Got goats, high horses, and sacred cows

Two posts today got my goat. (If you think you can work out which posts, don’t bother, you’re probably wrong - and what would it profit you to be right?)

The first was a quote on a ‘moral issue’ that a friend posted up on a social media site, which I took serious issue with. In my view the moral point it was trying to make was, in fact, immoral. The second was a longer post from another friend, lionizing a Christian from long ago, and defending (or at least excusing) this particular luminary’s – in my view – execrable views.

Christians, I find, when they get on their high horse, so often choose the wrong horse.

In my opinion.

Which is the dilemma, isn’t it? It’s so easy, in disagreeing with what I see as self-righteousness or preachiness, to get - well - self-righteous and preachy about it in return.

Later today, I was reading and writing about some of what Paul wrote in his letter to the Romans. ‘Love is the fulfilling of the law’ he wrote.

Relevant to my got goat? I think so.

Paul is addressing a particular problem – differences of outlook in the Roman church on vexed questions of Jewish food laws and festivals.

Not situations we generally face in our non-Jewish church context. But the principle Paul lays down is still relevant: 'If your brother is grieved (by your actions or attitude) you are no longer walking in love'.

So sometimes we may have differences of opinion or outlook. (Indeed, in my experiences, it’s what Christians are good at.)

The crucial thing is that we can learn to ‘disagree well’.

That is, to make love our highest priority, even as we work through our differences (and let’s not pretend that that is always easy!)

In it all, we must avoid hurting 'one for whom Christ died'. Love will 'pursue what makes for peace and for mutual upbuilding'. Or as he put it in another letter: ‘Love does not insist on its own way’.

Love actively seeks to encourage, to join people in brotherhood, and to build a church of compassion and generosity.

There are several issues I can think of straight away that my friends and brethren and I need to find a way ‘disagree well’ on. Give me five minutes and I’ll think of several more.

Oh God: help us slay our sacred cows. Help us get off our high horses. Help us unget our got goats.

Help us make love our highest aim.

Lies, damned lies and church decline statistics

‘The UK church is in decline’: today’s truism. You’ll see it breezily stated by tabloid editors. You’ll hear it complacently croaked by Professor So-and-so and Doctor Doodah on Radio 4 phone-ins. It’s tweeted, Facebooked and blogged. It’s all over the media – often with that thinly-veiled, quasi-secularist tone: ‘We-knew-it-all-along-how-could-anything-as-silly-as-religion-last-in-our-superior-age’.

‘The UK church is in decline.’

And yes, the published stats on UK church attendance are – let us say – not encouraging for church enthusiasts. Not heartening for those of us who contend that the church just might be good for more than providing pretty buildings in which to tie the knot. Not promising for those of us who posit that Christian faith might just have something to say to the UK beyond the utterances of cranky, phobic, UKIP-at-prayer types. (Though, goodness knows, the media always seem to find airtime for these odious individuals. Not in my name, I wince at the radio.)

In 2005, just under 6 million people in the UK were members of a church. That figure was projected to decline by one and a half million to 4.5 million by 2025. In 2010, this rate of decline seemed on course. But now, not so, says the forthcoming second edition of UK Church Statistics.

Future First, a Christian stats newsletter, summed up the situation thus: ‘The rate of decline has lessened significantly and the membership levels previously anticipated for 2020 will now most likely not be evident till 2025’.

I grant you, this is not yet a reason to hang bunting from every spire between Land’s End and John O’Groats. We’re talking delayed decline, not sudden growth. But what interested me was the analysis of the reasons for this change of fortune.

The first was the increase in black and other immigrant churches (shh, nobody tell the aforementioned ecclesiastical right-wingers). It remains to be seen what lasting change this will bring to the spiritual landscape of the UK. Personally, I welcome the spiritual vigour such churches inject into our nation’s bloodstream, but am wary of modernist messages in a post-modern society – and alarmed by some of the (im)moral and (un)ethical messages I hear coming out of Africa. Subject for another post, perhaps.

Cartoon from Future First

But what particularly interested me was the second reason for arrested decline: ‘the increasing success of new gatherings often called ‘Fresh Expressions’, which is becoming a generic name for all kinds of usually fairly informal gatherings like Messy Church, pub groups or café churches, mission-minded churches...’.

Not decline, so much as a change of direction. Traditional church attendance is giving way to smaller, mission-minded groups meeting, befriending and helping people on their own turf, forming and fostering community, engaging with and salting their neighbourhoods? Sounds like good news to me.

Could it be, dashing those radio 4 secularists’ hopes, that the church has an ability to morph and adapt, to regenerate? (Christians’ word, that one. I reclaim it forthwith.) That the church may be inhabited by a creative spirit (indeed, by the Creative Spirit) that will not die?

