Corinth. The whole body was at Thessalonica. And Ephesus. The whole body is a reality in any church where there is lasting commitment to God and to each other. God has not scattered limbs and organs across the world. Whenever even two or three gather – commit to each other, lay down their lives – Christ is there [Matt.18:20].
Then – and only then – a big bogeyman is given the death sentence: independence .

Independence – so prized by the world’s spirit! – is the big enemy of “body of Christ” reality.
And independence often wears a devout mask: “I’ll go where the Lord calls me!” (Translated: “I’ll go where I like and never limit my options.”) In the New Testament, people weren’t “called” – if by “called” you mean getting a personal “phone call from God”. Even Paul, who certainly was “called to be an apostle”, only set off apostling when God spoke to his church, in Antioch [Acts 13:1-3].

Relationships in this kind of body go very deep. “We are members of one another”; “If one member suffers, all suffer together; if one member is honoured, all rejoice” [Rom.12:5, 1Cor.12:26]

But we won’t get it on the cheap. How about total loyalty to the body you belong to? Never leave unless you’re commissioned and sent.

Be the body of Christ: deal the death-blow to your independence.

Inspiration and perspiration

2010-04-06T11:32:00.005+01:00

From time to time I get sent reports about Jesus Army evangelism efforts from round the nation. (I edit our magazine – helps to keep my ear to the ground.) Recently I was sent one that was a little different to the norm:

Six people went to evangelise in the city centre. It was cold and clashed with a youth event elsewhere, hence the small team. Generally a pants evening. Bless you.

I loved this report enough to reproduce it here. Not only does the grim “bless you” at the end make me smile, but this is a disarmingly honest report. Because the fact is that for all our characteristically Jesus Army gung-ho positivity, sometimes the work of building the church can be cold, hard slog.

Take another, different, example: we’ve just held our annual Easter weekend “Alive Festival”. After it was over someone asked me how I got on. I thought for a moment and then replied, “80% perspiration, 20% inspiration.”

It wasn’t that it wasn’t an excellent time; it was – inspiring talks from some of the Jesus Army’s main leaders; powerful encounters in times of prayer; energetic singing and worship. But I found it hard work, too (as did my good lady wife). Small children to manage; food to be transported, dished out, cleared up; muddy buggy wheels, shoes, toddlers; driving, driving, more driving... There were times when aching limbs and numbed brains congealed into cold questions like “Is it really worth the effort?”

And of course, the answer is yes. It is well worth the effort. But it is also – effort.

At the end of what is possibly the greatest theological work ever penned, Paul wrote these apparently rather mundane words:

Greet Mary, who has worked hard for you... Greet Urbanus, our fellow worker in Christ... Greet those workers in the Lord, Tryphaena and Tryphosa. Greet the beloved Persis, who has worked hard in the Lord... Timothy, my fellow worker, greets you... (from Romans 16)

Can you spot the theme?

It’s hard work being and building the church.

But it’s worth every drop of sweat.

Tough love, but love all the same

2010-03-24T15:16:00.007Z

Just wrote a bible study on 'Paul's tough love' - chapter five in Paul's letter of love to the Corinthians...

For those who like a bit of Bible, here it is...

1Corinthians is Paul’s letter of love and the epistle reaches its climactic point in Paul’s poetic depiction of love [ch.13]. However, though love is 'patient and kind' [13:4], it is not soft and wishy-washy. In fact, love 'does not delight in evil' [13:6] – as Paul demonstrates in his firm opposition to immorality in this chapter. He is appalled by the Corinthians’ easy acceptance of a man taking his stepmother as a sexual partner [v.1, see Deut.27:20]. He commands the Corinthians to exclude this man from church fellowship before sin spreads to corrupt the church further [v.2-8,11].

Yet we ought to note certain things about this ‘tough love’. First, it has as its aim the restoration of the sinning brother; it is not just punishment for its own sake [v.5, see 2Cor.2:7]. Second, such judgements are within the church to preserve her purity; Christians shouldn’t be judgemental or standoffish to those outside the church [v.9-10]. Thirdly, it is not just sexual immorality that corrupts; Paul list other impurities like money-love [v.11]. Today, Christians can be very shrill about sexual ethics – but when was the last time anyone was expelled from the church for being too rich?

JA pride

2010-03-23T12:30:00.007Z

This got me thinking...

I found seven occasions where the word 'pride' was used in the New Testament - and they were mostly positive.

