Context please! 1 Cor 15:33 is not about evangelism.

I was listening to a Christian Radio Station in the car as I do from time to time. I don't listen to any radio station a lot because they're all a bit repetitious and I get bored with the same play lists, ads, and in Christian broadcasting-appeals for support!

Anyway, I tuned in on a few days last week and one item frustrated me immensely. Not entirely the fault of the presenter I hasten to add, although he was guilty of nudging the responses in a particular direction and during the time I was listening no-one picked that up.

So here's the thing in question. He quoted 1Cor.15:33 "Do not be misled: 'Bad company corrupts good character'". To a man, and woman, all the responses I heard assumed that the 'bad company' in question referred to those who do not share a Christian faith. But is that Paul's point?

Read the verse in its context and it would appear that Paul is a long way from talking about evangelism here. The argument is about the resurrection and those who deny it. As with much of the letter, Paul is writing to address issues within the church. Paul's 'bad company' would seem to be in the Christian community not outside of it.

All those who sent a text to point out the importance of sharing our faith are right, but that's not what they should have been reflecting upon. The real question we might want to address is: "Are we good or bad company in the church?"

That's the importance of context.

Defining God's Mission

It's somewhat presumptuous of me, or anyone to think that we can actually define what it is that God wants to do in the world. We can however look at what he has done and what he says about what he does, and try to interpret that in a way that helps us participate.

For a long time now, my guiding principle for understanding my relationship to the mission of God has been in the form of this simple question: Lord, what are you doing, and how can I help? It comes from reading John 5 and the statement of Jesus that he does "only what he sees the Father doing". I've been around church long enough to have sent enough time conceiving grand plans on the assumption that God would naturally bless whatever it was we were planning to do. Rarely, if ever, did we stop and ask ourselves what he was already doing in our communities and neighbourhoods.

With the advent of missional church language and through a process of reflecting on why evangelism was so hard and how we could make it a more natural expression of our discipleship, I began to discover a working vocabulary that has helped me redefine the mission and my relationship to it. It is not complete yet, ad I guess probably never will be. I also must report that as yet we haven't seen anything spectacular, we haven't planted a thriving new church with a whole new outlook on community engagement. We're still on the journey and I'm none the wiser about what God is doing in my neighbourhood.

But, over the years, I've come to a few realisations and conclusions that have helped me see God's mission differently to way I saw it back in the 70's and 80's. Those realisations include the following:

• First, generally speaking, church works for people who like church and it doesn’t work for everyone else! 

• Second, people who don’t yet know Jesus aren’t really unhappy, unfulfilled and having a bad time. They actually seem to enjoy their lives far more than the average Christian enjoys theirs. 

• Thirdly, the simple fact that God is on a mission and has a church through whom he wants to work, and with whom he wants to work in partnership.

The church's mandate is to partner with God in his mission rather than seek to plan and do the work for him. Mission is much more than just evangelism. John Stott once defined mission as everything the church does. I didn't fully comprehend the implications of that statement at the time and even questioned whether it was true, but that was mainly from the perspective of looking at what the church was doing and wondering if it was actually part of God's mission. Looking back, I think I understand more fully how this fits in the context of we might now call the missional church.

The other thing that shifted my perspective was the concept of servant evangelism and the idea of ordinary evangelism. The latter is best summed up in the words of Jim Henderson, which I'll paraphrase from memory:

If ordinary people can't do it (i.e. evangelism/mission) in ordinary ways, ordinarily it won't get done.

I do believe that taken together, these concepts have helped me understand more deeply where I fit in big picture of what God is doing. It needs seasoning with some intentionality and a few other things,  but overall being ordinary, doing ordinary things, but understanding them to be part of trying to see what God is up to and partnering with him is the natural environment for my part in his mission.

As to defining that mission, well I got asked to preach this last Sunday and I chose to share our story in the context of talking about some of these things. I defined God's mission this way:

To let everyone know that God is for them and not against them. That he loves them with a passion and we can make this known through the things we say and do and the quality of the relationships we share.