I relate these thoughts to my own church experience. Our whole church, with its emphasis on community and engagement with society’s fringes, might be termed a ‘fresh expression’. Nevertheless, in our short (45-year) story, we’ve reached something of a hiatus. Growth has flatlined, our residential community all-too-often feels over institutional and is not currently attracting many new generation members. But missional, relational (why do so many current buzz words and in 'al'?) groups are springing up at our grassroots. They carry life and imagination. They’re growing (though rather less obsessed with measuring such growth than in previous times). They’re flexible and people-friendly. They are, I believe, the future.

But they’re not only the future. They’re also the past – no, not the halcyon days of the 1950s, when everyone went to church before their roast beef. I mean the ancient past, when the church met from house to house, and enjoyed the favour of the people, and shared with glad and generous hearts, and met in his house and her house, and multiplied greatly.

So don’t believe everything Professor So-and-so and Doctor Doodah say. The church has a future, even if it needs to shed some skins to get there. It’ll be about love, about people, about community.

There’s life in the old God yet.

Fishing for complement

The fish was off. It almost all went wrong.

It’s not every day we have an apostolic leader (Jesus Army speak for big leader) over for dinner. And the trout was off. Cue waiting at the table while my ever-resourceful wife cooked up some chicken fillets instead. But said leader amused my kids (and their dad) with optical illusion videos on his phone and all was well.

Later we had a great evening talking about lots of things from UK housing through to Pope Francis. Not surprisingly, given the rollercoaster ride my wife and I have had this year, we talked about vision and disappointment and community.

One issue we touched on that I thought would make a worthwhile wee post was the difference between generations when it comes to their money ethic. It ties into the wider discussion about intentional community – because if you’re going to share your money, as we do in a common pursue, the way members see money matters.

The older generation (his lot), we realised, prize frugality. This is the generation whose parents negotiated rationing and making frayed ends meet. For them ‘simplicity’ is about spending less. A community lounge with faded curtains, ill-matching plastic chairs and patched-together cushions is AS IT SHOULD BE.

The rising generation (our lot) prize liberality. This generation hasn’t, by and large, grown up with scarcity.  For this generation ‘simplicity’ is about spending more on others. About not worrying about money, being generous and spontaneous. A community lounge with simple, contemporary decor and plenty of (young) people feeling at home is AS IT SHOULD BE.

Of course, the younger generation’s liberality can tip over into profligacy – ‘want it nice, want it easy, want it now’. Likewise, the older generation’s frugality can slide into parsimony – ‘if it’s not horrible, it’s not holy’. And both sides can be inclined to characterise the other unfairly: ‘Wasters!’ ‘Misers!’

A better approach – as so so so often with these paradoxes – is to take both views at once. As John Wesley said ‘Earn all you can, give all you can, save all you can.’ 

Don’t waste God’s money; don’t be indulgent. Don’t penny-pinch; don’t be miserable.

Or to put those things positively: Spend money joyfully and remember that ‘God gives us richly all things to enjoy’ (1 Timothy 6:17); identify with the world’s poor and remember that ‘if we have food and clothing, with these we will be content’ (1 Timothy 6:8).

Jesus (funnily enough) got it right. ‘You can’t serve God and money’, he warned. But he also said ‘Use wicked wealth to make friends’.

Simplicity is best. But if the fish is off don’t eat it.

Dying we rise

I write with news of change. We have decided, after ten years, that it is time to wind up White Stone, our community house on Leamington Road and its wider household membership. After a few months’ prayer and thought for the whole of our church congregation in Coventry, the decision was made to strengthen our communities by closing one of our five houses and rejigging the teams in the remaining four.

But which one to close? It is, I suppose, a good sign that no household rushed to volunteer! As it happens, the White Stone team had been showing signs of considerable strain for some time. We've had some truly wonderful times over the years, with a cast of amazing people sharing the journey – but it hadn't always been easy (see posts like this, this, and this!) and the core team had grown tired and some had suffered a degree of burn-out. It had become difficult to generate fresh energy and forward momentum.

Our story on a scroll; our calling on a carving.

So we’re ‘quitting while we're still ahead’ or something like that. We’ve been very supported by our local friends – that’s helped enormously in a tough time. Needless to say, it’s a time of grieving and loss for us. But it’s also the right move, I believe. One of my dearest friends (and fellow White Stone pioneer) coined an apt neologism to describe the sensation: ‘grelief’ – an odd combination of grief and relief. This just about sums it up.

A number of us are going to move to one of our other community houses in the area. My wife, children and I, however, are going to live in our own place for a while and take stock. We'll still be linked to the community – part of a common purse, and maybe even with one or two others living with us – but we're looking forward to having some more time and space. People are referring to it as our 'sabbatical' which sounds rather nice (in reality I'll still be working for the church and three children mean that life is never exactly quiet!)  

It's a big change for us, this sabbatical from load-bearing leadership. We need time and space to be restored and find fresh vision and direction. Please pray for us.

The house on Leamington Road probably won't be sold, but used somehow. It may even house a newly formed community team. That would be rather wonderful – the house has been a place for God and we’d love it to continue to be. We’ll see.