Eight references to 'proud' were all bad.

Interesting. It would appear, from the New Testament, that to 'take pride' in something or someone is generally good - certainly it was good enough for the apostle Paul - whereas to be 'proud' is not good.

So I'll 'take pride' in my wonderful church, and the men and women I love, and my wife and children, and even my gifts without fear, safe from the humility police.

But I'll avoid getting proud!

The calm and the crazed?

2010-03-23T10:32:00.005Z

Philip Pullman’s got Christians’ goat again. Or rather, they see him as a goat – destined for an eternal roasting, unlike good sheep like them. Pullman’s about to publish a book called The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ – and Christians have been writing him letters of denunciation and damnation.

But what bothers me about this little news vignette, is not Pullman’s book. (From what I can gather, it will be a pretty unoriginal regurgitation of the old ‘Jesus-was-nice-but-Paul-made-him-into-a-beastie’ myth). No, what bothers me is the way, yet again, it presents a watching world with a dispute between the calm, rational atheist and those hysterical, crazed and judgemental Christians.

Which bothers me on two counts. Firstly because – and you’d expect me to say this – it is simply not true that most Christians are shrill, paranoid hellfire merchants, looking to hurl anathemas around. More on this in a bit. But the second reason I get twitchy about this is that, in fact, I don’t think Pullman is calm and rational. I think he’s got just as much of a bee in his bonnet as the wild-eyed religious zealots he pillories.

I read Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy some years ago. I enjoyed volume one. Sure, it was dark, a bit creepy, but a little daemon-possession makes for a good yarn. Volume two was, if anything, better still. (I love the idea of a ‘subtle knife’ that can cut its way between worlds.) But by volume three something else was happening. The anti-god, anti-church theme, which had been bubbling along under the surface, came to the boil. (‘God’ is a senile old bully, ‘church’ an institution of repression and abuse.) In fact, Pullman’s agenda boiled over, messily – and spoilt the story. Novel became diatribe. God is awful, wicked, nasty, an ogre, the church his twisted mechanism of control. Now go out and tell others: religion is evil. Evil, I tell you!

Again, I know I’m open to the jibe ‘of course you wouldn’t like that – you’re a Christian!’ But that really isn’t the point. (Apart from anything else, my God is nothing even remotely like Pullman’s creation; my God sacrifices himself, in love, for the world.) It’s just that Pullman spoiled his own story because it became silly – hysterical, crazed and judgemental, in fact, like the religious individuals who are now giving Pullman advance notice of his damnation.

Pullman is an a-religious zealot (along with his church’s high-priests Messrs Dawkins, Hitchens, and Harris). But zealotry is zealotry.

Philip Pullman is ‘unperturbed’, report the media; the disapproving letters are ‘water off a duck's back’; he’s not bothered by these silly Christians. Well, quite. So he shouldn’t be – because the letters are, evidently, silly. ‘The letter writers essentially say that I am a wicked man, who deserves to be punished in hell’ smiles reasonable, persecuted Pullman. ‘Luckily it's not in their power to do anything like sending me there.’ (Chuckle, chuckle, stupid religious loonies.)

But look a little closer at what Pullman is saying. Pullman essentially says that Christians are wicked men who deserve to be punished. And he’ll bang on about it. He’ll even spoil his own novels for it.

Meanwhile, back to my first reason for discomfort – most Christians aren’t judgemental loonies. In fact, far, far, far from it.

Last night I sat down for the evening with our local church leadership team. We spent a couple of hours talking about how we could best serve those we pastor in the church. How we could best meet their needs. We prayed about it. There was love and concern in the air. There was gritty resolve to live given; to make church a place of security and strength for many – including many who are hurting and in need. That’s church – and that’s the true Christ.

And he’s no scoundrel, Philip.

To God or not to God

2010-03-15T13:32:00.003Z

Latest poem from my friend, Stuart, written after a conversation we had the other night about whether 'God' is a noun or a verb (as you do...)

God the noun
thing unwrought
the unthinkable thought
the unbelievable something
the what
the is
the art
the can’t be
how on earth
pure being
just being
was to be
is that was
and will be
wholly noun

God the verb
is to do
was that does
will done
naked action
unclothed power
making causing essence
moving being breathing
wholly verb

God the undefined
this print
this page
your hands and eyes
your mind
thou and thee entwined
noun indeed
verb instead
you read

Muse

2010-03-09T14:45:00.005Z

My friend wrote a poem this morning. I'm in it. So I thought I'd share it here. He describes it as being 'meant to say something about grace renewing our youth, or something like that, with touches of redemption by the blood, the miraculous - and so on'.