That mission is redemptive (restoring the broken relationship between humanity and God through the cross of Christ) and it’s active (God came looking, Jesus said, “Go!” He sent the church to the world, not the world to church.)

This is the kind of church I believe Jesus wants to build. A church made up of people who will partner with him on his mission to bless the world and share the message of his redemptive love and sacrifice. Being missional is about making disciples who make disciples so that the world can be saturated with people who love Jesus. It's not about doing more mission. It’s not just about becoming socially active or engaged.

We do what we do because we are the people of God partnering with God in his mission to the world. That mission is primarily a mission of incarnation, where God comes to dwell amongst the people he loves and seeks to redeem them into relationship with him.

Turning corners, changing cars and cleaning house

I just noticed that it's been a month since I last posted anything on this blog. There was a time when I posted something every day. Thankfully that was only an experiment and I've slowed down since then! I have written a few posts, well started them, but not finished any of them. There was one about the need to pray for Syria, a still current concern, and I thought about writing something about stretching quad muscles, but that was for my other blog.

Then there have a been a few reflective thoughts on 1Thessalonians around the connection between Paul's opening prayer and words to the church and missional thinking. I'm constantly trying to figure out what exactly it mans to live missionally. It's such a slippery turn of phrase, easier to recognise what it isn't rather than what it is. Perhaps I'll get around to making sense of those thoughts.

As we continue to think about what it means to live in a community, serving among the members of that community, working with them and living out our faith as we do so. One of the things that we had to decide concerned our relationship with the denomination we've served for over twenty years. In order to remain an accredited minister of the denomination I needed to be in membership of a church in the denomination. The thing is the nearest church to us that fits that bill is the one we left!

So, in the end, we decided that it was time to call it a day. We didn't feel we could join a church just to retain accreditation and then not attend, that runs counter to my view of membership of a local church. Had we not taken the decision to resign then others would have made the decision for us, so it was better we decided. To be honest, the debate about accreditation just seemed to get in the way of meaningful conversations with other baptist ministers about partnership and relationship.

So here we are. We're not alone. We have a faith community that shares some of the same vision and vocabulary about the missional journey as we do. To all those who keep asking how I'm doing now I've "left the ministry", my answer remains that I have not left the ministry, I'm just doing it differently.

So, we've turned a new corner in our journey and in some ways we've cleaned house by tidying up some of the loose ends concerning our relationship with the denomination. A sad day, but a liberating one too. As to cars, well, if the dealer can get their act together, that too will change in the next few days!

Can we change?

I've noticed a little trend in my social media feeds recently. It goes along the line of new problems needing new solutions, not being able to solve new issues with old thinking, that kind of thing. Einstein gets quoted (the one about expecting different results, even though we do things the same way), and I've even quoted Craig Groeschel a couple of times on this very blog in the past (if we're going to reach the people other people aren't reaching, we're going to have do what other people aren't doing). They are great quotes, challenging and thought provoking. But are they changing anything?

In order to think in new ways you have to innovate, and innovating can be a very lonely endeavour. To be a pioneer means to be leading the way to a place we have not been to before. We may have a sense of what it might look like, but we have yet to experience the breath-taking wonder and beauty of the new.

When we sense the call to pioneer, to move out of the comfort of what we know and towards something yet to be realised, we face the double challenge of the journey into the unknown and how to take people with us. We can go alone, but alone isn't usually a great plan. Casting a vision for the new can be the most frustrating thing you ever do. I know from personal experience that it's very tough to get some people to see what you see, to understand what you say and to want to change and embrace a new adventure.

The problem seems to be that what you are offering them in this new vision is a swap. You're asking them to swap the thing they know for the thing they don't know. Their something for your nothing. So what do you do?

In the midst of all these hints and calls for new ways of thinking and new solutions I think it's worth spending some time reflecting on something I've heard Bill Hybels talk about a couple of times in the last year or so. Bill is a great vision caster, he's had a few years experience doing it! He knows a thing or two about the way vision leaks as people grapple with what they've just heard and how important it is to reinforce the vision and revisit it regularly in order to keep in the front of minds that get preoccupied with other stuff. But he's recently tried a new approach when casting a vision.

