Two days to go

It's Friday and I have only today and tomorrow left before my sabbatical starts. And I think I'm more relaxed now about the whole thing than I certainly was a few weeks ago. 

The weather doesn't look too promising for doing my woodwork projects. Maybe the first thing I need to do is build a workshop! A friend has offered his garage, so I'll have to see how things shape up. Still, there's plenty of other things I can do in inclement weather. There's a fair amount of decorating that I can get on with, which would please Anne. 

Tomorrow is my last official working day, and it's nice to have a wedding as my last official bit of ministry before the rest. On Monday I intend to spend the day making sure my study is tidy and I've dealt with all the paperwork that's accumulated recently. 

The question is will I be bored by Wednesday or will have paint in my hair and newly decorated bathroom!

Inside out and upside down Christianity

It was time to tidy up in church ready for a funeral yesterday and a wedding on Saturday. It was a good opportunity to bring my model of the Tabernacle home before recycling it. 

When I first presented it at church as part of our series Wilderness Ways, I talked about how it represented God's desire to draw close rather than exclude the people from his presence. This, for me, is a key perspective on the heart of God. There are times when I get the feeling that we've spent much of church history creating an orthodoxy that majors on our unworthiness, our sin, our exclusion from God's presence rather than God's desire to draw close to us. Such a perspective makes grace hard to grasp.

I think also that it means we emphasise judgement and all that's wrong in our world instead of focussing on grace. When failure comes, we ask first what discipline we should apply. We become desperate to preserve the purity of the church. 

But the church is not pure. 

I guess the fear is that if we turn things upside down, we run the risk of thinking we're okay. We're afraid that we'll stop preaching about the need to repent. We're afraid that we will make it too easy to be a follower of Jesus. But how difficult did Jesus make it?

Unrecognisable faith

Having read Joel Edwards response to a recent Dispatches  documentary about "Fundamentalist Christianity" in the UK–In God's name–and having missed its transmission, I thought I'd have a look for myself using Channel 4's "watch again" feature on their website. 

In order to watch the internet replay I had to fire up my Windows PC, download Windows Media player 11, update it and then only in Internet Explorer could I watch the programme. I wish I hadn't been so persistent. 

After less than two minutes I had to stop watching. It wasn't the portrayal of faith that bothered me, it was the faith that was being portrayed that bothered me. In the opening few minutes I saw a version of Christianity that worried and, if I'm honest, offended me. Is this kind of militancy a true reflection of Biblical faith? No wonder the scientific community think we hate them, no wonder the gay community think we hate them. In those two minutes I heard no mention of grace no sense of sharing the pain of a broken world, no attempt to engage in dialogue. All I heard was judgement and condemnation.

This is not the faith I share. This is not the faith I want to share.

It's sad to think that some evangelicals are rejecting the label "evangelical" in favour of "red letter Christian". If the kind of militant, venomous expression of evangelical faith I saw in those two minutes of TV is going to become the only expression of evangelicalism that society sees, then I guess I too will need to find another label to describe myself.

Whilst I recognise that Channel 4's documentary, as do many documentaries, focused on the sensational, I do get the uneasy sense that it points to an underlying mood swing in some sections of the church which not only offends ordinary people in the streets, but actually contributes to alienating them from the God who loves them.

If Jesus came to save the world rather than condemn it, how come some of his followers only appear to use the vocabulary of condemnation?

Planning the sabbatical

Having been asked by a number of people, most recently Scott via a comment on a recent post, what I'm going to do with my sabbatical, it really does sound like a good idea to have a plan. If only to have something to say every time I get asked the question. 

The first thing I will do is rest. Rest and work out. I actually quite like going to the gym, and although I'm not exactly a picture of health, the gym is a place where I get away from stuff. And it's good to get away. So I'll spend more time at the gym and more time walking. 

If the weather improves I hope to walk at least 10 maybe 20 miles each week. I have a favourite restaurant down by the river about 6 miles from home. It's a nice walk there and back, and there are a couple of different routes I can take. I might have a go at a longer walk. The one I'd really like to do locally is the Ouse Valley. From start to finish it's about 150 miles I think, so I don't suppose that will get done from end to end, but I might have a go at a section or two.

