God of all nations

still alive but i'm barely breathin, prayin to a god that i don't believe in....

so, i didn't really mean to be mysterious the other day (rach :), it was just a comment on the sudden, and slightly unexpected sense of constraint i was feeling. it's similar to being in a church and having to be discerning about the things you say, and definitely the things that you blog about! but for some reason, perhaps it's the intense nature of college, it felt like that but much more oppressive. anyway, nuff said about that, i think.

onto my next thought. this week i've got to lead a discussion at our post-grad theology discussion group (yes, i know, it sounds eye-crossing, but it's really quite informal and there was port last time, and it's a mike thomson/richard bauckham tag team leading it, so, good good)

anyway, i somehow managed to allow myself to be volunteered to lead the discussion this week, with another student as we'd been asking the same questions about 'how it is that we actually know God (hence the title of this blogpost)

i think that my own questions stem from my experience of being in church family with conservative evangelicals and many many times thinking 'i don't know the same God you do'. i know, it's not PC to say that out loud particularly - and i most definitely am not saying that this is about being a christian or not - but that's how i've felt, and it felt like that when i was in that community, and it has continued to feel like that when i've had the odd conversation with people, or just been immersed in that community again (a day out at FCAUK for example).

so, i guess i've got a couple of options here, i could just think 'oh well, sod them' or just pootle along with my own little thoughts, in my own little mind, with my own little friends, who think exactly the things that i think. i could decide that there's no way to discern which version of God is the right one, so either do a dawkins and decide it's all the biggest load of crap, or sit with my happily relativised 'god in my pocket' entirely made in my image - or i could go a little bit mad.

or.........

or.....what?

at this point, i imagine (hope?) that some of you are wondering about the place of scripture in our ideas of God. and yes, i agree with you, that's my first marker on my journey. but.....you see ...how do we interpret scripture? who decides which interpretive model, hermeneutic, is the valid one? and if we then decide which particular hermeneutic is going to be 'ours', which interpretation derived from that model will we decide is valid? and where do we get our idea about what exactly is a valid 'idea' about God? scripture? but then we're in a cycle aren't we? our idea or 'image' of God in our heads determines our assessment of what someone says scripture says about God, which we then choose to assimilate into our thinking as a 'valid interpretation' dependent on which image of God is already there.

so where does my image of God come from?

speaking with someone else about this, he says, what about the community? (as in the universal community of God, throughout history - tradition)

so, the things that have been handed down, the traditional interpretations of who God is, are handed down, we don't 'imagine' things up ourselves (how arrogant!), we were not the first people to read scripture, to meet God, to 'think things' about God, to be persons of faith who sought to understand. the tradition gives us a framework and an anchor, within which and rooted by which, we are free to do our own thinking about God.

true.

but just one more question.

in our history there are different understandings of God. calvinism vs armenianism is not a 'new' discussion, trinitarianism was always a faith position, 'God is love' had to be wrestled with as a concept from the beginning.

even now, i wonder, do i ally myself with those who simply affirm my already formed views about who God is? do i wrestle against those whose view of God i, sometimes, find abhorrent, only because it conflicts with 'my' idea about God?

someone recently said to me, after a conversation on this subject, 'yeah, but maybe that's okay, maybe it's just being okay with you believing in the God who you know in your own head', to which i responded 'no, that's just not good enough, i want to know God, i want to know who God is, and i want to seek him until i know that i really know him.'

i think that this is my position, for the moment - to know that i don't know and to be okay with that.

but only if he doesn't turn out to be a big beardy storm god who hates me.

oh!......bugger.

voiceless

i am in a bit of a predicament (i wanted to say 'pickle' but didn't think it sounded right)

you may have noticed that i haven't been blogging as much lately, you might have thought that i've been busy, had other thoughts to think, and you'd be right....kinda.

there is sooooo much here to do, so much to say, so much to think and reflect on - but should i blog about it? there's stuff that i really want to say, to work out, to demand to be wrestled out and thoughts to be thought.

but the truth is that i feel.....a bit silenced.

what does a feminist look like?

apparently, at college, some people think i'm a bit of a feminist.

strangely i was a little surprised. 'why?' you may well ask. after all i'm not exactly 'lost for words' on the matter, i don't mind saying, for example, that our words in worship should represent all humanity. and lots of other things that strike me as essentially gospel practice, rather than distinctively feminist.

and i suppose that is something that i will continue to reflect on. i guess i've been on this journey for a long time. i've had space to make the connections, which, for me now, makes the thoughts that i think, the practices which i endeavour to do and promote, inherently gospel.

my point is that i never 'try to be a feminist', well, actually, that's not entirely true, there are moments when i think that the right thing to do/say/point out, will cost me and it is an active choice, but mostly the way that i am and the things that i say are just second nature. however when i am aware of the cost, it's a cost which, to me, is about gospel values, a cost which, as a disciple of jesus, i am bound to pay.

in the end words can be a bit slippery, they conjure up images, they represent symbols which mean things to us, different things to different people - the word feminist can mean ballbreaker, it can mean a call to arms, it can mean someone who recognises the history, it can mean someone who has hope for the future.

whoever you are and wherever you come from this word can mean all manner of things.

so....does it mean you?

method in my madness

a lot of my thinking at the minute is caught up in how we 'do' theology. i've been surprised at the idea that theology might be considered abstract, irrelevant. i guess i've had some great teachers over the last nine years who taught me, explicitly and implicitly, that beliefs and practice are inseparable and that what we believe about God inevitably controls what we do. what i believe about the doctrine of this, that or the other will never simply stay in the classroom.

this piece was written in response to a piece of contextual theology that was read and discussed in a classroom. it was written by heather walton and was about her experience of infertility and staying in a hospital with other women. she ends her piece by asserting 'this is how theology is done'. whilst i agree that people do theology from their context, i rather worry that we can become snobbish about certain contexts being unassailable, unquestionable as places to do theology.

____________________________________

A true story.

That may have actually happened.

It claims to have depth that abstract theology cannot. That theology done in the place of sterility cannot.