Rather than just describe what things could be like, he urges us to describe how things are right now and how unimaginable it is to stay where we are. In other words we have to be able to see the future in the context of the present and the present in the context of the future. We have to agree together that we simply can't go on as we are and that we have to journey somewhere new.

Perhaps, in church life, we have not yet reached that place where staying as we are is not unthinkable for most churched people. Perhaps until we do, little will change.

I'm not sold on the idea of importing business ideas and practices into the church, but I am struck sometimes by the difference in approach to innovation in church and in business. Would anyone have said to Steve Jobs when he announced the first iPod to the world that he needed to make sure he didn't upset or alienate users of portable CD players?

If the gospel is the power of God to change lives, if the church is God's chosen vehicle for the proclamation of that message, why are we so afraid of breaking it? Why are so we so afraid to try something new?

The church must change, we must innovate, we must pioneer, but do we have the courage to see it and to acknowledge that where are in not where we should stay.

The priority of discipleship

Interesting clip from Verge Network of Alan Hirsch talking about the centrality of discipleship in transformative movements.




I guess one of the questions is that if we don't invest in both discipleship and disciplemaking, then what is the future of any new movement? And trying to build church without discipleship is a pretty pointless exercise. Mike Breen, I seem to recall, said that if you make disciples then you will get church, but if you make church, you won't necessarily get disciples, or something along those lines.

Here's a big question then: What's the point of being missional over legacy church if discipleship is the key? The point is that it's one of the keys, and not the only key. It's just really important. Missional is a way of life not just a model of church, and we ought not to forget that.

Reflecting on preaching

Preaching on Sunday reminded me of a few things that I'd probably allowed to drift out of my line of sight in recent months. When I preach these days, and it's not very often at all, this was only the second time this year, I tend simply to share my heart rather than do a good old fashioned expository sermon. That's not because I don't think such an approach has no value, but at the moment because I guess it's just about trying to share what has been the concern of my heart for the last few years. Plus the fact that I wasn't given a topic or theme or text, so it seemed an appropriate approach. Little did I know that it would be so pertinent to where the church finds itself at this moment in time. Reminder number one: God knows what he is doing!

The second reminder was more personal. It was the reminder that this is what I do, this is part of the shape God has given to my life and that ought not to be ignored or rejected just because I'm no longer leading a church. I don't have to preach, but I ought not to avoid it just because it's no longer a regular part of my life. That means taking the responsibility seriously when I get asked. If I get asked!

The third reminder was about the things for which I have a passion. I may have no idea how to start whatever it is we're starting or supposed to start in South Ockendon, but I do have something in my head and heart that is not just a frustrated outworking of my concerns about the legacy model of church.

The truth is that our society is accelerating away from us and we are failing to keep pace with it. We are more out of touch than we were a year ago and getting further out of touch as I write.

There many other reminders yesterday. Things like preaching is not always, if ever, about how good you are, but about how God uses you; that the bigger the church, the harder change will probably be simply because getting everyone to reimagine things isn't easy; it's okay to do what we do "in" church, but if that doesn't translate into something we do beyond the building amongst the people of our communities, then what value does it have?

And to the people who took the time to speak to me afterwards and encourage me, a big thank you. I know that the folk that didn't like what I said, or didn't approve of the way I said it, won't usually come to speak to me afterwards, so I know that the positive response was not the whole church's response, but that's okay.

Off to preach at the weekend

In this odd world of ministry without church that I now inhabit, I don't preach or speak publicly much anymore. Sometimes I miss it, most times I don't. I don't miss staying up late on Saturdays trying to figure out if I've got it straight, and I don't miss getting up a few hours later on a Sunday morning to completely rewrite everything because it just doesn't sit right in my head. I never envied those folk who had Wednesday as sermon preparation day and seemed to be able to sit down at the desk and turn out the finished article by the end of a single day's work. For me, sermon preparation was a week long process of walking with the text, exploring it from a range of angles, reflecting on its context and generally letting is all coalesce in my head. Mind maps and sketchy notes were my route to a Sunday presentation.

