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Can we build the Kingdom of God?

As you may have gathered we live on a new housing development, so the idea of building is something I ponder often. I was invited to speak at a couple of things over the last week, so wrote something with some slides to accompany it. One of the groups was for a work-based fellowship in a local high-tech engineering company, so that is why it has a certain emphasis.

We live on the building site that is Charlton Hayes, and so there is a strong sense of a new community coming together. Admittedly, it is disjointed and dysfunctional at present - little blobs of housing without any interconnecting roads or any focal point, but it is already home to the residents of some 200 dwellings, with another 2300 yet to be built. We came here longing to be part of seeing the Kingdom of God built in this place and so our part in that is something which rattles round my brain with great regularity.

 

I did a degree in engineering and got my fist job in the autumn of 1984. At the end of my first week a 40' trailer was towed out of the yard, loaded full of gleaming stainless steel pipework destined for the Marathon Brae B oil platform (this photo is Brae A, I think, but you get the picture) and I remember a tremendous thrill from seeing the fruits of, admittedly other peoples, labours. Whether in the long run North Sea oil was a good or bad thing ecologically, there is something fundamentally human about wanting to make or build things after all we are made in the image of the Creator God and whether it is building oil rigs or baking cakes we all need to create so is it unrealistic to want to be building the Kingdom of God?

  Bristol has a long heritage of creating things. The Clifton suspension bridge is iconic...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

...but I think the Second Severn Crossing bridge is no less beautiful. Every time we drive over I try to take a photo, and the hill top from Almondsbury is too far away to capture the geometric elegance.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Living on what used to be Filton airfield allows us to see Concorde 216 parked on the runway often - another Bristol creation.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And this is a Bristol car I photographed in Clifton a year or so ago. I think it is a 1973 411, but it is not quite like the one on the Bristol web site, perhaps somebody knows better than I (nobody actually did, sadly).

 

 

 

 

 

 

But the Kingdom is tricker. Jesus tells us to seek the Kingdom of God first, and then he will provide us with all these other things, but we don't get a plan, scheme, or bill of materials. Instead we get parables. Now I get annoyed when people think that parables are children's stories, ideal for a Family Service, and not much else. These were stories Jesus told to theologically sophisticated people who knew whole chunks of their Old Testament by heart, but they are complex because they are often open-ended. I think it is only the parable of the sower for which Jesus provides an explanation and that is done privately to his disciples only.

I think these simple parables were meant to be based on things which would be constant reminders, mustard seeds and corn growing, but which would get under peoples skin as they tried to discern quite what Jesus meant.

 Clearly a Kingdom is a place where a King reigns, but we must remember that for those hearing Jesus speak they had no land of their own - the Romans were in town, and even so at his Ascension the disciples asked if Jesus would give the Kingdom back to Israel; would the geographical boundaries be restored, a process which would have demanded a military campaign against the Romans. Jesus tells them about times and occasions being set by his Father.

If the disciples confused God's Kingdom with land then is it any wonder that our Victorian forebears seemed to have done so even more. The Empire had been won by a disciplined army and an organised civil service and somehow, in hymns like

 Lord, her watch thy Church is keeping, when shall Earth thy rule obey?

 the Church took this as a pattern for the spiritual conquest of the world as well. You are allowed to disagree with me on that point, but there is little in the Parables of the Kingdom which would justify hymn lines such as

 and the great Church victorious shall be the Church at rest

  to be fair there's a modern song which talks about the Church in victory too (Father of creation).

 A cynic once said that Jesus came to preach the Kingdom of God but all he left us was the Church. The Kingdom seems to be ephemeral and the sort of thing one catches glimpses of, whereas we have made very rigid Churches. Ultimately the Kingdom will become the fixed eternal thing - God will rule everywhere when the new heaven descends to the new earth and the Church will disappear because it will quite simply have served its purpose. Of course, I mean Church here by the institution, not the people but I would wager that most of us involved in any style of Church actually invest heavily in that style. No, we need to think different, to quote a famous advertising campaign.