But is there ever such a place? Even the bearded theological professor has pain, has the deep secrets that he does not want anyone to know, has the fear.

God is the God of the fruitful vineyard and the fruitless fig. And you may choose who is who.

The things that we might think are ‘dead’ may be found to be living in God. It is only in the close scrutiny of doing, that we might find a latent fecundity.....or a pseudo-fertility.

Do not be fooled by the words, whether of the creative or the academic: poetic and beautiful, or droning and dull. Again, you may choose which is which. In either place the logos, the spark of life, may set you on fire, or, if you like, the seed may germinate, crack open and in its death give itself over to life, budding, green, new and vulnerable.

At any point it may not survive and may end up in the ground to become the muck that feeds the next new life. Or it may grow and grow and grow to be tall and proud, it may offer protection for the next new life to grow...or it may overshadow and steal its food.

Conception may happen in the dark of the night, in the strip light of a hospital room, or in the minds of students as they soak up the words dripping out of the professor. Birth is not inevitable after conception in any of these places. But it may be that something grows in the secret place.

The mind is the womb from where practice bursts.

How and where can theology be done?

Before the beginning was the Word.
Existing, being, living.

In the pulsating, pulsing place of life.
Theology is done.

Creation formed by a crying out.
Waking, seeing, thinking.

In the clumsy, chaotic, consummation of life
Theology is done.

A people gathered, in the smelting pot
Suffering, weeping, stumbling.

In the dirty, dreary, doing of life
Theology is done.

Women and men, acting out belief
Conflicted, confused, impulsive.

In the constant, continual, conversation of life
This is how theology is done.

prayer well

ridley has a quality about it - that's about as articulate as i can get about it. and i'm beginning to realise just how much that 'quality' is founded in the place of prayer in the life of the ridley community.

the simeon centre which is based at ridley, is a centre of ignatian spirituality, it is one of the main reasons that i felt excited about ridley at the interview day, and today i was reminded just how exciting it is.

prayer is something that is central to my own discipleship - not because i'm a particularly super spiritual pray-er, or because i think i've got the prayer life thing sorted, i absolutely do not. what i mean is that i know that without prayer i cannot do this. and by 'this' i mean life.

when i was going through a particularly acute period of anxiety, i quite literally could not have got up in the morning without starting with prayer. i know that this is my life blood, because it's all about jesus.

i can't wait to spend some time deepening this and enjoying the jesus-like people of the simeon centre, who live this 'quality' and can teach me more than i can imagine.

one thing i would like to learn over my time here is how to make prayer 'central' in a church that i might end up being vicar of in the future. how do we catalyse the prayer life of others? most people find prayer hard at some time or another and this is true of communities too. and quite often prayer becomes the thing around which apathy, guilt, insecurity grows. alternatively there's the legalism which can strangle anything like real life out of prayer. how do we help disciples and communities of disciples (the thing we call church) to want to pray, or at least to want to want to pray? without that being about yet another thing that we can 'beat' each other at - that is genuinely about care of each other on this road we're on.

so hopefully these will be things that i can see happening in ridley over the next little while and can drink deeply from.

wonderful idiots

the last few days have been a rather strange whirlwind of socialising, networking, encountering and listening.

i have had sometimes the most bewildering range of emotions - excitement, fear, anticipation. most of these have been expected, but some have taken me a little by surprise and as i start to watch others around me i am reminded how complex we all are. how different. how distinctive.

some of us are introverts and some extroverts - this is the classic dichotomy isn't it? over the last few years i've become less and less convinced about it, particularly because in many ways i'm your typical extrovert, i'm a social animal and always have been, however having spent so much of my time on my own to study, and perhaps it's a little to do with cherishing time alone when one has small children, i've begun to relish the time that i get to spend on my own too. i need headspace. but, in the end, i can't get away from the fact that i love people, i love hearing their stories, telling them mine - my default setting seems to be that of the anthrophile.

so i see the more introvert struggle with the constant 'noise' of community, which seems to assault the senses in a whole gamut of ways. this, i think, is to be expected. however, what i hadn't really anticipated was the way in which my own extrovert nature would react. you see i'm quite a 'heart on your sleeve' kind of woman. i'm quite open about my own peculiarities....most of the time. and in vicar college i'm sure that this is the way it's meant to be. after all over 2 or 3 years you really can't hide who you are, even if you want to. but the thing is that it's all a bit artificial. and i find myself slightly unsure in this bubble of forced community - how much to share, who with, and when.

it's also been slightly interesting having some people comment on stuff that i've written either here or on fulcrum (in a nice way, well mostly) - i admit to finding that a bit disconcerting. i could lie to you and say that of course i'm totally used to it - but i'm not. the truth is that most people have never heard of fulcrum (yes, it's true - i suffer no pretensions), and, shocking i know, but some people couldn't give two hoots about local church politics, national church politics, international church politics or the covenant, windsor process, gene robinson, GAFCON, FCAUK, etc etc.

i guess what i'm saying is that i have no desire to pretend. absolutely non whatsoever. i am constantly surprised that i've ended up doing everything i'm doing. i am sometimes a blethering idiot. i, rather too often for my own liking, say things that probably should have been left unsaid. when i'm nervous i'm much more likely to suffer from verbal diarrhoea than to clam up. i sometimes feel wildly free and sometimes excruciatingly shy.

and i'm okay with that.

i'm absolutely wonderfully, excitingly, amazingly terrified. and i would be highly suspicious of myself if i couldn't articulate that. it's very tempting to pretend. tempting to give off the aura of knowing what's what. but i don't.

so there :P

dna ii

observation no.2, which i alluded to in my last post, is the affirmation of 'lay' ministers. this is something that is not restricted to the frex community of course, it's something which is very much part of the dna of new wine too, however both those communities appear to struggle with how an affirmation of lay ministry happens without simply subsuming it into a type of pseudo-ordained ministry and thus, in reality, denigrating both.

again this is something that maggi, being an ordained woman who is secure in her calling, avoided, but was apparent in the conversations that i had with others at the conference, although not all.