So it's rather odd to be in a place where I don't have to do that on a regulars basis.

But this weekend I am preaching. Now I know that I've been asked because all the main stays of the church are at the BU Assembly. I also know that it's almost a racing certainty that it will be a one off invitation. So I could go in with the attitude of nothing to lose, but that would seem to be a somewhat arrogant approach. The truth is that I still believe that the local church is the hope of the world as Bill Hybels would say. And yes, I know it's the message that carries the hope, but the church remains God's chosen vehicle.

Having said that, it would be unwise to assume that the church as it presents itself in our times is somehow sacred to the purposes of God. We ought to remember the salutary lesson of those who believed Jerusalem could not possibly fall because it was God's chosen city.

So I will preach, and I won't go out of my way to upset or alienate anyone, but I won't hold back either in presenting a challenge to change. We shall see how it goes!

The Church, mental illness and suicide

With the recent news of the sad death of Matthew Warren, there are probably questions surfacing for many people in our Christian communities. Ed Stetzer has written a helpful blog post about the church and mental illness and a longer article here.

Four interesting principles for missional communities

From the blog of David Fitch comes an interesting piece about one particular missional community and the principles behind it. Here are the principles, (edited slightly):

• He got a job. Wayne Gordon came to Lawndale humbly, expecting nothing and got a job in the community. He said, “because I didn’t need money it gave us freedom to do things. We didn’t have to focus on getting people into church seats and tithing.” He was able to be “with” people on their terms not on terms dictated by needing to get a church going that was self-sustaining.

• He inhabited humbly incarnationally. He came to be “with” the community resisting any colonialist impulses. He came to listen to the community, hear the issues, and ask God how he could cooperate with His salvation in this neighbourhood.

• He gave it time: He said “the number one reason things don’t happen is we don’t give it enough time.” He said “if you would have come here when we were fifteen years into it, you would have said nothing is happening here.

• Money comes from God: Wayne talked about money as being a provision from God. For Wayne Gordon, faith does not mean we take crazy risks. Faith means we trust God that if we’re meant to do this we will wait long enough and God will provide the money. He said average time a project takes to go from initiation stage to completion is seven years. It takes perseverance.

When people ask us what we are doing or what we've done about planting a church in our community, we have very little to show them or to say at the moment. It can sound like we've done nothing. What we would say is that we believe that God wants us here, we believe that he is at work in our community, the thing is we just haven't worked out what he's doing at the moment. We've consistently said this is a long-term project, and we're not expecting an overnight success (no matter how nice it would be to be able to point to a flourishing community!) Time is really important in this process.

The other point that struck a chord with me comes in the first principle above. Succinctly it describes two of the big issues with legacy models of church planting. One is getting people into a building and the second is on who's terms do we do mission. So much of our historic mission has been done on the basis of inviting people into our controlled environment where we set the agenda. As the communities we try to reach continue to move further away from our the locus of our building-based activities we are faced with the stark choice of staying in our buildings and becoming increasingly irrelevant, or leaving the building and connecting with our communities.

You can read the whole post here.

"What's that all about?"

I've been asked variations of this questions quite a lot recently, and in some interesting circumstances. As many of you know, I spend some of my time supporting families through times of loss as what you would probably call an independent funeral celebrant. I always take the time to introduce myself and explain briefly my background and current situation. I'm not trying to impress people, I just want them to understand as well as they can what I do and that I'm not currently "in charge of a church".

After the funeral, if I find myself with the family, there's usually someone who comes to speak to me about this rather strange notion of starting church from scratch. For some it's strange because church is an ancient building with long traditions and unfathomable rituals. For others, church planting is exciting but typically a matter of gathering a reasonably sized group in a borrowed building on a Sunday morning to "do" church where there either isn't a church at all or there isn't a particular brand of church.