In my bleaker moments I can feel only loss, pain, bewilderment, anger: ‘Our holy and beautiful house and all our pleasant places have become ruins’ (Isaiah 64:11). Yet at other times, I remember that death is God’s way into eternal life. ‘It is in dying that we’re born to eternal life.’ After all, we follow Jesus, crucified and raised.

I don’t know about you, but my natural mentality doesn’t easily grasp the paradox of life from death (even if it is all over the New Testament I claim to live by). In the latter half of his ministry, Jesus repeatedly told his disciples he had to die. And repeatedly ‘they did not understand what he was saying, and were afraid to ask him’ (Mark 9:32). After he was raised they were as slow to understand: ‘Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory?’ (Luke 24:26).

It was necessary. ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit’ (John 12:24).

From Jesus’ death, freely chosen, came life for the world. I pray that from our small ‘death’, freely embraced, new opportunities may spring; new dreams, new joys – new life.

Waiting for Spring

Britain's waiting for Spring. Easter’s come and gone, but still snow lines the hedgerows. There’s ice on windows in the mornings. The daffodils in our verge have emerged but are shrivelling in the cold.

It illustrates, a bit, where we're at at White Stone (our community household and its wider members and friends). We hold together; we enjoyed our church’s Easter “Alive Festival”; we love having friends staying and coming round. There’s brotherhood and affection in our lives and that counts for a very great deal.

Yet our prayer is that God will rise over us like the sun bringing warmth, healing, new life and growth. "Let the long-term sick be healed; let new disciples rise; let prayers and longings be answered.

"Roll away the stone, great God. Unworthy though we’ll always be, let our faces turn from bewilderment to joy as we see You do what only You can do."

Oh Jesus, help

‘Christians! They do my head in sometimes!’ I was letting off some steam, chatting to my brother recently. ‘Gays! They do my head in sometimes, too!’ he replied (he’s gay). Just goes to show any group we belong to – even, or perhaps especially, those we derive something of our identity from – can be uncomfortable things to belong to.

I write a weekly Bible study for the members of the Jesus Army around the UK. This week I wrote about the final chapter of Paul’s letter to the Galatians. The issues threatening to tear apart Paul’s churches now seem rather remote to us – questions of Jewish law-keeping don’t generally cause too much hand-wringing in British churches today.

But that doesn’t stop Paul’s teaching, especially in this last section of Galatians, from being deeply relevant to us today when we consider some of the issues that do threaten to tear our churches up. So: read Galatians 6, and then, if you like, you’re invited to read what I wrote for the Jesus Army to ponder:

The crisis in Galatia (see Gal.1:6-7) had left the churches there deeply divided. Groups looked down on other groups as less ‘right’, even less Christian, and sneeringly condemned them. Paul has dealt with this at a theological level in the first five chapters of Galatians; now, to close, he deals with practical and heart issues surrounding conflict.

Christians’ dealings with each other should be characterised not by obsession with status or smug self-righteousness, but by a spirit of gentleness (v.1). Their heart should be to bear one another’s burdens (v.2), not to condemn one another. Ironically, self-important people make themselves the least important (v.3). Each person should take responsibility for their own life before seeking to take responsibility for others (v. 4-5, see Mt.7:3-5).

Paul urges a generous approach which focuses not on criticising and pulling down, but on giving and doing good to everyone, and especially to those who are of the household of faith (v.6-10).

In his handwritten postscript (v.11-18), Paul brings his letter to its powerful conclusion. The true marks of a Christian are not about outward status (v.12-13); they are the marks of suffering love. Paul embodied this lifestyle – so different to the world’s power-hunger – in his own suffering (v.17), as did Jesus at the cross (v.14). Suffering love brings new life (v. 15). True followers of Christ – God’s true people, the Israel of God (v.16) – will take up their cross and live lives of grace (v.18).

Such a passage leaves me asking questions like: What is the difference between having a ‘spirit of gentleness’ and just being timid? How can I show generosity of spirit to those I meet, those I know? Who am I inclined to look down on, and how can I change this? And what does it really mean to have grace flowing from my spirit?

The New Testament isn’t just a book I read; the New Testament reads me. And it invites me to be more like its main character.

Oh Jesus, help.

The fat and the fire

"Lovely evening tonight" I tweeted. "Friendship, candlelit dinner, baked spiced apples, glowing fire, chocolates, laughs. Oh and I was called fat."

It's true, one of our dear young disciples made this heinous (and sadly increasingly accurate) accusation. And it was funny, though not as funny as the time my then 3-year-old declared: "When I grow up I want to be like Daddy - " (pause for pathos and effect, then - ) "fat!" In fact, though I may be a little more rounded than I was ten years ago, I don't think I yet quite fit the epithet.

Nevertheless, there is something about those long, fire- and candle-lit evenings in winter, in community, that really does feel like living off the fat of the land. Friends and family gathered with nothing much to do except to be. To be friends, to be family, to be...

