Back to Church Sunday

We didn't do "Back to Church Sunday" but I hope those who did had a good day. The truth is that the whole event passed me by, mainly because I let it pass me by. I always remember a colleague commenting on an initiative to invite folk back to church a number of years ago. The tag line then was "See how much we've changed". His comment was that it was because of the changes that they'd all left in the first place.

But there's something else that drew my attention to this year's event. A report on one website used the headline "Churches welcome back lapsed Christians". I find this a somewhat strange turn of phrase. Exactly how do you become a lapsed Christian? It makes the Christian life appear to be more like a gym membership or a library card. 

Did I become a lapsed Christian during my sabbatical because I didn't go to church very often? Is coming to church more important than reading my Bible, seeking to build my relationship with God, or sharing God's heart for the poor? How do we, why do we prioritise certain aspects of our understanding of living a life that pleases God over others? 

Maybe it's just me, but doesn't this kind of approach, the kind that assumes that not being in church is a sign of disconnection from God,  maybe the only sign, just pushing things a little too far.

Maybe it's just the realisation that a truly missional church, the kind of church I want so much to be part of, is less focused on getting people into the building than it is on getting the good news incarnated into the community. Don't get me wrong, I pray for growth in attendance at our worship celebration. A healthy celebration is a good thing, but only a good thing if it is a sign of a healthy engagement with the local community.

In the end, I don't want to attract people to church, I want to attract them to Jesus.

What kind of Sunday?

I'm not sure if yesterday was an example of incarnational, attractional, or invitational church, but it was a day of interesting contrasts.

In the morning we did church, and we did it reasonably well. It was Harvest and we had all ages together. We tried to do something different, having a creative area for people to use during the worship. In the end only children used it, but that's okay. My big worry was that it might have been seen as something to keep the children occupied, which it was never meant to be.

In the afternoon I did something a little different. Just over a week ago the local landlord at the Pub took his own life. He was 31. The truth is that the Pub is more probably the focul point of village life than the church is. And if it's not the focus, it's closer to the focus that the church which in reality is on the margin. I'd been asked if I would go down and "say a few words". No one could really tell me what they wanted me to say, but they wanted me to do something, something I suspect to help them process the events and their grief.

So I went. And I was pleased to go. There were probably more people gathered in the garden in the afternoon than gathered in church in the morning. Does that validate one over the other? I don't think so.

What it does say to me is that it remains of utmost importance that we learn to hang out with the people we're trying to reach. That we learn how to live our Christian lives in the context of our communities not just in the context of our churches. It is so sad when Christians are so busy with church that they have no time for anything or anyone else. 

I guess this provides the paradox of my life. As a minister I find myself caught between the busyness of serving the church and the deep call of God to connect with, as Jim Henderson calls them, the people Jesus misses most. 

Being pursued by God's word

These three texts have been the focus of my thoughts for the past few weeks. It isn't that I've not read anything else, I just keep being drawn back to them.

As I plan for next year I have been considering a series on 1Cor.13. I have a plan, but what I really want to do is immerse the church in Paul's description of this "most excellent way". I just keep coming back to the question in my mind: What would the church look like if we lived out Paul's description of love?

Anyway, here are the three texts that have been following me around.

May the Lord lead your hearts into a full understanding and expression of the love of God and the patient endurance that comes from Christ.

2Thess.3:5

I urge you, first of all, to pray for all people. Ask God to help them; intercede on their behalf, and give thanks for them.

1Tim.2:1

Do not neglect the spiritual gift you received through the prophecy spoken over you when the elders of the church laid their hands on you. Give your complete attention to these matters. Throw yourself into your tasks so that everyone will see your progress. Keep a close watch on how you live and on your teaching. Stay true to what is right for the sake of your own salvation and the salvation of those who hear you.

1Tim.4:14-16

I'm not sure what the connection is, if any, with 1Cor.13 but it's just the place where I find myself at the moment.

No greener grass

It's very easy to fall into the trap of believing that one's ministry would succeed if only you could find the right situation. If only you could find the church or organisation that best suited your gifts and skills. The problem is that you can waste an awful lot of time thinking about how much better it could be somewhere else.

The problem is that you can't stop it happening, but you can choose your response when it does. You can choose how you deal with the frustrations of failure and log-jams of inertia that regularly arise in the life-cycle of the church. 

Jon Ortberg wrote a piece recently that reflects on two agricultural metaphors that Jesus used and their application to ministry. The first metaphor he considers is: "Put your hand to the plough and don't look back". He says this about it:

I have been doing that in my ministry. I have had an extremely strong conviction that I am to follow my calling in the place where I am and not waste energy thinking about other possibilities. I'm convinced I will grow in ways I would not otherwise if I put my hand to the plow and don't look back.

