Somehow to forget myself

This morning I was reflecting on the story of Jesus' arrest, Peter's swordplay and denial - and was struck by something that I read in the WordLive material:

"Jesus wanted Peter to be a witness, not a defender."

The more I thought about this, the more I realised that it's so much easier for me to live reactively, defensively, defending-ly (as Peter did) than to adopt the proactive, giving, accepting way of Jesus.

Then I read today's entry over at Living Wittily and was struck by this section from Elizabeth Jennings poem:

"Teach me how you love and have to die
And I will try

Somehow to forget myself and give
Life and joy so dead things start to live."

With help, we can make positive choices, even though we are aware of our own intrinsic frailty. I guess that in many ways it's about demonstrating the difference between knowing Jesus and knowing about him.

small acts - the sequel

"Do your little bit of good where you are. It’s those little bits of good put together that overwhelm the world."

Archbishop Desmond Tutu

Imagine how surprised I was to get this link in an e-mail today!

God does work in mysterious ways - and through our small acts.

stop and think

Two quotations from the same sermon made me stop and think. The preacher was called Jim Roberts, speaking at St Michael le Belfrey in York (podcasts available through iTunes).

"We are all the best Christian somebody knows... because we are the only Christian somebody knows!"

"We get persecuted for the message of Christianity, not for being stupid! There is a world of difference, although some Christians don't realise that."

Now put them together... Hmmm!?!

Let there be light

I was really inspired by His Girl Friday's entry "Let your light shine..." I particularly liked the Mandela quotation.

The section where he says "And when we let your own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same", triggered a thought. So I flicked through my journal and found the stuff below partly completed. (You might think that it's still partly complete - but I'm posting it anyway!)

we need shafts of
light
to sustain
hope

we need threads of
hope
to sustain
commitment

we need a lifetime of
commitment
to be
disciples.

The nature of the kingdom

This is not the blog that I intended to post today, but my thinking was overtaken by a combination of things that I read this morning.

First and foremost was a passage from Luke’s gospel – the words of Jesus that struck me were:

“The kingdom of God does not come visibly … because the kingdom of God is within you.” (Luke 17:20-21)

This is an extraordinary/revolutionary thought – not because it turned the religious thinking of the time on its head (which it did). But, if the kingdom of God is within us, then we contain/constrain it. We must release it in the lives we lead – our acts and attitudes.

The integrity of the kingdom depends on our integrity.

The demonstration of God’s love depends on our love… And so it goes on.

Then I turned to John V Taylor’s “The Incarnate God” (and I quote at length):

“The true meaning of the prayer ‘Your Kingdom come’ ought to be a subject of supreme importance for all Christians…

…this is why Jesus invented the parable as his particular method of preaching. A parable does not convince people by arguing; it simply offers the truth to their imagination as a gift to be taken by those who have ears to hear and ignored by those who have not…

The second innovation which Jesus brought to his preaching of the Kingdom was to call men and women to live the life of the Kingdom here and now in anticipation of its arrival… we must be like him and reflect his nature in all our relationships.”

All of which left me with a question – summed up by Heschel:

“We cannot endure the heartbreaking splendor of sunsets. Of what avail, then, are opinions, words, dogmas?”

My conclusion, so far as I have one - how we worship through our living will always outweigh the words that we use.

Extreme Pilgrim concludes (again)

I finished yesterday's blog entry with a question - The question is how do we maintain the spiritual dimension in our lives – short of trekking half-way around the globe and doing headstands in a thong?

I have two answers, or approaches, to suggest.

Mark Sanborn has posted a blog about Space and Place to Think. I think that this offers a clue - find a place and space to be with God. It doesn't have to be a Himalayan mountain-top, but it should be somewhere meaningful for you. Find it, and then go there regularly.

The second suggestion is to do it regularly - for me connected to Sabbath (again). David Adam talks of his belief in recital theology (in Power Lines). I am thinking of it as repetition within a pattern. The point is to establish a regular habit and stick with it. Don't wait for a spiritual crisis, make it part of your weekly. It should become natural in time - and fit in with other commitments.

Does it have to be any more complicated than that?

