a blog by howard jameson @ gatheringgrace.org

A Web 2.0 inspired joke

Messing about with a drawing package at the moment....

...dare you to put it up in your porch!!

(If you don't know Web 2.0 then the joke is that products in beta are normally free but a bit buggy)

A useful visual aid...

Many years ago my brother bought me a birthday present. It was an EMI Record Token.

Exhibit A

You can tell from things like "Record Token" (not CD or anything from the last 15 years) and (if you live in the UK) the old style phone number that I've had this a long time.

I used this as a visual aid this morning for unclaimed promises. It is also useful sometimes as an illustration of receiving grace but not allowing it to do its thing...

...unused record tokens...every home should have one.

Let's pause for a moment of honesty...

I was interested (as much as brain full of other things would allow) in the discussion on the recent publication of Church Attendance statistics. I am mildly encouraged at one level; statistically we should have died out years ago and yet faith remains strong in many peoples' lives (I mean here a strong Christian faith, not nebulous folk religion) and there is still a passion to break out of existing barriers. Alleluia!

But there is still pain to come which I think is quite simply the fact that the enormous kick in the trousers that the changes in our society are forcing upon us. From here it would appear that society is much more clustered than it used to be with many more young people going into higher education, and therefore larger urban areas attracting them for education, employment and social life, and therefore the less urban areas becoming more the preserve of wealthier family units and elderly people. There's not much we can do about that, other than being the agents of the Kingdom of God where we are. but the shape of our Churches has changed. I think this is well documented by cleverer people elsewhere.

So quite a few Churches are scratching their heads and wondering what happened - well, I think we should have been smarter about seeing it coming, but the Church had become (in a phrase we used to use about a competitor who thought they had a virtual monopoly and therefore didn't need to bother very much) "fat and lazy". We still face pain in this area because there are good faithful ministers who were ordained for Empire (as it were) who give the impression of feeling lost and bewildered by it, and often whose only recourse is to retreat into their shells or to try even harder to do the things which weren't really working.

Case in point.

I was told of a discussion in a Church I once attended where somebody complained about a sense of fragmentation and lack of direction. The response from the Rector was to demand that he be the hub through which all decisions and communication must flow.

(Cue: slow motion Homer Simpson style) Nooooooooh!

So who will feel this pain?

I think those in responsibility (predominantly Clergy, but there are others who are already heavily involved in this) will feel pain because of the the demands of changing a culture; weaning people off an unsustainable pattern of Clergy-centric Church life. The energy cost of changing a culture is huge and consuming and Church has, I think, got a bad record of planning for the implementation of the inevitable. Rather Church has tended to continue doing the old patterns until they are totally impossible to sustain, and then things break rather than develop organically. Time needs to be invested now to grow the patterns of Church for tomorrow.

Others will also feel pain. They will need to carry some of the load and bear some of the burdens of being in a mission-oriented Church. This is scary for many people; for those currently in charge who need to delegate and devolve and let go, and those to whom this work will be given who will need to learn new skills for which they have had no previous training.

It used to be said that the blood of the martyrs was the seed from which the early Church grew. Well the sort of pain I am talking about is nothing like that, but I think I can see some parallels. We might not have to die for our faith, but many more of us will have to start living for it.

A sign of increasing maturity

When I was a teenager I wanted to place explosive charges under large parts of the fabric and shout something about Jesus from the top of the tower whilst pushing down the plunger. But inevitably that was just a childhood fancy not based in reality...

Of course I'm older now, a bit grey and flabby. Life, experience and trials have taken their toll and I am by far maturer in my outlook.

I now think I've worked out a way of doing it!

tee hee

Poetry in motion

This caught my eye concerning the man widely regarded as the worst poet...ever...

A sample

"So the train mov'd slowly along the Bridge of Tay,
Until it was about midway,
Then the central girders with a crash gave way,
And down went the train and passengers into the Tay..."

...turning tragedy into, er, something worse.

I wonder if he ever turned his hand to hymns?

Rabbits and headlights...

Sorry. I have done two posts in quick succession and made references to rabbits in headlights in both.

Apologies to Bugs, Roger and any of their kindred.

I feel like old Arkwright...

"Its been a funny old day..."

This morning we didn't do anything too whacky, but we prayed for the Holy Spirit to come into various parts of our Church life and everybody joined in and it was one of those beautiful moments one longs for and wishes could be every week...

...and then this evening was (in my humble opinion) one of the worst talks I've heard in a long time. It made me feel like a hot Friday afternoon at School with double Chemistry and then French...we managed 70 minutes (I was mesmerised like a rabbit in the headlights) before I thought I was going to scream or laugh out loud, so we had to sneak out. Sorry.

"Hello Manchester!!"

So shouted the R&B star Usher to a large crowd...

...in Maidstone.

Whoops...sadly, my heart goes out to him. One of the perennial fears of the Clergyperson is being asked 30 seconds before a service to make sure that a list of people are mentioned in connection with something. One's head either implodes (trying to hold a vast amount of information) or one drops oneself in it by either forgetting (or saying Manchester, for example) or (most normal in my case) panicking like a rabbit in the headlights and then trying to make a joke about it to recover, and only dig oneself in further.

My particular favourite was my dear friend who wanted to welcome those who went to another Church which had just changed its name to The Gateway Church and he joked about being called The Safeway Church...one could feel the earth begin to open up.

I'm sure I've said this before...

...but just to remind us.

Pentecost is not the birthday of the Church. Sorry. Please, don't sing Happy Birthday etc.

Pentecost marked the Holy Spirit kick starting the original plan for Mission. The Church only came about when somebody asked "What do we do now with all these people?".

(In my humble opinion, of course).

links for 2008-05-08

• Tim Keller on Youtube
  (tags: religion)