All I know is that it gave me some strength at a time in my life when I've been feeling far from strong. Words have power, and these words, from a friend in need - helped.

Shaving before work, I thought of you,
how mourning stings eyes red and weary,
how years roll by, like tears, that cloud our sight.

A droplet of light cut from the sky
flashed behind me; fell from the sun
to quicken my razor to dazzling life.

A splash of heaven played on the sooty foam,
the scummy sink, the drizzle of scraped blood -
became jam on cream - and childhood remembered, home,
a stream of joy chuckling from the heart, me and you
transformed by glory reflected - youthful, renewed.

The next person

2010-02-26T11:41:00.001Z

A great friend of mine wrote a piece on community living called 'The next person' and another great friend posted it on his blog - so I couldn't resist linking to it here.

Worth a read if you live in community, or if you care about love, or if you're a human being. If none of those apply, give it a miss.

http://piersdy.wordpress.com/2010/02/26/the-next-person/

Atheist posters promote Christian happiness (by mistake)

2010-01-08T12:57:00.002Z

I liked this article so thought I'd reproduce it here:

It seems God has had the last laugh in regard to the latest advert by the British Humanist Association (BHA). The two children used in the poster to campaign against religious labelling of kids are from a Christian family.

The smiling boy and girl in the billboard campaign – Ollie and Charlotte – have evangelical parents. Their father, Brad Mason, sells his photos to stock libraries, one of which sold the images on to the BHA. Brad says: ‘It is quite funny, because obviously they were searching for images of children that looked happy and free… I reckon it shows we have brought up our children in a good way and that they are happy.’

Sources: The Christian Institute (23/11); The Telegraph (21/11); The Times (21/11)

Shepherds, stars, and angels

2009-12-24T13:46:00.010Z

A poem by my friend, Loz...

The coming of the stars

For Ken Jolley

The night the stars descended, we were hunched as usual,
dozing in tattered bundles; heads down,
oblivious to the aching air. Only one was watchful.

When he cried out, a wolf scattered my fitful dreams.

I started, came to; beheld my staring mates, stark with wonder,
Arcing up, like young cedars struck by lightning
wedded to the sky by blue white flame, transmitting unearthly energy to the mud.
The sparking multiplied, and a roar like a great song underground
intensifying in eye- watering, naked power. I swore it were the last hour.

You ask how it was that they heard the voices clearer than I?
I’ve often wondered why, but am none the wiser. I was the junior,
always simpler, smaller, quieter than my friends. But even then I had my uses:
sleeping in the gateway, seeking the lost ones, fetching sandwiches.

It wasn’t how they picture it, you know: us all starry eyed,
united, trooping down the bright hillside hand in hand,
like kids following a painted sign to wonderland.
That meeting was fear itself. The others wept, transfixed.
My legs were wet and shaking as I crept between a cleft rock,
jammed my fingers in my ears and prayed and sobbed.

Later, when I reappeared, the stars were gone. My mates
returned and mocked me for hiding, gave me a ribbing, said
I’d missed a treat; “time of their lives” they laughed, exuberant, fiery eyed.
They were changed men. But were they mad? I didn’t know what to believe.
As my dear mum used to say; “tidings that come in a flash are usually bad”.

But now I understand, feel the same thrill they had. I know why
they went to tell the world what they’d seen, share the tale
with one and all. Me; I stayed within sight of the sheepfold wall.

People still seek me out to hear my piece.
I say what I know; that now I sing my flock a peaceful song,
that fear bids farewell as new love is born, how joy
can be found in the lowliest place of all; how happy
is the shepherd when the least among his sheep comes home.

The Lord is my shepherd, I am depressed

2009-12-11T12:12:00.006Z

I love the honesty of the psalms. Here's a bible study I wrote for our church today, on Psalm 102.

'A prayer of one afflicted, when he is faint', this psalm expresses the agony of someone experiencing what we would today call depression. Every day seems empty; his sorrow feels physically painful [v.3]; his heart loses all vigour [v.4]; he forgets to eat and loses weight [v.4-5]; in sleepless nights he feels horribly alone, only able to think about those who are against him [v.7-8]; even pleasures loose their flavour [v.9]; he feels abandoned by God [v.10]: life is pointless [v.11].