Extreme Pilgrim concludes

The BBC’s Extreme Pilgrim reaches its conclusion this week – or does it?

The series will end on Friday night, but will Peter Owen-Jones reach any conclusions or find any satisfactory answers on his quest to find a spiritual dimension to his faith? I hope he does – primarily so that we can all learn from his adventure. I’ve also warmed to him over the course of the first two instalments, and I hope that he finds some answers for himself.

Before the series does conclude I thought I’d share my thoughts so far – based on what we’ve been shown. First of all, as PO-J has relaxed and retreated from (Western) society, he has found more peace and seems more at ease. This seems to point toward a need to slow down and step back from the hurly-burly of every day life. This fits with some of my own developing thinking about establishing Sabbath practices as an integral part of our lives.

Secondly, PO-J’s progress has also been linked to his involvement in small communities - in the mountain-top Buddhist monastery and in the Indian village in the foothills of the Himalayas. The lessons here seem to be that we do not exist in isolation, and certainly few of us will not find a spiritual dimension in completely retreating from the world.
The question is how do we maintain the spiritual dimension in our lives – short of trekking half-way around the globe and doing headstands in a thong?

The Incarnate God

After yesterday's rant I wanted to post something a bit different.

I'm currently reading John V Taylor's "The Incarnate God" (which I may blog about later - when I've finished it). In the meantime, I thought I'd post this.

In the preface to one of the section there's a prayer that Taylor used as a daily dedication. I like it; I hope you do too.

Lord Jesus Christ

alive and at large in the world,

help me to follow and find you there today,

in the places where I work,

meet people,

spend money,

and make plans.

Take me as a disciple of your Kingdom,

to see through your eyes,

and hear the questions you are asking,

to welcome all others with trust and truth,

and to change the things that contradict God's love,

by the power of the cross,

and the freedom of your Spirit.

Extreme wholeness

More thoughts about Extreme Pilgrim and the spiritual dimension to faith in the West.

“Our job is not to figure out the how. The how will show up out of commitment and belief in the what.”
Jack Canfield

I’ve been using the ethos of this quotation all over the place recently – and probably driving people crazy in the process – because I firmly believe that we are prone to jumping straight to the ‘how’, rather than identifying clearly what the ‘what’ is.

Applying this to the Extreme Pilgrim – or at least my interest in it – Peter Owen-Jones is looking at some of the ‘hows’, but what is the ‘what’? On reflection, the ‘what’ is not about the spiritual dimension as such. The ‘what’ is the search for wholeness and balance. If we only focus on the spirit, we will inevitably neglect something else (body or mind). I think this is where we end up when we pull back from the extreme of Extreme Pilgrim (and I’ll be interested to see where P O-J ends up).

We can think of wholeness in a variety of ways:
- Mind/body/ spirit
- Creative/ productive
- Prayer/reflection/ study/ application
- Life/ work/church
- etc, etc, etc

The point with any of these combinations is to find the right balance. This doesn’t mean equal portions, and the balance will vary for each of us.

The dissatisfaction with the spiritual dimension that I’ve been speaking about recently, is a consequence of losing the balance. Of giving too much emphasis to other dimension (mainly the mind in my view).

If we commit to finding our own balances, then we might find the ‘how’ that we need.

One final thought – look at the balance in Jesus life on earth. He spent time in prayer (spirit); teaching (mind); and healing (body). He also rested and enjoyed the company of others. An all-round balanced life. Dare we aspire to this?

Following the extreme pilgrim

Have we lost the spiritual dimension to Christianity in the West?

To a large extent I believe that we have – or at least we have diminished the importance of it. Maybe this is due to the post-Reformation fear of ‘mumbo jumbo’ – so the focus was moved from feeling to knowing. Then as a result of the Enlightenment, knowledge and rational thinking became a dominant theory in church life. More recently we have perhaps emphasised the aspect of the ‘personal salvation decision’, rather than developing a relationship with God.

I realise that all of these points are contestable, but it seems to me that they fit a picture of Western, Protestant Christianity that I recognise.

So what if the analysis above is correct? What do we need to do about it?

Well, I came across a publisher blurb for a book on Henri Nouwen, which talked about “… escaping the tyranny of busyness, choosing to live in ways that, moment by moment, remind us of who we are – the beloved of God.” I like that!

