Distinct Reflections

Interactive church?

I’ve been thinking recently about the ‘interactive’ option that we sometimes have as part of our morning services; an option where people get opportunity to discuss a topic over coffee & croissant whilst the rest of the church prays, sings and listens to my preaching.  

The feedback is very positive (which may simply be a comment about my preaching of course). And it is easy to see how it fits the zeitgeist with participation and interaction, creating a sense of community and connection. It also fits in with patterns of emerging church, valuing diversity not uniformity, being relational rather than goal driven and with a style of leadership that listens rather than informs.  

But it also raises some questions for me. If church gatherings assist spiritual formation in what ways do these alternative patterns of church help that process: resourcing people’s discipleship and encouraging transformation? If they form part of our worship gatherings in what way is the content and structure worship?  

And then there is preaching. I believe in preaching; there is something sacramental about the proclamation of the word of God. So where does a discussion based approach fit? My tentative answer lies in three areas. First a greater focus of word and sacrament would give shape, structure and theological moorings. Second, a change of perspective which doesn’t see church as providing a programme of different things over a week (worship, preaching, small groups etc) but a people who engage in an array of activities over a term. Third a pattern of preaching (from a bar stool not a conference podium) which encourages an experience of God through Scripture, aims for spiritual formation rather than education or entertainment, and opens questions rather than provides answers.

An Epic Advent

It is my turn to blog at the advent blog hopeful imagination today. My post is below but you can follow the rest here.

Being a minister at this time of year is an odd experience. Preparing services that fit the advent season whilst making plans for the period from Christmas to Easter. Yesterday I was talking about Palm Sunday, this morning I was thinking about how changes in society affect the church and this afternoon I’m grappling afresh with advent promises.  

Advent is becoming one of my favourite times of year with its reminders of what Christ’s coming entails. A promised ruler who will be no petty king or oppressive empire builder but one in whose hands the weakest will be safe and the oppressed released. A reign in which old hostilities will cease, in which the scattered are gathered in, drawing back those who have drifted off. The one who is with God from eternity past comes forth revealing grace and truth.  

In thinking about changing culture I was reminded of Leonard Sweet’s suggestion that post modern and digital culture can be understood to be Epic where E=experiential, P=participatory, I=image rich, and C=connective. This is not the moment to discuss the merits, or otherwise, of Sweet’s proposal but it strikes me that advent fits this well.  

Advent invites us to:

Experience the God who is now and the not yet. The growing familiarity of ritual with readings, candles and hymns magnifies the sense of God’s promise and presence.

Participate in the faith. The themes of advent incorporate the great doctrines of the Christian faith but not as propositions to believe but as truth to live and incorporate into daily living.

In an image driven culture we are reminded that the one who comes is the image of God; God in the flesh.

Connecting with the community of God’s people, advent is an invitation to respond afresh to Christ’s invitation to be children of God.  

O Come O Come Immanuel

What makes an evangelical?

It is a sign of desperation to blog about other people's blogs but this by Steve Holmes is worth it! I'm sure Steve's suggestion of a contoured approach to defining evangelicalism might helpfully re-frame the debate. I need some time (which I don't have this week) to think about:

• Despite Steve's approach isn't the nature of evangelicalism to define certain doctrines as core and to exclude those who don't hold them? In that sense Evangelicalism is a sect within Christianity one of whose defining doctrines is that ecclesiology is secondary; but who often prove to be fissiparous.
• Do we need some sort of account that recognises the difference between evangelical (which I think I still am on the basis of my conviction that the coming of Jesus is good news) and Evangelical (as subscribing to the Evangelical Alliance statement of faith).

As I say, I need to read Steve's post when I've time to think further; I might be misunderstanding him or underestimating the significance of what he is saying. Nevertheless he has touched on an important subject.

Advent: living patiently in a world of impatience

I sometimes use video clips in preaching; searching for something suitable for advent I came across this by Stanley Hauerwas here. I'm not sure if I could use it, though the idea of sharing Hauerwas with the congregation is attractive.