i mention this more because it is a trend that i have begun to see in both economies - parish and frex/emerging. there is seemingly an ambivalence as to what it mean to be a priest/leader, what does the collar mean? there's a reaction against the superiority that has been attached to the collar historically - a very right reaction in my opinion. however i firmly believe that the response, whilst noble, has taken a turn which will in fact cause serious problems in the future, and particularly for ordained women, who, now they have been 'allowed' to be ordained, discover that what they have fought for, not in terms of 'rights', but in terms of the mission of God, means, precisely, nothing - for now everyone, regardless of corporate discernment, sacrifice, training, is included in the ordination call.

everyone is ordained...so no-one is.

this is probably particularly a problem for evangelicals, actually that's a question - is this particularly a problem for evangelicals?

us evangelicals who talk about the ordained in terms of leadership rather than priesthood.

perhaps this is what the term 'leader' does, because we know that people can be leaders even if they're not ordained, so in order not to make the ordained leader 'special' or 'magic', we just make everyone 'leaders', and so the distinctive ministries of lay and ordained are lost. in the end, the use of the word 'leader' does the opposite of what it's trying to do. it's trying to make everyone feel significant, but because it loses the notion of 'distinctiveness' along the way, we get swallowed up in a soup of sameness.

i believe that we are all valued and loved by God, called by him to our particular ministries - and because of this i believe in distinctive ministries, ordained and lay, which are not to be subsumed, one into the other, but to be celebrated, encouraged and recognised. in this way each person is celebrated, encouraged and recognised.

it may seem that i'm being a bit harsh on the terminology, well perhaps, and again this is something that has diversity within fresh expressions too (i suspect that it depends on the evangelical/catholic heritage, but i'm not sure), but words matter, they form our societies and determine where we're going. so best have a look at their meaning, yeah?

dna

yesterday i went to an awesome day conference, helpfully put on in the church that i'm attached to for the next two years whilst training at ridley.

it was called 'fresh expressions and the sacraments' and was organised by dave male (fresh expressions guru) and the speaker was maggi dawn, which was brilliant.

the day was broken up into four sections; what are sacraments for? what is communion? (the particular sacrament that was being discussed over the whole day) liturgy of communion - in which we wrote our own liturgy and celebration of the eucharist using that liturgy.

a great mix of verbal speaker stylie and audience participation, with plenty of chance and encouragement to ask questions.

i am particularly interested in this because i want to do a kind of mix and match parish/pioneer ministry training. ridley are open to this and seem to have the things in place to enable me to do it, although i think i'm a little bit of a guinea pig in this area. after going to this conference, however, i even more strongly think that this is something i want to do. i feel really strongly about the growing mutual exclusivity of the parish vs pioneer priest. this is something that is unnecessary and really unhealthy for all parts of the body.

so there were loads of questions and thoughts that i came away with, which i thought i might explore a little bit here over a few posts.

so, number 1. i made an observation about some of the reasons that people get into fresh expressions ministry. there is a strong pull away from the 'one man band' type model of ministry, away from the apparent exclusivity of clergy vs laity and from the general stuffiness associated with the idea or image of the parish priest. in some ways i wondered if this was part of the 'dna' of the pioneer priest. on talking with one guy he verbalised it as pioneer ministry being full of people who 'don't want to be a vicar, and so this is a way to do it' - by which i took to mean that a lot of the young guys who feel called to ministry, think of their image of the local vicar and thing 'i don't want to be that' and so head towards pioneer ministry as a kind of anti-position.

my own vision of ministry which encompasses both comes closer to what i see maggi doing. as she called it at the conference, it's about 'blowing the dust off the old' and 'digging deep to the treasures underneath'. there's something about traditional parish ministry which has a deep rootedness about a community formed in continuity with that tradition. we must look to draw on this deep rootedness for the good of fresh expressions of church.

there doesn't seem to be any doubt that a lot of young guys/people don't want to be the image of the parish priest that they might have in their head, but for me, i don't have that image. this expresses itself in two ways - first, i didn't grow up a christian. i became a christian at 14 and yes, the vicar at the time was a bit old and stuffy, but this was also the era of youth ministry, soul survivor and school's ministry. vicars could be cool. secondly, i'm a woman, no matter whether i have an image of the stuffy old parish priest or not - i ain't gonna be it. whether i want to be or not. by definition of my gender, i don't fit that image.

interestingly, this makes my position perhaps more flexible. i can fit into the parish thing, and draw on it, but not be tied to what 'people expect' in the same way that a man might. don't misunderstand me, i'm not that naiive, of course people will have their expectations of me, but my own need or vulnerability to those expectations is not linked to matching up to the man who went before me. i'm not drawn to the fresh expressions thing as an 'anti' position. i'm not concerned with being associated with the term 'parish priest'.

how much is fresh expressions a renewal movement of the parish system? and how much is it a completely new system? how does the 'dna' of the ministers who get involved with it influence the way that it goes, the tracks that it takes and the ones that are consigned to the sidings? i can see a 'two-track' communion happening within fresh expressions itself (very topical!), in which there will be those who see the value in the parish system and are willing to dig deep to uncover the treasures and seek continuity both historically and liturgically, and those who, still seeking those treasures, will seek to keep that continuity in ways separate to that system.