The key to any solution (if a solution is needed), is to recognise and define the problem, then carefully consider what it is that is trying to be fixed. I suggest that this is not a quick fix or extreme makeover of the sort you see on TV. Rather it’s about adapting and adjusting our approach and building a more balanced perspective.

More to follow … but in the meantime a quotation from an Indian philosopher to think about:

“A cup is useful only when it is empty; and a mind that is filled with beliefs, with dogmas, with assertions, with quotations is really an uncreative mind.”
Jiddu Krishnamurti

Extreme pilgrim

I stumbled across this programme last night on BBC2 - you can watch it online for the next few days using BBC’s iPlayer. In my opinion it’s worth watching, although you may need to stick with it for a while. I didn’t find the first bit particularly endearing, but was quite captivated by the end!

Initially my interest was at a fairly superficial level. I had a degree of empathy with a middle-aged, unfit man entering a month of martial arts training. However, as the programme proceeded, I began to see some resonance with the spiritual quest that he was on. In his view, the church has become too intellectual, with not enough spirituality. In his words:

"What I'm looking for is a spirituality that is absent from western Christianity. A spirituality I know exists in the extremes of world religions.

I hope to enter worlds where rule book and doctrine are replaced by an individual relationship with God and where the attainment of enlightenment is won by hardship, privation and pain. I have to become an extreme pilgrim."

I certainly agree with the first part of his statement.

Yesterday, I also came across a blog entry talking about Konrad Lorenz and his view that man has lost the capacity to be reflective.

These two discoveries have certainly caused me to pause and reflect a bit.

Have we – in the Western, Protestant churches – lost the spiritual dimension to our faith? Have we intellectualized and neutralized our relationship with God? Do we view the spiritual aspect with suspicion?

Am I personally guilty of this?

Over the next few days I will reflect on these and provide some of my own thoughts here. Feel free to join the debate.

AIDS and advent - sinful absence and puny efforts

What’s the connection between World AIDS day and the start of advent?

It’s not a riddle – but could the answer be realisation and hope?

I’d like to point out 4 articles for you to consider:

1 - Tearfund’s December reflection
2 - Reuters’ article about Kay Warren
3 - BBC article on World Aids day – including George Bush’s attempts to double funding for combating the disease
4 - British Red Cross campaign to raise awareness and understanding

Contrast the “sinful absence and puny efforts” that Kay Warren talks about with the joyous, hope-filled presence of advent and the supreme efforts that Christ made for us.

Cumulative effect

Over the next couple of posts I'm going to draw on some quotations from Derek Wilson's Out of the Storm (see previous post). Lazy blogging? Probably, but I'm going to do it anyway!

"Dramatic sights stick in the mind while the daily routines of early life become blurred in recollection but it is the latter that, cumulatively, have the greater formative effect."

So how does this apply to our Christian experience? Many, particularly in evangelical churches, place a strong emphasis on the 'dramatic moment of conversion' - I don't, because I don't have such an event.

For me the greater signficance is the ongoing formation of character, as we seek to become authentic Christ followers.

There are scary thoughts here:

• What are we doing to support and nurture people exploring Christianity?
• What are we doing to keep on developing ourselves?

(Please note - I didn't say that the posts would be about Luther!)

Too much church?? #2

Since my last entry on this matter, I've been mulling it over.

As a complete aside - I was once at a seminar where the speaker described meditating as being like a cow chewing the cud. I like that! And having adopted it my brain is frequently full of half-masticated cud.

So what is it about church? Well, I think that we have a tendency to fall into habits that we struggle to break (usually an unspoken form of 'tradition'). This then presents itself in the following way:

• What did we do last?
• That went well.
• Yes - let's do more of the same.
• OK

Granted the thought process is never as strucutred as this, but if we are honest - when did your church last do something totally different? Just as an example, have a look at the nonprofitprophet's idea about guilt free Sundays. Could that ever happen in your church?