Each time I have one of these conversations, and it doesn't just happen after funerals, but in lots of settings, I find myself struggling to describe anything recognisable to either group. not wanting to stick 30 people in a local hall seems odd to the churched, and smacks a little of being somewhat weird. To the unchurched it's hard to articulate the concept of trying to discover what the incarnated gospel looks like in a community without the trappings of "normal" church life. Remember that for some folk Songs of Praise is the only expression of church they come across.

But maybe I'm not the only person who should be answering such a question. Maybe everyone who is involved in kingdom stuff should be answering the very same question. Each time I'm faced with questions about what I'm doing, two things generally happen. I get excited about describing the vision while struggling to find an adequate vocabulary to make it accessible, and secondly I remember Craig Groeschel's Leadership Summit session from several years ago. The phrase that reverberates around my head is this:

If we are going to reach the people other people are not reaching, we are going to do things that other people are not doing.

It might no longer be a verbatim quote, but the message clear. Of course the flip side of this equation is that if we keep doing what we've always done, we will get the same results we've always got. A different result requires a different approach.

Sadly in church, as in so many institutions, we are stubborn enough enough to simply carry on doing what we've always done in the hope that the response will change. We presume our way of "doing church" is somehow ordained and therefore the problem doesn't lie with the pattern, it lies with the world outside that fails to engage. Yes, people love darkness because it covers up their fallenness, but that's not the reason we fail to reach them.

I have no idea whether what we are doing will be any more successful than anything else I've done over the last 30+ years of following Jesus. I just know it has to be different. Not for the sake of being different, but for the sake of the kingdom and the sake of the missing.

Really? Still talking about a building?

An almost conversation I nearly had the other day, but narrowly avoided, would have focussed on "church" and how we use that word still. To be honest I just wasn't inclined to get into a discussion that would go something along the lines of:

Them: "We're hoping to have a church soon"

Me: "By that  you mean a building from which to operate rather than a gathered community by the sounds of it."

Them: "Well yes. Oh I know that the church is not the building and all that, but we know what we mean. We need a place to gather."

Me: "Ah, so your group has outgrown your lounge then. Why not start a new group?"

At this point the conversation would follow a pattern where I'd suggest that there are plenty of "churches" already built we just normally call them houses or homes. I'd get called picky or pedantic and then there might be some debate about how would people know where to find "the church" if it doesn't have an identifiable base or building, and so it would go on.

Maybe I am pedantic, maybe I am picky, but it's because I really am becoming more and more convinced that every time we bottle the church and stuff it in a building, we are in danger of institutional crepitus and long term irrelevance. Harsh? Maybe. The problem is that a building demands a purpose and that purpose is usually self serving. It might begin with good intentions, but it can so easily slide into becoming the focus of all our energy and time. We begin running programmes form the building and before you know we are lamenting the fact that people don't come to our building. Except we call it our church, and therefore people aren't coming to our church and the church has suddenly become the building and not the people.

I am no longer committed to serving that pattern of church life. I don't think I've ever been committed to it. In fact, I think a few people believe I ought to be committed because of it! Here's the thing. We do not need buildings to make disciples, and surely making disciples is what we have been commissioned to do. Helping others to become followers of Jesus should be in our DNA.

The longer we stayed attached to the building as the defining characteristic, the further we will find ourselves removed from the people Jesus misses most. exactly how you go about leaving the building and entering the community I don't know. All I can say is that if you ever hear me lamenting not having a building were we can focus our efforts and our worship, just take me to one side and remind of these things. I'll take a building one day if we use in, for and with the community. If all we do is keep it to ourselves and isolate ourselves, then I'm not interested.

Knowing you're on mission

There's always going to be an ongoing conversation about the mission/missional strategy of the local church. In some ways, if we're not having that conversation, then we're not engaging in critical thinking about what it means to be the people of God engaged with God in the fulfilment of his mission. And yet, at the same time, too much talk can mean too little action.

So how do we know when we are on or in mission? What might some of the signs be? Well, Jeff Vanderstelt gives an interesting definition in this short video clip of a longer talk. His basic point can probably be summed up in terms of living life among and with the people we are trying to reach.

