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I've got Alison my wife reading Gibbs & Bolger's book on emerging churches. Last night she was reading the bit where they describe what was happening at the Nine O'Clock Service in Sheffield. In the book they describe how this service was one of the most exciting places to be in the UK and that for many there was an experience of God's presence that they had not encountered before or after. Yet while this great blessing was happening there were major problems with some of the leadership of this group with regards to sin.
So Alison's question was, "so how does that work...why did God choose to bless NOS, show up there in an incredible way when there was lots wrong, and yet you many churches where they are doing everything right, leading godly lives and they are seeing decline"?
Hmmmm.....answers on a post card to..yes the comments section.
Jason has got me thinking again. I left a short comment to his post Disconnect between belief and practice, but my thoughts have spun off at least to a quantity where they need their own post. So to make sence of what I write here your best to read Jason's post first.
Jason’s post raises lots of questions and issues, too many to reflect upon in one post.
I therefore want to reflect briefly on the relationship between beliefs and practice and the role of faith, sin and wisdom.
Beliefs inform practice yet practice also informs belief. I’m suspicious of theories that suggest a linear progression from thinking to character, belief to practice, and would want to al least introduce some sort of “feed-back” loop. The relationship between beliefs practice is therefore something that is perhaps circular or dialectical.
For example - I believe that God heals, From time to time I pray for someone to receive God's healing (i.e. my belief informs my practice). That said I know people and have prayed for people who have not received healing. My experience of a lack of healing also informs my thinking. It has not destroyed my belief that God heals, but has shaped and is shaping my thinking and thus altering my practice.
So in our belief / practice interaction I would want to as a Christian introduce the "element" of faith. Not an issisponsible, blind or ill-informed faith, but a nuanced, informed faith in God.
Where does Romans 12:2 , “be transformed by the renewing of your mind” fit into this. Does this not suggest that thinking / belief is the locus of character formation and practice?
I think all I want to say about this here is that the injunction to be transformed by the renewal of our minds cannot be separated from the act of presenting our bodies as living sacrifices (v1). It is also worth noting that both are present passive imperatives – in other words not one off events but ongoing.
There are things that we would count as beliefs, even as core beliefs, but we don't really understand them, thus are unsure of the implications for our practice. Robin Parry states;
For many Christians, the Trinity has become like something akin to their appendix: it is there but they are not sure what its function is; they get by in life without it doing very much; and if they had to have it removed they wouldn’t be too distressed
In other words we've been told that belief in the Trinity is a core belief but we don't understand it, and don't see any practical implications that flow from it. My earlier post Mission / ecclesiology interplay is perhaps an example of how understanding added to a belief can be an impetuous to action and transformation of practice.
Ellen Charry in By The Renewing of your Minds advocates a return to a pre-modern way of knowing she calls Sapience.
Sapience includes correct information about God but emphasizes attachment to that knowledge. Sapience is engaged knowledge that emotionally connects the knower to the known.(p4)
Despite all the talk of postmodernity there are aspects to all of us that are stubbornly modern. Many of our beliefs are modern in the sense that there is a separation of believer and belief. We view our belief in say the divinity of Jesus as something that is external, as something we can dissect and play around with in our thought laboratory. We lack an emotional attachment to such beliefs because we’ve not integrated it into our identity. People react, people act on beliefs that are connected to their sense of identity. This is why people will become actively involved in issues around race, gender, women’s rights etc.
I’m not too clear on how we learn sapience, on how we become emotionally attached to beliefs that should matter, but I’d hazard a guess that being part of a believing community has a part to play.
Then there's the issue of sin. I am that wretched man of Romans 7 who knows the thing he should do and then does the very opposite. There are at least four levels to this problem of sin. One is my own rebelliousness, my selfishness my weakness. Another is "structural sin". I believe that war is wrong; I believe that for the
UK
to have nuclear arms is immoral, yet I pay my Taxes that pay for these things. I could refuse to pay my taxes, but the fear of the consequences from this weigh heavier than my belief that this is wrong.
