Get a Grip

And another thing ...

I am sort of sorry, but I feel another bout of invective coming on. Please don't think that I am a terminally bad mood because I'm not; I am just jaw-slack watching the world.

Some of you will be aware that a nice little West-Country town took the momentous step, not to stop flogging the under-5s or putting pensioners up their chimneys, but to stop saying a prayer before its council meetings. The responses to this immense event ranged from "Ding Dong the Witch is Dead" to "Eli Eli Lama Sabachthani" - or in other words, the sublime to the ridicuous. Some of the Dawkinsites (I still deny the existence of Richard Dawkins, and believe his followers to be deluded) hailed this as the death of religion. Some of the Christians of our fine nation hailed it as, well, the death of religion. 

I say get a grip.

This Careyesque persecution complex that we are currently enjoying in Britain today is as daft as it is needless. Even Baroness Warsi says we should get a grip and it is not often that I find my socialist heart being projected by the words of a Tory Peer (and a Muslim one too, telling Christians to get a grip). 

I think that we like to be defeated, and I don't know why. We believe in the God of the Universe and All Creation, the author of the stars and moons, of love and puppies. We believe in a Good News so overwhelming that it conquers even death - but not, it seems, the secularist hearts of Devonshire folk. We, the British people of the Book, in our thousands of churches who can pop and and out when we choose, if only we chose to do so, have no right to claim a persecution on the one hand, or that we are under siege from secularists on the other. If we were in danger of being shot in the face by an AK47-wielding sniper when we attend a service on Sunday, then we may have a case. 

Sadly, in many ways, we are giving the secularists and that man Dawkins all the 'ammunition' he needs. We fight among ourselves, we go to church when we don't have a golf game to play, we cannot communicate even within the sphere of our synods and governing structures, we would sooner stop going to a church of the wrong flavour than go and be glad of the chance, our national church website's guide to prayer will tell you only how to use your fingers and we self-flagilate with a whip of our own creation. 

We need to stand up and be counted. We need not whine and self-pity, but be strong in our faith and in the sure belief that we have in the Good News of Christ. We must bust our buns embodying the example of Jesus Christ who never once whined and complained, and do the job we have been mandated to do, and make disciples. To do that, we must make our beautiful wonderful altogether human church seem the slightest bit like a body that people would regard as Good News incarnate, not as a snivelling brood of sulkers as we are in danger of appearing. 

As I said a few days ago: the mission of God does not need a place on the Agenda of a council meeting. It is the reason why the council meeting can happen in the first place.

I Am a Pioneer Minister

I am Asparagus

My weekly edition of the Church Times offered me a useful perspective into the lives and future ministries of some younglings who are called by God, apparently, to walk beneath the banner "Pioneer Minister". To my eyes they seem to be funky young people all of whom are younger than me (if such a thing were possible). I wish them every success in their training and in their ministries, and I thank the Lord for their calling as I do for my own.

This is not to say that I came away from that time spend reading without a mite of a niggle in my stone-cold heart. No, dear readers, I had developed something of a low-level temper, a Grade 2 Tantrum (and not one granted by the snarling faces of the ladies on the front cover - and my weren't they snarling).

It's all to do with Fresh Expressions, an initiative of Mother Church to buy up small shops and sell coffee for God.  Don't misunderstand me, I laud the whole idea of 'fresh expressions of Church', even if I can't say it without need of a tissue. It speaks of a real need to re-think what we are and what we do in the light of the cultural changes that ebb and flow. Really, it is a good thing (even though I know you think I am being sarcastic, which I am not). 

Well the article in the Church Times, under the Big Blue Banner of 'How to Blaze a Trail', tells the story of some nice people becoming equipped for this work of Pioneering Ministry. The thing is, it makes two statements either deliberately or not, without stating either:

1. Given that the entire country exists within a parish boundary of some sort, it speaks badly of many church communities who have foundered for economic reasons among other temporal ones. These pioneer ministers will be working in someone's parish - this invites a wealth of commentary and discussion, and quite possibly judgement - which I will avoid here. 