For those of you who feel faint at the thought of walking to this degree, don't worry. My knees and feet tend to ache after 12 miles and I can't realistically do more than 10 miles a day if I want to walk every day. And believe me, once you get into a rhythm, 10 miles isn't that far. Trust me, I'm a walker!

Between walks I hope to build two pieces of simple furniture. The blanket box in the bedroom is falling apart and I think I'll make a new one. Woodwork was my escape at school from chemistry and maths and biology etc. It was something I loved to do and would, if  I had the space, have a workshop in which to potter about and make things. It's also a good discipline for slowing down. There's no substitute for precision and care if you want to make something decent.

The second bit of furniture is more adventurous. I want to build a wardrobe with a couple of drawers in it, for the guest room. I've actually had quite a lot of fun doing the drawings for these things. It must be around 35 years since I did a proper technical style of drawing for a piece of furniture.

Having rested, walked, worked out and become a master craftsman(!) I'll turn my attention to reflecting on ministry. I know it sounds a bit "spiritual" but I want to learn how to spend time with God again. Ministry is both consuming and demanding. It's so easy to lose sight of one's own relationship with God when you spend most of your time fixing other people's. Ministry dries you out, a sabbatical gives you the time to soak up God's grace and love again.

I've also been toying with the idea of writing something about ministry and organisation. As someone who is constantly battling the indiscipline of a disorganised life, I've been working hard to be better organised. The last year has seen some marked improvements and, while there is still so much to learn, it might be helpful to write down some of the lessons.

I have no doubt that some of these things won't get done. I'm not prepared to sacrifice having a rest simply to write a book. So priorities will need to be set. The last thing I want to do is to arrive at August 31st feeling like I've not done anything and wasted three whole months of opportunity.

Church Planting Conference

For those who might be interested...

The cost of this one-day conference is £20 and you can read more about the conference here. Bookings are here.

Countdown continues

Into the final week of ministry before my sabbatical starts. Yesterday was my last celebration service for 13 weeks. Last time I went on sabbatical I can't say it was difficult to go. Things had been hard and I don't remember preaching or leading worship at all in the run up to the break. This time is very different. I feel a different stress as I let go of everything.

The plan is still very fluid. I need to work out the autumn plan, which would be great to have done by the weekend. I have a couple of meetings and funeral and a wedding to do before Sunday (the first official day of the sabbatical). I think I might spend the first part of next week writing down everything that I might do and then begin to pick off the one's I feel drawn to think about. Whereas last time I was caught between wondering if I was going to consider staying in ministry or do something else, this time I know I'm coming back. 

I want, therefore, to take the time to reflect on how I do ministry, what it means to me, what my vision is, and most important of all, ask God if I'm actually doing the ministry he wants me to do. When my previous contract was drawing to a close I had various people telling me how I needed to "sell myself". It was almost as if I needed to convince the church that I was worth keeping. But I've never been big on doing that. I suspect in the secular world, or even in the world of Christian organisations, I probably don't interview well. 

Given that I've not been interviewed for a job for a very long time, things have probably changed. But I never could get the hang of telling people why I was just the right person for the job. I always felt that wasn't my decision to make. All I could do was tell the truth and be myself. 

When it comes to ministry, I'm much more interested in a sense of call than anything else. I know there needs to be a good fit. When I came to Cotton End I showed the church profile to a friend of mine. After he read it, he looked at me and asked, "Did you write that?" The fit, it seems, was rather good!

I suppose the question to ask is whether that fit remains good after seven years of ministry. I still feel there is so much that God is revealing to us that it's hard to put it all on hold for three months, but then again, God has his timescales. My hope is that after the sabbatical, we'll all be in better shape to push forward.

Perhaps, if you're the praying kind, you will pray for the church as they live without me and for me as I live without them.

Defining Pastoral Care

One of the interesting things from my day out on Thursday was the sense that we were not all working from the same definition of pastoral care. On the other hand it appeared to me that everyone else was assuming we all meant the same thing when we talked about pastoral care! Which of course begs the question: What do we mean by pastoral care?

My working definition is:

To offer spiritual, emotional and practical support, irrespective of the decision taken by those for whom we are caring.

One immediate issue that such a definition raises is that of church discipline. It was quite clear from the discussions and interactions that the withdrawal of care was, for some, part of the process of care. I'm not judging either way, it's a complex issue at the best of times, but I still like my definition because it expresses a sense of care even if we don't like what a person chooses to do. 