What hope can there possibly be in such sorrow? In the second half of this psalm, this broken-hearted man lifts his sights towards God and His great purposes for 'Zion', His people [v.12-28]. He takes in the big picture of God’s purposes, which cannot fail. Not that this is some kind of 'quick fix' for his distress [see v.23-24]. But it reaches for comfort in the truth that God's plan for Zion includes the ultimate good for each of her members. Even their distress is part of God's larger scheme: their faithful endurance is not, in fact, meaningless.

Godly people in the Bible got depressed. Even Paul, who wrote 'Rejoice in the Lord always' [Phil.4:4] also wrote 'We were so utterly burdened beyond our strength that we despaired of life itself' [2Cor.1:8]. Christian joy is not a denial of life’s very real pains, but a recognition that God’s overall plans for His people will prevail, that His love is eternal, and that, in the end, as one medieval saint wrote:

All shall be well and all shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well.

Obama on peace

2009-12-11T11:01:00.002Z

"The non-violence practiced by men like Gandhi and King may not have been practical or possible in every circumstance, but the love that they preached - their fundamental faith in human progress - that must always be the North Star that guides us on our journey. For if we lose that faith - if we dismiss it as silly or naive; if we divorce it from the decisions that we make on issues of war and peace - then we lose what's best about humanity. We lose our sense of possibility. We lose our moral compass..."
- Barack Obama

Spectre of hector

2009-12-09T11:40:00.004Z

Sometimes on this blog I opine. I did it recently about Christmas and got a range of responses, the most hilarious of which was a spammer promoting Christmas hampers. I did it a while back on a book, The Shack, and again got a range of responses.

Most of the responses I quite enjoy - both hurrahs from supporters and shaddups from opponents (many of whom are friends anyway). All in the spirit of healthy debate.

But - confession time - there is one riposte that does bother me a little.

It is the accusation of being a killjoy. Of course, it came up in the Christmas post (that is, my blog entry - no reference to cards depicting softly glowing feeding-troughs). "You have managed to take the fun out of Christmas faster than the Queen doing her annual speech naked" mourned one commenter. And some felt I should lighten up abut the Shack. After all, "it's just a novel", just for fun.

My contention is that while things - from Christmas pressies to Christian novels - may be "for fun" they do have a serious side and we shouldn't shy away from facing them down and, when necessary, making some radical changes to life as a result of the convictions we unearth.

Or... is that all rather, well - over-earnest? Therein lies my fear. The last person I want to become is some kind of moralising thought-policeman, determined to stop all enjoyment of anything. Frankly, enough people labour under that mistaken view of God, without me or anyone else adding to it.

It came home to me today when I read a thoughtful and serious Christian comment on Stephanie Meyer's Twilight series. (See blog.kyria.com.) I could see the point the writer was making. But I found myself having the same response I know some others have had to me: "Oh come on, it's just a story - lighten up..."

I ought, further, to confess my own secret relationship with the Twilight series. Please only read on if you promise not to tell. When my wife borrowed all four books from a friend I was initially scornful ("Mills and Boone meets Hammer Horror"). But she left the first book by the loo; I picked it up... Four books later, I admit: I was hooked. Actually, I've always liked a good yarn - mythical creatures? So much the better. I filtered out the rather embarrassing formulaic romance style and enjoyed Stephanie Meyer's imaginative ideas. Rather like Harry Potter - don't look for literary genius, but it's a good page-turner.

You might expect some Christians to be twitchy about a vampire story - just as they might a witches and wizards story. Personally, I've always taken something more like the C. S. Lewis line - "faith is imagination grown up" and all that. A good story is a good thing. Enjoy them, talk about them - sometimes with your children. (Incidentally, that was, broadly, the line taken in the blog on Twilight I referred to above: the writer there was making a different point, worried about a harmful model of romantic love as all-consuming.)

Come on. Life is to live! Lighten up! Enjoy a few innocent joys!

Oops. What about The Shack then? What about the holly and the ivy? Hoist by my own petard? Found out in my hypocrisy?

Possibly. Or is the point that one can be both? Serious and fun-loving, I mean. And, that loving fun doesn't mean abandoning all discernment.