It seemed a fitting follow-up to my last, rather theoretical, post about Sabbath rest.

C S Lewis, as ever, put it rather well: "Is any pleasure on earth as great as a circle of Christian friends by a good fire?"
 

Friends make friends

'What I'd really like is a pint of freshly squeezed orange juice!' One of our house family was feeling rough last night. One of those lingering colds. Hearing his orange juice longing, my 9-year-old daughter and I nipped out to a local store and got him a carton of posh Clementine juice. I think he was well-blessed.

Friendship is priceless.

There's a bit of a catchphrase round our place at the moment: 'friends make friends'. When we're truly friends with each other, it's attractive; others want to join in.

So we've been upping the importance of friendship in our household (by 'household' I mean not only those of us who live in our community house, but our wider circle of members and friends, too). We all know, somewhere in our bones, that friendship is simply the best thing in life. But we need to hear it sometimes, especially when busyness and clashing priorities can seem so pressing. And also because friendship - just chilling together, enjoying each other, laughing, playing - can seem somehow less spiritual than, for instance, all closing our eyes and singing a Matt Redman song.

I think that's a mistake. Friendship is centre stage, not in the wings.

There's a beautiful little bit tucked away at the end of one of the smaller letters in the New Testament: 'The friends greet you. Greet the friends, every one of them.' (3 John 15) Christians are called 'friends'. Not 'members' (powerful word if it means parts of one body, less so if it means belonging to a club); not even 'brethren'; but friends.

There have been many attempts to define friendship, some of which make good fridge magnet type quotations. 'Friendship is a single soul dwelling in two bodies'. That's Aristotle, y'know (thanks Google). 'A friend is someone who knows all about you and still likes you.' That sort of thing.

I like some of the biblical proverbs about friendship:

A friend loves at all times, and a brother is born for adversity. (Proverbs 17:17) 'That's what friends are for' they say about help given in hard times. True word that.

A man of many companions may come to ruin, but there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother. (18:24) There's something about friendships formed in Christ which has the potential to run deeper by far than even family ties - and certainly deeper than just those we sit next to once a week on Sunday.

Faithful are the wounds of a friend; profuse are the kisses of an enemy. (27:6) We usually take this to mean that the truthful reality of a friend is worth a lot even when it hurts - which is true. But I also wonder if it may include the idea that it's better to be hurt unintentionally by a true friend than to lap up the false blandishments of a false friend. Certainly I've been often hurt by my friends in Christ - but they're still my true friends and I ought to remember this. Mustn't let offence rob me of that.

Oil and perfume make the heart glad, and the sweetness of a friend comes from his earnest counsel. (27:9) Beautiful. There's nothing quite like heart-to-heart honesty with a dear, deep friend.

So we're into friendship: meals round friends' houses; parties with treacle toffee; days out together; games; laughter; nicknames; prayers.

We want a widening circle of friends. Life affords nothing better.

Love's the point

I wrote this paraphrase of Paul's famous passage on love in 1 Corinthians.

If I ‘do so make covenant’ * before men and angels, but have not love, I am missing the point of the promises I am making. And if I live in community, and understand all the mysteries of the common purse, and if I attend every meeting, arriving punctually and staying till the end, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away every chance of romance I have, and if I deliver up my life to celibacy, but have not love, I gain nothing.

Love enjoys people as they are, and can wait for perfection to come after resurrection; love can say ‘I am no less than anyone else’ but also ‘I am no better than anyone else’; love has no need to interrupt, shout others down, or push its way forward. Others can contradict love without having to face explosions or implosions. Love is not afraid to confront others if they’re wrong, but much happier to praise them if they’re right. Love puts up, bigs up, looks up, keeps up – always.

Our inspirations have a limited shelf life; our words will pass their ‘use by’ date; our certainties will be swallowed up. For our certainties are uncertain, our inspirations are uninspiring, compared to what we’re heading for. When perfection comes, my inspirations, words, and certainties will seem to me like that collection of stickers I prized when I was five: I’ll smile at them and let them go. At present these things are the binoculars through which I glimpse God, but when God arrives I’ll drop them without a thought (and realise I was looking through them the wrong way anyway). Then I’ll realise it was never about how much I knew God, but how much God knew me.

For now we need faith; then we’ll see. For now we need hope; then we’ll receive. For now we need love; and so we will forever, when only love remains.

* For those not familiar with the Jesus Army, my reference in the first paragraph of this paraphrase to 'covenant', 'community' and 'celibacy' are three of our church's key distinctives. Covenant refers to the promise of lifelong discipleship that our committed members make to God and each other; community refers to our intentional Christian community houses (with their common purse arrangements); celibacy refers to the promise that some have made to remain single in order to serve God more freely. These things are important ways in which we've sought to put the New Testament into practice over the years.