  Some of the parables paint quite a challenging picture of the Kingdom; the moment in which a young man runs back to his father and seeks undeserved forgiveness or a despised foreigner stops to lend a hand to a man who had been robbed and beaten. These are for more transitory than we think of for Church. Perhaps we need to be looking for the Kingdom as minute events which break into the present as a sign of what is to come, rather than the initiation of something permanent.

 I did some physics at University, but would not pretend for one millisecond to understand what is going on with the Large Hadron Collider or how the Higgs-Boson fits into the overall scheme of things, but here we have a particle which seems to exist for an unimaginably small period of time and yet adds substance to the whole of creation. I like that as an analogy for the Kingdom even if I don't really understand the science bit.

A science joke. I bought a book about anti-gravity. I couldn't put it down.

 I don't have a downer on the Church - far from it, it can be the catalyst for awesome stuff. A catalyst is something which is needed in order to help create something else, bit which itself disappears in the process. One of the funniest training courses I ever went on was about the production of polyethylene and polypropylene. A catalyst is spread over a large steel disc at the base of a vertical cylinder. The disc has lots of small holes through which is blown propylene or ethylene gas, and the catalyst is swept up by the gas (I imagine it would look like one of those snowman glass balls you see at your Grandma's house). The American leading the day said that this was like one of those hot air popcorn machines everybody has at home. Cue a sea of blank Brit faces. "You don't have them, I guess".

 But if we think of the Day of Pentecost then Holy Spirit came down on the disciples and people were converted (I would say that is the Kingdom). Church was something that came into being in order to teach, nurture and disciple these new converts that too is Kingdom, but Church is the vehicle, not the destination.

 So we need to think different about Church - because ultimately it is about the Kingdom

 and we need to think different about what isn't Church - because ultimately it is about the Kingdom

 To go back to my initial question, can we actually build the Kingdom of God?

 What we have tried to do in the past, I think, is to build a structure or hierarchy with programmes and agendas.This is only natural - most of us need a sense of order to survive and we are meant to be a community, so a degree of organisation is vital, but I think in doing so we have taken our eyes off the Kingdom. Again, going back to the parables where do we see the Kingdom? Most often it is in our attitudes, our faith, our relationships...

 Therefore, each of us needs to ask ourselves this, given the contexts and situations I inhabit Monday to Friday, and Saturday, and even Sunday, where am I seeking first the Kingdom of God?

Experience Easter

Experience Easter is an event I have run several times over the years, and enjoyed each time - as have the children. This year, being new, I saw the opportunity to do it again, but bigger. Three schools in quite close proximity, but not very near my Church - however, Amberley Road Baptist Church were really generous and cancelled some events to give us two clear days in their building.

There was quite a bit of anxiety on my part, I must admit, as to do this from scratch with a team of volunteers who hadn't done it before and in a new, untired venue meant a few sleepless moments at night. I was glad to be able to follow some advice on locating various bits and pieces I needed, not least the amazing Fabric Land down at Broadmead.

The schools were brilliant too, adjusting thier own timings to suit how we could fit as many in as possible! So that's a bit thumbs up to St Chad's VC CE, Holy Family RC and Stoke Lodge Primary Schools and their Heads and Staff.

The children arrived to hear the Easter story, and then explore it over a series of stations...

...and they waved palms, before building a cairn to symbolise thier own hopes and dreams...

They then move on to think about the Servant King...

...and the innate sense of the spiritual in children becomes apparent as they take time in stillness to offer a prayer. After this they move on to remember the Last Supper, and share in a piece of pitta bread.

Gethsemane is where Jesus was alone, and the children are invited to think about what this meant then, and to them...

...before they move on to the Cross of Good Friday, where they consider the God who shares our suffering and sorrows. They hold a ribbon to pray for somebody they know in this situation.

The final station is gathering around the Empty Tomb, before being offered an Easter Egg as a symbol of new life.

Hard work. Great fun. Wonderful responses.

The times they are a-changing....

I admire Pope Benedict XVI's decision to resign. With failing health and an enormous burden of care, along with the need for energy to travel and leading it is entirely understandable. Too often, I think, people have hung on and as a result the Church has stagnated.

