Leaning in the direction of shalom

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It is mistake we often make as we act, move and lean into shalom is a failure to connect this leaning into the future with the sense of trajectory that pervades the Judaeo Christian story. Truth is neither relative or absolute, it is directional. The story of shalom is the story towards completdness. It began before us and continues beyond us. It started in a garden and moves into a city. We have heard it said an eye for an eye but love your neighbour. We have heard it said love your neighbour but love you enemy. There was a separation between the sacred and secular, the world, the outer courtyard and the holy of holies. But we heard it said those walls would be called to dust and we have seen the temple curtain ripped in two. We have been embraced by Christ and embodied with the Spirit, and so we live in the now and not yet, we walk, live and lean into the future, part of the directional truth towards shalom.

The embrace of Easter Saturday

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Of all the seasons and times in the christian calendar I am most taken with the wait of advent and Easter Saturday. Up at 5am this morning to watch and pray, I tried to get my head around why the wait is so key for me.

The incarnation and trinity is formative in the way I engage with the world around me, the rootedness, the relationship, the reality calls me forward to the renewal of creation, the restoration of relationships, and the recovery of my own humanity. I think this why the wait is so pertinent for me, it recognises our part in the story, it embraces the in-between time, the reality of a world that is now and not yet, and even in that not yet time, God is there. The wait reminds me of the willingness of God to be in the process with us, to descend to the depths of sheol, on Easter Saturday, and openness to take on human form at advent. A God who is never distant, but always transcendent. A God who holds our hand and is just out of reach, the one who waits for the renewal of the creation and groans with us as we walk towards it together.

5 Turns the church needs to take

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In creative thinking Edward de Bono talks about the idea that our thinking is pretty one way and we need provocations that act like stop signs to help us move from the one way street to change direction. In this post I want to identity 5 Turns that the church needs to make and suggest some provocations that may help people make that turn. These are sometimes deliberately designed to be theologically ambiguous, because the action (the turn) takes places in reaction to the sign (provocation) so it doesn’t really matter how spot on some of the provocations suggested are.

From a Gathered church to Gatherings
There is something good about being together, but the way we talk about the gathered church and hold onto it as a concept takes peoples thinking down the line, that church happens at a particular time or place. We don’t mean to do this and preach that church is about people but the medium is stronger than the messages we preach. A provocation that may help is to start calling the different groups you have church, Toddler Church, Breakfast Church, Youth Church, Walking Church, Lunch club Church, even if you are not sure that is exactly what they are. If church starts where Jesus is with others, and it is about people not buildings see where this language takes you…

From Walls to Wells
This comes from a well known story. When a sheep farmer from the UK visited vast farms in Australia and asked the local Aussie “how long does it take you to build all the fences?” and he replied “we don’t build fences we just dig wells”. People in churches are on the whole great, most I meet are loving, kind, generous, and just good people to be around. But we have so many walls that stop people encountering this well of human goodness, we build them with theological positions, membership structures, hoops we like people to jump through and we are perceived to be closed in. Extend whatever practices you have that build community in your church and help people in the church when they are in need beyond your walls. If you do cake after the services well, bake cakes for the local brothel. If you do meals for a week when someone has a baby, contact the local midwife and offer the service locally. If you welcome a new minister with cakes, a guide to life in the village, and local tips on the best pubs and when to put the bins out, do the same for anyone who moves into your street.

From Contextualisation to Inculturation
Churches are slowly waking up to the fact that culture has shifted, that we need to be in missionary mode, and so people are doing a lot of work to try and ensure the services (no just sunday services) are relevant to the context. Those at front are more often than not aware that language needs to change, people don’t understand the jargon and we need to find ways to share the gospel with people that relevant and real to the local language and context, (contextualisation). However there is a bigger cultural backdrop that requires a missional response that is more than contextualisation. Culture is a semiotic fluid thick, with meaning and culture eats contextualisation strategies for breakfast. We need to recognise the participative nature of God, who is active in the community before we get there, and already working in the culture. We need to move beyond contextualising the gospel message to what theologians call inculturation, a process that is far more participative, reciprocal and equal. Where we allow those we are serving to speak into our context, shape our beliefs about what is church and even what is the gospel. Most people in churches are pretty well networked with friends, family, and have contacts with people who simply don’t do the God stuff, rather than asking how you can reach them, find out how can they reach you with the gifts God has already planted in their lives. Why not develop an open PCC policy, where there are three or four members who do not attend church. Develop a council of reference made up people from outside of church, who can advise you and look at the ideas the church has, how it communicates, and what it says about what it believes. Host a community meal where ideas are presented and church members are asked not to speak, but to invite friends and be there to encourage those friends to speak honestly into your context. Make it the church members responsibility to follow up the suggestions made, and make sure the church changes as a result of the process.