Anyway, perhaps part of the struggle to develop meaningful pastoral care systems in our churches is precisely because we haven't actually defined what it is we're trying to do through our care.

More thoughts to come.

A day out

Yesterday, May 22nd, I spent the day at Waverley Abbey House again, this time at a seminar on facing pastoral challenges. You may recall that I blogged quite a lot about Closing the Back Door back in March. This was another helpful day that will need some processing. As I do that I'll try and highlight some of the issues that come out of the day.

One interesting thing, that may or may not be a red herring with regard to pastoral care, was the male/female ratio on the course. Out of 36 attending the seminar, only 4 0r 5 were men (I didn't do an absolute head count). Does this mean that most of the pastoral care is actually done by women in the church? Is that a bad thing? Is it appropriate? Are male ministers more inclined to view pastoral care as an element of ministry but not the focus of ministry? 

Of course this is not a detailed survey. I don't know how many of the women present at the day were either the ministers/ senior leaders in their respective churches or part of the leadership team and called specifically because pastoral care is their primary gift. Let's try and avoid stereotyping people. It was just the apparent imbalance that caught my attention.

Maybe it's a positive thing that churches are developing pastoral care models and structures that no longer rely upon a single, ordained leader do everything. It would seem to me that a healthy church will have a diversity of ministry across the leadership rather than a single leader doing everything. It also naturally opens the door to leadership to people who don't have the traditional gifts associated with church leadership, but who nonetheless are called and equipped to lead the church. Perhaps even better equipped. 

Thinking about Alan Hirsch's Ephesians 4 paradigm, even if you still have a hierarchical approach to leadership, the senior leader could be any of the five types he mentions without isolating or minimising the others.

I just hope that the lack of men at yesterday's seminar doesn't mean that men have abdicated their responsibility to care.

More on Missional

An interesting article by Alan Hirsch caught my eye on the Christianity Today website this morning.

As I continue to think about missional church and what that actually means in terms of the changes we need to make to become more and more missional, I was drawn to this piece about leadership. The misisonal church, Hirsch argues needs a different pattern of leadership:

We need more than a pastor and/or teacher leading a congregation. A missional church requires pioneering, innovative, organizationally adaptive, and externally focused leadership, and this means a five-fold understanding of ministry leadership.

Hirsch argues that: Missional churches require all Five aspects of ministry Leadership on the team. His five aspects are taken from Ephesians four–Apostles, Prophets, Evangelists, Pastors and Teachers. I'm not sure what he makes of the exegetical arguments about the text–are they apostle-prophets, evangelists and pastor-teachers, or apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers? 

But his contention rings true that the model we have for church leadership today, primarily pastors and teachers, is at the heart of our problem. Our received model puts a high premium on looking after the sheep, and a lower premium on searching out the lost sheep. We are, to use and old phrase, more focused on maintenance than mission for the most part. Shifting away from this inward focus to a more outwardly focused pattern of church is taking time, but I do see evidence of it working its way through church life.

Hirsch goes on to talk about how the church in which he was involved restructured their leadership around a team representing these five aspects. I don't see anything particularly new about this, after all the concept of team leadership has been around for quite some time. I'd also suggest that we're not unfamiliar with the challenges Ephesians 4 presents to us. On the other hand, choosing this as the basis for organising the team, moving away from a single leader making all the decisions, may well be new for many a more traditional model of church.

The challenge comes in the smaller churches where leadership is thin and the minister has to fulfil more than one or two of these roles. He or she may even have to fulfil all five if the church is to grow. But then again, if we want to grow we will need to change.

Dysfunctional families

We're reading Jon Ortberg's Everbody's normal till you get to know them in our Book Club at the moment. It's a book I read some time ago and just dipping into it a second time reminds me how much I enjoy Ortberg's writing.

His description of the "as is" tag that we all carry and the dance of the porcupines brings home the reality that we are all far from perfect. Take the headline: Totally normal women who stalk their ex-boyfriends. As Ortberg points out, "if the obsessive stalking of an ex-lover is not just normal but totally normal, how far would you have to go to be a little strange?"