++rowan calls it a 'mixed economy' between parish system and fresh expressions, but it needs to understand that there is as much breadth of identity amongst the frex stuff as there is throughout our parishes.

and it's good to have a mixed economy, as long as the pound can be spent in the euro shop and vice versa.

words of knowledge

okay, so, derren brown.

i have to admit he's the kind of guy i think i'd love to hate. in my head i imagine him to be slightly smug and dismissive of people as he treats them like his playthings - daring them to try to outwit his freakishly intuitive nature.

but, it turns out, i don't hate him. i think he's bloody brilliant. and he's doing my head in.

if you watched his programs last night, i can't think how you escape wracking your brains as to how that kind of understanding of human facial expressions, mannerisms, body language is possible.

for those of you who didn't watch the programs, here's the big deal.

if that doesn't make you have big huge questions about all kinds of stuff, then i don't know what will.

so, let me tell you some of the things that it makes me think.

derren brown is absolutely exquisitely clear that he does not believe himself to be psychic at all. he doesn't attribute his gift to anything other than a honed skill in reading people, reading from their reactions to him, from the way they look, from the way that they carry themselves, from their manner, from the clothes they wear etc etc.

and he can tell you the most obscure things, the 'hidden' things, the things that no-one else could know - that he couldn't, or shouldn't know, but does. for instance, on the program prior to the lottery number prediction he told a man that the question that man had wanted to ask derren (but which he didn't because it was a silly question) was whether the man should shave his scrotum - i kid you not. the man had opened himself up to the question being guessed, so it wasn't an abuse, derren didn't reveal a 'secret' that wasn't openly offered to be revealed.

he was also very responsible with his gift too. a young woman's question (again guessed by derren) was whether she would end up living in america. derren was absolutely clear that whatever he said wasn't written in stone, that he wasn't pronouncing any definite future over the woman's life, but that he was offering his positive answer to her as a distinct possibility based on what he could 'read' from who she was.

so i began to wonder.

in my own context of faith and religion, we have such a thing as gifts of prophecy and words of knowledge. is this what derren does? or, more to the point, is what derren does, what we do?

what if the highly tuned gift that derren obviously has, is something that people who we designate 'prophets' have?

you see, i rather doubt that derren went from being someone with absolutely no intuitive gift, to predicting the lottery, overnight. i imagine that derren began to realise that he 'knew' stuff about people. and as this gift continued, perhaps he charted it a bit. clocked it. recognised that it was happening. then, perhaps with no 'faith' framework to fit it into, he decided that he would analyse what it was that he was keying into that gave him the 'knowledge' of these people that he, normally, wouldn't have.

so, after time, he begins to think of the exact facial expressions, the exact bodily posture, that gives away certain pieces of information. he memorises them, so that if they come up on other people, he knows.

now, this might make it seem like this is then a learnable skill, something that anyone can do - and therefore, de-mystified, and, perhaps, secular, rather than sacred. but, i would think that even if derren tells us exactly how he predicted the national lottery, there will be an exact number of '0' of us, who will, any time soon, be down the newsagents with the winning ticket.

but this is still an awesome gift - this is still a gift that has the whiff of the divine about it.

my point is that derren has done something with the gift that most of us would never do. he's analysed it. he knows it. he knows when it's his own stuff getting in the way. he knows exactly what it is that he's doing. he's made this 'talent' worth a million times more. he hasn't stuck it in the mud, worried that he'd be called a freak.

regardless of how we interpret this gift in light of our own understanding of God's revealing nature, of God's use of his people as prophets. how many of us would spend a year honing that skill? how many of us would use the skills uncovered by secular means to hone our divine gift?

i predict that you're either slightly irritated right now, or feel like your brain's going to explode - or both

article

just re-published a piece on fulcrum (previously on sophianetwork)

we are here

so on tuesday we moved.

and now we're here.

what does that mean exactly? just like moving was a long process over the last year, there are certain 'moments' in arriving that have to be noticed - you know, a deliberate noticing of the particular roots going down and feeding from the ground they've been placed in.

for example i felt quite clear that we needed the house to be 'unboxed' fairly quickly - that some sense of normality would help us all to feel settled. and so the boxes are pretty much emptied (apart from the ones that will stay boxed for the next two years...)

on thursday we took the kids to the maizemaze and met some other ridley students and spouses, even invited one of the 'new' spouses home for lunch - this was a particular 'root' for me, i love opening up our house to people, even if we're the 'new ones'.

yesterday i cycled into cambridge and navigated my way to college, just to test the route. i began to get a sense of the nooks and crannies of cambridge city centre (even if it was by cycling through places that i don't think i'm meant to cycle through - eek)

and today - we went to church. i have to admit feeling slightly nervous, this place will be our worshipping community, our church family, our friends, our leaders, for the next 2 years. it's important. this is a major root for me and for us as a family. i guess my main community will be the ridley one, but i also want to have real relationships with our community in milton and at church. it's a long time since i've had to start from the beginning in a place - i mean i've made many new friends over the years, i love meeting people and hearing their stories, but there is no one here who knows me from of old, who knows what i'm like, how i tick, there is no one here who can say 'that's what she's like', or, when i've screwed up, 'that's not like her, she must be having an off day'. yet.

i want to root down quickly, which will mean being a little bit vulnerable, discerning quickly what people are like, and what to say in which context. i have discovered that i already come with a label - 'ridley student' - and this will have it's pros and it's cons, but it's who i am, so i'll have to get used to it, and what that means to others, even when i'm not sure what it means to me yet.

i guess this is what it means to be present in an active sense. you have to really choose to be yourself in a place, choose to be in the place where you are. you particularly have to choose this when the place that you are is not known to you yet. if the relationships that you have with the people and the community that you find yourself in - and this probably includes the projected relationships that you have with places or institutions too - form you, then a recalibration must take place when you remove yourself from one place to another.

who you are in one place, is, necessarily, not who you are in another place. people react to you differently, and as your relationships form you, you are, essentially, a different person. of course all your relationships over space and time are still holding you, still forming you, so it might not seem as if you are that much different from yesterday. but still - we are changed by our encounters.

so...we're here.

now the question is...who are we?

remember our history

he [satan] had a deceitful conversation with the woman - no doubt starting with the inferior of the human pair so as to arrive at the whole by stages, supposing that the man would not be so easily gullible, and could not be trapped by a false move on his part, but only if he yielded to another's mistake.
augustine

and do you not know that you are each an eve? the sentence of God on this sex of yours lives in this age: the guilt must of necessity live too. you are the devil's gateway; you are the unsealer of that forbidden tree; you are the first deserter of the divine law; you are she who persuaded him whom the devil was not valiant enough to attack. you destroyed so easily God's image, man. on account of your desert - that is, death - even the son of God had to die.
tertullian

therefore satan, seeing that adam was the more excellent creature, did not dare attack him; for he was afraid that this attempt would fail. and i believe that if he had attacked adam first, adam would have gained the victory. he would have crushed the serpent with his foot and said: hold your tongue! the lord has commanded otherwise.
luther

woman is more guilty than man, because she was seduced by satan, and so diverted her husband from obedience to God that she was an instrument of death leading all to perdition. it is necessary that women recognise this, and that she learn to what she is subjected; and not only against her husband. this is reason enough why today she is placed below and that she bears within her ignominy and shame.
calvin

expectations

did you ever feel like there are days where everyone wants a piece of you?