From Answers to Questions
This one is really quite simple, we need to communicate more like Jesus. We need to tell stories and ask questions. When church held a more central position in society and christendom was still in place, we got used to providing answers. We even developed systems to help this answer driven approach, like apologetics, which at one level for that time when culture was open to the idea of fixed truths, was okay. (I’d probably argue it was more to with power and control than Jesus but lets not split hairs).
A sermon does not become interactive simply because you throw out some rhetorical questions that the christians know the answers to anyway. We need to embrace a far humbler approach to mission, and see ourselves as co-searchers for truth. To find the right questions to ask, and develop participative process that provide spaces for people to genuinely explore. Redesign a church service into a genuinely participative space (a byproduct of this maybe also genuine all age services), where regardless of age, all are seen as experts at the experiment of being human. Then instead of spending hours coming up with 3 points that answer a question few people are asking, the leader wrestles with God to find the right three questions to ask, and creates a space where those are explored by all the experts in the room. You could even tie the questions to the previous turn and ask your council of reference what are the questions we should be asking.

From Exclusion to Inclusion
When we follow the missionary god we cannot help but recognise the inclusive, loving, arms outstretched Jesus who died. So once again I quote Michael Curry “Our commitment to be an inclusive church is not based on a social theory or capitulation to the ways of the culture, but on our belief that the outstretched arms of Jesus on the cross are a sign of the very love of God reaching out to us all.” This is also not just a gay marriage issue, but about developing an inclusive way of being where all are welcomed, valued and served. Lets move beyond the arguments to find a way of being human and welcoming to all. So the the final provocation that may help us walk in a different direction is why not develop your own welcome notice like the one that was doing the rounds on Facebook a few years ago. welcome

Preach what you practice

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In the Creeds in the making, Richardson outlines how the early creeds were a missionary apologetic to what god was doing in the early church. For the last two or so decades my friends and I and many I encounter at conferences, gatherings and festivals, have followed the missio-dei as we minister to and with the LGBTQ community. It has often been misunderstood, been under the radar, or simply not shouted about because as Primate Michael Curry so brilliantly put ““Our commitment to be an inclusive church is not based on a social theory or capitulation to the ways of the culture, but on our belief that the outstretched arms of Jesus on the cross are a sign of the very love of God reaching out to us all.”
But perhaps it is time for those agencies to start to preach the inclusion they practice. Indeed many local churches practice a level inclusion way beyond the statements espoused by their governing bodies, and so perhaps it is time for us all to preach what they practice because we need to find an apologetic for what god is doing in so many lives and communities, and to create a pathway for those still suffering oppressions and violence in other places.

Institutional prophets

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Time and time again the prophets called out for justice, mercy and love. On occasion they acted and orchestrated acts of justice that brought their calls for justice to the lived experience of those suffering injustice. They acted knowing that what they did was out of love and thet their actions were more important than their words. They knew their action challenged the words written down on tablets of stone as the law, and they knew that at times these tablets had been so consumed by those in power that people hearts has also turned to stone. So the prophets spoke out, the prophets acted knowing there would be consequences and they would face exclusion and be misunderstood. The presence and practice of Jesus is clear in the actions of the Old Testament prophets, and the modern justice seekers who put orthopraxis before orthodoxy.

I see the person of Christ, and the prophetic call to a new way of being and acting in the Episcopal Church and its primate Michael Curry. His statement to the primates is full of grace, and reaches back beyond the roots of slavery to a love that was embodied in the person of Christ, and it keeps me hanging their by my fingernails.