These things matter to us. But as with the issues that mattered to the Corinthians - tongues, prophecy, faith, knowledge and so on - if we forget that they're actually all about love, we've forgotten what they're for.

Drugs shame cop jailed

This morning the front page of our local paper made me sad.

‘Drugs shame cop jailed’ shouted the headline. The story was about a young police sergeant who’d been caught trying to give illegal drugs to ‘as he tried to seduce a young man’ in a gay bar.

I only caught a glimpse of it as I ran out of the front door, late for work (again). I don’t know the backstory (can we ever, really?) But it made me reflect on the unhappiness of this young police officer’s situation. Yes, he’s done wrong, broken the law, and that’s particularly serious for a policeman. But I sense a sad struggle in the background.

I know a bit about Rainbows, the bar he was in because a number of my friends – gay and straight – have mentioned what a friendly, open, accepting place it is. It’s widely known as one of the most chilled out, peaceful venues in the city.

And then I imagine this young officer there. Is he desperate for some acceptance? Looking for some relief? Has he struggled with his sexual identity? Wrestled with what others may think of him? Felt the conflict between his public position and his private world? What drove him to the crazy risk of using drugs to try to buy love?

And I see in my mind’s eye that police sergeant’s face, as pictured on the front of the paper. A photo taken as his guilty verdict was announced. Grief. Broken. Hopeless. Finished.

My heart went out to him.

And it stirred in me again the strong desire for our community, our church, to be a place where all can come, no matter what ‘guilty’ verdicts hang over them, no matter what struggles they have and try to hide. I want to be part of a community like Rainbows, but even better. A community where all are accepted, welcomed, loved – as they are. And we can walk on together, all broken, all heading for a better future because God accepts us all – as we are.

Passing the baton

Last night two ex-students of mine came for dinner. They’re a great pair and I always enjoy the thought-provoking discussions we have when they come. They’re both Christians, but badly disillusioned with church. So much so that by their own admission they can’t really contemplate being part of one.

They love (I think) coming to our community and there’s genuine friendship there, but they’d run a mile (I think) at the thought of joining us. Not especially because it would challenge them; more that it’s all a little too ‘pre-packaged’ and they’ve got too many painful questions to easily accept our ‘answers’.

It chimed in a little with something I’ve been thinking about: the challenge of winning a new generation. Like in a relay race (there’s my topical reference; good eh?), the handover of the baton is a crucial part of running a good race. Raising up a new generation is crucial to a movement’s ongoing life.

In any transition from one generation to another there is the crucial importance of taking all that the previous generation have found (often at cost) and passing it onto the rising generation. Yet there’s also the importance of taking the risk of letting the new generation truly be just that: new. Of letting it wrestle with some questions in order to find its own answers. It may even have to repeat some of the mistakes the previous generation made, and invest some pain in learning things the hard way.

That way, a generation will come to hold a movement as truly its own.

It’s the difference between passing on a vision and passing on a blueprint. A vision catches hearts, stirs aspiration – but it doesn’t bolt everything down too tightly. A blueprint defines everything, leaves nothing to chance. A vision produces a movement; a blueprint produces a machine.

The blueprint option feels safer, feels right, precisely because it eliminates risk and leaves nothing to chance. Yet I suspect it produces two basic responses in a rising generation: rebellion (in its leader-types) or passivity (in its follower-types). Neither are much cop – and castigating the former and being over optimistic about the latter will not achieve much either.

I was intrigued to read bible scholar Walter Brueggemann’s comments about the last chapter of Deuteronomy (a chapter of generational transfer if ever there was one). Here’s what Brueggemann wrote (with the phrases that leapt out at me in bold):

[There is a] gap as wide as the Jordan, between the end of Deuteronomy and the beginning of Joshua... When the reader enters the Jordan and the land and the book of Joshua, Moses and Deuteronomy are finished. Fresh faith and fresh strategies are required under new leadership. The “new generation” of Israel represented by Joshua must now take form. This is “your little ones” [1:39] in “the next generation” [29:22] upon whom the tradition has its hopeful eye. The discontinuity is clear, a discontinuity necessary if Israel is to have a life beyond recalcitrance. Thus the new generation does not need to pay forever for the failures of the old [24:16]. At the same time, of course, the tradition insists that the new generation does not appear in history de novo. These are “your children” who must be fully inculcated into the story of wonders and into the demands of Torah that are the premise of life in the land. Thus the tricky relationship of new and old, of discontinuity and continuity, is much on the mind of this tradition, for the covenant is “for all of us here alive today” [5:3], but also for “those who are not with us here today” [29:15]... [This text is] powerfully contemporary for every generation that finds itself pondering old miracles, trusting old memories, heeding old commands, and always again entering new territory of promise.

I know that when something’s on your mind, it can seem to crop up everywhere, so I wasn’t altogether surprised when, this morning, I read something Tom Wright wrote which seemed to be about the same thing.

He tells the story of how he was invited to go and preach at the school he attended as a boy. It was ‘one of those annual events where we were supposed to remember the great pioneers who had founded the school’.