The Bible, rather than hide the fact that we are all flawed, tells it as it is about the people who come "as is". Here's how Jon Ortberg sets out the patriarchal family line and its flaws:

Cain is jealous of Abel and kills him. Lamech introduces polygamy to the world. Noah–the most righteous man of his generation–gets drunk and curses his own grandson. Lot, when his home is surrounded by residents of Sodom who want to violate his visitors, offers instead that they can have sex with his daughters. Later on, his daughters get him drunk and get impregnated by him–and Lot is the most righteous man in Sodom!

Abraham plays favourites between his sons Isaac and Ishmael, they're estranged.

Isaac plays favourites between his sons Jacob and Esau; they're enemies for twenty years. Jacob plays favourites between Joseph and his other eleven sons; the brothers want to kill Joseph and end up selling him into slavery.

Their marriages are disasters:

Abraham had sex with his wife's servant, then sends her and their son off into the wilderness at his wife's request. Isaac and Rebekah fight over which boy gets the blessing. Jacob marries two wives and ends up with both of their maids as his concubines as well when they get into a fertility contest.

Jacob's firstborn son, Reuben, sleeps with his father's concubine.

Another son, Judah, sleeps with his daughter-in-law when she disguises herself as a prostitute. She does this because she is childless since her first two husbands–both sons of Judah–were so wicked that God killed them both; and Judah reneged on his obligations to her.

These people need a therapist.

These are not the Waltons. They need Dr.  Phil, Dr Laura, Dr. Ruth, Dr. Spock, Dr Seuss–they need somebody.

It's a sobering thought to see this family history set out like this. But God continues to use flawed people. 

Of mice and men

We love our cats. Normally they are sociable and very little trouble except when hungry. One of them spends most of the day following the sun around the house, the other follows me around the house in the hope of biscuits.

But cats are hunters.

Now if they just went out, hunted and came home, it would be fine. It's not a pleasant sight watching a cat play with it's prey, but it's what they do. Sometimes of course they like to bring their trophies home for inspection. Again not pleasant, but bearable. It's when they bring the live stuff home for you to play with that we get a little upset. It's not too bad if you catch them near the door because you can keep them out of the house, but every so often we get a live mouse dropped on the hall floor.

"Look what I've brought you," declares our proud feline, "Ahhhhh," is the typical human response. This of course throws the aforesaid moggy. He can't understand why we don't want his prize catch hiding behind the crockery cabinet. He also can't understand why we aren't fast enough to catch the thing as it runs between our feet and into the safety of the darkest corner of the dining room.

We have a quite elaborate method for catching and releasing these small creatures, although I did squash one by accident one day. I had it cornered in a big box which I picked up to take outside. Unfortunately the delicate little animal got trapped just where I grabbed the box and it's short life was brought abruptly to and early end.

Tonight we had the full team out. 

Anne, Ally and I went into action with our biscuit tin, torches and wooden laminate floor sections. We build a simple rectangle to contain the mouse or shrew-the most common invaders-and try to negotiate a surrender by getting it to run into the tin which then gets flipped upright and the lid attached in a single swift motion. It's then across the road and a civilised release back into the wild. 

Unfortunately most of these small visitors appear not to speak a great deal of English and the gentle intonation of, "We're only trying to help, we're not going to hurt you," falls on unappreciative ears.

This evening's captive was a plucky little fellow, who evaded us several times, even scaling the wooden barricade at one point in a vain attempt to escape. But we are too seasoned at this procedure to be outwitted by a simple mouse (no disrespect to Reepicheep). After several attempts to corral the little chap and one worrying injury moment for Renee's distant cousin, we finally got him into the tin and out into the wild.

As I released him into the undergrowth on the far side of the road from the house, I had the distinct impression that he looked back at me with gratitude in his eyes. Either that or he was just checking so that he could tell the tale to his friends of the odd looking cat that walked upright and his strange journey in a dark box the likes of which he hopes he never sees again.

Willow's Reveal

I've just got around to listening to the Willow Creek Association's "Defining Moments" CD about Reveal. Very interesting.

As I said before, I don't think the survey necessarily tells us anything we don't know. But what it does do is put data on the skeleton of what we've suspected in church for years, namely that time served in church is no measure of spiritual maturity.

If you're at all interested, then visit the website and check out the key findings.