the ever talented dave walker

click flash

are you fat? are you lanky? do your ears stick out? is your hair going grey?

do you hide?

when people run around with a camera, are you the person who pretends it's not there, turns away; do you hide?

i know, i understand, i've been there, but who is it that you're hiding from? your own image of yourself in your head? do you think you're protecting your friends and family from what you really look like? do you think they don't know? don't love you exactly the way you are? what are you scared of? what is your deepest fear?

a long time ago, two others hid from the One who loved them. they were ashamed, they had realised just how exposed they were, how known they were. they saw that their brokenness was visible. and so they hid.

but this is where the lie is exposed. they couldn't hide. they did the human equivalent of sticking their heads in the sand. like children who cover their eyes and think they can't be seen.

you know, i meet so many people - sadly mainly women - who are paralysed by what they do or do not look like. who are obsessed by food - too much or too little. and who assign moral value to each mouthful. it's the culture we grow up in - and it is an extremely hard one to work against. especially if you feel like you wear your brokenness in full visibility of everyone else. too fat, too thin, too old, too geeky, too whatever.

but everyone is broken, and there is One to whom all our brokenness is fully known. and this One still loves us, calls us, gives us a purpose and a voice.

so my challenge to others out there - don't collude, don't hide, use your voice.

and most of all

say cheese.

meet the fca: part II

‘satan is alive and well and resides in church house’ according to +broadhurst

together with general synod, which apparently has a huge dose of satan too, as it has failed on the issues of marriage discipline, liturgical language (quoting also ‘creator redeemer sustainer’ language), language in worship songs.

he then lambasts Lambeth 1998, calling it a bureaucracy seeking to suppress the gospel and commenting that people are believing the ‘system’ and not in the gospel. he calls the new province (ACNA) ‘authentically anglican’.

at this point i admit to a smile being raised as i watched paul perkin cross the platform and encourage +broadhurst off the stage. certainly quite revealing.

__________________________________________

+duncan also comments on the seeming incongruity of these two traditions working together. how has it happened? because God changed hearts and they agreed to bless each other. they had a common focus: mission, and he comments that when we focus on each other and the party, this is where the temptation is to pick each other apart.

he says that he is asked ‘are the new churches growing?’. to which he answers that there has been terrible splitting and that people have their difficulties in separating from their buildings and the places and things that they have worshipped with, but that when they see those who have made the ultimate sacrifice, that they are encouraged that God is faithful.

he asks ‘what are the qualities of a leader?’. he says that leaders must stop worrying about who gets the credit, and that leadership is about serving. that leaders must speak the truth in love and that we must face the things that would divide us.

(you will begin to notice that there is a huge weighting difference between the time allowed to anglo-catholics compared with evangelical voices, with the evangelical voices more prominent)

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after a short video interview with j i packer, done by richard bewes, +jensen approaches the platform.

he speaks of ‘ominous and foreboding words’ that have been ‘used against’ the FCA. but that this shouldn’t be the case because all FCA wish to do is to keep anglicanism united, to keep orthodox Anglicans within the fold. he asks ‘will you join us?’.

he tells us that we are fighting an ideological war, that the fate of culture and the eternal fate of souls is at stake and that unless we pass the test in the UK then the ‘culture will swallow you alive’. it is a question of the structural unity of the institutional church over the gospel and that whilst in the UK we have the disposition not to ‘panic’ (‘don’t panic mr mainwaring), that this is not a time for drift, that there is little time left and if you don’t do something then the younger generations will be lost. some treat the institutional church as the unassailable temple of the LORD. listening as the false prophets say ‘peace peace’, +jensen says ‘there is no peace’.

the biggest clap of the morning goes to his next statement which is about the place in the church for those whose integrity doesn’t allow them to affirm women bishops. this tells me the constituency i am amongst, even if FCA claims that this is a second order issue, for everyone on the platform and the majority of those there, this is the issue at hand. this is the thread that appears to run through, joining them together. it may run under the surface, but it is there.

he finishes by saying that the conflict is over jesus’ authority, over theological education, over hermeneutics and that ‘they’ (liberals) are ahead of the game. he honours those who remain inside and who are going with the covenant, but he also honours greg venables and the jerusalem declaration is a good document that affirms the biblical gospel, that it is a holy spirit gospel, and it affirms the uniqueness of christ.

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so we turn to the afternoon now, where we are told that we are going to explore the shape of regional expressions of FCA.

vaughan roberts, st ebbe’s, oxford, introduces his ‘nightmare’ and his ‘dream’. his nightmare is that there will be a gradual drift towards apostasy, that there will be a time when the orthodox will not be ordained. that this will come because of people’s naivety, good people will fail to notice the ‘salami tactics’, where slice by slice we find ourselves unorthodox. or that through compromise, where good people don’t want to engage with the issues. or through divisions amongst the tribes. his nightmare is that this will end in sectarianism, where we have such things as ‘church of england (reform)’ or ‘church of england (FIF), or ‘church of england (new wine)

his dream is that FCA becomes a strong united renewal movement of orthodox anglicans. people committed to the truth and that it is not a pragmatic alliance of those united in what they are against. that this would be a group who are committed to breadth: culturally, racially, liturgically, and committed to grace and prayer. a group who would continue to exist within the structures if possible, but if necessary, on the edge.

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i have to apologise that I didn’t take any notes of vinay samuel’s talk on the anglican communion, catholic and local – by this time my brain needed a slight breather!