‘I pointed out something very odd was going on,’ writes Wright. ‘Each one of the men and women we were honouring had been innovators. They had been the ones who dared to do things differently, to go in a new direction despite the people who wanted to keep things as they were. But we, by reading out a list of their names in a solemn voice, and by holding them up as our founding figures, were in danger of doing the opposite: of saying that we wanted everything to stay the way it had always been. Do you honour the memory of an innovator by slavishly following what they did, or by daring to be different in your turn?’

I couldn’t help thinking of our Jesus Army founder, Noel Stanton, who died three years ago, nothing if not a visionary and a force to be reckoned with. I, among others, am tasked with taking his vision forward. Yet one of the great abilities Noel had was the ability to contradict himself. If he felt an emphasis or direction had outlived its purpose, that new ones were necessary, he wouldn’t flinch (even when almost everyone else was reeling). He was an innovator to the core. We had at least one major revolution every decade – and many minor ones between (if you want a flavour, try to imagine a deep, rural, Anabaptist-influenced community becoming Jesus Army, an urban missionary fighting force in the space of about five years.)

It may not be right for my two ex-students to join us. Our answers may not be their answers, though I do pray they won’t drift on the tide of their questions forever. But God help us find, call, envision and train a new generation.

And God help us not try to give them all the answers. God help us let them be innovators.

Sunk without you

At our recent big church bash Ian, one of the Jesus Army's main leaders, spoke about "covenant".

We call the commitment made by core members of the Jesus Army a "covenant". It's a mutual promise to be faithful to God together and to live out His calling to be a Jesus army (and not without its controversies; for instance, some have seen it as too limiting: “why commit to just one church?”) I’d say it was one of our key strengths, a confirmation of the real brotherhood and unity we share.

One thing that Ian said jumped at me with real freshness. I captured it with a tweet as he spoke: ‘Covenant commitment is not a super-spiritual pledge for holy people, but a survival pact for people who know they’re weak.’

All too often we can see things like covenant commitment as an attainment, as a plateau inhabited by the spiritual. In fact, it’s a recognition of need.

I cannot be a Christian on my own. Others may be able to sustain an isolated discipleship; I can’t. I need my covenant brothers and sisters and I need them to stay with me or I’m sunk.

I cannot stop sinning on my own. Others may be able to achieve solitary sanctification; I can’t. Without brothers to hear my sordid confessions and cheer me on along the upward road to (an, in this life, always approximate) holiness, I’d degenerate fast.

I cannot believe in God on my own. Others may have mightier faith than I; I need the reality of brotherhood if faith in God is to be anything more than just a theory (and one that I might well abandon when the chips are down).

What’s more, it isn’t enough for me to just have some brothers and sisters walking with me part of the road. I need them the whole way – or I won’t make it. What’s more, if I don’t promise, very clearly, to stay on the road with them, I’d be off into a siding in no time.

So I promise. I covenant. I need to.

It occurred to me last night – after an evening of wonderful relaxed eating and laughing with those I live with, in community – that Christian community is much the same. Some see living in community with all things in common as a lofty pinnacle (or at any rate something “for the most committed”).

Really?

If you can have your own money and not love it, you are more advanced as a Christian than I am. I need to have no money, to share all my money – otherwise money-love would get me (maybe subtly, maybe outright, but I promise you it would be there.) I take my hat off to those who evade money-love without a common purse. I’m just not up to their standard. I’ll take the easier path please.

I’ll live in community.

Choose life

And very early on the first day of the week, when the sun had risen, they went to the tomb. And they were saying to one another, ‘Who will roll away the stone for us from the entrance of the tomb?’ And looking up, they saw that the stone had been rolled back. (Mark 16:2-4)

Disappointment can dog anyone.

It can get a group down, too. At White Stone we’ve had our fair share of disappointment over the years (mingled I should say with a good deal of joy and achievement). People whose stories didn’t turn out as happily as we’d hoped; tensions that proved difficult to resolve happily; stubborn health problems; growth slow despite effort and prayer.

A result of this has been a certain loss of sparkle. We started as a team of bright-eyed idealists, sent  ten years ago from our ‘mother house’ on the other side of the city, full of dreams.

We spoke in those days of our household having a ‘character of worship’. A little grandiose, perhaps (and those words should describe any church), but it gives a flavour of our early idealism. I believe God was in it, even if it was mixed with copious amounts of youthful naivety.

We’ve gained much. Breadth and stickability. We’ve learnt to pace ourselves (sometimes the hard way, as we’ve taken turns to bump along the bottom of burnout). We’ve learnt that love means longsuffering and that it isn’t neat and tidy and that we can live with that, even celebrate it. We’ve learnt some wisdom (I hope).

