Baptist Assembly 2006

I'm off to the Baptist Assembly this weekend in Brighton. I'm staying quite near the Brighton Centre. If your there and want to meet up then e.mail me so we can arrange something. I have just changed my mobile number so don't rely on an old one, drop me a line and I'll let you know the new one.

Media Row over Norman Kember’s appology

Some things sadden me, and the fuss that has surrounded Norman Kember's time in Iraq is one of those things. I'm not sad because I have a particular axe to grind. I had never heard of Christian Peacemaker Teams or Norman Kember until after he had been kidnapped. What saddens me is that I have a suspicion that the Media have jumped in and made assumptions. The Christian think tank and news agency, Ekklesia, have just published a list of how they understand the fuss and row over Christian Peacemaker Teams and Norman Kember. It seems that they think the media have jumped the gun. They address the following allegations and make it clear that they are not speaking on behalf of the Christian Peacemaker Teams, but just how they see it.

• Allegation: Norman Kember and the Christian Peacemakers have been slow and grudging in thanking the soldiers who rescued them.
• Allegation: The CPT thank-you only came after criticism by people like General Sir Michael Jackson.
• Allegation: Norman Kember’s arrival statement was disrespectful to the armed services.
• Allegation: The Christian Peacemaker activists imperilled the lives of soldiers and others by their recklessness.
• Allegation: Christian Peacemaker Teams went to Iraq for publicity and to cause a nuisance.
• Allegation: CPT parachutes in and parachutes out of conflict zones.
• Allegation: CPT’s actions are naïve, foolish, ‘self-indulgent’ and ‘not at all Christian’.
• Allegation: Dr Kember is declining to speak about his captivity or rescue.
• Allegation: The military operation to free the three proves that non-violence doesn’t work.
• Allegation: Christian peacemaker Tom Fox was tortured before he was killed – which may have taken place in an escape attempt.
• Allegation: CPT has achieved nothing in Iraq, unlike the coalition forces.
• Allegation: There is no legitimate role for Christians in a situation like Iraq.
• Allegation: CPT had no possibility to refuse military protection and no grounds for doing so.
• Allegation: The military had no choice but to intervene to save these misguided activists, and every right to ignore CPT’s request not to do so.

http://www.ekklesia.co.uk/content/news_syndication/article_060327cptmedia.shtml

Encountering the God Squad

On Friday I met Rob for lunch (nice lunch Rob, thanks). Walking back through the university campus, we came across a group singing. They were quite clearly the god squad on a mission, "Oh yes, you get all sorts in here" said Rob, indicating a tent pitched in the middle of the square. I can't help feeling admiration for people who have the guts to stand in squares and declare their faith, but sometimes I wonder about the effectiveness of that style of mission. The majority of people put their head down and skirt round the edge (as I did). Last weekend, there was another god squad group in a shopping centre in Telford (unfortunately I didn't get to see this one). Mark, takes a slightly different perspective on mission. Not one for standing in the centre singing God songs, he arranged for an art installation called "holy ground" to be placed right in the centre of the walkway. Shoes surrounded a central "thingy" and the stories of the spiritual journeys that the people who had once worn the shoes were written up for the shoppers to read. Although both groups were doing their best to communicate their faith, they took different approaches. The first is a fairly traditional approach to evangelism, and perhaps people are hardened to it. They spot the "god squad" from a mile off and attempt to avoid them. Mark's approach seems to have drawn people into the story. You can read Mark's accounts of the Holy Ground here.

Welcome, Desert and Waiting

Welcome to anyone who has come by because of Mark Berry's kind link (thanks Mark).  MArk has written a meditation on lifes journey's through the desert, which I have the privalage to host (here).  If you use it for anything then please let Mark know.  Thanks. For anyone  who is looking for a copy of the "waiting" reading we are using on Sunday morning, you will find it here.

Lunch

I have had a couple of lunch time appointments this week, beyond my normal pastoral appointments. I met with the new minister in the village of Caton for one of them and the local schools worker Tony Bower (working for NISCU). It was nice to talk with two people about mission particularly in the local area. Tony has been in this area for years and has done loads to encourage churches into active mission among young people. All in all a refreshing week! Added to that, I have managed to get back to a bit of regular blogging.

An eventful Sunday

Sunday was quite eventful for me. Sunday morning was about the last recorded words of Jesus written in Matthews Gospel: "Go, Make disciples, Baptise them and I will be with you". We worked the service out using a living parable. We showed a video (http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5381243457844102397), and then sent Gill into the congregation to cut hair. She cut Alan's hair, and did a good job of it. Then I paralleled the last words of Jesus with a hair salon and the church. Jesus said "go" but we stand at the door and shout "come". I realised it was going to be provocative, and it was. Thankfully most of the congregation enjoyed the service and took it as it was intended without taking umbrage. At times like this I try and remember that people always take offence. It is never given to them. In the evening all was going well. It was obvious that one person in the congregation was drunk, but it didn't seem to matter that much. The congregation were interacting with the passage well, asking lots of questions which was good. The drunk man asked a few. Eventually I began to wrap it up, and I took one last question. My inebriated friend wanted to ask one more question, and began to get a bit obnoxious. I have never chucked anyone out of church before, but I felt I had no choice. He wouldn't shut up and he wouldn't sit down. So I took authority and bundled him to the door, where two big chaps took over and kicked him out. I talked it over with him afterwards and we parted friends. I can't help wondering if I did what Jesus would have done.