2. That only pioneer ministers have the gift of pioneering ministry. If a pioneer minister is called to exercise a ministry in a new context, with those yet to be exposed to the Gospel (anyone says "un-churched" and I will geld you), what about those who already do? I minister in new contexts and with such people every day of my working life without exception. Yet I am not billed a pioneer minister, just Vicar. 

Summed up, my view is that many (if not all) parish clergy are pioneer ministers by very definition. What we do daily is pioneer ministry - just within existing frameworks - as well as tending Christ's existing and much loved flock. I don't have this badge. I don't work out of a coffee shop. What I do every day is proclaim the Good News of Christ to my parish, walking with them afresh daily. 

I am a pioneer minister. I blaze a trail. My expression of church is fresh. 

Careless Whisper

There is a theory expressed in some places that claims that the beat of a butterfly's wings in one part of the world can create a hurricane in another. I am no physicist or chaos-theorist, so I opt to acquiesce on this idea, all the while being quite sure in my unqualified heart that it is bunkum!

As I spend more time in this ministry of mine, I encounter more and more people. Every single human creature has a story, and I am willing to bet that they have one thing in common (or else know personally of such a thing close at hand).

I believe that, in the main, the fractures and disputes, wars and conflicts, turmoil and suffering, needless slaughter, lifelong antipathies, deeply set quarrels, career ending, family smashing, sibling dividing, friend destroying phenomena are not the products of great single events. It would be easy to say that all marriages end because of an affair, because of violence, or because of someone else - but I am not sure that is the case. It would be easy to say that siblings fall out for decades because of a Last Will and Testament, of greed or jealousy - but I am not sure that is the case. It would be easy to blame all wars on Archduke Ferdinand-type events, the lit touchpaper, the invasion - but I am not sure that is the case.

I think the cause is altogether more mundane. I think the cause is banal in and of itself. 

Every conflict (with the very rare exception) I have heard about in all the ways I sit and listen to people talk have started not in the seat of a significant event, but in the wake of what can only be termed a 'careless whisper', an ill-thought phrase uttered thoughtlessly, a rebuke that was a fraction too heavy. Equally, I have heard of conflicts that are seated in the glint on an eye, a passing expression, the interpreted inference that wasn't intended. That beat of a butterfly wing, in the moment, seems to cause little damage - but the fracture starts and simply widens with time until a hair-line crack becomes a gap becomes a fissure becomes an aching chasm. 

This is both an alarming conclusion and a reassuring one. Everyone of us has the wings of a butterfly and the power to cause a hurricane. Mostly we would never intend to, but the road to Hell and all that ... Equally, we have the power to prevent wars and disputes that destroy lives, simply by taking a moment more care in an argument, with throwaway comments. We can ignite a smoldering fire in someone with consequences that can never be predicted, or we can quell one (or indeed avoid one). 

As I sit and write this, it occurs to me with some measure of concern the increasing power to build or destroy in the context of social-media. If only people read our words as we intended them to be read!

Women Bishops, Synod and Froth

I love women, me. I love women because they are sort of like blokes but different and they can do all the same stuff. A woman is like a man, only different. It is also fair to say that I love men too. I love men because they are sort of like ladies but different and can do all the same stuff and that. A man is like a woman, but with fewer glands. It's like we are the same, just a little different, init.

If you hadn't heard, didn't care, or were in the real world, you may not have heard that the famous veteran of the Jerusalem Wars, General Synod, is talking about none less that women bishops. It seems that the church is one of the few places where equality is laughed at like a dirty joke in a vestry, where mammaries are anti-mitre devices and that it is seriously believed, by even some people with more than an 'O' Level in woodcraft, that the God of the whole Universe would give a rat's behind about gender when dishing out shepherd jobs. 

Oh no. God has us to do that for him, for we are flawed and broken. 

Facebook, a whole array of internets and Twitter are now the playground of the "We Should" and "We Shouldn't" brigades. There will be name calling, there will be acrimony, there will be point scoring, there will be more froth than a branch of Starbucks. Perhaps less prayer than any of that, but much wordsmithery. 