Advent

As far as Christmas goes my attitude is best summed up as ‘bah humbug’; not to the incarnation but all the other trappings. But, over the last decade, I’ve come to appreciate Advent.  

Advent expresses an important dimension of the Christian life; a life of expectant waiting and a period of hopeful purpose. As those who live after the end of the beginning but before the beginning of the end we should have an attitude towards God that is faith filled and yet hesitant, humble and yet assured. Too often we struggle to deal with ambiguity, we desire certainty not provisionality and prefer the well trodden paths to the mystery of faith. Advent reminds us God is both faithful and intentional, but our perception is partial and incomplete. Nevertheless we can trust that the one who came as the word made flesh will come again to judge the living and the dead and while we await the fulfilment of his promises we do so in hope. Maranatha

For those who are interested in advent thoughts see here were a number of people (including me) will be contributing to an advent blog.

Building a ministry team

We are searching for an Associate Minister, a more stressful task than I anticipated. I’ve been through the Baptist settlement process twice as a candidate and once as a church moderator but looking for someone to join the team here brings out different questions. Some while ago I came across Bill Hybel’s 3 C’s for building a staff team: Character, Competence, Chemistry. I’ve modified this to create my own 5 C's grid: 

• Character: anyone in ministry needs to have integrity and a desire to be Christ-like in attitude and behaviour. They also need a certain resilience to survive, enjoy hard work and have the emotional stability and energy to sustain this over the long haul.  
  
• Competence: ministerial life requires a range of competences in order to function in a wide variety of situations. In a team situation they need gifts and skills in particular areas to fit the role.  
  
• Chemistry: we need to get on well and trust each other. They need to bring a positive atmosphere to the team. Given the number of churches where team dynamics have gone wrong this is worth paying attention to.  
  
• Conviction: whoever joins the team needs to be on the same page in terms of vision. They need their own thoughts and ideas but their core convictions about church and the future trajectory of church life need to match.  
  
• Congregation: they need to feel called to serve this local church, the church needs to warm to them and for us, as the gathered people of God, to discern that this is right before God.

IBS-STL an opportunity?

I’m saddened to see the financial problems of IBS-STL who run Wesley Owen, Authentic Media and others. The temptation is to view financial difficulty as a wholly bad thing but it is an opportunity to take a fresh approach and I hope there is a positive outcome.  

Finding a buyer for the Wesley Owen chain of stores will not be easy. Running bookshops in an Amazon age requires imagination and I suspect the store locations and layouts would make it hard to copy the Borders/Starbucks style retail environment. There is perhaps a future in a form of ‘franchise’ venture with local churches looking to create or maintain a high street presence.  

I very much hope the book publishing continues. I’m convinced there is a market for quality Christian publishing in the UK and Paternoster has a good track record here. Personally I would look to create a company, like Traidcraft, where the shareholders provide capital for public benefit rather than a financial return.  

This also creates an opportunity to move away from the growing comodification of Christian media in the UK. Whilst the causes of this are complex, and not STL’s fault, it seems to me that having media production, distribution and marketing in the hands of a small number of organisations isn’t a good thing.  Perhaps a greater diversity reflecting the breadth of the church in the UK, higher quality which moves away from 'how God healed my hamster' publishing towards resources which equip every disciple and an ability to invest in creativity giving a platform to emerging artists. The realities of commercial life will not make it easy but maybe it is possible something positive arises from the ashes.

Watching Christian TV makes me grumpy!

Twice in recent weeks I’ve wasted some free time watching Christian Satellite TV; on both occasions someone speaking at well known evangelical Christian events in the UK. The first programme made my heart sink. The speaker, who I hadn’t heard before, talked complete rubbish making comments that are contrary to the Biblical text (how is this allowed to happen?). The second was better but a misrepresentation of the description of God in the OT in an attempt to make a valid point about God’s grace.  

It seems to me the problem is threefold.