As ever, I have an opinion on this - and in a large part, we are unduly restricted by our history/traditions and the type of leadership that emerges as a result. I came across a quotation from a book called "After the Church: Divine Encounter in a Sexual Age by Claire Henderson Davis (I haven't read it yet, but the title makes it irresistible!). Anyway, she says:

"While the west has shifted to democracy, Christian churches still tolerate parent-childlike structures... in order to mature we must reconnect. Not to embrace the Christian cult, but to know where we are in the plot, to take the story forward."

So how do we go about this? Well, that's something that we need to wrestle with and debate - openly, robustly, honestly and lovingly. That Hideous Man has some thoughts on aspects of this - and my limited addition to his current posting is that maybe we need to have more arrows, but of different sizes - representing different emphasis. I suggest that a model worth exploring might be to include the "offering praise and worship" arrow in Marshall's view.

But how we get there is another matter - even if it's where we want to go.

I will be posting an entry on constructive dissent in the next few days - maybe that will have some impact on my thinking in this area - more cud to chew!

Too much church??

Surprisingly, this is not a rant about too many church services and meetings. It's more a half-baked thought (or conversation starter) - it's something that I want to think through a bit more.

I wonder if we/I spend too much time and energy 'doing' church rather than 'being' church. In part my thinking has been prompted by a visit from our church's link missionaries (more about them another time) and in part by reading the story of Jesus' rejection in his hometown.

Improving church organisation, etc is important, but so is building and being part of a loving, inclusive, incarnational community that is ready to be amazed by Jesus - week after week after week. I'm concerned that we've become so comfortable and complacent in the western church that we're settling for re-arranging the flowers rather than turning the world right side up.

I'll need to chew this over a bit.

BiSY bees

I've mentioned before that I write bible study material for a bunch of teenagers. During term they meet in our house after school every Thursday - we call it "Nurture Group". Aye, not too original - but it does what it says on the tin, and any time we've tried to change it the youngsters protest (maybe geeky is the new cool?). I should mention at this point that the study leaders are my wife and a couple of friends from our church. They are the real heroes in this endeavour.

Anyway, today was the first Thursday of the new school term and we had record numbers - 28! And at least a couple of the regulars missing. I'm stoondit - 28 kids coming to study the Bible (and eat food and have a laugh), then one of them asked if she can bring 4 friends from her church!

It's only a few years since we were wondering if we should keep the group going when the numers dropped to a handful. But since they were faithful in turning up each week - and growing as individuals - we decided to persevere.

There is hope!

So why BiSY bees as a title for this blog? Well, before I get into that I should explain that our planning for NG covers a six-year period. This coincides with the maximum duration of a secondary school career in Scotland - unless you're a teacher. It also means that my brain only has to cope with Revelation and Creation once every six years.

Right, BiSY is a new introduction this year - it stands for the Bible in Six Years. We've introduced an optional six year plan for reading the whole Bible. We'll see how it goes. By the way, if anyone knows of a six-year plan it would save me a bit of effort;-)

The thinking behind this is kind of inspired by Brodie's blog on "Deep Scripture". I've tried the Bible in a Year stuff - but it becomes a mind-numbing chore, with more effort going into 'ticking the boxes' than into reflection and learning. I've tried the Bible Study notes approach - they're a bit variable (that's a euphemism). So I figured that we would give them a different approach. Along the way we'll give them some tips, prompts, quizzes etc to make them think about what they're reading, but most of all we'll celebrate the fact that our house is too small for all of the kids who want to study the Bible in Perth.

Rejoice!

Jesus rocks ...

“Our great problem is the problem of trafficking in unlived truth.”
D.L.Moody

In church yesterday, the sermon was based on John 3:16. It occurred to me that there is great significance in the context of this well-known passage. It’s Jesus response to Nicodemus’ night time visit. Jesus comments would have rocked Nicodemus’ world- not just the stuff about being ‘born again’, but also the inclusive nature of Jesus’ words. Look closely – everyone, whoever, the world. Not just the Jews then!

In Power & Passion, Samuel Wells comments:

“This is the first of two opportunities Nicodemus is given to choose between worldly respect, influence and power on the one hand and true discipleship on the other.”

I find myself wondering if the church needs to experience a Nicodemus moment – rocked by Jesus words, and facing the choice that Nicodemus was left with.