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My report to the four Annual meetings

A little rough and ready, maybe, but I am only going to do one report this year to the APCMs rather than try to pen four different ones. After all, we are all in this together...

I want to take this opportunity to look back on 2011, and try to get a glimpse of the next year or so as well. We are now a single Benefice of four different Parishes, and so I intend to say broadly the same thing to each APCM as we cannot ignore our shared life together.

I am not going to pretend that last year was a particularly easy one, there seemed to be a lot of issues forcing the agenda which meant that it felt like being on the back foot for most of the time and therefore there was little space for reflecting and trying to direct the four Churches.

One significant success was the outstanding rating given to WInsley School for their OFSTED and their SIAS inspections. They had been working on a series of words to describe the School which you may have seen on the hoarding next to the Co-op which says Challenge - Cherish - Enrich. I want to use these three words as headings for what I want to say today.

Challenge

There are many challenges that face us as a group of Churches. If I concentrate on what we might think of as external challenges then for me the greatest is the gulf that is growing between those for whom Church is a normal thing to do, and the increasing number in our society for whom Church is the thing they would now least likely do on a Sunday morning.

At Christmas we talk of Christ’s coming into the world as the Incarnation - God comes into an existing culture and set of circumstances, and makes his home amongst those he finds there. We are challenged to be as equally incarnational, whereas I think we tend to want Church to somehow remain a constant in this changing world. There is something in this, of course, our faith is an inherited one which is based on truths that stand outside cultural and historical changes, but if our primary concern remains on ‘preservation’ of a form of expression of that faith then we are accepting our becoming irrelevant to the lives of the majority of the population too lightly. This also misses the point of a second really important theological word, discipleship. Our middle class culture encourages us to be tight lipped about things like faith or some of the more internal aspects of our lives, but we are called to live in the world, confidently as disciples - followers of Jesus with him as the one who sets our values and priorities.

We need to mention at this point The Ark at Christ Church as an example of something taking place outside the normal four walls of Church, to which there is an open, generous welcome and which has Jesus at the centre. This has grown quite rapidly and the efforts by the volunteers every week in term time need to be applauded. We have Sunbeams at Winsley too with a similar set up and similarly generous volunteers - perhaps the local context is different, but for whatever reason that isn’t growing in quite the same way. Something for us to think and prayer over.

It is much more comfortable and reassuring NOT to look outside, but when I read the stories in the Old and New Testaments I see no parallels with the teaching of Jesus, in the dynamism of the Book of Acts or in the Epistles and Pastoral letters of the New Testament. The only parallel I see is in the Old Testament where the people gradually lose faith and lose heart, they become introspective and eventually get sent into exile as God’s way of bringing them to their senses.

We need to remember that Church is meant to be Good News, because it should be the place where the Kingdom of God is most clearly seen.

Cherish

Another significant challenge is that of resources. Money is tight everywhere, but this is more than simply money. It is possible that by the end of this round of APCMs we will have only 3 Churchwardens when we ought to have 8. I appreciate we have some really good people who would be willing to stand were it not for other issues, so this is not meant to be a statement critical of individuals, just a broad observation.

As a result of this situation more responsibility is loaded on fewer and fewer people. I think we need to recapture a sense of people feeling cherished. I think it is true to say that most of those who hold a post in Church receive flak in some form or another from within the Church community. I know often we say things off the top of our head, or because we believe something strongly, but these things are rarely received as gentle reminders but as criticism or worse. Church should be better than that.

We need to learn to cherish each other with Christ’s love, building each other up - even if somebody’s performance is not to the standard we would like still we should build up rather than chop down.

We need to do some humble cherishing. I think we have glimpsed something of this at South Wraxall. In order to get around the fact we did not have a Churchwarden a scheme was hatched which, if I am honest, at the time seemed quite complicated. In reality we now arrive at St James to find a wonderful, committed core of maybe half a dozen people all actively getting the Church ready for worship and talking together to get things done. Wonderful. So for those who are standing down this year because your time is up - thank you. And to those who are continuing (despite the rest of us) Churchwardens, Treasurers, PCC Members, those involved with young people or our older folk - an enormous thank you. We love you and want to cherish all you do for us. This extends particularly to the Ministry Team; Clergy, Lay Ministers and LPAs who support, pray, talk and share ministry with me and each other.

Enrich

There is a reason we do all this Church “business”. We are called to be part of God’s plan to be a blessing to all the families on earth, as he originally called Abraham to be. I see this as a call on us to enrich our neighbourhoods. We have our Church Schools, which are vital links in this direction - and certainly I want to celebrate the move of the Family Service at Christ Church into the School and at Winsley the cafe style Sunday mornings we are calling ‘Refresh’. I appreciate these are not to everyone’s taste, I wish I could make it otherwise.

In the villages we have also been hosting ‘Village Breakfasts’ and those need to be something we keep doing. We may not be feeding the hungry in quite the way Jesus mentioned, but bringing the villages together is crucial - and if the Church doesn’t bother then who else will?

I find the idea of gift very helpful here. In offering breakfasts in the villages we are extending a gift - a bit of food, but more importantly some time and space to meet those we live with but tend not to meet very often. God’s economy seems to have these beautiful side-effects. I wonder what ways we as four Churches can be gifts to our neighbours in the year ahead.

 

 

 

 

I believe with all my heart that the only way we can be truly enriched as human beings seeking to become enriched as children of God is for us to grasp these nettles; to be outward looking, to be encouraging each other and to be willing to become vulnerable to one another as fellow disciples.

What is real?

Spent a happy few minutes yesterday evening watching the spoof song Newport (Ymerodraeth State of Mind)...