-      We confuse clarity and simplicity. Clarity is desirable but you don’t need to over simply things to achieve it.

-      We value entertainment more highly than transformation. It is good to be engaging but the value of a message should not be measured by how amusing the anecdotes are.

-      We allow relevance to be an excuse for sloppiness. God speaks in conformity to God’s character and prophetic speech will resonate with God’s.

Apart from reading Glen’s excellent article (here) I suggest every conference speaker should:

1. Speak from a single text not a string of Bible verses. What matters is the proclamation of the word of God not your attempts at systematic theology.

2. Make sure you understand what textual / theological issues arise from the text you use; if you don’t know, and have no idea how the passage has shaped Christian thought, read a couple of commentaries on the passage.

3. Take care how you use argument, anecdotes, jokes and emotion: remember a holy God is listening. Ethos, pathos, logos!

A radical idea for BUGB?

This week I’m at Baptist Union Council which has, so far, been a positive experience. As I listen to the various reports and discussions I find myself wondering whether we need to create a new role for someone to help the Union move things on. A kind of development officer who would help the Union to move forward with vision and direction, facilitating conversations and taking pro-active initiative to help process agreed pieces of work.  

The Union is not simply one large church with a church staff, leadership team and members meeting but is a complex web of relationships between churches, ministers, associations and others including colleges so the person will need both intuition and the interpersonal skills to work with Council, Trustee board, Executive Committees, Team Leaders, Senior Management Team and others.  

This person would not simply be someone who services committees but someone who is released to encourage, enthuse and enable the whole Union. Clearly this person would need to be familiar with the history of reports to Council and other pieces of work that have been done, and have a good grasp of the theological and detail issues that inform our common life. They would need to understand the key strategic questions that face the BUGB: the central resource, associations, churches and ministers.  

Currently we have a General Secretary, who spends large amounts of time being the face of the BUGB to churches and the wider society, and a General Manager who focuses on managing the Union’s resource centre in Didcot. But perhaps we would make more expeditious progress with someone who had the time to develop Baptist life, building consensus and helping us grapple with detail as well as the big picture who wasn't directly responsible to the Trustees but an extention of the work of council.

Perhaps I'm still a charismatic after all.

Years ago I would happily have owned the labels ‘evangelical’ and ‘charismatic’ but these days I’m more suspicious and when asked if I identify myself as either generally want to squirm out of the implied constriction. Nevertheless I continue to believe that God speaks today; I still believe in prophecy (in the charismatic sense of God speaking to/through me today).  

Now I’ve have heard some very bizarre things claimed as prophecy so I hope I’m not being totally naïve, but I can also think of times when people have shared thoughts and ideas which seem to have something of God about them (sometimes inexplicably so).  

It seems to me that a healthy understanding of prophecy is reliant on four things:  

• Total depravity: we need to recognise that we are fallen humanity and that every aspect of our being is affected including our reason, our intuition, our emotions and our sense of hearing from God. If nothing else this ensures modesty on our part.
  
• Incarnation: God speaks through humanity, any impression I have that God is speaking to me is therefore filtered and affected by my humanity and any ‘word’ spoken by someone else is similarly incarnated, it is never unmediated.  
  
• Pneumatology: the Spirit of God continues to sustain us, sanctify us and draw us into kononia with the Father through the Son. This is a dynamic process in which the Spirit continues to reveal God to us in thought, word, image and imagination. We may only perceive in part but the Spirit continues to stir us towards a God purposed future.  
• Church: it is as we meet together in the name of Jesus that we discern what Christ, via the Spirit is saying to us. Gathering to discern the mind of Christ is a particular Baptist distinctive but it is an important component in the weighing of what people say and in giving voice to those on the margins who may be the ones who are truly prophetic. Meeting in the name of Jesus suggests gathering round Scripture, expecting that it will shape our thoughts and actions and that God will be present as the Word of God is preached.  
  

Anyway, off to BU Council tomorrow, let’s hope the deliberations of Council have something prophetic about them.