The bible on MP3, from ppodbible.com

I am listening to the bible by MP3. The people over at podbible.com have recorded the whole bible and are releasing a chapter a day via a podcast. At the moment they are working through Mark's gospel which is the shortest biography of Jesus life. If you are interested in following it you can download it daily from the website: www.podbible.com You can add the feed to your podcast software: feed:http://podbible.com/rss

Things brewing in my mind

I am the kind of person that has things brewing in my mind and developing for a long time before they either develop into long term projects or become relegated to the realm of "I had an idea about that once". I have several ideas that have been brewing for a long time now, they are all connected with church.

• Mission and Culture
  I have been thinking for a long time now about how the culture around us and the culture that is in the church are so vastly different. I have been reading about it and beginning to develop some new approaches to church life. I am thinking about starting on a research degree to see if I can ground my practice in rigorous thought. The church agreed to one day a week personal study when I started, though I have never made use of it yet, so in principal I have the time available.
• Using the Internet to make local connections and make discussion about faith issues easier and less threatening.
  I have blogged about this on the emerging evangelism website. I would like to progress this a little further and suspect that over the next few months I will get something together. See: http://www.emergingevangelism.com/ 2005-05-11-anonymity-and-local-connections
• Creative Cafe
  I have met quite a few people with an artistic streak recently. Some of them come to church, but most do not. I was wondering if there was a need for people who are artistic and creative to express worship in a way that is different to the ordinary "Sunday service" style. Imagine a room set round small tables, there is coffee and low background music available. Some one leads a reflection on a bible passage. The people gathered round the tables discuss how they could represent those thoughts and then set to work on the walls (which have been prepared with large sheets of paper), or on clay modelling, or something. It sounds like a creative idea to me, but in general churches don't have an excess of people with arty temperaments. Would it work? Who would come? I don't know.
• Stress
  We live in a world that manufactures stress on a daily basis. The usual Christian response is to invite people to church and then add to the stress by inviting them to join committees and add more to their burden. I wonder if it would be good to offer some kind of stress management from a Christian perspective. Jesus said some helpful things about life perhaps we could apply them (in a non church setting). Imagine going to a familiar place. The environment is relaxing and comfortable with some soft music playing in the background. There are several people there, someone helps you to relax, put your stresses in perspective with techniques like "thought stopping" or "worry work". The evening closes and those there are handed a little card that shows simply how what happened relates to the bible. No pressure, but a useful application of biblical principles for those people who wouldn't normally go to church.

I have a couple of other things on the go at the moment. They are the things I came to Morecambe knowing I would do, but not quite knowing how they would work out.

• Small Groups
  There are three types of small groups that run in the church now. The good thing is that they run without my intervention. There are
  • Regular small groups that meet to discuss life faith and the bible.
  • Irregular small groups that meet to discuss the life of Jesus and the impact he had, a new one starts on Thursday.
  • Membership and Baptism groups, that meet to talk about the implications of Membership and Baptism, they last for four weeks and we are in the middle of one at the moment.
• Developing leadership
  It is the job of every church leader to look for the next generation of leadership and help those people to develop move on in their church leadership. This happens in several different ways, the most obvious of which is when someone from within the congregation starts taking an up front lead. I mentioned the preaching experiment yesterday which is one way to see that leadership up and coming. I am also involving more people in leading the all age services.

Esther

We are starting a new series in the evenings services (which meet on Stanley Road, Morecambe).  We will be looking at the book of Esther, in the Old Testament.

I gave the congregation a choice between Esther and Colossians, having done an introduction to both books.  Esther got 66% of the vote, so Esther it is.

 I will be posting my notes as I do them.  I don't post them here, because not everyone will be fully interested.  You can follow them here: bible.graham.doel.org.  Should you want an RSS feed for them it is http://bible.graham.doel.org/node/feed/.  I put the notes up as I write them.  They are quite likely to get edited and changed.  But if your interested you can follow!

The church is dead, long live the church!

Through the post this week arrived the thoroughly exciting "Religious Trends 5" report. I'm not big on statistics but they can be helpful. The statistics and predictions in this report seem to be so alarming that Nigel McCulloch suggested that the church faces extinction.  (Full News Report).

This is what the report had to say:

• By the year 2040 only 2% of the population of the UK will attend church.
• By the year 2040 virtually all rural and innercity churches will be closed.
• By the year 2040 6.2% of the population will be active in other religions.
  

While that may well be true if the current trends continue there are some things that we should bear in mind:

• The statistics are measured by attendance to church, just because people don't attend churches that are run as institutions it doesn't necessarily mean the church in the UK will die, just that the institutional version might.
• As the culture changes institutional church things are becoming less and less important to people. That doesn't mean that people reject the idea of God, just the package that he is dressed up in. The challenge to the church will be to find creative ways of reinventing its self.
• Andrew Jones (aka tallskinnykiwi) points out that the Church of England report "The Mission Shaped Church" contains the phrase "fresh expressions" of church  (Link to his observations here). According to Religious Trends, the Church of England have the most to be worried about.    Anglican Priest, Mike Moynagh provides an inspiring look at how the institutional church can re-invent its self in his book "Emergingchurch.intro".
• In my mind one, the most threatening thing that the church faces is it's own institutional approach. Seth Goddin suggests that bureaucracy leads to death (Link to his observations here).  I think that the church needs be realistic about the possibility that the fear of change will stifle and prevent innovation and growth.

My hope is that this report will not send the church into a downward spiral of depression and lament about how things used to be in the past. I hope it will inspire the church to think about why people don't attend, and to think of innovative and creative ways of re-imagining church for the twenty first century.

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