“Our commitment to be an inclusive church is not based on a social theory or capitulation to the ways of the culture, but on our belief that the outstretched arms of Jesus on the cross are a sign of the very love of God reaching out to us all. While I understand that many disagree with us, our decision regarding marriage is based on the belief that the words of the Apostle Paul to the Galatians are true for the church today: All who have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is no longer Jew or Gentile, slave or free, male or female, for all are one in Christ.
“For so many who are committed to following Jesus in the way of love and being a church that lives that love, this decision will bring real pain,” he said. “For fellow disciples of Jesus in our church who are gay or lesbian, this will bring more pain. For many who have felt and been rejected by the church because of who they are, for many who have felt and been rejected by families and communities, our church opening itself in love was a sign of hope. And this will add pain on top of pain.”
Curry told the primates that he was in no sense comparing his own pain to theirs, but “I stand before you as your brother. I stand before you as a descendant of African slaves, stolen from their native land, enslaved in a bitter bondage, and then even after emancipation, segregated and excluded in church and society. And this conjures that up again, and brings pain.
“The pain for many will be real. But God is greater than anything. I love Jesus and I love the church. I am a Christian in the Anglican way. And like you, as we have said in this meeting, I am committed to ‘walking together’ with you as fellow primates in the Anglican family.”

When I first met Rowan Williams when he was archbishop I was so taken by his ability to listen, perhaps I was a little in awe but I sensed in him a willingness to stand with me on the edge. It is early days, so I do not want to jump to conclusions about what the decision to exclude the Episcopal church means, but struggle to see how such a fracturing move can be an act of grace. So I am keen to know how both Curry and the current ABC Justin will respond but My prayer for all the primates is that they will have the eyes to see and ears to hear and grace will find a way.

We need to talk about truth…

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Last year there were a raft of posts, like “it’s not you its me” “we need to talk about church” all exploring why people are disenchanted with church, leaving church and why it is failing to connect with people anymore. Then this All of which are far more symptomatic of a far deeper issue. What we really need to talk about is truth, our approach to it, the false security people invest in mini truths, the lack of trust it can engender, and how our poor approach to it captivates and limits many rather than being liberated and freed.
I think much of the issue is we have tried to limit the truth, and think it can be singular, explained, preached and taught. The monologue sermon, at its core says this is what is true. Truth is something to be wrestled with as we are wrestling with G-d, it demands dialogue, community and lived experience. It calls forth a trust that takes us out of the pulpit and towards discovery, to uncovering, and journey.
The idea of a singular absolute truth is a crutch which if leant on too heavily breaks and brings down with it all it was meant to support. Truth helps us walk forward, in faltering, humble steps, it is discovered as we walk with others, and when we turn the crutch into weapon to ward off others we fall once again. In fact perhaps if we do away with the crutch and lean into the future with the support and help of others we may begin to discover something far more real than the imitations of Truth we have created.

When we wrestle with these deeper notions of truth it will demand a shift in practices that people are drifting away from, a reimagining of the the institution that is loosing its currency, and create a space of discovery and adventure where community is lived and people want to be.

Being bestself and politics of powerlessness

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THIS Article is probably the best thing I have read in a long time. When I came to my new role I determined to be myself and have already found myself apologising for speaking too much, pulling back from leading in certain circumstances and hesitant as I try to get the balance of leading and serving right.

I know my own tendencies to wonder (that isn’t a misspelling) off point, weaknesses in thinking there is a right way, a desire for something other, that ends up with some people isolating themselves from what we were trying to build, and I am aware of my responsibilities in that process. So I identify strongly with the author of this and why I was drawn to occupy in the first place.

The challenge of my #adventweight series was to remind myself of our shared humanity, by distance from others plight, and soften myself to do more in the year ahead. Yet to move from these reflections to actions means I need to be my bestself to not capitulate to the internal or external fears, to be aware of the gifts and strengths I bring, to challenge myself to lead again at times, and to know when pull back, and it is only in doing that will I begin to discover my true self and fuller humanity and what it means to be made in the image of g-d.

Apologies this wasn’t intended to be a self reflective piece but a heads up to the best thing I have read all year. It’s a long article so here is an extract to encourage you to read the whole thing.