... and for the sake of balance then watched the original upon which it is based...

... the second, Jay-Z and Alicia Keys is obviously the original - slick, expensively made, gorgeously filmed in world famous locations - so why, in comparison, does it have no soul?

Self-doubt and Creativity

I was surprisingly moved by this interview with Alistair Campbell from the BBC website magazine. I agree with the interviewer that Campbell comes across as one of the most hard-nosed men of certainty, and here he is allowing himself to be seen as vulnerable in acknowledging his self-doubt. In fact Campbell goes further and sees a virtue in his having doubted himself prior to making a decision.

I also watched this fascinating clip of John Cleese on creativity.

 

He too discusses decision making, but form the point of view of creativity.

Cleese epecially refers to the example of politicians operating under the adrenyline rush of pressure who lose the time to enter what Cleese refers to as the open mode where creative thinking exists.

Monday of Holy Week

I kid ye not, but I was asked if what I said this evening was available long-hand for somebody to read again. As Eric Morecambe would have said, "the boy's a fool".

We had the Gospel reading from John 12, where Mary anoints Jesus' feet with nard and then wipes his feet with her hair, which made me think about how real our worship ever is.

On May 21, 2008, a little girl was killed in her driveway as she ran to meet her elder brother who was returning from an audition. He was driving and didn't see her - she died on the spot.

Little Maria Chapman was the adopted daughter of Stephen Curtis Chapman, and his wife Mary Beth. Stephen is a successful Christian singer-songwriter and out of his family's grief her wrote an album called 'Beauty will rise', a collection of songs describing his grief and pain and yet holding on to his faith in God. His emotions are raw

I am broken, I am bleeding,
I'm scared and I'm confused,
but You are faithful.
Yes You are faithful.
I am weary, unbelieving.
God please help my unbelief!
'Cause You are faithful.
Yes You are faithful.

these are songs I listen to often, but they are far too personal for me to use in public worship I feel.

I was reminded of these songs as I pondered the way that Mary anointed Jesus' feet. Jesus had raised Mary's brother Lazarus from the dead and so there had been real pain in Mary's recent experience, as well as the visible recognition of who J was, and these two extremes were wrapped together in this public and yet very intimate act. Jesus himself clearly receives the anointing as part of the preparation for his burial, but in the context of that society, and with the next episode in the Gospel being the Triumphal entry there is also the hint of anointing as the Messiah. I think there is also something here about the loosening of her hair to wipe his feet, which might hint at loose morals, but I don't think Mary is even aware of that such is her desire to express her love for Jesus. She allows herself to be extremely vulnerable.

I wonder what our reaction might have been had this sort of thing happened in our Church? I imagine the tense silence, people trying to see over the top of their hymnbooks without making it look like they had noticed her, but then the whispered disapproval over coffee afterwards.

"Did you see what she did?"

Mary wanted to worship Jesus, and Jesus received it graciously and lovingly protected her against the accusations of those around him.

My eldest once asked his godfather, a Vicar, what worship was. He replied that it is what should unite us, but usually ended up being what divided us, and certainly most congregations could tell you stories from the past of worship wars.

I am not convinced we are given the best models of worship as we look around us, from the slick, well rehearsed TV version on Songs of Praise, or the aesthetically pleasing Cathedral style (which ticks all our Anglo-Saxon preference boxes for orderliness) or the mega-event multi-media extravaganza, which can be truly sensational, but for all of them, like any limited diet, will ultimately cloy. Here's a thought - what if the deepest and truest worship can only really take place amongst a small group like those who gathered in Lazarus' house, where we know each other and want to learn to love and trust each other. What if small groups are actually the ideal unit for building the Kingdom in our midst? However, before I am seen to write the aforementioned styles of worship off it is worth noting an important point. The potentially bland middle of the road expression we see in the C of E - was it not an attempt to end the bloodshed of the Reformation? The processions and ostentation of high Catholicism - were they not actually born out of the celebration of the end of the Roman persecutions?The high energy triumphalism of the Pentecostals - did that not begin in a response to the racism, segregation and poverty of Black Americans?

Does all forms of worship only really make sense when they have been grounded in a sense of pain and distress, the stuff of real ice?

I think we need to have something to chew on in our thinking through Holy Week; the joyful heights of the Triumphal Entry to the bitterest emptiness of Good Friday provide the outer markers of our human experience. All that is contained within is valid emotion and experience to bring to Jesus as part of our worship, providing, of course, that we kneel at Jesus' feet and be honest about them before him, and in that honesty we need to find a way through our Anglo-Saxon reserve - to be wiling to express emotions publicly, not necessarily everybody on every Sunday.

I think there is a potent myth in the Church of England at the moment which says that if we get our worship right then people will come to Church but the next step that seems to be made in this logic is to look at what we do now, and then try and tidy up a few loose ends; tweak the sidemen's rota and make sure the person reading the lesson speaks properly and the microphone works. I believe the true course for worship may not be automatically attractive to the world outside, but at least will engage them in some questioning of their presumptions about the Church and what it means to be real in our faith. It would be for us to be a place where we can be real and vulnerable together, holding each others' emotions and experiences and questions with gentleness and grace (after all, these are often the most real parts of us anyway). For if these parts of us do not come into our worship how can we actually claim to be worshipping at all?

But even that is to collude with the lie that worship is the 75 minutes we are together on a Sunday morning and not an expression of our gratitude to the love that Jesus showed us. Worship is actually a way of life; our attitude when we are washing up, or stuck on the motorway, or in a boring meeting at work - we should be living acts of worship, such that the fragrance of this expression of our love for God fills the rooms that we inhabit.