Bearing in mind our thinking recently about listening to the world around us so that we can respond appropriately, I found this article on the BBC quite thought provoking. The suggestion here is that in 1962, with Vatican II, Joseph Ratzinger was a reforming liberal, writing speeches for one of the leading modernisers. But within a few years he had changed sides quite dramatically to become somebody renowned as a conservative. Why the change?

Quoting the Pope on his view of the mid to late 60s

"It is true I saw a new spirit creeping in," he said. "A spirit in which fanatical ideologies made use of the spirit of Christianity… Here I saw very clearly… that there was an abuse of the Church and the faith, which were used as instruments of power."

which seems to be in response to some ultra-liberal views of Jesus doing the rounds at the time, combined with the rise of left-wing extremism. However I am wary of the corollary of this, which is that the Church can change the world through institutional opposition, because that presumes arguing from a sense of influence and power. That is the easy way out, but it is not the way that Jesus took.

It looks like, if we are serious about engaging and responding to the needs of the world around us, we have to risk being tarred with the same brush as those we might not agree with.

While Jesus was having dinner at Matthew’s house, many tax collectors and sinners came and ate with him and his disciples. When the Pharisees saw this, they asked his disciples, ‘Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?’

 

Snow and other stuff

An interesting and varied week, rounded off with all the excitement of snow - snowballing, schools closed and meetings cancelled.

I cycled down into Cotham to network with some other Church leaders - a valuable morning (and proud of using the bike). Great to bump into my Methodist colleague as I cycled through the roadworks at Horfield so we could stop for a chat.

A night away with local leaders with some great input with loads to think about.

I hadn't had a night out in Clifton for a decade, so good to see the city from a different angle.

The snow brought builders to a halt early, so it was very quiet around the site on Friday.

Meetings being cancelled gave space to walk in to Church to meet someone, and to say hello to the man at the bus stop.

Reflecting back on the last week I made a slide I will use tomorrow. I don't especailly like slides with lots of words, but at the moment this is the best I can do, and this captures something that, I think, is hugely exciting.

Sorry if that doesn't make sense if you are out of our context. Some good conversations too, face to face and email, with some things to explore coming to the surface.

Looking forward to Sunday!

Getting back to basics

I have taken quite a long time to read…

"Search for the Origins of Christian Worship" (Paul F. Bradshaw)

…but have found quite a lot to ponder over.

I suppose we all like the idea that the earliest forms of Church and of worship were untainted by the Greco-Roman world, but Bradshaw makes a strong case that this is not true - there simply isn't the consistent evidence across the Mediterranean to come to any other conclusion. The first two or three centuries of Christian history was a hotchpotch of styles and structures. Indeed at first sight it may even be quite threatening to think that early Baptismal rites could have been influenced by the ceremonies in secular society which allowed a slave-owner to free a slave, but this is not so appalling once you think about it.

So if there is no consistent form of structure or liturgy or much of anything prior to the arrival of Constantinian Christendom, is there any sense of being able to get back to basics?

This is where I still find the ideas put forward in…

"The Forgotten Ways: Reactivating the Missional Church" (Alan Hirsch)

…and to think of a Missional DNA which needs to be released within our contemporary Churches really helpful.

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.

 

Farewell Anglican Covenant, so long Rowan

I am saddened that Rowan has announced his departure, although after 10 years in the no-win hot seat I don't blame him one little bit. As far as I was concerned he was genuinely the ideal candidate for the job because I believe he genuinely didn't seek the post. He also proved to be a heart and soul advocate for a Church engaging missionally with the wider world, and he did so without conforming to a single stereotype of Churchmanship. I don't see that in the yet mentioned "heavyweight candidates".

I spoke to him once - asking how the family had settled into life at Lambeth Palace, he muttered something and then scurried shyly away. I also stood next to him as he humbly queued like everyone else for his coffee at a conference. His wife, Jane, is probably the nicest person in the Universe and a joy to be taught by.