I - seriously - believe that Christmas is pretty much unredeemable, too mired as it is in materialism and sentimentalised religion. And I submit that as my considered and, yes, somewhat heavy conclusion. But - please God - I intend to enjoy a few days off and make sure my children enjoy them, too. It'll be a far cry from the ridiculous depiction of Scroogelike gloom written by an opponent of the Jesus Army on a web forum the other day:

A 7-year-old in the Jesus Army on Xmas day? ...it will be a complete non-event. There will be no Santa and no stockings, no mince pie left out (if you did some strange person would eat it). No decorations, no tree, no cards or any reminder that normal people are having fun. The day will start the same as any other day eating stale bread and cold leftovers from the night before, then it will be on with the chores the sisters cleaning and the brothers cleaning cars. Lunchtime will arrive and all the freaks will gather and bang their tambourines and pray against the forces of evil which are making normal people have fun at this time of year, then will come the same old food (stale bread and mouldy cheese with cold soup). Dinner will end and the brothers will slope off to the kitchen to wash up while the women drag their weary carcasses to do knitting or some other mundane job.

Apart from my amusement at the Dickensian language, I found this sad - and alarming. Man, I thought, is that what people think is the only alternative to a "Sainsbury's and Coca-Cola Christmas"? Worse still, has my tub-thumping contributed to the polarization?

Of course, I did try to express positively what my family and I - and our community - would be doing at Christmas (I wrote about love and - shock! - fun). And I tried to convey some of the good I saw in The Shack. But the danger is still there: people can dismiss me as a crackpot religious killjoy, parodying what I say into morose sourness.

So be it. I cannot just swing into festive forgetfulness of the world's poor and those who drown in sorrows at Christmas. Nor can I not think hard about some of the things I read. I could, of course, not write about them here. But I think I will. Because, on the whole, I like the debate, the thinking, the wrestling.

But - I hope - that this post stands as a brief testimonial that I (yes, I, dour and repressed old me) like to have fun, intend to have fun and will enjoy having fun - whenever I can.

Cheers (without a humbug in sight).

Addicts welcome (yes, that means you, too...)

2009-12-08T10:34:00.003Z

Someone took issue with a testimony posted on the Jesus Army website the other day. It was the story of a guy who'd got free from addictions through his faith in Jesus. (Check it out.) They wrote: 'So what ur saying is christians don't have addictions?? Now I've heard it all.'

Actually that wasn't what the article was saying. But nevertheless, there can be a danger that Christians, keen to broadcast the amazing change Christ brings, can over egg the cake and present a picture rosier than the reality. It's misleading.

Christians do suffer from disorders, disease - and addiction.

In fact, I reckon most people suffer from addiction of one kind or another. Some are big and life-wrecking (harmful habits, substance abuse, whatever). Others are more subtle but destructive nonetheless (minor obsessions, skewed thinking...) Christians are no exception to that at all.

But they have found hope of something better in Jesus who breaks the power of all addiction (or, to use the older word, all sin). So perhaps the only difference is they acknowledge their need and ask for help.

As a Christian - I do truly believe Jesus answers that prayer, bit by bit, over a lifetime - and after.

Xmas-rated

2009-11-26T09:21:00.012Z

I read a disgusting blog post today. It was written by a leading Christian.

This particular influential Christian works a lot with students and I've followed him off and on over the years. He has some interesting and thoughtful things to say - what's more, years back he led one of my closest friends to faith. I rate him pretty highly.

But his blog horrified me.

Here's how it started:

Christmas is more than just buying presents, filling up on Turkey and tinsel. Christmas is all about the birth of Jesus. But so that you can focus on the real meaning of Christmas...

Nothing too shocking about that, you might think, but I confess I inwardly sighed as I read even these words. I get tired of the well-meaning but futile 'back to the original meaning of Christmas' line. Why? Not least because the original meaning is in fact a pagan midwinter festival. Christians only hijacked the feast around about the time of the fourth century around the time of the highly ambiguous 'conversion' of the Emperor, Constantine. (Hey presto! A status-quo-challenging, marginal movement morphed into a mainstream imperial power-structure. Historians debate the pros and cons. I'm very inclined to see it as something like a disaster.)

And so it concerns me when I see well-meaning and otherwise serious and deep-thinking Christians swept along by the Yuletidal wave which is the modern and hugely commercialised descendant of a pagan knees-up, or at best a fatally compromised Christianity.

But I realise the pagan-Christian-historical question may seem a bit remote to many. Besides, many Christians would say, 'Face the facts: people are into Christmas, and we may as well use it as an opportunity to broadcast the Christian message of Christ's coming'.

Not so fast. It's one thing if Christmas is just neutral - like art, for instance, something that can be an influence in many directions.