Why? Because we are flawed and broken. 

I am in favour of all God's children doing what God calls them to do. I don't think God discriminates on the basis of gender, because such a God as that would surely have to discriminate on the basis of far more important matters like worthiness - and I'd still be peddling my woven wares in a warehouse. There is no argument (except for the words of one human man from a few decades back) against it. 

What I am not in favour of is seeing my beloved church turning into a torch-and-pitchfork organisation in the public glare of the all the world. I shall pray that the debate is dignified, that the Interweb output is steeped in humility on all sides, and that the world will see that Christians can be people of the grace they purport to have received from God. 

... and that anyone with a career-builder's heart in the middle of that debate, from either camp, may be consumed by pestilence. 

Cheap Words

It happens, sometimes, that a theme starts to nag. When a theme starts to nag it becomes the one thing that everyone in the world world seems to be talking about, the topic at hand in our daily Bible readings, and the haunting lullaby of our dreams. 

Well, I am having one of those. 

No, it isn't a revelation or epiphany of any great weight or import, so you may relax. I have not, I don't think, been given the answer to life, the universe and everything. That remains the number 42 and the Alpha Course (which now owns the Bible, I see).

Words, kids; words. 

I have thinking about words. This came from a passing comment from a luminary theologian who lives on the manor when I asked him for some material for something I am planning. He said that he didn't but a friend of his is likely to have what I sought "in a draw drawer". Oh, said I, that's great; he can email it over (the geezer lived in the land of Mandela and Table Mountain). No, David, these are words on a page, in a large file - properly and literally "in a draw". 

And so the nagging started - words; words; words. Words, those things that explode light onto our world. 

In my life, things are ordered on a device of the digital age. I type and I bluster for many hours a week (often for your edification, people, so listen up) typing and writing. The fact is, I am probably too fond of the sound of my own keyboard. What I write is either published in date order, or filed in the perplexity of files and sub-folders that are established on this here device and every thing has its place. I delete nothing and I file everything. Hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of thousands of words. 

It struck me that I probably wouldn't write half as much if I was at the mercy of the pen, quill or stylus. Actually, my handwriting had degraded to that of a doctor and is, therefore, illegible. Why? Because I never, ever, ever, write. I type. Or I write in capitals. The thing is, I hate writing as an literal pastime. My forearm aches, I am left-handed so smudge each syllable off of the page as I write it, I make an appalling mess because my spelling is atrocious (you will have noted that already, regular digesters of this offal) - and so in the days when I had to write, I just didn't unless I had to. The age of the Amstrad word processor, the home computer and then latterly the blog has given me lease of writing life that would have remained suppressed otherwise. Now I love writing, but only when it is to the chaotic drumbeat of a keyboard. 

Once, monks toiled over parchments and then theologians sat in studies scribbling on to pads of paper. That all took far longer, each words crafted and prayed over. Every scintilla of every iota of every little bit of word was deliberate for Tippex wasn't invented, let alone the delete-button. This leaves one question, the question of my nag:

Are words cheaper because they can be mass-produced?

Hardcore Calling

If you say "vocation" in a church, chances are people will think priest 'minister'. If someone comes forward claiming a sense of calling, invariably they are saying "I think I want to be a vicar". Vocation and ordained ministry have become synonymous (more often than not).

Oh that it was that simple. 

I don't deal with vocations in the way some of my colleagues do. I don't have to read the fine print and the words between the lines with those who feel that inexorable pull from God. Maybe one day I will, but not now. Now, I regard it as a tough job and one where I would struggle. 

Today we remember Simeon ('the Righteous', for there is a panoply of Simea), the old geezer of Candlemas, the fella who just happened to be stood there when Mary and Joseph carried in that peculiar little bundle of out-of-this-world new life. With Simeon, we then witness a hardcore calling, an extreme vocation. 