Fancy that, the opportunity to grow in ways I would not otherwise grow if I moved. So often we sense the restrictions to growth that our present circumstances generate rather than the possibilities they offer.  

The second comment concerns the way we deal with the multiple demands that never seem to stay in the study or church office. Of this he says:

I can do this. I can set aside the weight of unfinished tasks and unsolved problems when I come home. I can be fully present and alive even though everything around me is not settled down. Each moment I can choose this; I can ask God's help with it.

I guess the simple message here is that to fulfil my call I need to fully invest myself in following through my call in the place where I find myself not the place I dream of being and secondly, when the day is done, I come home (or in my case cross the hallway) and enter fully into life outside of the church I serve. Knowing that this is a tough choice to make, burdens don't evaporate when I cross the threshold from my study to the rest of the house, but church was never meant to consume my family it ought rather to be a blessing to my family. 

I need to remember this when Ally comes home from University and I want to "just finish this little job I need to do."

Star Wars, from a different perspective!

Ages ago it seems I made some one minute programmes with a friend of mine, and earlier this year he posted them on YouTube. Yesterday I got a comment from my friend about the number of views the videos had got and wondering what impact they had made on the people who had watched them.

So I wandered over to YouTube to see if the stats for myself. While I was there I came across this video and thought the world should know about it!

Enjoy it.

Tool Chest Project

I spent a little time on my new project today and yesterday.

It's difficult to see what it will look like when it's finished, but the main carcass has now taken shape. 

If you remember, I cut all the pieces from a large piece of leftover 12mm hardwood ply. Eventually there will be a parts well and five drawers.

Yesterday and today I cut the dovetails to join the back to the sides and the upper and lower front rails.

Cutting dovetail joints in plywood is fairly straightforward, although the finished joint is far less forgiving than softwood. Unless it's quite precise it just refuses to go together. You also need to be careful not to split the ply. 

The next job will be to route the rebates for the bottom panel and the base of the top well. This needs a rear rail set in from the back to make room for the carry tote. 

All will become clear as the project progresses! Hopefully, with a few good Saturdays, I'll make some progress quite quickly.

More than a friend

I've found this song particularly moving these last few days. I find the vocal quite haunting and the lyrics simply cause a deep sense of worship to well up inside of me.

Tumblr

So, Ally got me using Twitter, mainly I think so that she can keep an eye on me while away at University. And I always thought it was me as her father that would want to keep tabs on my daughter!

Anyway, it's been fun tweeting and it made me think about how interactive can, and ultimately should, we be via the internet. I've resisted the urge to sign up for Facebook or Myspace or the over fifties version run by Saga. However that's a debate for another day.

The thing with Twitter is that it isn't really a route to use for quick thoughts and quotes etc. Jeff put me onto Swurl and I've set up a homepage there to collate various streams (blogs, music, Twitter, wish lists). 

And because Swurl does the job of putting everything you want to put in one place in... well one place actually, there's no need to spend all day updating a whole range of social sites with duplicate information. It also means that if, like me, you write more than one blog, then you can pull all of them into one place for anyone interested to read all your musing but who doesn't use RSS or similar to aggregate blogs. But that still doesn't solve the problem of posting a quick thought without logging in and creating new posts.

So, to complete the picture so far, I've added Tumblr to my streams. It's a simple, quick thoughts kind of approach to blogging. Using my Blog title "the view from here" I now have a Tumblr homepage, but all the things I post there will automatically appear on the Swurl page. I'm also working on how to add my Tumblr blog to the sidebar of my main blog but I'm having a few problems getting the size right.

Being a Mac user I've also found a dashboard widget, or rather two dashboard widgets for Tumblr. 

The first is available from the Tumblr site, the second from the Apple downloads site. I prefer the second one because it has some automatic formatting built in for posting regular text or pictures or quotes. 

Both are free, so you just choose your preferred style I guess.

Exiles

I've just begun reading this book and I'm finding it truly fascinating and challenging and liberating. 

The call to find a third place, a space to connect with others has long been a desire of my heart. As a church leader it is so easy to spend all my time either in the study or among believers. But that's always been an uncomfortable place for me to be. I'm convinced that the church exists not for its own ends but for the sake of the not-yet-believing community.

So this book is a real challenge to put into practice many of the things I've longed to do for so many years.

Here are my "favourite" quotes from the first part of the book Dangerous Memories:

We have preferred the adorable alabaster Jesus to the flesh-and-blood radical Messiah. We have imprisoned him in a stained-glass cell and want only to worship him, never to follow him. (52)

...if exiles today are to model their lives and ministries on that of the exile Jesus, they must take a stance that promotes proximity between themselves and those among whom they live.