I assume he saw the Anglican Covenant being rejected even on his home turf, and so confirmed the rumours from last year that he would step down early as there was no point flogging a dead horse. I am sorry to see him go. I am even sorrier for how the obituary to the idea of the Covenant is being portrayed. Writing in The Guardian, Diarmaid MacCulloch seems to think that the Anglican Church can start afresh, as if the Covenant was the thing that started the problem and that those opposing the Covenant are agreed on their reasons for not liking it (I don't know the exact split but it has been rejected by those who think it does not go far enough, not just by those who see it as too draconian). Sadly I think Bishop Alan Wilson also misses a serious point when he advocates continued dialogue. It has been as much ECUSA which has avoided dialogue and acted unilaterally which precipitated the situation as those who have taken their bats home elsewhere in the world.

I voted in favour of the Anglican Covenant locally because I saw in it an entirely Christ-like sense of limiting my own options for self-determination in favour of accepting a mutual responsibility. In this process I saw a framework for the continued and committed dialogue that Bishop Alan called for. However, I think we also need to be honest enough to admit that simple dialogue is not sufficient between groupings where the starting points for the debate are so markedly at odds. 

I wish those who had taken provocative action on all sides could get together and offer us a better alternative.

I do not see the one issue of how and what we agree over sexuality as the make or break mark of doctrinal correctness, but I do see the loss of a man with mission so clearly on his agenda as Rowan is a very great loss indeed.

How's your Lent?

How is it going?

I have been trying to be a little less cluttered, to allow some space for some light to fall.

I had a chocolate chip cookie (it was offered to me) and I had to have a cheese sandwich (because it was the only healthy looking one in the shop), and whilst I did munch some nibbles yesterday evening they were not strictly crisps. I think, therefore, that on the whole the "giving up" side of Lent is going ok.

We heard yesterday about the idea of "taking up" for Lent which I haven't done, although I have just been for a run and I count that as a positive.

Lovely to run and breath deeply and have some quiet to pray.

Fresh Expressions and Mission

Really good to be asked to present on the subject of Fresh Expressions at our Deanery Synod this last week. I tried to give a general definition as well as tell four stories from my experiences. Slightly overshadowed, I have to say, at the end where people were invited to share their own experiences and basically anything that had been started in the last couple of years seemed to get a mention, completely overlooking the definitions I had given and particularly that the aim of a Fresh Expression is NOT that somebody ends up coming to Church the way we do it already.

Just came across another great Alan Hirsch quote from The Forgotten Ways, this time on page 235.

In a remark ascribed to Gordon Cosby, the pioneering leader of that remarkable community Church of the Saviour in Washington DC, he noted that in over sixty years of significant ministry, he had observed that no groups that came together around a non-missional purpose (e.g., prayer, worship, study, etc.) ever ended up becoming missional. It was only those groups that set out to be missional (while embracing prayer, worship, study etc., in the process) that actually got to doing it. This observation fits with all the research done by Carl George and others that indicates that the vast majority of church activities and groups, even in a healthy church, are aimed at the insiders and fail to address the missional issues facing the church in any situation.

A bit of a long quote, I accept, but worth reading in full. Our current experience here is of trying to make something new and with a strong missional thread through it, and in the process seemingly dis-satisfying a number of regulars. This was not the intention, but it does beg the question about how we are to square the circle of these two demands of expectation of those inside and the needs of those outside.

Lent

I wanted to give up something big
to show how much I love you
cigarettes, I thought - there’s a thing
but I’ve never really smoked

So chocolate and crisps make up the denial
hardly a burden, I know 
in a world that starves
I’ll struggle none the less

I’d like to find a way to cut through the clutter and noise
to hear you plain and clear once more
but clutter and noise seem to be all that goes on
would there be much left of me?

May my Lenten fast be my pride
the things I tell others about me first
Strip the layers I add to myself
disguising the Child of God

Let my discipline be humility
not me, but you
living as prayer
with your compassion

I wiped away the ashen cross
the blackened smudge on my forehead
but keep the imprint within, I ask,
a footprint to show you have passed this way

create in me a clean heart, O God
renew a right spirit within me