Using the "BCC" field for mass email

If you don't like being one among a long list of email addresses, then you might find this website useful. It sets out the simple principle behind using the "BCC" field rather than the "To" field if you're sending out a mass mail message.

The idea is that you simply direct your mass email friends to the site, politely pointing out that there's a better way to mass communicate something.

"Ungrace"

As I prepared the talk for church this morning, I dipped quickly into Philip Yancey's book What's so Amazing about Grace. It's a book I last read when I was on my previous sabbatical seven years ago, but I've never forgotten the sense of the book and the impact it made on me.

Today's topic was "Failure and Restoration" The outline notes I used to preach from are on the church blog.

The central story was the golden calf incident in Exodus 32. As I prepared I knew that what I wanted to talk about was grace. It's so easy to focus on the failure, but a few weeks ago something quite profound struck me. I was thinking about Aaron and his role as High Priest as we wandered around our full-size layout of the Tabernacle and its courtyard. What struck me was that it was Aaron who made the golden calf and yet, because God is a God of grace, it's Aaron who becomes the first High Priest. What amazing grace. The most significant role in the covenant life of the people goes to someone who got it so terribly wrong.

We are not often as gracious with others as God is with us. In his book Yancey talks about ungrace, the refusal to forgive. He describes a family generation after generation deeply wounded by ungrace.  This how I described ungrace this morning:

Ungrace turns forgiveness into something that works for the one who needs to forgive rather than for the one who needs forgiveness. We trade it like a commodity. You give me humility, you take all the blame, you own up to what you’ve done to hurt me, and I might, if I think you’re sincere, if I think you really mean it, I might just forgive you, but there will be conditions. 

I will store up this memory and use it at my convenience to remind you of your failure.

When I make a mistake, I will use your failure to demand forgiveness for mine. I will remind you that your sin was worse than mine ever could be and that mine would not have happened if you hadn’t failed in the first place. I will shift the blame.

We take the story of the prodigal son and focus on the remorse of the son who comes crawling home, forgetting so easily the joy of the father figure. We assume forgiveness is granted because the son prepares his speech. However, his forgiveness comes unconditionally as the father greets him and welcomes him. He does not wait for the son to ask, he simply forgives him.

Grace. like love, keeps no record of wrongs.

'tis the season for sabbaticals

Is it my imagination or is 2008 turning out to be the year of the sabbatical? Maybe it's just my circle of ministry friends, but it does feel like this year we're all on sabbatical at some time.

Tomorrow will be my penultimate Sunday before my sabbatical kicks in on June 1st. My last sabbatical was just before we came to Cotton End. I'd had 10 years in ministry at that time and I really needed the break that a sabbatical afforded. This time, while the rest will be welcome, I get the feeling that I ought to enjoy the opportunity to reflect rather than just let the time drift by.

My plans are suitably vague. If the weather is okay, I hope to make some furniture. I need the good weather because I will have to work outside. I hope to do some work on my role as chair of governors in a local school. It will be good to have the time to sit down and work out some boundaries of the role and some of the responsibilities etc. School governance is getting more complicated and demanding, and I wonder how much longer it will be possible for ordinary folk to fulfil such a role while they continue to do their day job. Perhaps there's a challenge there too for church leadership. What kind of demands does the 21st century church put on its leaders?

Maybe there's a little sabbatical project there too, who knows! 

Probably the thing I need to make sure I do is to take the time to reflect deeply on where I am in ministry (not geographically speaking) and where God wants me to go. The sheer pressure of the daily demands makes doing this kind of considered reflection really difficult, so  a sabbatical should afford the time to do this without either the pressures or the strains of day-to-day ministry.

It will be interesting to see what shape my blog takes during these next three months.

For such a time as this

There are days when I wonder why I do some of the things I do and then there are days when I realise that God has placed me in certain situations because I do what I do. As I've got older, I've become more comfortable accepting that God is at work in my life and through my life. Sometimes I'm aware of God at work, other times I'm not. There's no pattern to being aware and there's no pattern, as far as I can see, to being unaware.

And so it is that I find myself facing challenges because God has placed me somewhere to use my gifts and skills in a way I wouldn't have imagined a number of years ago. Yes, someone else could do it, and someone else would do it differently, but God has placed me there to use me.

As Christians we should never assume that the highest calling is to serve in the church in some ministry, preferably full-time. I'm privileged  to do just that, but it's not all I do. I serve as a school governor and as a member of a governance body for another organisation. I have other connections with community groups.