The third level is what I'll call "societal sin". As Maslow’s hierarchy of needs tells us a sense of belonging is a fundamental need. This need means that our egos can be easily manipulated to conform to the crowd. We know we should care for the poor and be compassionate, but the message from the rest of society to "look afar number one" bends our will away from that which we know we should do. We want to fit in and not be different, so we conform and look after number one.
An issue with many of our churches is that rather than act in a positive, non-manipulative way, in informing our behaviour / belief matrix, our relationships at church are so shallow that they lack the ethical currency to exert any real influence. Just as above there is a lack of emotional attachment to our beliefs so for many in our churches there is a lack of emotional attachment to their brothers and sisters, so there is an ambivalence to what I think about what they think about what I am doing.
These are my initial ramblings
Jim mentions that a few years back he gave up giving up thinks for Lent and instead added something.
I must confess that Lent is something that's rather new to me. I've been a Christian for 21 years but I was brought up very low church and Lent was soemthing that as a family or a church community we never did.
Inspired bu Jim's idea of adding things for Lent I'm going to do likewise. What I'm going to add is Sam Wells book Power and Passion. Who knows I may even get around to blogging about it?
Jason Clark has been thinking about how Church, God and the World intersect and the implications for us with regards to mission and church.
I commented on his post saying the following;
"I found this diagram (the one to the right) helpful when reading the shape of things to come, and I hear your concern / observation that position 4, which I think is where we should be aiming for, can lead to a post-church response. I can’t help but feel that this is due in part to Frost & Hirsch’s insistence that mission drives ecclesiology. For me this is too simplistic, there needs to be an interplay between the two rather than the domination of one by the other".
Jason responded in the comments asking how I say the interplay working out.
I think in order to articulate how this interplay might work out I need to take a step back and place mission and church in some context. The diagram below is my attempt to formulate this context.
The diagram is a bit messy - but perhaps that points to what I think is obvious, i.e. theology is messy and trying to describe how our theology flows into our practices is messy.
What I'm trying to show here is that our christology, ecclesiology, missiology and eschatology "swim" in our understanding of who God is. They are not however located in our knowledge of God in a static way but that there is a dialectical relationship between our understanding of God and these other doctrines. I my opinion there is no simple liner progression from one to the other, but there is a interpenetration, a circularity a shaping of one by the other.
So from my Trinitarian understanding of God things like mutuality, non-hierarchy, community, generosity, a going out of oneself to embrace the other come to the fore and inform my view / understanding of ecclesiology, christology, missiology and eschatology.
Locating missiology within this understanding rather than defining it in some liner fashion by christology for me expands what mission is. Mission its then transformed from just being about "saving souls" to participation in God's redemption and transformation of all of creation. I think that this is the position that Frosh and Hirsch want us to reach in their number 4, yet I'm struck that we can often arrive at the "right" praxis while holding onto a theology that slowly erodes it. Thus like a cliff being eroded at it's base if fear that if we have a thinking and a praxis that are not mutually compatible then in the medium to long term our practice will collapse as over time our theology fails to sustain it.
I feel it's important to have eschatology in this mix as this gives us a sense of direction,a telos, and also that our shaping then is not solely driven but history past but by the yet to come of the kingdom. Eschatology needs the pressures of Christology and missiology upon it otherwise it becomes about creating an enclave of the kingdom rather than a subversive yeast that undermines the structures of our society that are antithetical to the gospel.
Missiology needs ecclesiology otherwise we become like chickens with our heads cut off. We run around create a stir and then fall flat. Our mission needs to be located in community (well that's MHO), yet without the force of mission acting upon this community this too can become insular. It would be my hope that ecclesiology's dialog with missiology prevents us from a post-church approach. Here again I find the concept of Trinity helpful, for there we see a diversity and yet unity - so I theologically and in practice want to affirm the unity of the catholic church and it's diversity. Yes we need new forms or expressions of church, but this need not mean a doing away with church.
Christology, the incarnation when read with a Trinitarian hermeneutic becomes not the mission itself, but the decisive act in that mission for the mission. Christology alone cannot adequately define the mission for if it did in what sense would it then be the missio dei? I recently read (it's inappropriate to name who) a leader of an important Christian organization say. "while caring for the environment is good it's not what it's really about, after all where do we see Jesus care for the environment". For me this is a truncated version of our mission and of the Gospel itself - yet is was driven by this guys christology. You might want to argue that he needs a better christology and I'd have some sympathy for that, but I would say that the route for this "better" christology is in a Trinitarian understanding of God.