I’m at a retreat center in Florida, at the first ever Wildfire National Convening, with 80 members of organizations from all over the country: folks from Ohio Student Association, Dream Defenders, GetEQUAL, Rockaway Wildfire, and the Occupy Homes groups in Atlanta and Minneapolis. It’s the first night, and the organizations are performing skits that explain their origin stories. It’s Rockaway Wildfire’s turn?—?a group that formed in the wake of Hurricane Sandy, merging the relief effort with organizing in Far Rockaway, Queens. Out there, floods fell on top of broken schools, impoverished projects, and a population that was drastically underemployed and over-policed. The folks in the Rockaways were losing their homes to foreclosure before the floods wrecked them, losing their sons to prisons long before the storm came to displace them.
The skit begins, the lights go down. We hear the pounding of feet against the floor, which sounds unmistakably like heavy rain. And then a chorus of howling that sounds like the violent wind that battered the New York area that October in 2012. Then heart-wrenching wailing, like a child crying. Pounding and howling and wailing that get more and more intense like an orchestra building up to its crescendo. Suddenly, I’m crying. The sounds catapult me back to the hurricane, but also to the fear I carry with me of the many more hurricanes surely on the way, and the children and parents and friends we will have to protect when they come. Suddenly the sounds come to a crashing halt, the lights go up, dimly, and I realize most of the other people in the room are weeping too. There is silence, the kind of hanging stillness you stumble on rarely, when a room full of people dedicated to the struggle are all quietly reckoning with the fear we carry in us every day and the doubts we have about whether we can do what must be done. Then one of the actors breaks the silence with the last line of the play, delivered soothingly to her child, as if she has read the minds of the 80 fighters gathered here: “Don’t worry, baby, don’t worry. We’ll be alright. Momma’s gonna start a revolution.”
The fear is real?—?palpable and also grounded. In addition to good organizing, it will take some small miracles to win the world we all deserve. It’s better to acknowledge that than to try to bury it. At least it’s honest. And who knows, maybe there is something about fear that?—?when we turn and face it?—?can be grounding instead of handicapping, can help us sit in the stakes rather than live in denial, can compel us to take the risks we need to take rather than to hide, can drive us to be the biggest we can be instead of shrinking. Or at least, that’s my hope.

Advent weight

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Strange how this stuff happens but before I posted my #adventweight tweets and without either of us knowing what the other was doing, Lori was asked to post an advent reflection and she wrote this amazing poem.

There is a wait
and the wait weighs heavy
It breathes deeply
as if asleep
not stirring
Try to reach around it
But as if magnetic
It draws you
embraces

So you wait
and the wait weighs heavy

The wait moves slowly
It won’t be hurried
Cannot be coaxed
blackmailed
reasoned with
or forced

It just waits
and the wait weighs heavy

‘and G-d said…’
G-d breathed
G-d became
was and is and is to come
and we waited
and we wait

we wait
and the wait weighs heavy

Recreating St Nic in our own image

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I was watching The Santa Clause film the other day with my daughter and thinking how real Father christmas has become, how millions of people make Father Christmas real without him physically existing, yet he is manifested and brought into being by our giving of stockings and presents. Yes I know the story of St Nic, but can’t help thinking our desire to see the magic in children eyes stems from a deeper need to make manifest something we have all lost. However in doing so with Father Christmas we have lost more of the mystery of life than we have found, in trying to make the magic happen, it once again slips through our fingers…Kester writes brilliantly on the need to recover something of St Nic here and in doing we might just recover the truer mystery beyond.

if you want to pioneer Set your face like flint

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I work with the wonderful Carolyn Dykes who has been pioneering the Network Youth Church across Cumbria. NYC is a fantastic initiative, it was way ahead of the curve, and has been trying to develop a more ecclesiological rooted model of youth work practice across the diocese for the last 7 years. Pioneers find new routes and pathways, and with the archdeacon Kevin, Carolyn has been pioneering within the structure of the established church, to create space on the ground for new forms of church with young people. In many ways she has had the hardest task of all pioneers, working within the system, and if I did #wonderfulwednesdays like my friend Gemma, Carolyn, Kevin and NYC would definitely be up there for a post.

As I said before, I often encounter people doing great stuff on the ground, but who are too close to it see how good it is. In this quiet corner of the North West I think I have uncovered a real gem in NYC. There is still a long way to go if we are to really embed a fresh approach to mission and ecclesiology, and I am really looking forward to helping NYC move forward into a new phase, but Carolyns vision and drive has been really pioneering, and I suspect really hard work! So here are a few of the things I have already gleaned as I have come alongside NYC:
– Embedding a radical approach into diocesan structures is hard work but it can be done!!! Amen can i get an amen!!!
– Holding the ecclesiological model is difficult but direct lines through the structure to episcopal oversight can be found
– even when senior leadership get it, the local context might not, so relationships and trust needs to be won and systems and permission from above can help
– The structure can help, but can become a problem, hold the values and be flexible, if good stuff happens on the ground you already some structures in place.
– The gravitational pull of traditional approaches to mission and ecclesiology is almost a cultural embedded phenomena it is strong and can easily lead to mission drift, but perhaps the structure can help act as a corrective to shift the culture towards re-imagination.