In all these areas I can serve God. In all these areas, God can use me. 

If you have the opportunity to serve God right now through something that isn't church, don't despise it, do it for his glory.

A long and busy day

So, we went to the Christian Resources Exhibition which entails walking up and down a seemingly endless array of stalls collecting information you want, information you don't want and information you didn't know you wanted until someone thrusts into your hand! I didn't find anyone who was talking about missional church or conversational evangelism but I did have one or two helpful chats with a few folk, especially about data projectors with long throw lenses. I'm sure you find that fascinating!

Having been quite regularly over the last few years, it's quite interesting to see how things appear to have changed. At one time there were a lot of photocopier suppliers demonstrating their wares. Now it seems as though there are more banks, ethical investment and insurance companies, and fund raising advisors. Some of the big exhibitors have cut down their presence and I didn't actually come across one theological college. It was noticeable too that there were fewer technical stands dealing with PA and AV equipment, lighting and stage stuff.

Perhaps it was just the way I approached it all this year that I missed some organisations that I expected to see, but then again maybe things have changed and this kind of event no longer serves their needs. I think for some sadly, the event has become too expensive to justify being there. Still there was a lot to get around and, armed with my trusty Ikea bag I set off in pursuit

of information and inspiration. This year for the first time, I took advantage of the seminar programme and attended a seminar on All-Age Worship. 

Suitably tired I returned to the Bible Society stand to buy some books that had caught my eye and then wandered back to our agreed meeting-point to drive home. The M25 was gloriously slow as usual and we turned off early to avoid the trauma that is the M1 at 5:00 in the afternoon.

Now all that's left is to go through everything I've accumulated and decide what is worth keeping and what needs to be recycled, but that can wait until tomorrow when my aching shoulders have had a rest. In the meantime there's a website for an organisation, the founder of which I know, and who planted an idea in my head for something I might do during my sabbatical. Very interesting!

Sandown here I come!

Up early today, which is fairly typical in our household. Anne usually goes off to catch the train to London that leaves Bedford at around 7:00am, so I'm awake if not up and about at 6:00am most days. Today it's a little earlier because she's on a course.

Anyway, it's given me time to think about the things I want to find out about at the exhibition today. On my list are:

• Data projectors with long-throw lenses
  
• Solutions to our interference problem between the PA system and data cables
  
• Bible study software for the Mac
  
• Companies who can provide creative and thoughtful solutions to our low balcony
  
• Information about Conversational Evangelism
  
• Any up-to-date information about DMin courses and Continuing Professional Development for ministers (it's time I stretched my brain again!)
  

Then there's catching up with a few old friends who might be about. Some run companies and others ministries. 

And finally...

There's a seminar I might go too, a couple of bookstalls to browse and undoubtedly a few new things I haven't thought of that will catch my eye.

All-in-all quite a busy day in prospect and I get to play with the traffic on the M1 and the M25. What joy!!

Off to CRE tomorrow

Every year there is a major exhibition of Christian resources in Esher, Surrey. It's a great way to find out what's new and what's useful for church and ministry. So off I will go tomorrow and collect a bagful of information about all sorts of things. I'll take some of my questions too and see if any else is asking about Conversational Evangelism and Missional Church.

How do you define missional?

In 1989, as part of my theological studies, I wrote an essay about the church and mission. It had a title that was way too long, but the essence of which was a heart to see the church re-involved in mission. Little did I know at the time that what I was trying to do was to put the church back into a missional context rather than the maintenance context into which it appeared to have fallen. 

20 years later, missional has become a term we throw around, often to describe the contemporary or emergent church. But missional is not just about style, in fact it's not about style at all. Missional is a way of describing the fundamental context in which the church lives and ministers. As one website puts it:

A missional church is one where people are exploring and rediscovering what it means to be Jesus' sent people as their identity and vocation.

But it's quite a shift to begin to see the church as existing primarily for those who don't attend and don't believe. Being missional however is not just about being evangelistic. I'd even go so far as to suggest that it's possible to be an evangelistic church without being a missional church, simply because evangelism is all to often a programme we do rather than a  life we live.

With all the talk about declining church attendance, isn't it high time we rediscovered our missional call.