There's much more that could and probably should be said on this but this would seem like enough to be getting on with for just now. Jason I trust this starts to tease this out?
As is was Valentine's Day yesterday Alison and I went out on a date. We ended up at the pictures and went to see Blood Diamond. If you want a good review of this movie then read Fernando's thoughts, he's a much better film reviewer than me!
As we left the film Alison said, "so what can we do about this, after all we're unlikely to be buying anything with a diamond in it soon". I had been thinking the same thought and while the film had stirred me, made me aware of an issue that previously was not forefront in my mind, I felt that there was no appropriate response I could make.
Oh what a limited imagination I have! Of course there's stuff we all can do in connection this this issue. The film ends with some slides giving stats about the blood diamond trade. One slide states that there are 200,000 child soldiers in Africa. 200,000.
So here's the thought that came to me when I was praying this morning - what if we all donated the price of our cinema ticket and popcorn (if you bought some) to an organization that is working to rescue these kids, rehabilitate them and repatriate them with their families? My ticket was £6.25, popcorn £3.75 = £10. Why don't you blog this idea, talk to your friends about it, get your church, faith community etc., involved - let's not just be moved by a powerful piece of cinema, let's do something!
HERE is one place you can give to and I'm sure there are many others.
This Site gives some links so you can write and keep pressure on people connected with the diamond industry.
I like and have found both encouragement and challenge in the following words from David Burrell;
"we [must] take the sort of steps which are on a scale modest enough to be incorporated into our own story ...if we begin to alter the pattern of our lives, however, we will have to explain those actions to ourselves and those close to us".
At the weekend it was our leaders weekend away. I'd been asked to take the Sunday morning communion service and decided to do a Christianized version of a passover seder.
To help create a visual focus I painted the picture to the right on a curtain. It's the lamb from the book of revelation. Note the red cross is not St George's cross, rather a red cross was a symbol for the resurrection. So the picture shows both the death and resurrection of the lamb.
Brodie - Stuart can you tell us a little about yourself and your family?
Stuart – I am married to Susanne who has been my friend since she was 12 and I was 15 (childhood sweethearts and all that) and we have two children, Stephen (18) and Kim Michal (she has two first names!!! Aged 14).
Brodie - Tell us about your journey to faith?
Stuart – In Uddingston, dwarfed by the world famous Tunnocks’s Factory there is a little Nazerene Church . One day many years ago an 11 year old boy, from a non-church attending family, whose dad had recently died, attended a Summer Holiday club there. On the Friday night somehow he was captured and captivated by the compassion and challenge of the inspiring, provocative, compelling character, Jesus. And after all theses years…’Still, I will follow’.
Brodie - You are currently working on a PhD. Can you tell us a little about the subject area your looking at, your aims for this project and what some of your initial thoughts are?
Stuart – My first plan was to look at preaching as a political act in post-liminal political Scotland . That has become somewhat narrowed and I am now looking at ‘Open air preaching as radical street performance (with attention to three Scottish expressions)’. Initial conclusions, people might hate the terminology – but preaching is a performance (shown doing) the question is whether it is a good performance or a bad one – and who does it, and where it is done, and how preachers read and utilise that context in addition to what is said are all an important part of its effectiveness. Following on from this I think that there is scope for the development of alternative interventionist forms of public ‘out-church’ preaching – called by me ‘guerrilla preaching’ – based upon ‘guerrilla theatre’ a non-violent interventionist type of theatre. (Bored yet!!!!)
Brodie - Amoungst other things you teach a course in preaching at the Scottish Baptist College . Do you do this, (a) because it’s expected of you, (b) the kindsof churches that would employ those you train expect it, or (c) because you believe preaching still has a place in our hyper-modern / postmodern context?