The thing with Simeon, is that his calling was there from before his birth, placed within him by God as he was formed in his mother's womb. This is, I believe, where all callings are placed - whether we care to take any notice or not. His calling was not to pop down to the nearest clerical outfitters for an array of Fairtrade poly-cotton tunnel-collar sky-blue shirts. His calling was not to move into a generously proportioned vicarage or take the keys to a marvellous edifice. 

Simeon was called by God to receive that Christ child - and then, basically, to die. For Simeon, his vocation to was wait an entire lifetime for the moment that may or may not happen in his dying days. When we think "vocation", we think beginnings, new directions. For Simeon, "vocation" meant fulfillment, accomplishment and endings. God, having filled the old bloke with the Holy Spirit, had kept him alive so that his eyes may see the child, the Messiah. We know that it all worked out perfectly for Simeon, for our Bible tells us so. But imagine waiting seventy, eighty or ninety years for a single moment that may or may not happen - a moment that you feel called to enter. 

Callings are universal - which is to say that all people have a calling placed upon them from God. Some listen, some can interpret that, many mis-interpret that, but some are the hardest callings of all. May Simeon become your Patron Saint. 

The Challenge of Choice

I think it is perhaps fair to say that a great deal of what we choose is done so for selfish reasons. There is no judgement placed in that. That it is so is why acts of specific altruism are so memorable, that good deeds are (for the most part) the choice of exception not the matter of the norm. I include myself in this, of course.

We live in what many term a 'Choice Society'. We can design our lives from the beginning to the end. We can almost design our babies and purge those that don't reach the desired standard. We can choose how many we want, their names and how they live while in our care. We can even choose to make babies to fix existing siblings. We can choose work, or not. We can choose relationships, or not. We can choose faith, or not. We can choose to defy the effects of the passage of time with mechanical and chemical intervention. We can choose to sue those flawed humans that don't get that right for us. We can choose to eat ourselves spherical or to starve ourselves stick-thin. We can choose to abide by promises we make, or not. We can choose to deprive others of their possessions or health. We can choose to consume toxins beyond safe levels. We can choose to live and we can even choose to die. We believe too, that it is our right to make these choices. 

Speaking only for myself, but as a litmus test for many normal humans (quieten down before you even say what has just popped into your mind), I fail to make universally good choices. If I am fortunate, I can live through the effects of a bad choice or decision, and if I am even more fortunate than that, will hope that no-one else was damaged by my flawed choice. It is part of being human, so nothing too surprising in any of that. The fact remains, though, that I cannot guarantee that every choice I make is a good one.

We are now past Christmas as we rest here in the Feast of Candlemas. The story of the Presentation of Christ in the Temple is an anecdote for choice. Mary and Joseph had a choice to take, or not take, their firstborn to an old geezer in a Temple. Imagine expecting new mums to go through a Rite of Purification these days and you will have a mighty cohort from the NCT on your door-step! And then we will reach Lent, a period of de-choosing in many ways. Lent is a time of self-emptying, self-sacrifice, rejecting pleasures, adopting the burden of more prayer and fast. Lent rides against everything that our modern society stands for. 

I should say, too, that I am a believer in human choice. Many is the time when you will hear people of faith saying that 'God told them to N...'. Even Howard Camping, the false-Prophet of the non-starter Rapture blamed God for not stopping him from his foolishness. This line of thinking to me is faith based abdication of our rights under free-will. We choose, not God. God will guide, but rarely will God do the big Lottery Finger in our decisions. I have sat in some Christian circles and felt, quite sincerely, that I am surrounded by God's Own Puppets. I don't believe in a God like that, but rather God who walks alongside us in all our choices, good or bad. In the same way I cannot blame my mother for my poor choices in my younger years, but can be glad she was there to help me mend the damage. 

So, we choose. It is us who choose, not God. We have rights yes, but we are human, mortal, flawed and foolish in our own ways. During the Lent that fast approaches, and on a day when two fearful parents took this strange child to a man they probably didn't know, we have to put down our rights to some extent and remember to replace it with a little humility and know that the choice we make could easily be wrong - and not use God as a celestial crutch or a Omnipotent Scapegoat.