I still maintain that too much of our mission activity is predicated upon the idea that people need to come to where we are in order to come to faith. In simple terms, they need to discover the church before they discover Jesus because the church is the only valid route to do this. Now we might not articulate in that way, but I think if we stop and think about, that is precisely what we've tended towards for many years. We hold evangelistic events and invite people we hardly know.

Now I guess that if the church really was the people living out the gospel and not the programmes and buildings and events, then it might just work more effectively than it has done. It certainly has worked in some circumstances, but I fear that there are many for whom it hasn't worked or for whom it may never work that way. Our imagination has to shift away from populating our programmes and towards something altogether more kingdom focussed.

I wish I could see the end from the beginning, but I can't. All I know is that it is time for the church to leave the building and find ways of taking the gospel into the heart of the communities where missing people dwell, and to invest the time and energy to dwell there with them as gospel people. In the world but not of the world as Jesus once said.

Church Planting

While I still remain uncomfortable about using the term church planting to describe what we may be doing in the future, these Ten Things You Should Know seemed very appropriate:


1. You're a limited leader. (Exodus 18:18)
2. Process your hurt. (1 Peter 5:7)
3. You are not planting the church. Your family is planting the church. (Ephesians 6)
4. You'll experience internal and external prejudice. (Galatians 2:11-21)
5. Go after men. (1 Timothy 6:11-16)
6. Get a spiritual father. (1 Timothy 1:2, Philippians 2:22)
7. Date your wife. (Ephesians 5)
8. Establish unity with your core team. (Philippians 1:27-28)
9. People will leave. (John 6:58-66)
10. Fundraise for longevity. (Philippians 4:15-20)

Not too sure about number 10, but then again we haven't considered funding as an issue. I suppose too, that we would need to reflect on these ten items in the context of organic/missional/simple models. I'd say that for the most part they are thoroughly transferable, but maybe there are other things to consider with the model we are exploring.

Why I hesitate to talk about Church Planting

I read a quote this morning that popped up in my RSS feed:

his [Jesus] disciples were to establish beachheads of his Person, word, and power in the midst of a failing and futile humanity. They were to bring the presence of the kingdom and its King into every corner of human life by fully living in the kingdom with him.

This comes from Dallas Willard and it is part of a longer quote. (You can read the whole quote here.) In the original blog post the question asked is a simple one: Is this just about semantics? To which my response is mostly no it's not, it's deeper than that. As you know, I'm concerned about the way we do church, the way we've turned church into an institution based largely around gathering a suitably sized group of likeminded individuals together on a week-by-week basis to sing songs and learn three things they already know about a text with which they are often over familiar but with which they are under engaged.

Okay, that's overstating it a bit, but you get my point. Church has become a refuge for the insider more than for the outsider. You have to know the language, know the songs, know the form and fit in on order to access what we do. At some point every institution or even group or tribe has it's now language and practices. In order to be part of that group you have to learn these things. So it's not just about clearing away those elements, as if building something without those limits will magically work a different outcome.

So why the problem with church planting? Well I guess it's because when you say you're setting off into the unknown then you need a label so people can identify with what you're doing and church planting seems to be the label that most closely fits what we are about to do. But on the other hand it doesn't fit at all because everyone seems to know what church planting is, and it doesn't look like the thing that I see happening! Yes, Im;' awkward and different and all those things, but the point is that I'm not that interested in filling the local village hall with a group of already believers who have become disenchanted with their current experience of local church life.

Perhaps I can't avoid the label, perhaps it's not important to avoid the label, perhaps it doesn't matter what it's called as long as God is honoured. I'm sure though that when some Christians get to hear about it they will make their own assumptions about what we should be doing. I just hope we are open enough to listen and strong enough to resist and wise enough to do both at the right time!

Back to School

I took the opportunity yesterday to begin the process of familiarising myself with the contents of the first paper for my massage course. It's all about anatomy and physiology. And it's scary! It's bound to be when you haven't studied either topic before in any detail. But I've been down unfamiliar roads before, so it's books out, head down and get started. At least I don't have to fill my head with information for a written exam at this stage.