Stuart – The answer is all three. As a College we seek to be responsive to what are the perceived expressed needs of the constituency of Churches we serve in term of the key competencies that they are looking for in those who would be ministers in their Churches. Most Churches, including most Baptist Churches for reasons of theology as well as tradition still consider preaching to be an important if not central part of their worship. In considering who will be their ministers people in Churches still put a lot of weight on whether people ‘can preach’ or not. In addition to this the regular ministry of many ministers will involve them in preaching at least one if not more sermons a week. All of this is just the case. But putting all of that aside I do think that preaching still has a place in our hyper/modern post-modern context, and I do see people changed by it – people coming to faith through it, people hearing the call of God in it. I also have a theological commitment to it based upon its integrated significance in the Luke 4 Nazareth manifesto.
Brodie - If your answer was (c) to the above then what are some of the ways you think preaching has changed (say in the past 15 years), or is changing if it is to be efficatious in our age?
Stuart – Here it gets tricky. On the one hand you could argue that in our Scottish experience preaching has actually changed very little in the past 15 years. On the other hand there have been huge developments in the theory and theology of preaching and how it functions and can function effectively as a means of communication in our post-modern context. Narrative, imagination, moves, event, form sensitive, listener orientated, creative, conversational, artistic, Jazz, etc etc are now the words which are associated with contemporary ideas on preaching. Don’t get me wrong at all. Preaching is indeed a Divine event. Its power is in the power of God, Scriptures, the Holy Spirit, the centrality of Christ. But as with the incarnation of Jesus, the Word made flesh, it is a power that God is pleased to have expressed through humanity. As humans we preachers can and should attend to our side – so that as far as it lies with us – we do our best in terms of our communication approaches suited to our context.
Brodie - What for you is the key function of preaching?
Stuart – In artistic language – it is about spraying oral graffiti on the walls of peoples’ hearts to change the old stories that are written there. In traditional language it is about bearing witness to the Gospel. It primary function, whatever the language, for me – is that people might be encountered by the Living God through the preaching event.
Brodie - your blog is called, "the word at the barricades". What are the barricades you had in mind when you chose this name?
Stuart – This related to my studies. I came across an article called ‘Art at the barricades’ an article that highlighted a move to more oral expressions in political protest performance art. The barricades therefore are anything that need to be spoken about from the particular perspective of the Kingdom Good News of Jesus.
Brodie - Your involved in a thing called, Centre for the study of Scottish Spirituality. Can you tell us a little about this, whiether is something that’s in the pipeline or is already functioning, what it does and how you think it could beinfit the church in Scotland and perhaps beyond?
Stuart – It is not so much a place as a ‘space’ for conversation about Christian issues that takes seriously the specifically Scottish dimension. This dimension is important at the very least from the perspective of understanding ourselves and engaging in mission. It will function both informally and formally. Informally through coffee shop conversations about issues such as the ‘ Emerging Church in the Scottish Context’ – date to be arranged with you soon!!! J More formal meetings will be like the one to be held at the College on the morning of Saturday 24th March when a paper will be presented and discussion will take place about a recent oral history of the early days of the Iona Community. This, however, will be done within a context of some worship and reflection utilising resources from that community.
Brodie - Given we live in a globalized economy do you think there is such a thing as a distinctive Scottish Spirituality?
Stuart – I know that instead of Scotland there are Scotland’s, instead of Scottish culture there are Scottish cultures, instead of Scottish identity there are Scottish identities - but in terms of historical and contemporary shared national experiences I think there is a ‘Scottish’ that makes these cultures and identities distinct – and likewise if not indeed more so, our spirituality.
Brodie - Stuart, I detect in conversations we’ve had and stuff you’ve written on your blog that you’ve an interest in new forms of church and in particular what people are calling the Emerging Church . Can you share what’s driving this interest for you and what you find attractive / hopeful about the Emerging Church ?
Stuart – The interest will sound so pious…but at its heart – that some who presently do not know or are far from Jesus (perhaps put off by their previous experiences of Church – and some of such people are my friends) will find a meaningful community expression where they can learn of him, be close to him, live for him.
Brodie - Tell us three things we could be praying for you and your family in the work that you are doing.
Stuart – That my children will continue to grow in the creativity and courage they are already displaying, that Susanne will keep being her, that I might actually finish my PhD one day...
Brodie - Stuart thanks for taking the time to answer these questions.
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