And yet. Could it be that when we gather to worship and pray together we’re – dull? A touch dowdy in spirit? Is it possible to worship God whilst slumped in an armchair and staring into the middle distance (‘the hands in my heart are raised’)? Could it be that spiritual gifts are a wee bit ‘same old’ (‘I saw a picture of God as a shepherd and us as his sheep’)?

Recently poleaxed again by one of our members going through some personal difficulties and having to move out, the spirit level sunk lower still.

And then, well – God spoke.

I don’t want to over egg the cake. I’m not claiming that we were all subject to an epiphany, a blinding revelation. But God has spoken to us.

First, he spoke through Colossians 3 which happened to come round in our cycle of bible readings. As we together chewed over its call to ‘put off the old and put on the new’ and to live for the body of Christ, God spoke. Then, a week or so later, a younger leader reminded us of the call to have ‘a character of worship’. A worship time of more than usual tenderness followed (not revival, granted, but tender nevertheless). Then, another day, another leader, quoting Moses’ call to Israel, called us to ‘choose life’ in all the situations where we might ‘choose death’ through unforgiveness or resentment or whatever. (Read some more of his reflections on this here.)

It’s all combined to be a word of light in a dark place. God has made it possible for us to throw off the grave clothes, the old reactions and selfishness. We can rise in worship, not dominated by our poor old souls, with their thoughts and feelings of failure and hurt. We can choose life.

Then, to cap it all, our local pastor spoke last Sunday about ‘resurrection life’: how, though Christ, we can know a power of LIFE working in us which enables us to overcome and endure – and to shine.

It’s not that everything in the garden is rosy, but it’s strengthening to know that God hasn’t left us, that he is guiding us.

Jesus Army coming of age

Talking to Shane Claiborne when I met him last summer, I said: "Six people were living in community at The Simple Way and you became world famous. There are 600 of us in New Creation Christian Community and we’re not! Why do you think that is?"

If you think the question sounds mildly petulant, perhaps it is! But the tone of our conversation had been so very brotherly that I felt at liberty to let out a wee bit of frustration in the question. Here's what Shane said in answer:

"One of my friendly critiques of the Jesus movement in the US – and I sense you’re a bit like some of those communities – is that when they started they were wonderfully counter-cultural, but they also threw out the rest of the Church. I think maybe some of that was necessary – but I think it also minimised the impact they had on the wider Church.

"Learning from that, we are trying to revitalise and restore some of what’s broken in the Church, a bit like Francis of Assisi’s calling to 'repair the Church which is ruins'. Our discontent with the Church is the very reason we engage rather than disengage. We said 'We are going to stop complaining about the Church we’ve experienced and work on becoming the Church that we dream of – but that also means we’re not giving up on the rest of this dysfunctional family.' I think that’s part of why we’re still invited to preach at Willow Creek and other places.

But I think that the gift of the Jesus Army and other radical communities is in preserving the radical spirit of that counter-culture or contrast society. It’s community on steroids. It moves the Church I think closer to where it should be."

Which was both encouraging - I love being described as "community on steroids" even if I wince a little - and challenging - it makes me feel the need for us to embrace our brothers and sisters everywhere, of whatever Christian "stripe", to learn and to share.

Talking of sisters, I met a nun last week, Sister Catherine (@digitalnun of some fame on Twitter), who said of us in the Jesus Army, "I love what you're doing - but your website's rubbish."

I know, sister, I know. We're working on it.

But later, Sister Catherine said, "Be encouraged. You're coming of age as a community." As someone who belongs to a monastic movement with fifteen hundred years under its communal belt, I take that as quite some encouragment.

Time out

Yesterday afternoon I unashamedly drank an entire bottle of the finest quality solitude.

Obvious statement alert: living in community, life is full of people. People in your kitchen, people in your lounge, people in your garden, people in your hair. As a married man there’s even another person in my bed (and, if any of my children have a nightmare, there’s more than one other person in my bed).

Now I believe a life full of people is the life God calls us to. After all, his commandments can be summed up in the word ‘love’. Ever tried loving on your own? Even the solitary hermit has a community of beloved people in his heart – otherwise, I contend, he is no true Christian.

Yet for a life full of people to remain fresh – to remain, in fact, loving – there is a need for times of solitude. I’m not talking about solitude’s rather shallow cousin, sometimes called ‘me time’; I’m talking about deliberate times of aloneness and stillness in which a person comes back to themselves, to their centre – and therefore to God. It may involve prayer (all of life involves prayer), but not necessarily conscious prayer.

So yesterday afternoon I went to a village near the city in which I live. I sat on a bench, overlooking a pool. I read a bit of Captain Corelli’s Mandolin. An old chap came and sat next to me and we said nothing to each other. The sun was warm. I wrote a poem and didn’t worry about the fact that it wasn’t very good. I wondered along a country pathway. I sat next to a field of cows, reading a commentary on Romans. Then I dozed off (it wasn’t the commentary, more the peace and the sun). And after that, I read some more of the commentary. Then I came home.