First task was read chapter 3 of the A&P set text. Off to a quiet place I went, book in hand. A quick read through I thought and the once more making notes. It turned out to be somewhat more demanding. New words and technical terms filled every sentence. I probably got half way and my brain began to seize up.

So it's going to be slower than I thought and possibly in need of more repetition. But that's the nature of doing something new. If our only adventure was to do what we have always done before, read only about the familiar, the usual, then how would we conquer new challenges?

Church planting is not something Anne or I saw ourselves doing. We've been involved once before, but not leaders. But here we go. The house should be ours in a few weeks. The builder is working out a quote for the work. We're planning the move. Ready or not, here we come!

It's going to take time!

Finally I got to church yesterday. What with Christmas, family visits and weekend introductory courses, I haven't actually been to church for a month. Well not on a Sunday anyway, and not to a building that we mistakenly call the church and... Actually I have "been church" over the last month, just not in a standardised and sanitised appointed 1.5 hour worship experience.

Anyway, we toddled off somewhere yesterday and had a good time. Perhaps "good time" is not an appropriate description of what we did, but it will have to suffice. It certainly wasn't traditional, and it wasn't slick, but it was open and relaxed and engaging and okay. Is that the right way to describe a worship event-Okay? Who knows! It was interesting to be part of the congregation, mostly unknown in terms of my background. Only one or two possibly knew I'm a minister and I didn't tell anyone! Not that it's a secret, it just takes a bit of explaining! Rather like explaining that just because I used to work for British Gas didn't qualify me to fit a central heating system or that having studied chemistry that I would be able to fill my grandmother's prescriptions for her because the shop is called "Boots the Chemist" rather than "boots the Pharmacist"!

So what's going to take take time? Well, mostly it's about finding a place within a Christian community. One of the reasons for not disclosing readily my background as a minister is in order to not get pigeonholed into a role of any kind. If I'm a leader, then I want that to emerge through service rather than imposed by virtue of training. Eventually, if we settle in the community we visited, then it will become apparent, more widely known as we become more widely known within the community. The risk I run is being seen as the quiet one who doesn't say much. But then again, keeping quiet isn't a bad habit for someone who's been preaching for twenty years.

I don't know if it's going to be more difficult after two decades of ministry or if we will simply ease ourselves into ordinary church life. I don't know how it will be sitting in the congregation listening to otters do what I used to do. I don't know how I will respond if and when an opportunity to speak is offered. All these things lie ahead of us. I just hope that we don't lose sight of the simple church idea that is forming in our hearts and minds.

Psalm 137

I read Psalm 137 and wondered what it has to say about our current, and future situation. Of course, just because you read the Bible it doesn't mean that you have to find some sort of point of equivalence in every word. That was one of the faults of some of the early interpreters who found meaning in almost every detail of the parables. But it's always important to ask questions of the text you are reading, even if in the end you conclude that it is silent on the prevailing issue.

So, as for Psalm 137, I'm not going to equate our new home with Babylon, although I did remember God's word to the exiles in Jeremiah to settle down, build houses and pray for the prosperity of the city. Equally I'm not going to treat either Upminster or even Bedford as our Jerusalem. But there was one lesson to learn.

Don't forget the heart, the focus of your worship.

With the potential to be out of connection with a church, it would be easy to drift into a worship-less pattern, to become the Christian equivalent of the solider stranded on the desert island who doesn't know the war is over. We want to continue to grow and worship and develop as followers of Jesus and we need to guard ourselves against losing our way in this.

So there was a lesson to learn from Psalm 137, it just needed the right question and the right eyes to see it.

That was the weekend that was!

Well we had a very good weekend. I guess we would have to say that we missed not having to plan the All-Age and Carol Services for Christmas and we missed being part of those events, but we also rather enjoyed not having to do all that too.

Instead we travelled to Bedford to share in a wedding and we got to have brunch with some old friends and visit others. The wedding was the third of three sisters, and it was great to be part of that event. Brunch on Sunday was an exciting affair too!