Christians must be prepared to go where Christ would go: to the poor, the marginalised, to the places of suffering. They must be prepared to die to self in order to follow Jesus' radical lifestyle of self-giving and sacrifice. (54)

...our lives need to become increasingly aligned with the example of Jesus... It means, though, increasingly becoming people of justice, kindness, mercy, strength, hope, grace, generosity, and hospitality. (64)

Bart: What religion are we?
Homer: You know, the religion with all the well-meaning rules that don't really work in real life. (70)

Reflecting on the economic crisis

Can I point you towards the blog of an old college friend of mine, Simon Jones. In a previous life he was a financial journalist and has written a really good piece about the present crisis and some of the questions it raises.

Like Simon I wonder where the wise heads have gone. Perhaps they were laid-off in the last crisis. 

You can read Simon's piece here.

Perhaps, after all, I'll sign up to the Blog Action Day on Poverty.

More Apologies

After getting so worked up over the email I received about Christian Voice Apologises to Richard Dawkins, I wrote to the author to express my concerns. Rather unexpectedly I got a very gracious reply and, although I still don't think the original piece was in good taste or particularly gracious, I do have to commend the author for his response to my concerns.

He could simply have dismissed me as failing to understand the intended parody and satire of his piece (actually I readily recognised those aspects, but it still didn't sit comfortably with me.) He could have dismissed me as a deviant evangelical who doesn't understand the role of the prophetic voice.

But he didn't. 

And for that I'm grateful. If Christians can't disagree and yet share a sense of blessing towards each other, no mater how different they might see things, then how are we to express the grace of God to a world than runs so contrary to his purposes and desires?

There is grace and forgiveness, mercy and healing, He'll meet you wherever you are. as Third Day are singing as I write this post (Cry out to Jesus from Wherever you are)

Christians don't apologise like this

I'm angry.

I'm angry because I got an email today that outraged me. It did so because of the complete lack of grace and the schoolboy-like tactics of the content.

What got me so angry you might ask? It was an email from Christian Voice. 

At first I thought it was a joke, a bad joke. I'm not aware of being on their mailing list, so I thought this was someone else farming emails and sending out a spoof message. I was wrong, apparently, because I took a look at their website and discovered it was real.

The email concerned a so-called apology to Richard Dawkins the well-known scientist who is venomously anti-Christian. But no matter how much he reviles the church and Christian faith, that is no excuse for the appalling diatribe that is the Christian voice website and it's response to him. The ridicule and cheap point scoring has no place in a faith built upon grace.

If this is the Christian voice then it's a voice with which I do not wish to be associated. It certainly is not this Christian's voice.

How exactly does this kind of presentation of a Christian position, I use the term lightly, help the cause of Christ? Personally I don't how it can or ever could, and I just wonder what sadness it causes in heaven that those who claim the name of Christ would behave in such a distasteful manner.

If this is a Christian voice then it's the voice of an adolescent who has much to learn about about the true heart of God.

If you want to see what's got me so hot under the collar this is the link: CV to apologise

Changing lives

A friend sent me this story by email.

The great evangelist H.A. Ironside was interrupted one time by the shouts of an atheist. The atheist yelled, "There is no God! Jesus is a myth!" and finally, "I challenge you to a debate!"

Ironside responded, "I accept your challenge, sir! But on one condition. When you come, bring with you ten men and women whose lives have been changed for the better by the message of atheism. Bring former prostitutes and criminals whose lives have been changed, who are now moral and responsible individuals. Bring outcasts who had no hope and have them tell us how becoming atheists has lifted them out of the pit!

"And sir," he concluded, "if you can find ten such men and woman, I will be happy to debate you. And when I come, I will gladly bring with me two hundred men and women from this very city whose lives have been transformed in just those ways by the power of the gospel of Jesus Christ."

Ironside knew that atheism doesn't change lives. Jesus changes lives.

Videos

Follow this link to some really funny videos. Some painful, some really well done.

Living with migraine

I'm always amazed when someone announces they have a migraine headache and yet they can walk around unaided, cope with loud noises and bright light. I can do none of these things. I can barely sit upright and lying down isn't much better.

My first migraine headache hit me when I was about 6 years old. I'm really fortunate that I don't have them very often and I get enough warning that I can usually get control of them early. This means I don't usually need anything more substantial than a good painkiller or the occasional Ibuprofen migraine tablet, a lie down in a reasonably dark room and peace and quiet. So far, a migraine has never coincided with  a sudden desire on Anne's part to rearrange all the metal pans and cooking trays as they fall out the cupboard at the same time!

I can have quiet detailed conversations with people as long as they don't mind the fact that I don't open my eyes. If I do, I feel as though my head will explode which is somewhat unnerving to say the least, and likely to cause a particularly difficult to remove stain to appear in the furnishings. I'm sure there are one or two people with whom I've spoken on the 'phone who are blissfully unaware that I am sitting or lying down with my eyes closed thinking calm thoughts.