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we had a brief unpacking of fellowship from philippians, summarised in the five following signs:

1. common partaking or experience of the grace of God.
2. concern to defend and proclaim the gospel (accused some of being ‘sniffy and iffy’ at FCA even though this is all they want to do)
3. pray for and covet prayer from brothers and sisters
4. stand firm – military metaphor of ‘locking shields’
5. giving and receiving finances

fellowship must contain all five

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the main part of the afternoon was taken up by focusing on FCA as a mission movement and this too was split into five sections:

1. mission: we must go, sometimes to places we are not allowed to go
2. ministry: we will appoint, within the structures, sometimes outside
3. stewardship: we will fund, some things we cannot fund
4. fellowship: we will associate, but sometimes we cannot associate
5. oversight: seek oversight within the structures, and sometimes outside

my subtitles are a paraphrase as i didn’t copy them exactly.

the format of this part of the afternoon was to use videos of some with a positive spin on, for example, church plants, and some who had been ‘forced’ to go against the bishop and plant anyway, where they deemed their bishop to be working against the gospel by stopping them plant. then two people were invited onto the platform to be interviewed about their experience – overwhelmingly these people were negative. this format was followed for all five sections and became more and more wearing as the afternoon went on.

the people involved in the videos and interviews were overwhelmingly if not 100% against the ordination of women. when the section on ministry followed those being trained outside cofe structures, these training courses were either cornhill or training courses like the one currently running at st ebbe’s oxford – neither of which could be said to encourage women in an ordained calling to priesthood. one vicar complained when a member of his congregation failed to get through his BAP and proceeded to denounce the ‘hoops’ that he had been made to jump through by his DDO, which (oh horror) included having to work in a church with a woman incumbent – he actually admitted that she had given his candidate a ‘glowing report’, so i’m not sure the worth of mentioning it, apart from putting the fear on others who would find this a similarly distasteful exercise.

richard coekin of the co-mission effort made a plea for the FCA bishops to give him oversight as the archbishop of canterbury wouldn’t provide him with appropriate support.

in effect, in all these areas the message seemed to be – support us, or don’t support us, we’ll do exactly what we want anyway.

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i stayed for the communion afterwards, i wanted to be clear that fundamental disagreement had no effect on the grace of God to me in the sacrament. but be of no doubt that to stay came at a cost.

meet the fca

so, i'm not entirely sure what the best way to tackle this is. i have some very strong feelings about yesterday's FCAUK launch, but also want to give you an overview from someone who was there - so i come to the conclusion that i'll try to run you through the day, but i do come with a bias, so you'll just have to cope with that.
________________________________________

it is fair to say that even before the meeting, it was not lost on me that there were no ordained women asked to speak, the only woman on the platform was baroness cox (whose presentation i enjoyed), but she wasn't asked to speak on bible or vision and strategy, but in the conservatively 'safe' zone of social action/mission

at first we are welcomed by paul perkin, who is hosting the morning session together with a woman, i'm sorry but i didn't jot her name down, janice i think.

paul welcomes us and then reads messages of goodwill from various people, including +rowan (no applause), +carey (raucous applause), the queen (moderate applause). he then does a bible reflection on mark5v1-20, the demon possessed man whose legion ends up in the pigs. much good stuff about jesus as our liberator and the one who reunites us with our 'family'. not entirely sure about the metaphor that our church is demon possessed, nor with the link between jesus saying 'come out' to the demon in that passage, over and against what that term means today.

at the end of this more goodwill messages are read out - firstly from +akinola by two nigerian bishops who attended, then videos from +nzimbi of kenya, +orombi of uganda, +kolini of rwanda and then a paragraph from a new wine newsletter which represented new wine as being fully backing of the FCA. now, for those who are on the new wine mailing list, you may well wonder what happened to the second half of the paragraph of that newsletter which stated:

'I realise that there are many in FCA who hold views which are very different from ours, for instance excluding women from church leadership. But with Henry Orombi right at the heart of it I know that our views on women in leadership will be upheld. I further realise that some will think this movement is the wrong strategy and that everyone ought to support the moves towards an Anglican Covenant. I believe both in the need for a Covenant, and in FCA; let’s try to use every means available to secure the orthodox future of the church’s teaching and practice.'

i felt this was a way of high jacking new wine into the fca fold - obviously with paul perkin being very vocal in both, this possibly would make it quite difficult to hold onto new wine's integrity on this.
_____________________________________________________

next, john hind introduces greg venables of the southern cone. +venables talks of the US case as being a long slow process (the hint of 'you are in danger in the UK' becomes more pronounced throughout the day), he talks of a new reformation in 'the offing' or 'already underway'. he says the situation is serious here (in the UK) and throughout the world and that we are at a crucial moment, we must not drift, hebrews 2: pay attention lest you drift away. we must pay attention, he says, to what has been 'heard', not to synods. this is not an alternative denomination, there is no alternative leadership (how this matches with what happens in the afternoon, i'm not sure), no division - the division was done by ecusa in 2003. FCA is simply affirming the central truths as received, we have 'raised the standard'. using an illustration of the only safe runway, he says that FCA is the one safe place to land and to take off, there is no other. he says that they are standing on the historic, apostolic, biblical faith, unchanged, not relative, or subjective, or a question of interpretation, but revealed plain truth. he exhorts us not to rest in institutional procedures - this will not save - but that this historic, apostolic, biblical faith is not being proclaimed in most western churches (!).

many have drifted away, false teaching has been introduced and the Anglican Communion can easily be taken over by a false gospel. there has been a strident and swift reaction to GAFCON, especially here in the UK, he says. why? because the gospel and truth has always been resisted, particularly by those who say 'we are modern'. the orthodox stance has been vigorously and violently resisted in the US, but here in the UK it is subtly done. remember we are not fighting flesh and blood, but principalities and powers. why do people not join FCA? some, he says, have a false view of institutional loyalty, or for some there's a fear of being blackballed, for others it's simple rebellion.

what is going to happen? the structures will continue to seek to accommodate the revisionists. the 'system will push the liberal agenda. we must have a robust and clear voice in the UK or christianity's voice will be silenced in anglicanism. he exhorts us to stand together, stand for truth in true love for one another, stand for him (jesus)
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after greg venables, baroness cox and then +ackerman speak. baroness cox about AID's work in the sudan. a place where many evangelical organisations of all hues are working. this is work that we should all affirm, and +ackerman gave us a brief overview of where he is as an anglo-catholic in the FCA mix.