But I contend that Christmas is not neutral. It is immoral. Would you use pornography to promote Christ? I suspect not. Because Christians would generally see that as immoral and wouldn't want Christ to be sullied by association.

Christmas is immoral because it is the absolute epitome of the greedy, consumerist, pleasure-loving, unjust, Western system that is driving many of the world's population deeper into poverty, and many of its own into psychosis.

To link Christ's name with the festival of all this is nothing short of blasphemy.

And this brings me onto the real beef I had with the blog post. Remember where it left off? 'But so that you can focus on the real meaning of Christmas...'? You might expect that what follows would be some creative ideas for worship on 25th December. Or maybe some Christian outreach ideas. Better still, suggestions for how you can engage with the poor or destitute, or use one of the many excellent charitable 'alternative gifts' schemes.

Sadly, no. Cue the next bit of the blog:

But so that you can focus on the real meaning of Christmas I have done some searching online to find the best ideas I can for great christmas [sic] presents that will stand the test of time and keep the kids amused until next Christmas.

What follows? 2,569 words of product advertising. Books, board games, gadgets (everything from mobile phones to Wii to camcorders).

This apparently, is 'so you can focus on the real meaning of Christmas'.

I would like to think that this was a clever and prophetic indictment of the orgy of materialism that sweeps the western world each Christmas. But it just wasn't. He simply took for granted that Christmas was a time to shower one's children with more material possessions they don't need, to force feed them the spirit of the materialistic, consumerism-maddened culture which surrounds us. So he was just doing us a favour by helping us avoid the stress of choosing precisely what unecessary rubbish we should join the queues to purchase.

What's more, two and a half thousands plus words of crazed commercialism aren't enough: the writer cheerily informs us at the end of the post that there are 'More ideas coming soon…'

No thank you. No - please - no.

Because behind the merry-go-round, the Christmas whirl is making many sick. And a highly-informed, leading-edge, blogging Christian communicator should know about it.

An online poll by the mental health charity Mind found that respondents were stressed and anxious about repaying their Christmas spending. 19 per cent felt less able to manage their mental health because of worries about paying off the cost of Christmas; 25 per cent were feeling depressed because of Christmas; Over 50 per cent admitted they had spent more than they could afford on Christmas; 39 per cent used credit cards to cover the cost of Christmas; 33 per cent estimated that it would take them more than six months to pay off their Christmas spending debt.

Debt is a huge problem in our country and Christmas doesn't help one bit. Debt aid charity, Credit Action, reports:

The ghost of Christmas past continues to knock on some doors as nearly 1 in 4 (24%) Brits are still paying off credit costs from last Christmas. Over a third of people on a lower income (34%) are still paying off their bills from last Christmas.
Cash-strapped families who turn to credit to pay for Christmas could be setting themselves up for a New Year debt disaster... [A] survey found that a quarter of people planning to borrow over the festive period will use catalogue credit, a fifth are planning to use store cards and one in seven are planning to go to doorstep lenders - three of the four most expensive sources of credit.

Christians Against Poverty (CAP) commissioned a survey of 2000 adults asking them about their plans for funding Christmas expenditure in September 2008. The results show that 76% of those questioned were worried about Christmas due to the financial cost. 30% of respondents said they did not budget at all for Christmas.

So it's not just abstruse arguments about religion and history. Consumerism is killing people - literally, in some cases - and at Christmas it kills more people then ever.

I want thoughtful, responsible, leading Christians like my blogger friend to be speaking out for simplicity and for sanity. 'You don't have to get on the merry-go-round' I want him to say. 'By all means look for opportunities to bless others and to relax with loved ones over the holiday season. But do it simply, include your poor neighbour, do it as Christ would do it.'

That's what I wished he'd said.

As for me and my house, what will we be doing over Xmas (as I much prefer to call it since it is more respectful to Jesus)? We will throw our big shared house open to our many friends, some of whom have no family (and little else besides). We'll play games with paper and pens, or with nothing, 'give-us-a-clue' style. We'll go for a walk in the country. Some of us will volunteer at our drop-in for the homeless. We'll play with our children. We'll laugh with each other. No-one will say 'bah humbug' but we won't eat turkey, pull crackers, or have a pine tree in our living room. We'll drink no alcohol and be riotously happy. We'll give no presents except for love - which I trust will be shared out generously.

My kids can't wait.