Why am I blogging about it today? Well I got hit this afternoon with a humdinger of a migraine that came out of nowhere and without any of the usual symptoms. When I was younger I used to get these really weird shifts in perspective. Things would start to drift off into the distance and I couldn't bear striped things or anything with a repeating pattern of circles or squares on it. I remember even now having bad dreams about the kitchen wallpaper!

I couldn't sleep facing a wall or any object, which made it a challenge when Anne (please don't tell her I compared her to a wall and an object) and I got married because I would always have to turn my back on her in order to get to sleep and not set off a headache! She's got used to it now by the way.

Anyway, over the years my symptoms changed and I would get blank spots in my field of vision. I'd be reading a book and suddenly realise that bits of the page were disappearing. To this I seem to have added flashing lights that only appear when I close my eyes. Which in turn is rather unfortunate because closing my eyes is the one thing I need to do when the headache strikes. A somewhat unfair development in the circumstances!

Today however I just became nauseous and felt quite sick, and then came the thumping headache and we were stuck 30 minutes from home in a noisy shopping centre. So we got home, and for about two hours I lay quietly, waiting for the medication to kick in and now some eight hours on I feel fine.

Odd things migraines, at least for me. I'm just glad they don't strike as often as they used to when I was younger. Maybe I've just got better control of things, maybe I don't do or eat the things that trigger them, maybe I'm just more disciplined about staying hydrated.

But if you're a fellow sufferer, then my heart goes out to you and I pray that your headaches will be rare and short-lived. 

In case you're wondering my worst one lasted five days.

Shock in the post

Got the gas bill today. Hopefully, with the improvements we made recently to the control system, the amount of gas we use to heat the house and the produce hot water will fall but that doesn't soften the immediate impact of the latest price rises.

British Gas has just put our monthly Direct Debit up by 67%. 67%! Unbelievable. What's worse is that a recent report said that gas prices were the highest in our region for the whole of the UK.

I know world prices have gone up and I've heard all the well rehearsed arguments on the radio, but I can't help but wonder how we've got ourselves in this position.

Has the constant pressure of years of deregulation and competition meant that energy prices have been forced artificially lower? Have we simply not been paying the right price for our energy? When you watch all the advertising for energy, it appears everyone can save you money. If that were true, then by now someone would be paying me to take gas and electricity off their hands. And then there's the "Buy both from us and it will be cheaper than using two companies approach." That doesn't sound much like competition to me.

In the end I think we've got ourselves in a real mess over energy and I remember the questions we asked when privatisation was first mooted: "In the end, who will really benefit from taking utilities out of public ownership?" Because we can't run the clock back and watch price changes over the same period with a nationalised energy market, we will never know the answer, but the question remains.

And finally, I don't keep up with all the changing technology and the advancements in R&D, but when I worked for British Gas 30 years ago we knew then that the resources were finite. We knew then that we needed to work on what comes after natural gas. There were projects looking at SNG (Substitute Natural Gas), where has that research gone in 30 years? Perhaps R&D was deemed non-profit making, too costly for the company in a shareholder economy and as a result the ideas shelved. I do know that the laboratories where I worked closed shortly after privatisation and, coincidentally my departure too. Although it must be said that I take no responsibility for the said closure!

Drawbacks at Swurl

So, I've signed up for Swurl and I've been playing with it for a day and I've found out why some things work and some don't.

I added my blog, Last.fm, Twitter, Amazon wish-list and Picasa but nothing shows up for these. The reason seems to be that it doesn't handle none ".com" locations for the likes of Amazon. Last.fm only adds "loved" tracks, a feature I don't use.

So at the moment Swurl just brings my blog posts and Tweets together.

Hopefully, with time, the features will improve, but it's not as useful as it first looked. However, lots of encouragement is due to the guys that have developed this idea and I look forward to more features being added and supported.

Shared Items

I've just added a "Shared Items" widget to the sidebar. This shows things that I put in my shared folder on Google Reader.

Swurl

Some time ago Jeff sent me an email about Swurl. At the time I didn't have the time to look at it and I put it to the back of my mind. anyway, now I Twitter, thanks to Ally, and use Picasa and Lastfm, Swurl looks like an interesting way to bring it all together in one place. So I've plunged in and created an account.

You can visit my Swurl homepage here.

Defining the role of the minister

I'm reading The Forgotten Ways by Alan Hirsch at the moment and I was struck by something he said about the role of apostolic ministry. It made me wonder about the role of the minister in the life of the local church.

So, here's an adaptation of something Hirsch says.

The role of the minister of the local church is to reawaken the people to the gospel and to embed it in the structures and framework of the life of the church in ways that are meaningful.

Any thoughts? It's got me pondering some things.