+ackerman begins by telling the media not to report that it's about 'women and homosexuality', but that it's much broader than that, it's about the 'soul of the Church'. it's about jesus. he says that he is surprised to find himself working with evangelicals, but that traditional evangelicals and traditional anglo-catholics must find a way to work together. he comments that FCA is neither for affirming catholics, who are neither affirming nor catholic, or liberal evangelicals (who could he mean!?) - he states that issues of style must be put to one side.

for the US he says, the erosion became obvious over 30 years ago, that now it is a new church. the power is centralised rather than diocesan. he also comments on the institutional loyalty that, to me, seems to be becoming the 'straw man' of this conference - that he isn't frightened by biblical fundamentalism, but is terrified of canonical fundamentalism and that the church has given way to 'institutional moonyism', where it believes it is carrying out the end of jesus' mission. just before this comment he talks of fear of language being changed, which changes everything, that to call God, 'creator, redeemer, sustainer' is like calling our parents 'life-giver' and 'sperm-donor', that issues around 'father' are purely narcissistic, about 'my needs'. it made me wonder how he deals with other labels like 'lord', 'rock', 'the almighty', whilst i affirm the necessity of the relational and 'given' father son spirit.

he finishes by saying that in answer to the question 'aren't you just pleasing yourselves?' they must rest in the fact that the only credibility they need is for jesus to say 'well done, good and faithful servant.'
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i'll leave it there for a moment, sure that's enough to be going on with. i'm not sure if i'll get a chance to type up the rest prior to leaving for bishop auckland tomorrow, pray for us as we try to navigate these choppy waters...........

pray for us

so this week is definitely 'church politics' week in my diary.

tomorrow i go to the launch of the 'fellowship of confessing anglicans' in the uk, and then on wednesday and thursday i travel to durham for our ref group meeting for fulcrum.

it's been an interesting time of it - we (fulcrum) seem to have been getting a bit of flack for trying to tackle some of the sticky questions that surround the fcauk, but i won't say too much about that because we've already replied.

but i would certainly appreciate your prayers as i go into this week - whatever you might think of politics in the church - for wisdom, discernment, patience, courage, love.

feMIniSSION

at the sophianetwork consultation on wednesday, i was once again struck by the truth that the gender debate is not about a bunch of women with chips on their shoulders, who need some space to vent (although sometimes we all need a good vent), but that the pursuit of gender equality is so caught up in God's mission to his world, that without it we will never truly see the glory of God's kingdom come, on earth as it is in heaven.

but even more than that - if the foundation of our Mission is based on structures which silence or dull the voice of a particular 'other' then the whole 'building' on which those structures are based, is in danger of collapsing in upon itself.

people will do good work, will build the kingdom, will love God, and grace abounds. but at some point the reality will have to be faced - the thing is still the thing.

one of the speakers at the consultation was mandy marshall of tearfund. she presented the basis and some of the results of a gender audit that tearfund have undertaken in their own organisation. it highlighted for me the real cost of the gender inequality that is still (despite protestations to the contrary) being promoted in the west, to those in the developing world. the reality of gender inequality is the most stark when we view the statistics globally. tearfund's own website has much to inform in this area and it is a credit to the organisation that it was willing to put itself under the microscope and make itself vulnerable in an area where any western company is likely to struggle.

women are most vulnerable to HIV, poverty, violence, disempowerment among other things. the trouble is that so much of what we see is 'out there', over the hill and far away. we don't see the link between the structures that have created these injustices and our own stories.

let me offer one link.

a theology which sees women as 'lesser' (in whatever way) will inevitably lead to one where women are more vulnerable to injustice. so if a woman is seen as the one to be 'protected' or 'provided for', instead of a partner alongside whom men work, perhaps towards a community where all are protected and provided for, there will always be the potential for this vulnerability to be exploited. some will say to me that this is because the God-ordained way has been corrupted. but i want to say that any theology which conveys a sense of ownership in the relationship between the man and the woman is already corrupt. it may be outworked over here in ways that some find desirable. but in the end it will prove to be the short-leg on the chair which causes the whole lot to topple.

just think of the story of abraham and sarah. abe has been given that wonderful vision, the promise of descendents, of a home, a land, and inheritance....and that, through him, all nations would be blessed. and what happens next? he high tails it off to egypt where he proceeds to get rid of his (barren) wife, not finding any space for her in the covenant that God has initiated. on doing this deed, pharoah discovers that all is not as it seems, and is angry that abe has brought curse. ironic that the first nation that abe encounters after being told that he's going to be a blessing to all nations, he curses instead. he brings curse on another nation in 'selling' his woman, the one who is meant to be his partner, alongside him in a covenant of blessing. he exhibits that his mentality over her is one of ownership, but it doesn't just affect sarah, it affects those they encounter.

our thinking, our behaviour, our indifference, our lack of vision and intentionality over here, affect the stories of human beings over there. it has ever been the way.

CofE does the spanish inquisition

courtesy of eddie izzard. (contains some bad language and obviously a man in make-up...)

sophianetwork.org.uk

tomorrow i'll be attending a consulation day with sophianetwork, see below for information
_______________________________________

How can organisations and churches be places where both men and women thrive in ministry? Our consultation last year highlighted concerns about a lack of opportunities and support for women in Christian ministry. Is that a true reflection of what’s happening in the church?

The Equality and Human Rights Commission have highlighted five areas of persistent inequality in society that affect both men and women: the income gap; supporting modern families; public services; tackling violence and sharing power. Do these inequalities also exist in the church and in Christian organisations?

Come and share your experience, learn from others and help us find a way forward. To include input from Andrew McCracken and Mandy Marshall from Tearfund on their recent gender audit, and from Sally Nash on skills for collaborative ministry from her book.