Twits for Christ

2009-11-12T14:36:00.006Z

I did it. After an initial phase of something like laziness (thinly disguised as moral high ground), this summer I did it.

I became a twit. Or a twitterer or tweeter or whatever you call someone who uses Twitter to talk to the world.

It's long been a subject of debate around our church what our take on the internet ought to be. On the one hand, we want to take seriously the apostolic command 'Do not love the world or the things in the world' (1 Jn.2:15). It'd be short-sighted not to see the that 'the web' can be sticky and tangle Christians up in immorality, time-wasting or whatever. On the other, intensely conscious of the Great Commission and the desire to get across God's goodness by whatever means, we've not been shy of cyber-missioning: jesus.org.uk was one of the earliest Christian websites to get up and running.

But it's all moved on. Fast. Tech know-alls call it the move from 'web 1.0' to 'web 2.0'. Nowadays it's not just static websites with their content - it's all about interactivity, networking, instant exchange. MySpace, then Facebook, and now 'share this with everyone you know - now!', 'Twitter your "now" stuff all over the place - now!'...

Anyone who knows me will tell you I'm not a tech-guru. (My friends who are would laugh at the notion.) But I do a lot of work for our church in communications - writing and editing mainly - and that has meant I've had to get my head round this stuff. Paper is so last millennium. Even websites are so pre the bursting of the 'Dot-com bubble'.

'I have become all things to all people, that by all means I might save some' (1 Cor.922). That was how Paul described his voyages to the centre of the culture of his day. And now it's our turn.

So I tweet my life in a colourful Christian church into the web-stratosphere. Mainly it's still received by friends and friends-of-friends. But others have joined in. (It was an exciting moment when the Religion Correspondent of The Times started following me.) Meanwhile my mate is debating with Paul Daniels whether the resurrection is a magic trick, and another is exchanging emails with Alastair Campbell about compassion towards those who suffer from mental health issues.

Evangelising on the streets (that good, old fashioned, first century, method of mission that we still do a fair bit as a church), I often exchange Facebook details with people so that the discussion of the gospel continues online. Meetings are tweeted and Facebooked and bookmarked and left around for others to 'stumble upon'. All the articles I and others write for our website can be commented on and these comments are instantly Twittered. And on it rolls.

But even so, I often feel we're really rather behind the light-speed movement of the world at large when it comes to these things. The (Google)wave sweeps onward.

So the other day we got together a group to talk through the different cyber-channels that may be worth exploring when it comes to expressing the gospel and the life of the church online. On top of social networking and Twitter et al, we considered web forums and fringe interest sites, 'viral' publicity, video and picture sharing, iphone compatibility, blogs, vlogs, plogs (actually, there's no such thing as plogs - yet - before you look them up) - and linking them all up so that we 'scatter our seed' as far and wide as we can.

We agreed the future is in the tributaries that make up the river. Individuals and little groups sharing personal stories (with words, pictures, videos, music whatever) which capture the imagination of the iGeneration - this is where its at.

I started this blog to chronicle my experiences of leading a Christian community which I still believe to be a remarkable way of living and in the hope that it would capture the interest of seekers out there. But it's got bigger than that. Now the challenge is before us to express Christ to a world which is suddenly enabled to watch - and listen and answer back - more than ever before.

(As it happens, today the EA are running a a synchronised blogging day called 'DigiMission' today to explore 'creative ideas for how Christians can use the digital space to impact mission'. Check out the link here.)

'The white rose' - no fairy tale

2009-11-09T13:36:00.004Z

A friend of mine recently wrote this account of a disturbed prisoner and a Salvation Army officer. A striking story. Thought it was worth posting here.

The woman in the prison cell was like an animal, snarling and attacking anyone who came near her. The Salvation Army officer hesitated. Had she heard God right? Should she enter the cell when everyone told her it was madness? She went in and spoke lovingly to the woman – who growled and flew at her. Shaken, the evangelist escaped, but the next day tried again, then the next day – always with the same violent response.

After much prayer, the officer went again. She said nothing but left in the cell a single white rose, then left. Before long, she was called by the prison staff: could she come and visit the woman? The officer went and found her transformed, soft and tearful. The sight of the white rose, she said, had broken her apart. It faced her up with how evil she had become. Yet with it came a longing that God’s love might be able to make her clean and white on the inside. The officer realised that God’s guidance had been right; that she could indeed believe the best for anyone, because Jesus died for all. Right there in the cell, the prisoner was born again.