That night I spent about an hour listening to someone who’s been pretty troubled and needed to talk. I was able to listen. Not perfectly (listening doesn’t come naturally to me, as my wife tirelessly points out); but I was able to be there for that person. I don’t think I would have been able to be had I not taken a good long swig of solitude earlier.

That’s the difference between solitude and ‘me time’. Solitude, ultimately, is about community. It resources us for love.

To truly live in community, it is vital that we make space for solitude.

Why community?

The email popped into my inbox about half an hour ago.

'Writing an article about growing interest in community living among evangelicals. Care to offer a few lines from your perspective about why people from an evangelical background are interested in either community life?'

It was from my old friend Simon Cross. Great chap, Simon, and I was at a lull in the working day, so I replied straightaway.

Here's what I wrote:

Evangelical Christians often emphasise the importance of individuals having an authentic relationship with God - 'knowing God personally'. This is indeed important, but it's not the whole story.

Christianity is essentially a communal faith (after all, the command to love one another is at its heart). I think many evangelicals have found an over-emphasis on individualism has left them hungry for more. For some this leads to exploring what it means to be 'church', to be 'the body of Christ' - in ways that go beyond just meeting together once or twice a week. Some read the early chapters of Acts, with its daily fellowship and sharing of possessions and find themselves thinking 'Why not now?'

Certainly it was this kind of exploration that led members of the Jesus Fellowship to start a residential community, forty years ago. Now about a quarter of our members (600 or so people) live in community. Of course, sharing homes and possessions is a fairly 'full on' and strenuous expression of community - it's not for everyone.

But it is also true that you get out of community what you put in. By definition, 'community' has to be more than just a fad or phase if you're going to experience it truly. To paraphrase Jesus - it's in losing your (independent, self-centred) life that you find real life.

Tonight, most of the sixteen who live in our house are having a meal together. Maybe I'll read out to them what I wrote to Simon.

After all, it's good to remember why we're doing what we're doing.

The art of shutting up

Yesterday morning was our community's monthly ‘house family breakfast’. We meet, eat, talk about communal practicalities, I or someone else will usually share a thought or two on community life, we pray or worship...

But yesterday was different. For the first half of our breakfast, by prior arrangement, we were in complete silence, not a word spoken.

The seed for this novel arrangement came from a conversation I’d had earlier in the week with Penelope Wilcock, author of a series of novels set in a Medieval monastery called ‘The Hawk and the Dove’. (Read her account of our meeting here.) I asked her what she felt we could learn from an ancient community rule such as the Rule of Benedict.

Her answer, perhaps surprisingly, was that the Rule of Benedict can teach us common sense. We might think of the founding document of Benedictine monasticism as a lofty, spiritual masterpiece – as indeed it is. Yet, as Penelope pointed out, many of its injunctions have a ring of good plain sense about them.

An example Penelope gave was ‘the great silence’ – the rule Benedict laid down that after evening prayers the whole community observes silence throughout the night until after the morning service the next day.

‘What a brilliant rule for fostering harmonious community,’ Penelope enthused. None of those too-late-at-night conversations when things can get fractious and irritable (and things can be said which are regretted the following morning). Likewise, no demand for communication while still waking up (one of my favourite biblical proverbs springs to mind: ‘If anyone loudly blesses their neighbour early in the morning, it will be taken as a curse.’)

Common sense, yes, which fosters the health and harmony of a community. It got me thinking because as a leader in a residential Christian community, I give quite a lot of thought (not to mention what goes on in my subconscious) to the issue of how to foster healthy, fruitful community. And this issue – silence – is part of that. (I’ve mused about it before here and here.)

We’re a very active community. Activist, one might even say (and one recent blog called Power Activism has already featured us three times!) That’s good and it’s what God has called us to. And yet. Without silence our minds and spirits become noisy and overcrowded.

There is stillness and silence in our community life, but it mainly happens on our own, out on the fringes of community life – a personal prayer hour, a walk in the park... a bath! And sometimes we will have a pause for silence before a meal or during corporate worship.

I think we should integrate shared silence into our life more, for the sake of health and harmony.

It was silent in the temple’s holiest place. And the New Testament speaks of the ‘unfading beauty of a quiet spirit’ (our spirits, God’s dwelling like the temple, ought to be silent, still, poised). We want our community house to be a place people find the presence and peace of God. Silence must play its part.

So we passed the first half hour of our breakfast in silence. It wasn’t a 'religious silence' – we weren’t praying or meditating, just eating breakfast together. There was quite a bit of signalling (a wave meaning ‘pass me the honey?’ A thumbs up meaning ‘thanks!’), some winks and smiles. Most of us found it refreshing; some rather hard work.

I’m convinced it’s something we’ll explore. Ideas anyone? What can a busy, bustling community do to foster shared silence, shared stillness in the midst of it all?

Watch this space (space! ah!) – I’m sure this is a theme I’ll return to again in this blog.

A remarkable healing

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.

Love, key to joy

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

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