When: Wednesday 1 July, 2009
Where: CPAS, Athena Drive, Tachbrook Park, Warwick, Warwickshire CV34 6NG
Time: 11am to 4pm
Lunch and refreshments will be provided.

We still have a few places so RSVP to Sharon Prior if you plan to come.

women who preach

reading through some stuff on sophianetwork, i came across this post on preaching tips.

the one that jumped out at me was this one:

'2. Develop your own style – don’t try to be like anyone else – you’ll be rumbled. Don’t be taken in by the popular blokey, shouty, stand-up comic style of preaching. Is that really the most effective way of communicating?'

in fact i had just been thinking about preaching styles and how my own experience of preaching has formed how i preach myself - and i'd been wondering how much i like that fact, or whether it inhibits me a bit.

recently a couple of people have said things like i preach with 'humility' and that i am 'softly spoken'. i had almost equal and opposite reaction to these comments. so often people are complimentary about those who speak with 'authority' (although i'm never really sure what that means), or who are passionate about what they are saying. i'm not sure how humility or mellifluence fits in with this idea of 'authority'.

i guess i am growing in my own style, growing up into being happy to be whoever i am when i preach, but it's sometimes quite difficult when there's such a lack of role models - not that i'd want to preach like anyone else, whether they're male or female - but this point about the 'popular blokey, shouty, stand-up comic style of preaching' really pinpointed something for me, because it really isn't my style and i had wondered if that was because i simply don't like being shouted at from the front of church myself, because of the experience of that being manipulative and coercive. however it seems that this is something that a few women have picked up on enough to say that women (and men?) should be released from this role model.

so is this a female thing? a style thing? a culture thing? a 'me' thing?

mourning a mirage

i'm looking at the man in the mirror
i'm asking him to change his ways
and no message could've been any clearer
if you wanna make the world a better place
take a look at yourself and then make a change

new song old song

when i saw this i thought - wow! talk about recovering the old chants.

having spent a couple of hours in westminster abbey yesterday at graham kings' consecration as bishop of sherborne, and listening to the wonderful music that was part of the liturgical rhythm and reading through simon barrington ward's 'the jesus prayer', i think there's definitely something 'soul deep' about this way of worship.

about a boy

i've been reading an awesome book lately - and it's not a christian one.

well, at least any book which calls itself 'raising cain' and has reference to the story of cain and abel, must surely have authors which have some kind of knowledge, but technically the book is written by two psychologists who work particularly with boys and sometimes men who need a little help, and sometimes a lot of help.

my mum gave me the book, she's just retired from social work and her last few years have been in education, working with those who don't really fit into school very well.

the authors are attempting to stem the flood of those boys who grow into men and never really get taught to know and love who they are, and so cannot learn what it is to know and understand the emotions and inner life of others around them. it is one of the only books which i have encountered so far which neither majors on the 'essential difference' between the genders, nor denies that there is one. there is a certain amount of reticence about the supposed biological differences (which appeals to me), a matter of fact-ness about nature and nurture being pretty much a 50-50 split when it comes to our identity, and a bowing to the seemingly irrefutable evidence that the top 'difference' between boys and girls in our childhood development is that boys are so much more active and girls tend to be able to articulate themselves better.

they also admit that there are always exceptions to the rule, but that that doesn't negate the need to deal with the way we respond to our children when this is the way they act - in general.

for any of you who have boys, as i do, i wonder if this resonates with you - it certainly did with me: high levels of activity are seen and understood negatively. what is, the authors argue, a normal 'boyness', is received by others around them as 'badness'.

a small example in my own family is the fidgetiness of my boy at the table. so we sit down to eat and he can barely contain himself! fidget fidget, sometimes he just stands by his chair, or starts to sit on my knee, or stands on his chair. it's irritating, and i find myself saying 'sit down' 'stop fidgeting'. but he's not doing anything wrong. i remember my dad saying that when he was a boy if they could have put all the food you needed into a pill to take, then that would have been fine with him - having to stop to eat was just such a bore.

the book continues to talk about how boys are militated against in schools because of this high activity level and that there are now so many more boys labelled with ADD/ADHD, now that there is a label. they even talk about the probability in their opinion that some are simply medicating against 'boyness' rather than illness.

it broke my heart actually, reading some of the case studies and watching my own boy. i love my boy (love my girl too, but for now this is about boys), he's got such an inner life, i'd hate him to lose that. he reminds me of me a lot, which is where the gender thing confuses me a little - my children seem to fit more readily into the 'sibling position' thing than the gender thing. my boy is a classic 'baby', as am i, and my daughter reminds me so much of my older sister it ain't funny. but he is definitely a boy - his energy levels are off the roof - and i'm not sure that boys are treated so well in our culture. their propensity as a human being for emotional connection with themselves and therefore others, is mitigated by the social pressure to 'be a man'. and i can try my best to model otherwise, but i'm not a man. my boy needs his dad and other men to model emotional literacy to him because 'he must see and believe that emotions belong in the life of a man.'

the book has many treasures, but for now i'm going to leave you with a secular book's exegesis of a biblical passage - a hope for a different ending for the 'cains' who now walk our world:

Cain's story describes every boy's desire to please - especially to please his father - and the sequence of ill-managed emotional reactions that lead to a tragic ending. we see a reflection of boys today in cain's disappointment and shame at his heavenly father's rejection, his anger at feeling disrespected, his silenced voice in the turmoil of feeling, the absence of empathy or emotional reflection, and his impulsive act of anger.

for us, cain's story resonates in the lives of boys today when we see them distanced from their own feelings and insensitive to the feelings of others, so clearly suffering the consequences of an impoverished emotional life.

before cain kills his brother, God reminds him: 'sin crouches at the door, its urge is toward you. yet you can be its master.' how different cain's story might have been had he been able to draw upon inner resources, emotional awareness, empathy, and moral courage, for instance, to master the moment. but this emotional education was missing for cain, and it continues to be the missing piece in the lives of most boys today.