During our eight years in Bedford we talked a lot about what it meant to be a church in the community, about how we could serve the community, about what it meant simply to be church. We were not afraid to ask the questions and think differently about the answers. Yesterday's brunch was some of the fruit of that thinking. About 30-40 people gathered in the loach village hall and talked and ate together. A whole cross-section of people. I met someone who had come for the very first time and I sat and simply asked him questions about is life and listened to his story. There were no songs, no prayers, no preaching.

Having the time to talk, which hopefully leads to building relationships, that in turn create opportunities to share faith, was at the heart of the purpose of the event. there was a bouncy castle for the children and some craft activities for them too. The adults sat and talked.

Okay, so it's easy for the Christians to drift into comfortable small groups around tables, but generally, with a bit of effort, that didn't happen. You have to be intentional about talking with others, but everyone can do it because everyone can listen to someone's story. All you have to do is ask questions and listen carefully enough so you can ask more questions.

So we had a good time. I got to share our vision for the future with some old friends over the course of the weekend and we got to spend time with our daughter. All in all it was good way to spend our first weekend away from full-time leadership.

What might it look like?

We were joking the other day with some friends about what we might be doing next now that formal ministry seems to be over for us. Amidst the swinging from crazy ideas and incredible vision to sheer panic and scary dreams about the future, we find ourselves reflecting on all sorts of things. The truth is that rather like one of the legendary large artworks of the inimitable Rolf Harris, it's difficult to, "see what is it yet."

In my dreams, it looks very different to the usual experience we have of church. It's rooted in relationships, built around common values and shared experiences. I know this is what all church experience ought to be, but it isn't. That's the truth. When faith becomes institutionalised it requires an organisational system to maintain itself. That system generates demands and expectations that are sometimes in danger of becoming the defining criteria above the core message. It's the nature of an imperfect expression of being the body of Christ with which we all have to do battle whether in or out of the local, traditional expression of church. Whatever we do in the coming years will not be perfect, it might not even be better.

Having a blank sheet of paper does give us the opportunity to begin from scratch and ask ourselves what are the key things, the non-negotiables that we would want to put in place. I don't have a definitive list, but one of the things I know will be important is a resolute determination not to criticise and moan about the established church. It doesn't help anyone. I also know that whatever happens, it will probably not happen spontaneously but will require a degree of intentionality about it. With that in mind, I think we will need to be able to describe the boundaries and the ethos of the thing really early. Like now would be a good time!

So here are a few thoughts about some key ideas:

Firstly, whatever group assembles, we will need a clear, shared vision that we all buy into. If some of us ultimately see the end game in terms of a gathered group of people in one place of Sunday mornings singing songs and listening to sermons, and others don't, then we would need to get that sorted pretty quickly.

Secondly, we would need to be fully committed to spending regular, quality time around a shared meal. Call it what you like, but relationships are built over time and not through worship services alone.

Thirdly, we would need to agree to live as an extended family. Put simply, we care for each other without abdicating that responsibility to one person alone.

Fourth, it's shared leadership. More like parenting maybe that CEO-leadership, but based on a plurality of leadership gifts distributed among a group of leaders.

Fifthly, and remember these are not in any specific order, a deep commitment to pray and to incarnational mission.

There's a lot missing I know, but it gives you a flavour of the things that are going through my mind at the moment. To those who have listened to me over the years, some of it will be instantly recognised from previous conversations.

More to come, I'm sure.

Ministry and mission preparation

Here's an article that's worth a read if you are thinking/wondering about the role of the minister in a post-Christendom world.

One key quote to think about:

One of the most disastrous effects of Christendom upon our systems of theological education has been the unhelpful assumption that the Church does and should exist at the center of our society. Under this vision, seminaries have equipped leaders who would excel at managing and maintaining this system. However, as the missio Dei and its implications for the Gospel and the Church come back into focus in Post-Christendom, we submit that our systems of theological education must be re-imagined for the purposes of training missionary leaders. These will be leaders whose concerns and skill-sets revolve not around managing churches as part of an ostensibly "Christian" culture, or in the interest of "church growth," but around mobilizing the people of God for participation in God's mission in the world.

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